A vignette into the world of the nutty professor surrounded by a sea of sanity comes from a risible piece that appeared in Saturday’s New York Times. The author is Rhonda Garelick, an associate professor at the respected Connecticut College. Gorelick took Mona Lisa Smile, the Julia Roberts movie about Wellesley in the 1950s, as the text of her sermon.
Needless to say, the commentary on the flick made by the deux Charlottes in this space was quite different from Prof Gorelick’s: “The film also reminds of the period’s political witch hunts, of how much sexism ultimately had in common with McCarthyism,” Gorelick writes. Apparently, things aren’t much better today, according to Ms. Gorelick.
She reports that it’s just as hard to inspire students with feminist values today as in the movie. Gorelick feels “increasingly compelled to look beyond my syllabuses [Just like Catherine in the movie!] to devote myself more to teaching a ‘wakeful’ political literacy.”
Is Gorelick a crusading women’s studies professor? No, she teaches French and Russian! You really can’t make this stuff up.