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    Discussion of women's biography in theory class

    Mitchell Ohriner
    edited July 2020 in Pedagogy

    Collected wisdom,

    This coming term I'll be discussing many composers for the first time in video lectures (ugh), composers such as Valerie Coleman, Chiquinha Gonzaga, Betty Jackson King, and others. Since I anticipate students won't know these composers, I've been writing brief biographical sketches—I want students to see photographs or paintings of these women (and also of the composers of color) and I want them to think of composers as people. But the sketches of women invariably include details I wouldn't include in introducing men—details of their private lives, e.g., who they married, the age and social status of their husbands, the number of children they did or didn't have, etc. These details are often necessary to contextualize their compositional output (since their husbands may have disdained public performance and teaching but supported publishing) and the genres in which they wrote, but it also gives a clear signal that they differ from the men. On the third hand, I does seem valuable to highlight that marraige and family had (and have) a far greater impact on women's careers than men. I know this issue is perennial but I thought I'd raise it again. Would you advise including details of marraiges and childbearing in discussions of women composers?

    Thanks so much,

    -Mitch Ohriner

    University of Denver

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    • 6 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
    • Richard Cohn
      @RichardCohnSend RichardCohn a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

      Hi Mitch, maybe taking students through exactly this line of thinking and then inviting responses/discussion, or asking them prompting questions that would promote their own reflections as you assign the reading and then discussing the issues, would go a long toward accomplishing your goal of getting them to reflect on these issues. But also maybe wait to until  class 2, after they've had the opportunity to come to know this music qua music, which is presumably a luxury that is afforded their male peers.

       

       

    • Nancy Rogers
      @NancyRogersSend NancyRogers a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

      That's a really good question, Mitch.  I think you're right that including certain kind of personal information implies a lower level of professionalism for women, and so it might be better to omit this sort of thing.  I would make an exception, however, if there's information that's relevant to the compositional output.  For instance, if a woman's husband forced her to give up composing after a certain year, or if she wrote numerous easy works for her own children to play, that seems worth mentioning — and I would say the same of a male composer who wrote easy works for his children or whose output was limited because he was poor and had to work extensive hours in a non-musical job.



      I realize that my suggestion underplays the greater impact that marriage and family have traditionally had on women's careers, and reasonable people may disagree.  On the whole, though, I think that the emphasis on such information not only implicitly undermines women's achievements, but it also suggests that treating women and men differently is acceptable, reasonable, and normal.



      Again, thanks both for the observation and for the question.





      Nancy Rogers

      Florida State University

    • Rachel Short
      @rshortSend rshort a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

      Hi. 

      Definitely a great question. Representation matters, but what we say and how we show people also matters. I was thinking about that recently with a NY Times article about work/parenting:  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/us/drisana-rios-lawsuit-hub-international.html. It was upsetting to me, not just the situation, but I was wondering why the paper chose to show a picture of the mother in t-shirt/shorts wen outside playing with the kids, instead of in dressed work attire, at the computer? Even the image seemed to put a slant on the situation.

      Perhaps - also think through including brief biographies of male composers, and consider what details would be in those? I agree with the two prior posts as well. To help with the discussion Ricahrd Cohn suggests, perhaps put two biographies side-by-side to discuss how gendered they often are. (And the differences may be more than just which biographical details are included, or how they are described, but also the type of words used - just look at recent studies on student evaluations to see that gendered langauge is still a huge problem)

       

    • Conor Cook
      @RomanticStringsSend RomanticStrings a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

      Including that information might be relevant if it's important to the composer. If that's a part of their life they want people to know, then let people know.

      Related, how many biographies don't include the number of children Bach had?

    • Nathan_BakerNathan Baker
      @Nathan_BakerSend Nathan_Baker a private message.Vote Up0Vote Down

      Personally, I think a healthy question is: why don't we discuss the emotional life, including family life, of male composers? To what extent has this separation of the personal from the "professional" contributed to the phenomenon of toxic masculinity, to say nothing of the continuing problem of work/life balance in academia?

      Nathan Baker

      Music Theory Coordinator, Casper College, WY

      nbaker@caspercollege.edu