In which I make enemies within the Art History department

To anyone who said I might just have one blog post and then never blog about my time in Scotland again:
YOU WERE WRONG
Here is a blog post.

But first, a bit about me.

As you may have seen in my last post, I am an American college student currently studying abroad in Edinburgh. This isn't the first time I've left the US - I recently spent a few weeks in South Korea, the details of which you can read about here: http://emilyoskoreanescapades.blogspot.co.uk/

Also, my name is Emily O.  My middle name is Richelle, which I find a little froufrou for someone like me, who is most often found wearing sweatpants, eating disgusting amounts of cookies, and ranting about the evils of the wealthy white patriarchy. Although I am an English major, I also have other interests, like whales, rocks, black holes, 80's music, and Netflix. I look sort of like that picture of me on the right. If you would like to know anything more about my character, please refer to this article published in the Onion, which, to my shame, accurately describes me.

Anyways. Back to Scotland.

For the most part, my two weeks here have been lovely and uneventful. I have three lovely flatmates, a lovely group of friends, and I happen to be living in a lovely city that looks like this.

So for the most part, things are, well, lovely. But since lovely things are usually boring, I won't bother you with any more of them. I'll bother you with the more interesting stuff. You know. Embarrassment. Culture shock. Incompetence. Human struggle. The stuff stories are made of.

I got into a spot of trouble. Not with anything interesting, like the law, or drunken Scottish warrior-lairds. Just the University of Edinburgh History of Art department.

I come from a small women's college in the US, where, theoretically, all students receive oodles of support from professors and administrators and are encouraged to voice their opinions. I'm used to small classes and oodles of support. So you can imagine that a big university environment might come as a shock to me. In my Intro Art History lecture, there are 200-ish students. We are all divided up into tutorial groups headed by a tutor (an Art History grad student), in which we discuss the lecture and other bits that the various people designing the course feel are important.

My trouble concerns a strongly worded email in response to a homework question about a subject I don't know or care much about: late medieval art. And this email is why I am supposed to meet with the head of the Art History department tomorrow.

Hm, you say. Why get your panties in a knot over one tiny homework assignment about a subject as insignificant as that? Why not use your energy for something that really matters, like world hunger, human rights, or saving our ecosystem from total annihilation within the next century?

I don't know. I don't know why. I just did it. Maybe I'm stressed, possessed, or subconsciously obsessed with 15th-century illuminated prayer books. It's like spontaneous combustion, but with emails, instead of fire. It's like a mad crusade for a cause I don't think I support. It's like—

Oh, enough excuses. Here is the email I sent to my tutor. You can judge me for yourself.

Hello. I hope you are well. I have a complaint. 

This is probably not a surprise. 

As I'm sure you know, for Monday, my group (C) has to answer the following question:"How would early viewers, including the Duke of Berry, have reacted to the experience of viewing the Calendar cycle in the Très Riches Heures?" 

Now, the problem is, this is a royally stupid question. 

We can't possibly know how anybody in the 1400's REALLY reacted to anything. All we can do is make some simplistic conjectures that have about a .000001% chance of being accurate, because obviously, we can't read the minds of anyone, much less anyone who died 600 years ago. Instead of engaging with the art itself, it seems like we're just supposed to come up with vague ideas of something that can never be conclusively proven. To make an argument, we have to have evidence, yes? Well, how are we supposed to make an argument out of evidence that DOES NOT EXIST? 

But I am aware that whoever came up with this god-awful question has a PhD in History of Art, whereas I do not. I am also aware that whoever came up with this god-awful question probably didn't deliberately give us a question they thought was god-awful, and that there is probably some broader, more relevant conclusion we are supposed to reach. 

Please tell me what this conclusion might be, or I will be very unpleasant and opinionated in class on Monday, and everyone will hate me. 

In short: why is it important to imagine the reactions of sketchily-defined "viewers" to pieces of art, in spite of the fact that we'll never actually know how they would have reacted, or did react? 

Thank you.Have a nice weekend.-Emily Oxfordps. My fellow group members are not involved in this email at all. They are more even-keeled and complacent than I am.

I now regret some parts of this email. Well, mostly just the PS. My group members are lovely people who I should not have described as "complacent," because "complacent" means something like "showing smug satisfaction of with oneself," and I thought it meant "unwilling to rock the boat; tending to go with the status quo." I don't know how I made this mistake. I'm an English major, for God's sake. But at any rate, the last sentence of the PS was unacceptable, with either meaning, and I readily accept whatever punishment Karma has in store for me. But I don't regret the rest of the email. My pride prevents me from doing anything so mature as that.

In response, I got a very long, considerate email from the tutor, in which he tried to explain the merits of the question. His response included this bit, which I'm sure was not ill-intentioned, but a little patronizing nonetheless:

Of course we can't go into Berry's head, nor that of later viewers of the TRHs - but what art history in part does is reconstruct choice, experience and reaction - and we all do this, from the nascent steps of an undergraduate to an old professor past retirement. The latter may have more knowledge and experience, but he or she began as an unknowing undergraduate too.

He then asked me to meet with one of his higher-ups to discuss some basics on respect. Shortly thereafter, the head of the Art History department sent me a very nice email, asking me to meet with her to discuss "the tone you used throughout the email, which we felt was inappropriate."

My next logical step should have been to send a formal apology and wait patiently for my disciplinary hearing.

But I didn't.

I've spent my entire life being the polite straight-A good-girl, and it was so, so refreshing to be a rebel instead, even for something as tiny as this. I was on a power trip. I'm still on a power trip. It's exhilarating. Stupid, but exhilarating.

That being said, I may have taken things a bit too far. I am young. I am insecure. I am self-centered. But I do not like being called a "nascent" or "unknowing" undergraduate. And I do not like discipline, however well-intentioned it might be.

This email, I sent to my tutor:

Thank you for your honesty. I apologize if my email personally offended you or any of your colleagues. Please know that I'm not frustrated with you, the lecturers, the course, the tutorial, the university, or with anyone in particular, but rather with a system in which "nascent undergraduates" must defer to their elders.

And to be fair, it was a bad question.

And I this email, to the head of the Art History department:

It would be best for me to meet at noon, if that's alright. I hope that we can discuss my actual concern as well as the email itself, scandalous though it may be. Have a good evening!

In short, if there is an Art History hell, I will burn in it.

I am now experiencing massive mood swings. I go from rebellious exhilaration to fearing that I'll be exiled to some desolate British island, because really, I am a coward at heart. My meek and suck-uppy 12-year-old self still lives within me and cannot bear the idea of going against the status quo. But what is done. At this point, I've gone too far. I'm in too deep. I can't back out now.

I'd give a more impassioned speech, but I must go to bed. You know, saving strength and all that, for the conflict ahead. Maybe I'll sleep on the issue and wake up more mature and open-minded, ready to accept some discipline and grovel my way out of trouble. But maybe I won't.

Because really, it was a terrible question.

Melodramatically yours,
-Emily O.