WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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Now to change the tone,
the topic, and everything

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I told Alison that
because I teach English,

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and for many of the
years that I taught it,

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I was what we jokingly referred
to a composition slave.

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I was sometimes called one
week before the quarter began

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and told by my
department chairman,

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we need you to teach
a course and that'll

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be starting next Monday.

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You have to teach literature
since the beginning of time

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up to the Renaissance.

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And for slave wages, of
course, and you said, yeah,

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because there were a
million other graduate

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students who would do it
for free or something.

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And so I ended up reading.

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One year I taught
from the Old Testament

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through the Renaissance
second period

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and I taught from
"Beowulf" up to that time

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and I was always in a
time warp; not quite

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understanding what century,
I have to look at my notes,

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where am I today?

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And one of the
things that happened

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was that, that was
during the time

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when I was really learning
about the difficulty of being

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a woman in the job situation.

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And I was trying to teach these
things in an egalitarian way.

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I wanted my students
to understand

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that women had made a difference
in history and literature,

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but then there were no women.

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When they were there,
they didn't have a voice.

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And don't worry, I'm not going
to go into a militant diatribe.

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I don't have the energy
for that anymore.

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But what happened was
that, for example,

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I taught "The
Odyssey," which I love.

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And the character of Penelope,
a smart woman, a queen.

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And we are asked to believe that
for 20 years, while her husband

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was out having a blast,
sleeping with goddesses,

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and eating well, she was
there weaving and weaving

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a shroud for her father-in-law.

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And I said, no, I have to
do something about this

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or I'm really going
to start feeling

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resentful about literature
since the beginning of time.

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And so what I did for
myself was I wrote

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a series of poems called--