About the Author

Gina Barreca is a professor of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut. Her books include They Used to Call Me Snow White, but I Drifted; Perfect Husbands and Other Fairy Tales; Babes in Boyland; and, with Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post, I'm With Stupid. She's written or edited other books on vice, Victorians and sex, American humor, the erotics of instruction, The Sopranos, women's humor, and Italian-American literature. She will blog about teaching, sex, humor, money, publishing, ambition, books, marriage, envy (professional and personal), politics (professional and personal), aging, and cartoons.

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Recent Posts

The Professor's First Wife | Comment [7]

The Unsettling Idea of Settling | Comment [11]

Good Company: About Feminism and Various Sorts of Women | Comment [3]

Ranting About Feminism: Not That I'm Bitter (Part I) | Comment [38]

Driving Alone | Comment [9]

Featured Articles By the Author

Babes in Boyland: A Personal History

Why Can't I Get a Raise?

My Grad Students Want Sex. Let Me Explain ...

They want some sex in the Murdering the Mann Mystery. And they want it now. They are angry that Cynthia and John have not, as yet, had a passionate affair. They are writing out their frustrations on the official board, but mostly they are stopping me in the hallways and at the end-of-semester parties and, well, yelling at me.

“You’re always telling us about the erotic underpinnings of the social systems operating in academe. Put your money where your mouth is,” they tell me. Or they suggest narrative contexts where it might be intriguing to engage some character’s mouth in a far less metaphorical sense. They are tapping their collective and combined M.A. and Ph.D. heels.

I am less certain.

Cynthia and John? Miss R. Furbished and the librarian, perhaps? Kicker and Cynthia, or Kicker and the librarian, for that matter?

I hadn’t expected to include steamy scenes in Satis library, despite the name of the place; I had, I’ll admit, set it in a place I found pretty unromantic and uninspiring (all that cheese, perhaps). But maybe they’re right.

Your thoughts on the necessity of and possibilities for sex in the text, dear readers? Do you want me to say please?

Comments

1. Send the grad students to see the film Sex Is Comedy by Catherine Breillat.

   — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · May 3, 11:06 PM · #

2. I think it highly likely that your grad students actually want sex, in general, but figure they could settle for some written sex, since they have a much better shot at that. I would take this as an indication of a) grad student avg. social life and b) the rapidly accumulating stress of finals, not as any sign that sex would be appropriate in this particular narrative.

   — a grad student · May 3, 11:21 PM · #

3. Although personally I wouldn’t mind some sex in this particular narrative, now that you ask.

   John and Cynthia.

   — Dimitri · May 4, 06:45 AM · #

4. what’s a good murder mystery without some token sex? I see no harm in it. Doesn’t mean the story has to revolve around it…could be fun…and besides John and Cynthia seem up for it.

   — Frank · May 4, 11:31 AM · #

5. It seems to me that sex in college novels is usually sordid and illicit (as if academic types were necessarily either celibate or perverted…). So, as I see it, you have two choices: either avoid it altogether (thereby defying generic conventions) or go TOTALLY over the top with it—thus spoofing them. (I think my own inclination is for the former—I’m partial to endlessly unrequited sexual tension, a la Scully & Mulder—but perhaps that’s just me.)

   — maggie · May 4, 12:57 PM · #

6. I agree with Maggie. I think that would be a good and fun way to take it….(meaning you should go for the over the top sex option).

   — Harris · May 4, 05:30 PM · #

7. According to your students, ““You’re always telling us about the erotic underpinnings of the social systems operating in academe. Put your money where your mouth is.”

   That kinda creeps me out. It’s like you’re telling your students that being an English professor is like living out an Anais Nin novel. Academics have plenty of sex with each other, but as anyone who’s been to MLA knows, it’s of the desperate, anxiety-ridden, over-analyzed rutting variety. Hardly “erotic.”

   — Luther Blissett · May 4, 07:34 PM · #

8. What you just described, Luther, is the definition of erotic: desperate, anxiety-ridden, over-analyzed rutting variety. YES.

   — mickklukle · May 4, 10:00 PM · #

9. Ack! Not Cynthia and John! I was admiring them for being capable of having a male-female relationship without sex! Please, keep them modern! If there must be sex, have someone else do it. People incapable of having male-female friendships without sex are so archaic! Besides, if they do have sex you condemn their relationship to a “necessary” dramatic arc that flares out into total death of the relationship at the end, however high you take their peaks. Which is a shame when they look like a good potential crime-solving duo for the long term.

   — bta · May 5, 11:05 AM · #

10. I agree. Avoid the pit of department-based sexual encounters. No good can come of them.

    — Gary · May 6, 06:55 AM · #

11. All due respect to Harris—let me reiterate that I lean heavily toward Gary & bta’s camp—I see the “over the top” option as a decided second, still preferring the endlessly-drawn-out sexual tension scenario….Especially if this is going to go on for awhile. Sex would ruin everything.

    — maggie · May 6, 12:11 PM · #

12. Oooh! We have a camp! We need a tree fort and s’mores. ^_

    — bta · May 6, 12:38 PM · #

13. My own experience of the “erotic underpinnings” of academia is that all that eros gets constantly rechannelled back into intellectual engagement. If there’s a lot “rutting” going on at the SBL, I am blissfully unaware of it.

    — Bible Spice · May 8, 08:52 AM · #

14. “The erotic underpinnings of the social systems operating in academe.”

    Jesus Christ, what a hot phrase.

    — Joe Strummer · May 8, 05:05 PM · #

15. Speaking as one of the grad students, you guys are rapidly talking me out of a life in academia… Must it all always, always go back to intellectual engagement? Can’t we just have sex for the fun of it?

    — saddened · May 11, 12:19 AM · #

16. John and Cynthia must form a viable couple for this story to end happily. That’s the bottom line. Sorry.

    — Funofit · May 13, 08:33 PM · #

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