A Female Professor and Her Research
一位女教授與她的研究
鄭惠芳
Wai Fong Cheang
長庚大學通識教育中心教授
Professor, Center for General Education,
Chang Gung University, Taiwan
The Publish or Perish Jungle
This talk is on how a female professor survives the
“publish or perish” pressure of the academic world.
It begins with three personal anecdotes. The first is
existentialist, the second is feminist, and the third is
Harvardian.
It introduces alternative perspectives for tackling research
in the field of language, literature, and culture.
It pinpoints the salient features of new historicism, cultural
materialism, and stream of consciousness from her
perspective.
The talk concludes with what the speaker believes to be
the essential elements and sentiments for research in her
field.
2
「出版或滅亡」叢林
此演講旨在分享講者作為一位女性教授，如
何在學術界的壓力下存活。
演講從三個個人軼事為起始點──其一與存在
主義相關，其二與女性主義相關，其三與哈
佛大學相關。
講者將介紹可用以探討語文、文學、文化領
域研究的另類觀點，並指出其個人認為新歷
史主義、文化唯物主義和意識流中最值得注
意的特點。
最後，以語文、文學、文化的研究中之基本
要素和情感作為總結。
Existentialism
Jean Paul Sartre (1905 –1980)
1940s
the world has neither meaning
nor purpose
Every human being is alone and
completely responsible for her
own actions
No Exit--play
Feminist
1. Virginia Woolf
A Room of One's Own (1929)
A Bedroom of One's Own - ?te 壞特
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DlQ7Z
Rcl6E
A Few Lines from
A Room of One’s Own
“Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom.
And women have always been poor, not for
two hundred years merely, but from the
beginning of time. Women have had less
intellectual freedom than the sons of
Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not
had a dog's chance of writing poetry. That
is why I have laid so much stress on money
and a room of one's own.”
Excerpt from: https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/online-ebooks/virginia-woolf/room-of-
ones-own/complete-text.html
Women’s Movements in England
Suffragettes
“
Women who campaigned for suffrage in
th
early 20 century.”
“
universal suffrage (= the right of
all adults to vote)普選權”
From Cambridge English Dictionary
A Feminist Movie 2015
1928 Equal Franchise Act
Movie picture X
Picture from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3077214/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
UN Women
Picture of a Woman with a Loud Speaker
X
Picture from
https://www.unwomen.org/en?gclid=Cj0KCQiA1NebBhDDARIsAANi
DD2q0JL27DhgBPT0GAQV1P1Nn_ArFjpHP6ZXmLNjBx-aSM4H-
d5a2e8aAnwrEALw_wcB
1
970s Feminist Manifesto
“I Want a Wife”
By Judy (Syfers) Brady
Heresy
“
(the act of having) an opinion or belief that is the opposite
of or against what is the official or popular opinion, or an
action that shows that you have no respect for the
official opinion”
（
信奉）異端邪說；（持有）反面觀點
From Cambridge English Dictionary
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/zht/%E8%A9%9E%E5%85%B8/%E8%8B%B1%E8%AA%9E-%E6%BC%A2%E8%AA%9E-%E7%B9%81%E9%AB%94/heresy
Excerpts from I Want a Wife
“I belong to that classification of people
known as wives. I am A Wife. And, not
altogether incidentally, I am a mother.”
“I would like to go back to school so that I
can become economically independent,
support myself, and, if need be, support
those dependent upon me. I want a wife
who will work and send me to school. And
while I am going to school I want a wife
to take care of my children.”
Conclusion of “I Want a Wife”
“I want a wife who will take care of my physical needs. I
want a wife who will keep my house clean. A wife who
will pick up after me. I want a wife who will keep my
clothes clean, ironed, mended, replaced when need be,
and who will see to it that my personal things are kept in
their proper place so that I can find what I need the
minute I need it. I want a wife who cooks the meals, a
wife who is a good cook.”
“My God, who wouldn’t want a wife?”
Excerpts from:
https://www.wsfcs.k12.nc.us/cms/lib/NC01001395/Centr
icity/Domain/10659/I%20Want%20a%20Wife.pdf
大學教授的辛苦
「教授爸爸的心聲──「為升等錯過孩子的童
年，是我最自責的事」
作者 侯勝宗
「台灣社會的辛苦，大學教授如何承擔？」
「升等背後的代價，卻是犧牲了老三與老四
的出生與童年時光，也因而忽略了家中老大
與老二在求學過程中所需要的教導與陪伴。
從某種角度而言，孩子心中可能也缺了父親
角色的那一片拼圖。」
https://opinion.cw.com.tw/blog/profile/394/article/5883
Harvardian
Humanism
Legend
Friendliness
Library loans
Photocopy service
Interlibrary loans
I made a joke
Harvardian Legend
Picture of Harvard ID
Left foot
New Historicism
New Historicism: the influence of poetic
productions
The term New Historicism was coined by
Stephen Greenblatt, who published The
Power of Forms in the English Renaissance
(
Pilgrim Books, 1982), a collection of
essays with an introduction in which he
writes that the collection “gives voice … to
what we may call the new historicism” (5).
NH
New Historicism emphasizes the power of
literary and cultural productions, not as
aesthetics beyond reality, but as materialistic
influence both at the time of the production
and also at the time of reproduction or
rereading.
This emphasis has encouraged more and more
attempts to politicize Shakespeare’s works in
reinterpretation. It has also encouraged
imagined links between poetic works and
modern social-political phenomena.
Pleasure
Stephen Greenblatt stresses the
importance of pleasure in literature--
“
Pleasure is an important part of my sense
of literature…. I am frequently baffled by
the tendency especially in those explicitly
concerned with historical or ideological
functions of art to ignore the analysis of
pleasure or, for that matter, of play.”
Source: Greenblatt, Stephen. Learning to Curse: Essays
in Early Modern Culture. Routledge, 2012. 12.
Cultural Materialism
Shared perspectives
MY MOST Application:
學術研究、國家發展及其他應用方面預期之貢獻
“Unlike researches in the field of science
or technology, which may yield applicable
research results, my research on
Shakespeare belongs to the field of
literature, which shall have no result for
immediate application.”
“But most important of all, they shall
enhance our pleasure in Shakespeare.”
“Pleasure in literature and in the study of
literature is by itself the utmost purpose.”
Stream of Consciousness
Definition in Cambridge Dictionary:
“
a style in literature that is used to represent a
character's feelings and thoughts as they
experience them, using long, continuous pieces of
text without obvious organization or structure
意識流（一種文學寫作手法）
”
From
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/zht/%E8%A9%9E%E5%85%B
8
/%E8%8B%B1%E8%AA%9E-%E6%BC%A2%E8%AA%9E-
%
E7%B9%81%E9%AB%94/stream-of-consciousness
An Example in Hakka Literature
Picture of a book
Enter Hamlet, reading a book.
Polonius: “What do you read, my lord?”
Hamlet: “Words, words, words.”
(Shakespeare, Hamlet 2.2)
Shakespeare in Love
I could make love out of words as a
“
potter makes cups out of clay.”
Source:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d78f7aafa2a676e1fcddfe9/t/5f29714db738ca002d53cff7/1596551513933/Shakespeare+
2
3
In+Love.pdf
Essential Elements
Pleasure
Love
Imagination
Inspiring Elements for Research
Quotation from Shakespeare
This above all: to thine own self be true.
Hamlet, Act I, Scene iii
Inspiring Idea from My Alma Mater
Bell in NTU
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 18: Song
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=s
onnet+18
A FEMINIST QUOTE BOOK 2018
Picture
A FEMALE PROFESSOR AND HER
RESEARCH
一位女教授與她的研究
Academic jungle: Publish or perish
Hamlet:To be or not to be
THE FAMOUS SHAKESPEARE
QUOTE
To be, or not to be, that is the question,
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
(Shakespeare, Hamlet 3.1)
Pen
Thanks