Hello, I am a professor in the English Department at a large community college in Garden City, New York, where I teach a range of courses from English as a Second Language composition to business and technical writing, and many others in between. I'd like to respond to the following questions posed by the moderators: What concrete strategies can we use to change social values and power structures in order to end violence against women? What specific steps are needed to change definitions of "masculinity" that contribute to violent behavior? As someone whose primary work in the area of ending violence takes place in the classroom, with people whose values and behaviors are largely established, and therefore not as amenable to change as those of young children, I'd like to offer to the group an essay that I have found very effective in getting college age men to confront the question of violence in their own lives, either as its objects or its subjects. The essay is called "The Necessity to Speak." It's by Sam Hamill and is included in his collection "A Poet's Work: The Other Side of Poetry." Unfortunately, the book is out of print, but I'd be happy to send a PDF version of the piece to anyone who's interested.
The essay deals largely with the writer's responsibility to "call things by the right name," and has a lot to say about the ways in which United States culture refuses to do so when it comes to violence. Hamill was himself a batterer and is a survivor of rape, and one of the things that speaks powerfully to students is the passion with which he talks about his decision to shape his life as a non-violent response to those aspects of himself through writing, specifically poetry. Students find it hard not to respond on the personal level as well; the authority of Hamill's willingness to share his own experience making it difficult for them to rationalize his arguments away. I can't say that reading this essay has changed any of my students lives in immediately visible and significant ways, but I do know that many have left the classes in which I teach this piece thinking differently--in positive ways--about male violence in general and male violence against women in particular. One thing that it seems to me would be a very good thing to do is to build a bibliography, spanning cultures, languages, time periods, of similar pieces (and I am thinking specifically of pieces from a male point of view) that teachers could then use in their courses, or even to build entire courses around. Richard Newman English Department Nassau Community College Garden City, NY 11530 USA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (516) 572-7612 ***End-violence is sponsored by UNIFEM and receives generous support from ICAP*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe end-violence OR type: unsubscribe end-violence Archives of previous End-violence messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/end-violence/hypermail/
