Death, Violence, and the Gendered Body on the University Campus

[1] & [2] Panel Chair/Discussant Linda Eisenmann Wheaton College eisenmann_linda@wheatoncollege.edu [3] Panel Abstract From celibacy requirements to curfew regulations to debates over co-education, the gendered body has always been problematic in university spaces. Ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle argued that the mind housed the ethereal soul and should be exalted above physical needs. In the seventeenth century, Rene Descartes argued that while “man” was ALL body, cognitive functions defined one’s humanity. More recently, feminist epistemologists argue that knowledge and the mind are situated within an individual’s particular standpoint in the world and that specific identity factors like race, class, gender, and sexuality can significantly affect how an individual perceives, and is perceived by, the world. For many in power, bodies, particularly gendered ones that carried notions of masculinity and femininity, were seen as challenges to patriarchal hegemony, as transformed physical threats to the entrenched socio-intellectual world. Looking at formal intellectual and academic cultures, this panel explores the conflicted and unsettled attitudes of nineteenth and twentieth-century university students, personnel, and institutions about the gendered body. The first paper explores the literal study of bodies as anatomical corpses in university classrooms and laboratories that was framed by Victorian society’s understanding of crime against the body typified most heinously in the act of murder of both men and especially women. The paper pieces together pedagogical approaches in nineteenth-century Scotland in the realms of history, law, literature, and the sciences. The subsequent papers of this panel investigate twentieth-century campuses, arguing that the parallels in cultural interactions between university faculty and the general public saw the former seeking to establish its role as authorities on all matters concerning the socio-intellectual gendered body. The second paper focuses on a landmark 1932 university hazing case, Powlett and Powlett versus the University of Alberta, which incited considerable debate around the ritual practice and the performative violence of students’ initiations that were commonplace—although not uncontested—on university campuses in the first half of the twentieth century. The corporeal marking and disfigurement of the male body served as a form of intimidation that constructed and manipulated bodies relative to minds. Focusing on the appeal’s case and medical and psychological testimony, the paper analyzes how masculinity was discursively seen to operate within normative and performative binaries which specified particular and layered notions of manhood. The concluding paper analyzes how fictionalized women academics were used to explore and exploit contemporary cultural anxieties about gendered bodies after the era of Margaret Thatcher. Contemporary British academic crime fiction seems fascinated with the persona of the violent woman don, out to destroy her students, male colleagues, and perhaps the institution itself. At the same time, women intellectuals often are portrayed as crime solvers , and thus as symbolic saviors of the university. Contemporary novelists thus seem conflicted over who to blame for the current state of higher education: Thatcher or the women academics themselves. The panel concludes with an exploration of the role that ideological apparatuses (pedagogy, the law, fiction) play in defining our own identities, work, and understanding of gendered bodies in higher education today. [4] Paper Abstracts Studying Murder in Scotland during the Long Nineteenth Century Christine D. Myers Monmouth College cmyers@monmouthcollege.edu Crime has always been a part of society that people grapple with in an effort to make sense of it.  During the Victorian era violent crimes like murder were a source of extreme fascination, in both popular fiction and scholarly study.  In this paper I will examine the ways students in Scottish universities were taught about murder.  From students studying Scots Law to those who learned Anatomy by dissecting executed murderers, universities engaged regularly in conversations about this particular crime. These intellectual considerations did not always follow expected lines, but pushed students to explore new ways of thinking.  For instance, in 1884 students at the University of Glasgow were asked on their Moral Philosophy exam: “If to die were the intensest pleasure, would murder be a crime?”  In response they were to consider “Mr. Spencer’s view” for Herbert Spencer wrote extensively on the ethics of murder, as he interpreted it from current events and history, and comparative morality of criminals. Source materials used will include university records/library holdings, contemporary journal/newspaper commentaries, and writings of individuals who studied or taught in universities to ascertain what was taught and how it was taught.  As such, this paper will offer a chance for twenty-first century conversation about why we teach students about violent crime in the ways that we do. Marking the Male Body: Hazing, Performative Violence, and Legal Interpretations of Mental Illness E. Lisa Panayotidis and Paul Stortz elpanayo@ucalgary.ca and pjstortz@ucalgary.ca In 1932, following the vicious hazing of a young male student named Armand Powlett, the University of Alberta was sued by the student and his father for $200,000 in damages. As a cause celebre , the Powlett case incited considerable discussion and debate on and off campus around the ritual practice of hazing and its  performative violence. The corporeal marking and subtle disfigurement of the male body served as a ritual form of initiation that was conceived as a manly pursuit that built bodies relative to minds. The subsequent court cases (an appeal case followed) revolved around notions of masculinity and gendered robustness. Rather than focusing on the perpetrators, the cases focused on the victim, linking “effeminate” and “histrionic” behaviors in men to mental illness and subtly to homosexuality. The case reflected the unease both on and off campus around the indiscreet, subjective, and idiosyncratic expressions of masculinity among young freshmen. In this paper, we concentrate primarily on the appeal’s case and the testimony given by medical/psychiatric professionals on behalf of both the crown and the appellant. We analyze how masculinity was discursively seen to operate within normative and performative contingent binaries that specified particular and layered notions of manhood. The complex historical intersection is problematized between hazing as an ostensibly innocent set of formalized youth behaviors and criminal assault that aggressively threatened someone’s physical/mental health. Historically and culturally, the case serves as a critical inquiry into power relations among students and student cultures on campus and also mediated meanings of socio-academic regulation of university initiations and youths’ rites of passage. Deadly Dons: British Crime Fiction and Post-Thatcherite Anxiety about Women in Higher Education Ann McClellan Plymouth State University akmcclellan@mail.plymouth.edu Simultaneously one of the most revered and reviled of British Prime Ministers, Margaret Thatcher made a substantial impact on British higher education. While many of Thatcher’s opponents hoped for radical policy changes after she’d stepped down in late 1990, her successor, John Major, followed closely in his mentor’s footsteps. In fact, some critics argue that Major’s 1993 Education Act granting university status to all polytechnic institutions was the final blow to British dons’ authority over the higher education system. At the same time the British government was making drastic cuts to higher education, the British public was being flooded with cultural representations of university life and privilege. Rather than immuring the public to Oxbridge, such portrayals often fueled hostility, resentment, and even fear of academia. Thatcherite British women’s university fiction, in particular, seemed to be riveted on questions of control, violence, and women’s bodies in academic spaces. Ruth Dudley Edward’s Matricide at St. Martha’s (1994) reveals the economic, emotional, and political turmoil at the heart of St. Martha’s College Cambridge, when one campus leader, Dame Maud Buckbarrow, is found murdered over a financial large bequest.  Margaret Murphy’s Caging the Tiger (1999) traces the suspicion following Dr. Helen Wilkinson upon the discovery of her husband’s dead body. In both, a woman don is discovered to be the murderer. Why? What attributes, behaviors, or experiences make these fictional academic women seemingly prone to murderous acts? Why are they individuals to fear? This paper will analyze how these novels explored and exploited contemporary cultural anxieties about gender, violence, and the body within the university and, as such, served to reinforce Conservative fears about British higher education at the same time they were trying to subvert them.

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