Calling: Essays on Teaching in the Mother Tongue

In this absorbing, insightful collection of 15 essays in a feminist vein, Griffin reflects on life in academia, mainly at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, where she is chair of the English Department and director of women's studies. Her voice is wise, wry, self-critical and passionate as she discusses the growth of her feminist consciousness. She deftly employs passages from Alice in Wonderland to counterpoint her amusing account of the Kalamazoo faculty's convoluted attempts to cope with a proposed women's studies course. She involves Emily Dickinson and Jane Eyre as she describes how her female students struggle to find their voices. Ruminating on sexual harassment, she explains how she grew to believe consensual professor-student sex should be prohibited, but admits she has fantasized about students and recalls how one student told her that the professor she followed to California was the one good thing about this place. In a lecture delivered on campus, Griffin recounts how a sticker on her door, Feminist Spoken Here, has sparked the most significant discussions she has had at the college. Those interested in education, not only in women's studies, could learn from this book. (Sept.)