When near-naked video dancers, hostile housewives and basketball players’ brawling ex-mates are posited as the new norm, some young women—even college co-eds—get confused about what constitutes appropriate behavior, said Marian Muldrow, a University of West Georgia English professor.
Case in point: A first-year student in the African-American Female Learning Community that Muldrow launched this fall recently shared her reaction to an overly noisy dormitory mate. “So, she yells,” said Muldrow, replaying what her student conveyed about the tiff, “‘if I hear you talking that loud one more time, I’m going to scream.’”
“Really?” Muldrow added. “How does that make the situation any better?”
At 29, Muldrow is a decade older than the aforementioned freshman and 20 other students in her all-Black, all-female learning community, a project aimed at easing these first-year students’ transition into college life and at helping them better connect collegiate endeavors to their overall life experiences, explorations and goals.
Indeed, televised housewives gone wild and rump-shaking videos, as subject matter, are as integral to classroom discussions as Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Vietnam War veteran Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” contemporary poet Allison Joseph’s Imitation of Life, or neo-soul singer Jill Scott’s lyricism. All are on the reading list in one of two classes Muldrow teaches in the learning community, whose students are taking five courses this semester.
“Everything in this curriculum is centered around them,” Muldrow said, “so that they can feel part of the campus, not be so insecure as students, and not fall into the [social] stereotypes like the ones we address in class.”
If singer Miguel’s “Quickie”— some have dismissed the video as soft porn—heralds loveless relations and sexual orgies, why is that so? “We talk about that kind of thing in class,” Muldrow said. “We ask, ‘Why not be a part of changing that?’”
