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In This Issue
The English Major and Activism: The Fat Acceptance
Project
 by Katie
Struck
As a proud feminist and LGBTI rights activist, I am
always looking for a way to change the world into a
better and more accepting place. One of the issues
that interested me in my Women Studies course was
body image and fat acceptance. The Fat Acceptance
Movement has been working since the late sixties to
end size discrimination. The media bombards women in
their twenties with images of size zero women who
represent only a small percentage of what women look
like. This discrimination not only stays in the
media, but also it has real life consequences where
negative body image can lead to self-destructive
behavior. Senior English major, Jackie Deskovich, is
bringing awareness to this issue on campus through
her senior Honors project. When I asked her why she
chose to do a project on the subject of fat
acceptance, Deskovich says, “It’s something that
I’ve always followed and research for the past year,
and I knew that if I did a project, it should be
about something that I’m passionate about.” I sat
down and talked to her about the project, future
goals for the fat acceptance movement on campus, and
what people should know about this issue.
Usually, senior Honors projects involve students
writing a lengthy paper on a subject and then giving
a presentation to their class, but Deskovich says
that she knew that she had to share it with more
people than just those in her class. She hoped that
her project would look at more than the white
hetero-normative privilege to the thin privilege and
the beauty privilege. She stresses the importance of
a campus-wide discussion about fat, health, and body
image. She hopes to create a campus-wide discussion
through art installment projects, involving
photography of women of all sizes, and protest
signs. Also, she wore a shirt that said “I’m Fat”
and offered to explain what she was doing to people
who asked her about it. She said that she wants
people to learn that weight is such a small
indicator of health. Also, she said that as a
campus, Monmouth College does not take enough
opportunities to discuss important, progressive
social issues, so she hopes that her project will
change that. Already, she has been discussing this
issue with anyone she can: her sorority, classmates,
and friends.
I asked Deskovich what she wanted for the future of
the fat acceptance movement on campus. She said that
she wants to hear fewer girls say they can’t eat
something that they want to eat because it will make
them look fat. Also, she wants self-destructive
behavior caused by negative body image to stop, such
as college-aged women sleeping with men just to feel
attractive. She thinks that by reclaiming the word
fat and showing that beauty does not come
in only one shape and size, more women will feel
better about themselves. Mostly, she says that the
fat acceptance movement is all about changing
people’s thinking (changing your mind not changing
your body).
I finished the interview by asking her if there is
anything else that people should know about the
issue. She said that people should know that the
research is out there. First, the National
Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance is
an organization whose goal is to promote respect and
equality for all sizes through education, support,
and advocacy. In order improve working and health
care conditions for overweight
 adults,
the organization works to add weight to the list of
categories covered in anti-discrimination laws. Two
other resources on the issue are blogs: “The Rotund”
by Marianne Kirby and “Two Whole Cakes” by Lesley
Kinzel. Kirby’s blog is honest and hilarious in its
encouragement of acceptance of all sizes. Kirby says
in her "About Me" section, “I'm on a mission here to
let you know that fat people are not your enemy. And
skinny people aren't your enemy either.” While “Two
Whole Cakes” is also hilarious and empowering, it
seems to have more substance in its look at body
politics through pop culture criticism. I would
recommend all of these resources to anyone curious
about this issue.
Coming to the end of this article, many of you may
be wondering “what activism has to do with the
English major?” The answer is that it has everything
to do with it. Words have the power to change the
world for better or worse. Writers like Thomas
Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Henry David Thoreau
wrote pieces of literature that caused people to
start thinking about important issues. While
Deskovich’s paper will only be twenty pages long and
her project only last this semester, the effects of
this look at body image on campus will with any luck
last for decades to come.
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Surveys or Specialties: Why the English
Department Remains Traditional
by
Stevie Croisant
“The way we are doing
it now makes sense for who we are,” said
Professor Mark Willhardt in regards to the
English major curriculum requirements.
Compared to other schools, Monmouth
College’s English Department resists the
trend of eliminating survey courses and
replacing those courses with what Willhardt
referred to as “themed courses.”
Colleges and
universities in the United States are put
into three different categories with
Monmouth College falling into the liberal
arts category. State schools typically fall
into what is known as a Research I category
(with Research II being the third category).
Research I schools are committed to having
their students continue to graduate school.
Professors at Research I schools primarily
focus on doing research of their own and
have huge faculties with perhaps 40
professors for each department.
Since Research I
schools have many professors who each have
different areas of specialty, it is easier
for those schools to cut the survey courses
and add in themes courses where students
might have classes called “Crime and
Punishment in Early American Literature,”
rather than classes that teach American
literature as a whole.
“Surveys are practical
for small numbers,” said Willhardt. The
English Department at Monmouth has already
weighed the costs and benefits of dropping
the survey courses, but came to a unanimous
decision to keep the surveys. According to
Willhardt, there are two main reasons why
the English Department decided to keep the
surveys.
First of all, each
English major at Monmouth has a different
background with literature. Professors
cannot always assume a majority of their
class has read most of the classics during
high school. Students have proved to their
professors that their high school knowledge
is not what is usually expected.
“Students can’t see the
connections if they don’t read the
literature,” added Willhardt. “The surveys
build a base of literature.
Secondly, the surveys
provide a quick look into the topics that
the 300 level courses teach. Students can
have an introduction to Shakespeare in
British Survey I, but in the 300 courses on
Shakespeare, students will spend a whole
semester on his works. The surveys are
necessary to provide English majors with
essential knowledge about authors, works,
and history.
“Grad school is the
time for specialization,” Willhardt said.
“Now is the time for understanding.”
Professor Belschner who
is currently teaching the British Survey I
course agreed that the surveys needed to
stay at Monmouth, but gave a slightly
different reason as to why.
“It’s important to have
the surveys,” said Belschner. “Students
don’t have a good sense of history. The
strength of the surveys is to hit that
contextual upper-level elective. The
histories are important if you want to
continue onto grad school. The GRE requires
students to know the history and periods.”
Belschner explained
that Research I schools require students to
understand the histories before taking the
courses which can be difficult with older
material which tends to be unfamiliar with
students.
Almost half of the
English Departments in the ACM (Associated
Colleges of the Midwest) agree with MC’s
philosophy. Out of the 13 schools in the
ACM, six have two required survey courses
for its English majors. The other seven
schools do not have surveys and instead
offer courses built around themes with
courses like “Tragedy in Early British
Literature” or “Beauty and Christianity in
Poems.” Schools without survey courses tend
to be more selective than schools with
surveys.
Both Belschner and
Willhardt agreed that students do not know
the material well enough for them to want to
eliminate the survey courses. Schools in the
ACM such Carleton College does not require
surveys, but it also ranks higher than
Monmouth College. According to U.S. News and
World Report's college rankings, Carlton
College ranks sixth nationally among all
other liberal arts colleges. The more
selective a college is (among other
factors), the better rating a college
receives, and Monmouth College ranks 162.
However, Carleton’s
course requirements make it look more like a
Research I school. Carleton can cut survey
courses because its students have other
requirements.
The English Department
here even contemplated cutting survey
requirements from four courses to two.
However, Willhardt was worried that students
would not take any early survey courses.
Even if students were required to take one
early class and one late class, Willhardt
still worried students would have a general
preference towards one class.
“No
one would want to go through British Lit
over American. The modern stuff is much
easier,” said Willhardt. “Who wants to take
a semester on Chaucer when they can take
American literature?”
As of now, the English
Department here has no plans of eliminating
any survey courses. They are much too
valuable to the English students here in
order to help them understand 300 level
courses or even help with the GRE.
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Book Versus Movie: Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants
 by
Leanna Waldron
I always get nervous when I hear that a book I
love is being adapted into a film. The movies always tend to dull
down some of my favorite characters or cut out my favorite bits of
the story line or cast actors that don’t bring the characters to
life the way I imagined them. But, with the beauty that was
Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hollows Part 1 fresh in my mind, I went into the theatre to see
the film adaptation of Sara Gruen’s
Water for Elephants
cautiously optimistic. I left the theatre very pleasantly surprised.
The book is told from the point of view of old
Jacob Jankowski who is, “ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other.”
After escaping the confines of the depressing nursing home he is
left alone in, he sneaks into the circus and tells the owner his
story of being a 21-year-old orphaned, veterinarian school drop-out
runaway who ended up with a travelling circus. The novel
captured my interest from the first page and held on to me
throughout the two days it took me to finish the book and then pass
it along to the next person who I could convince to read it.
Gruen’s story, characters and atmosphere are so beautifully
written that I really felt myself getting lost in the world of a
Depression-era travelling circus. The book was funny and sad and
frustrating all rolled into one 350-page paperback package.
Gruen’s characters, both human and animal, were
probably what made the book so phenomenal.
Every character, from Walter the midget clown to the
beautiful, damaged Marlena to the runaway Jacob to the abusive,
drunk August were three-dimensional and, in one way or another,
relatable. Each character evoked an emotion from me, whether it was
pity, joy or even rage. Even the animals, Rosie the elephant in
particular, had completely individual personalities that shone
throughout the book.
Although much of the novel revolves around
Jacob and Marlena’s love story, the relationship that I loved the
most throughout the novel was the relationship between Jacob and
Rosie. Gruen spares no detail when describing the abuse the animals
and workers suffer at the hands of not only an abusive owner
 but also the squalor of the times. However, Rosie, a stubborn Polish
elephant who finds nothing but disrespect and abuse at the hands of
August finds refuge with Jacob, the only person who can speak Polish
and, therefore, the only person who can teach Rosie tricks for the
show. The bond of friendship between the elephant and the young man
was beautifully written and makes the ending of the novel all the
more poignant and beautiful.
Aside from being just generally apprehensive
about the release of a film adaptation of this fantastic book, I was
even more nervous when I heard who was playing the lead role of
Jacob Jankowski. Like many, I knew Robert Pattinson from his brief
stint as Cedric Diggory in
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire but I also knew that he
became famous (or infamous) from his time spent playing Edward
Cullen in the Twilight
series. And, as an avid
Twilight hater, I must say that I unfairly judged him. I can
honestly say now, without feeling a trace of shame, that Robert
Pattinson is a great actor. I did not see a trace of Edward Cullen
on the screen when I was watching
Water for Elephants and,
by about ten minutes into the movie, had forgotten all of my earlier
anxiety.
The movie, like many book-to-movie adaptations,
obviously had to make some cuts. While I understand why some of them
were made, there were some bits that I missed. For example, the
beginning of the book sets up Jacob’s current unhappiness nicely,
which really makes you understand the ending of the novel. Early on,
Jacob states, “I used to think I preferred getting old to the
alternative, but now I’m not sure. Sometimes the monotony of bingo
and sing-alongs and ancient dusty people parked in the hallway in
wheelchairs makes me long for death. Particularly when I remember
that I’m one of those ancient dusty people, filed away like some
worthless tchotchke.”
In the movie, this bit is completely missing, which altered how I
saw Jacob’s character immensely. He is still a funny old man with an
amazing story to tell, but I missed the set-up of the sadness and
loneliness that was prevalent throughout the novel.
Overall, though, the movie fueled the same
emotions in me that the novel did. I laughed, cried and was
repeatedly amazed by the sheer cinematic beauty of some scenes.
However, as always, the novel version of
Water for Elephants beats
the movie version. Unlikely as it seems, though, I felt that the
movie was comparable and nearly on the same level with character
development, atmosphere and a fantastic story-line.
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Survey Says:
Who is your favorite scary or
creepy literary character?
 Uriah Heep from Charles Dickens’s David
Copperfield. I saw a theatrical adaptation of this novel at
Stepenwolf Theatre in Chicago, and the actor captured his
creepiness exceptionally well. Here’s a description from
chapter 15 of the novel:
Uriah Heep’s face “was quite as cadaverous as it had looked in
the window, though in the grain of it there was that tinge of
red which is sometimes to be observed in the skins of red-haired
people. It belonged to a red-haired person - a youth of fifteen,
as I take it now, but looking much older - whose hair was
cropped as close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any
eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so
unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went
to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent
black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the
throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly
attracted my attention […]”.
-Rob Hale
"The
Man in the Black Suit," from the O. Henry Award-winning short story
of the same name by Stephen King:
His face was very long and pale. His black hair was combed
tight against his skull and parted with rigorous care on the
left side of his narrow head. He was very tall. He was wearing a
black three-piece suit, and I knew right away that he was not a
human being, because his eyes were the orangey-red of flames in
a woodstove. I don't just mean the irises, because he had no
irises, and no pupils, and certainly no whites. His eyes were
completely orange -- an orange that shifted and flickered. And
it's really too late not to say exactly what I mean, isn't it?
He was on fire inside, and his eyes were like the
little isinglass portholes you sometimes see in stove doors.
-Alex Kane
Erik from The Phantom
of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
-Emily McClay
As of now, it's President Snow from The Hunger Games
trilogy.
-Leanna Waldron
Ambrosio in Matthew Lewis’ The Monk.
-Bridget Draxler
My favorite creepy character is Washington
Irving’s headless horseman in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
-Kevin Roberts
announcements!
-
Don't forget about
the Writing Center when you're working on those
troublesome papers! Located on the third floor of
the Mellinger Learning Center, tutors are available
Monday -Thursday 3-5pm and Sunday - Thursday 7-10pm!
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Submit to COIL! We
are accepting submissions for creative writing,
poetry, art, photography or any other type of
creative art! Email your submissions to
coil@monm.edu by
FEBRUARY 29!
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