Poisoned Ivy by Toni A. H. McNaron

Poisoned Ivy

Lesbian and Gay Academics Confronting Homophobia

Toni A. H. McNaron

‘… Political conservatives have been so successful at getting the popular media to spread their spurious message about ‘radical’ professors enforcing ‘politically correct’ views that most non-academics think that college and university campuses are vastly different from the wider society. In- deed, progressive academics ourselves, while knowing that the academy in general is far more conservative than the media usually portrays it, often want to believe otherwise. As one professor said to Toni McNaron as she was beginning work on Poisoned Ivy, ‘I personally believe that academe is one of the most difficult places to be out because although we are often enveloped by a (supposedly) liberal environment, heterosexism has an insidious way of permeating that seemingly accepting exterior and striking at the core of people’ s deepest fears.’

POISONED IVY POWERFULLY demonstrates the truth of this observation. McNaron, a professor of English at the University of Minnesota, brings together her personal narrative, the results of a study she conducted of three hundred-plus gay and lesbian academics and insights gleaned from other research to construct this multidimensional portrait of the academy during the past three decades. As one might expect, it is not a pretty picture, although certainly there is some cause for hope.

McNaron explains that she originally intended to write an autobiography focusing on her own career, using herself as a kind of case study to theorize about lesbian and gay academics. Judging from the preface to Poisoned Ivy, one catalyst for this project was the very positive reception ac- corded two gay men-partners-hired by her department in 1992. Between her own hiring in 1964 and the arrival of these new colleagues nearly thirty years later, ‘the picture at the University of Minnesota was dismal and frightening.’ The difference between her experience as a closeted young professor and the experience of her new, entirely out colleagues evidently prompted McNaron to think about what changes had occurred in the academy and what still remains to be done, and she shifted her focus to a blend of ethnographic and autobiographical study.

In 1994, McNaron distributed 865 questionnaires to gay and lesbian faculty across the United States, finding possible respondents by contacting friends and friends of friends, professional associations, newsletters in gay and/or lesbian studies, Internet news groups and bulletin boards. Because she wanted to study change (or lack thereof) over time in the lives of gay and lesbian academics and in the institutions in which they work, she limited the pool of respondents to people hired to post-doctoral jobs before 1980. Of that 865, 304 were completed and returned. McNaron conducted follow-up inter- views with roughly half the respondents. In these interviews, she focused on ‘the impact of being gay or lesbian on three aspects of academic life that seemed to [her] to determine any faculty member’s success and satisfaction’-classrooms, relation- ships with colleagues and scholarship. Poisoned Ivy is organized around these categories.

The material from these interviews forms the heart of this book. McNaron offers generous chunks of her respondents’ stories in their own words, which are often eloquent and moving…’ ~ Maureen T. Reddy, The Women’s Review of Books

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Details

ISBN	9781566394871
Genre	Education
Copyright Date	1997
Publication Date	20-Nov-96
Publisher	Temple University Press
Format	Hardcover
No. of Pages	234
Language	English
Rating	Good
Subject	Educational Surveys; Educational Surveys – United States; Gay College Teachers; Gay College Teachers – United States – Attitudes; Gay College Teachers/ United States/ Attitudes
BookID	9989