The Never Ending Arts Degree

Deciding to go back to tertiary study, this time at the Australian Catholic University, in 2003 semester one, also meant going back to distance education. That had changed beyond recognition since external studies in the pre-internet age. Everything was text, but online and communication was by email and discussion board. I don’t remember going to the ACU campus more than a couple of times, and for research that needed more than the internet, that meant a trip to the UQ libraries. My impression of the ACU library at the time was that it was limited. The Brisbane campus of ACU was situated across the road from my primary school, Nudgee State School, which no longer exists. When I was a child it just the Banyo Seminary, a closed and mysterious place. It is now an open and attractive campus with coastal views.

This course looks like it is still being offered, but my lecturer Dr Gerard Hall left ACU in 2017. I don’t think I knew he was a Marist priest. He had once been a school teacher and had a degree in literature and he must have been working on his PhD the year he supervised this course. I suspect I was rather spoiled by having him as the first lecturer from ACU, as not all the subsequent lecturers were of the same standard.

His blog has a wealth of information on his story and has access to his publications. There are also archived ACU sites about him that date from the time I did his subject and do not appear to have been updated, here and here.

My notes say there were two assignments worth 80% between them, but he must have allowed us to combine them into one. There was also 20% for participation in the discussion board. I don’t appear to have kept a record of these ephemera but did find one draft of something I must have contributed.

The support material was phenomenal. The modules of the course guide led to further readings from Hall’s Christology material – still available online here. There were bibliographies, but the modules also linked to provided readings. Being set in my ways, I printed it all out! I had trouble reading for understanding from screens and still do.

I was impressed by his openness to a plurality of ideas and also his use of poetry and other works of art to advance the discussions. He also edited the Australian E-Journal of Theology for many years, which seems to have ceased to be since he departed.

I was worried that when I got closer to the present and blogged courses that still exist, the risk of plagiarism would increase and I debated whether to post my old assignments. Happily, no-one other than myself reads this blog. I also suspect my old fashioned way of writing would be obvious to any astute lecturer of the future.

It is hard to remember what I was doing for those years, so since I am writing this for myself, I will see what I can recall. My wife was working as a part time GP. The four children were growing. I was working in General Practice and also as a medical adviser to DVA. I was increasingly active in the local church. At one stage I was on the parish council, but I was mainly involved in the music since I could play guitar and they were short of musicians. I was asked to assist a youth group but they grew up and moved on and then I just played with my family or other groups. I also started making primitive backings for hymns on an ancient version of Band in a Box.

Looking at old documents reminded me that I was published in Australian Family Physician. My wife and I had been published previously but this one was on my own. I’m not sure if this is a draft or the final version but it does not suggest I am happy in General Practice.

This nasty piece of writing imagining the life of a drug rep would seem to confirm that.

I also found notes for a short talk, apparently to other doctors, about treating mental health issues. I don’t know what SC means.

On a brighter note I was leading evening sessions at St Edwards. Father Frank Andersen had come to talk to us for a couple of evenings and we decided to go more in depth over several weeks, largely based on his book, “Eucharist: Participating in the Mystery.”

I do not recall how but at some stage in 2002, I was made aware of the MA (Theol) course at ACU, for which I possessed the prerequisites and that was wholly online so it wouldn’t interfere with working two jobs (!). Which is how is spent from 2003 to 2006 doing the eight units that would make up a coursework MA.

There are four poems miraculously preserved in a single manuscript by an unknown poet, who is usually called the Gawain poet. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and “Pearl” are considered works of genius, but the two other poems “Patience” and “Cleanness” are less celebrated.

When it came to looking at a dissertation topic, when my other suggestions were discouraged as being monumentally boring, Dr Moores was OK with me looking at the less celebrated of the poet’s works.

Most of this appears to be a combination of overeach and wishful thinking but if you ever were looking for a contrarian reading of these poems have a look.

I did spend an awful lot of time and effort on it and she did give me a grade of 7 (out of 7). I think she rightly struggled with my style suggesting that I wrote arts essays like a scientist.

Abstract:

Dissertation:

…and there ended my studies at the University of Queensland and logically should have ended my studies altogether.

It didn’t and I did use UQ libraries a lot when I embarked on further studies later on. This was because they were just better than the ACU library at Banyo, except for niche areas, and I was more familiar with them.

I found both the factual test and the two hour exam paper that between them were 50% of the marks for this subject.

I had an advantage in that I was up to my neck in the Gawain poet in my dissertation and that was a lot of the exam.

My last coursework subject at UQ was rewarded with a grading of 7 (out of 7)

My essay for this subject related to Guthlac A, The Passion of St Edmund and The Battle of Maldon.

It was graded 20/21.

1997 was my last year studying at the University of Queensland, where I did my Medicine degree and my Arts degree and the Honours in Arts part time, then called a Postgraduate Diploma in Arts.

In trying to recall what else was going on, I’m pretty sure I did the RCIA and became a Catholic that Easter, and at some point that year was mad enough to go part time as a General Practitioner to become a medical adviser to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. We had four children, a relatively new house and with all the driving and trains to the city for the new job I have no idea how or why I was still studying English.

Otherwise what I was mainly doing was my dissertation under the loose and benevolent supervision of Dr Elizabeth Moores, but in second semester, while struggling to finish that beast, I also did this unit. After the brave and foolish decision to go straying into modern feminist lit the previous year, I got permission to go back to the medieval era by taking an undergraduate course, EN282, at postgraduate level.

The topics covered were fairly broad and avoided the topics covered in more usual medieval subjects, that is, Chaucer.

We looked at:

• Old English literature – Saints’ Lives, Maldon, Beowulf
• Old Icelandic – Viking Romances, Prose Edda
• Gawain Poet – Pearl, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Malory

She didn’t follow my orderly list as above though, we meandered backwards and forwards a lot. There were lectures and tutorials most weeks.

Assessment was actually quite extensive. We had a small essay in the first week looking at the difference between Myth and Legend. There was a factual test after two months that I think was ungraded. She set a major essay due well before the end of semester and a two hour examination.

I remember a lot of reading and especially the Malory texts which were something in which to get really bogged down.

For some reason I went to the case of Buddy Holly to define a Legend as opposed to Myth.

This essay had to respond to something from given quotations. I used this one:

“Luce Irigaray…attempts to posit an alternative body image which is for woman a full body image, based on two lips rather than a gaping hole…Irigaray’s writings…make it impossible to maintain the Freudian conception of the male body as full. The male body can only be full on the condition that the female body is lacking. To present a female body that is full poses the question, well what about the male body, what is it?”

Moira Gatens

I used Bedford’s If With a Beating Heart, Harris’s Lover and Farmer’s The Seal Woman.

My usual approach was to research the hell out of things and I did that with the first essay in this course. In this essay, either from time constraints or design I just spoke about the books and the only other work consulted was Sheila-Rae the Brave, a children’s book that my daughters loved.

As was usual at the time, no feedback was given on the second essay and my overall score of 6 (out of 7) for the course suggested it was accepted as legitimate. I don’t imagine there many other essays as odd as this one.

I wrote on the feminist spirituality aspects on Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera and Maxine Hing Kingston’s The Woman Warrior.

I was commended on my research and got 17/21 but I find it rather cringeworthy now, and I was obviously trying to drag the subject back to my turf. It’s a good thing I have computer files of these now, or the copious annotations that Levy had to make would be hard to take on a scanned document.

By mid 1996 I had two of the four subjects needed for a PG Dip Arts. I had studied mainly medieval English, but was struggling to find a subject that fit my availability and bravely chose this one.

I should have known better and spent a semester so far out my area, depth and comfort zone that I am still recovering. It was fantastic but terrifying. I recall two male participants originally, but the other one disappeared very quickly. I figured out that, as a male, I struggled with the feminist part of the course. I was too stupid to note how heavy the queer lit emphasis was and that that was also going to be difficult for a boring 35 year old straight male.

The convener was Bronwen Levy, who had a long career at UQ and is now an emeritus. She is the first of my old lecturers that I have found on twitter.

I recall this was one of the first courses where access to the internet made a real difference.

Assessment was two essays (40% and 60%) and a non-assessable but compulsory seminar based on something from one of the essays. It appears I was allocated Gloria Anzaldua for week 9. I recall getting some pushback with my suggestion that she was anything other than perfect.

The book list (pretty much one a week) will give the flavour of the course:

Woolf, Orlando

Franklin, Cockatoos

Marshall, Brown Girl Brownstones

Duffy, The Microcosm

Kingston, The Woman Warrior

Harris, Lover

Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera

Farmer, The Seal Woman

Walwicz, Red Roses

Bedford, If with a Beating Heart

Galford, The Dyke and the Dybbuk

A couple of these were hard to get and may have been scratched. I know I photocopied the entire book, Red Roses, because it was out of print. Unfortunately, it had no punctuation at all and had a bit of the “Finnegan’s Wake” about it so I didn’t get past a couple of pages.

This was the major essay for Lloyd Davis’s “Renaissance, Poetry and Prose” subject in 1996 and I appear to have been in my element discussing the interaction between politics and religion. I book-ended my essay with quotes from Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum” so I was either being clever or showing off.

As was often the case you got no feedback on final essays so the 6 out of 7 rating for subject overall was the only indication of achievement.

I was clearly getting more confident in my writing whether justified or not.

Spenser and Milton