Fetishes at UIUC

If you still doubt that college professors have way too much time on their hands, take a look at the program for a conference at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

Entitled “Fetishizing the Free Market: The Cultural Politics of Neoliberalism,” the two-day event at least featured speakers expert in their subject. All of the lecturers there had pronounced academic fetishes.

The April 29-30 seminar drew the best and the brightest in liberal arts studies today. A presentation of UIUC’s Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, the conference speakers examined such topics as “The formation of Girl-Centered Consumer Culture in Japan” and “Global Asian Queer Boys: The Case of Singapore.”

Top-billed among the organizers of the conference was Karen Kelsky [pictured], an associate professor of East Asian Languages and Culture and of Anthropology.

“My newest project is on queer Japan, and is an exploration of lesbian and FTM urban subcultures in Tokyo and Osaka,” Dr. Kelsky informs us on her web site.

“In October I made a 10-day research trip to Japan where I conducted fieldwork for a project on lesbian and transgendered Japanese women in Tokyo and Osaka, and participated in a seminar on Judith Halberstam’s Female Masculinities,” according to Dr. Kelsky’s update. “The project is titled, “Femmes and FTMs: The contested politics of lesbian drag in urban Japan.” On whose nickel did you make this junket, Dr. Kelsky?

Dr. Kelsky’s students have more prosaic concerns. Chief among their preoccupations is the understanding and comprehension of their teacher.

“Lots of malapropisms, as she tries to use big words to appear intelligent, in addition to being loquacious,” one reviewer on ratemyprofessor.com wrote.

Nonetheless, Dr. Kelsky gets high marks for, essentially, giving high marks. “Easy class,” another reviewer concluded. “I did NO reading and very little studying and I have a solid A.”

“The class was boring at times though and she couldn’t answer all questions,” the reviewer confided. “Seems to pass work off to TAs [teaching assistants] most of the time.”

Back in January, UIUC featured a debate between two professors and two students. That breakdown of pedagogues and pupils facing off may not have been planned.

On his blog, The Lone Conservative, one of the debaters, UIUC graduate student Adam Feil wrote, “Since no conservative professors were available for the panel (apparently the two of them had other plans), I’ll be filling in!”

Feil may not have been that far off in his ideological survey of UIUC’s faculty. The school certainly had no trouble fielding speakers for its April dissection of “neoliberalism.”

• UIUC anthropologist Matti Bunzl did his doctoral thesis on the topic, “From Silence to Defiance: Jews and Queers in Contemporary Vienna.”
• “Good lectures, but the class and grading are tough,” one reviewer wrote of conference participant Melissa Orlie on ratemyprofessor.com. “Clearly a feminist—sometimes makes males in the class uncomfortable.”
• “How this man got tenure is a mystery to me,” another reviewer on ratemyprofessor.com wrote of UIUC speech professor James Hay, another conference participant. “He’s pompous, which would be okay if he had intelligence to back it up.”

  “He takes something that should be interesting and overtheorizes it to the point of nonrecognizability,” the reviewer elaborates. “He’s disorganized and forgetful and never seems to have a plan for class.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.