Here's a tweet I saw today, posted by @erinanmcc (and retweeted by @Andrew__Bretz, my friend in the world of academia, which is how it came to my attention). This question made me stay up late and write this post instead of going to bed.
This question has been bugging me, too, ever since I read a post by @melissaterras (another scholar I don't know at all) way back in 2014, drawing attention to a similar issue: the question of whether there were any books about academics in children's picture books, who weren't old white men. (Here's the post I'm talking about.)
Back when I read that post in 2014, the first thing I thought of, of course, was this page from Herge's The Shooting Star, one of my favourite pages in all the Tintin books, a picture gallery featuring a bunch of white European men who have been chosen to lead a scholarly expedition (along with Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock). This kind of confirms the stereotype.
Back when I read that post in 2014, the first thing I thought of, of course, was this page from Herge's The Shooting Star, one of my favourite pages in all the Tintin books, a picture gallery featuring a bunch of white European men who have been chosen to lead a scholarly expedition (along with Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock). This kind of confirms the stereotype.
I can't speak for representations of academics/professors in pop culture generally, but I have been wracking my brains about fictional academics as portrayed in children's literature, particularly Young Adult Fiction. And my answer is: no, there aren't too many out there, and yes, we could sure use some more!
| For what it's worth, here's what I could come up with: 1. Woo Eubong in Maureen F. McHugh's amazing 1992 sci-fi novel China Mountain Zhang. Without giving away too much, I'll just say this story envisions a not-too-distant future in which the highest standard of living - and educating - is to be found in China. Woo Eubong, who holds the rarified position of "organic engineer," is not only an intelligent and skilled professor, she's a compassionate and patient woman, who also happens to be a wife and a mother, too. In the story, we learn that she, too, was mentored in her profession by a woman. And the student she's teaching is a gay man. So I have to give this book full marks for featuring academics from a few unsung categories. (And, it's just such a good book.) |  |
2. E. L. Konigsburg's novels are populated by some of the smartest characters in YA lit. Mrs. Olinski, the smart, compassionate and courageous academic coach in "The View from Saturday," is next on my list. Mrs. Olinski isn't a professor at a post-secondary institution - she's a grade six teacher. But if you read this book you will agree with me that Mrs. Olinski's grade six students could hold their own with any university students you may care to mention. And she embodies those traits that the folks on Twitter have been talking about - she's a teacher who's also an inspiring female role model for readers.
A Google search led me to this photographic envisioning of Mrs. Olinski, so in hopes that the author of the page won't mind, I'll put it in here.
A Google search led me to this photographic envisioning of Mrs. Olinski, so in hopes that the author of the page won't mind, I'll put it in here.
 (As far as female educators go, in books about younger children, there are lots - ranging from the talented and tragic Miss Honey of "Matilda," which might actually be the only one of Roald Dahl's wonderful books that actually offends me, the charming Miss Honey notwithstanding)... |  - to the pitiful Miss Wilder of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books. Anyway, though, I digress.) |
3. Next: Meg Murry's mom in "A Wrinkle in Time" (as depicted here in Hope Larson's graphic novel based on the book).
A scientist who makes breakfast over the bunsen burner in her home lab, she's clearly brilliant and a beloved parent into the bargain. But, is she a professor and/or affiliated with an academic institution? She seems to have isolated herself from her peers, when we meet her in the story. Maybe we can imagine that she gets reinstated into the academy after her theories are shown to be true at the end of the story (although it seems unlikely, since it's hard to imagine any traditional stodgy professors who would believe her family's account of what happened.) Her own daughter, Meg, goes on to marry a brilliant scientist while herself staying home to have something like seven children - kind of the same way Anne of Green Gables did. (By the way, what about Muriel Stacy - the teacher who inspired Anne of Green Gables to go to Queen's Academy to study to be a teacher, back in "Anne of Avonlea"? Here's a page I found all which is all about that. (Who were Anne's actual teachers at Queen's, by the way - were they all men? Ok, I digress again...)
4. Back to Madeleine L'Engle: a range of complicated, brilliant grown-ups appear in the pages of her many books (including a bunch of serious old-school female boarding school teachers in L'Engle's early novel, "The Small Rain"), but off the top of my head, I can't think of any real professors. There's Dr. Ursula Herschel in "A House Like a Lotus" - she's a neurosurgeon, I think, so presumably she's done some time at school, but we don't hear about it. In the same book, we read about a literary conference in Cyprus populated by male and female attendees - Vee and Norine are the names I remember - but if they are writers, or academics, or administrators attending the conference, I'm also not sure. (As you have gathered by now, this post is heavy on the "I seem to recall," and light on the "actual research to confirm my vague recollections.")
 | 5. There simply must be somebody somewhere in the giant stereotype-busting oeuvre of Diana Wynne Jones. "Witch Week," a book which I'm sure had some influence on the Harry Potter series, features a boarding school full of teachers, some male, some female (and not all great role models). Again, though, these aren't post-secondary teachers. The Dalemark series (one of which pictured here), a fantasy quartet, features a young lady who runs away from home to study law - at a school where, presumably, some of the teachers are women (maybe?) And the series that starts with "Dark Lord of Derkholm" ends up with a novel set a university, where some of the students are not humans, but griffins... so that leaves a lot of room to include any marginalized, underrepresented, non-traditional characters you like, I'd say. |
| 6. We also have Noel Streatfeild's revered, respected, awe-inspiring ballet teachers, i.e. Madame Fidolia, who appear in several of her novels ("Ballet Shoes" and "Apple Bough," for example). However, legndary as these ladies are, academics they presumably are not. |  |
 | 7. This brings me to the children who populate "The Alley" in Eleanor Estes' book of the same title, and its sequel, "The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode." They are all children of academics who work at the nearby Grandby College. Here, as elsewhere in Estes' work ("Ginger Pye," for example), academic parents have a highly positive connotation. However, are any of those academics women? Not in "Ginger Pye" (pictured here: "Call in Mr. Pye, the famous bird man!!!") ...and I can't find my copy of "The Alley." Maybe??? But "The Alley" was published in 1964, so I don't have high hopes. |
We don't really find out, though, whether Mrs. Castle goes off to work for some kind of academic research group, or for a private corporation. So - she's smart, but she might not quite quality for what we're looking for, either, alas.
In case you're wondering who ended up looking after the little Castles - please indulge my including what may be a couple of my absolute favourite illustrations in all of children's literature: a two-page spread that lays out a tantalizing description of the a day in the life of the Perfect Househusband.
In case you're wondering who ended up looking after the little Castles - please indulge my including what may be a couple of my absolute favourite illustrations in all of children's literature: a two-page spread that lays out a tantalizing description of the a day in the life of the Perfect Househusband.
I can just imagine wives around the world drooling over this fantasy. (Mahy, who was a single parent of two, may have put some of her own fantasy into this story, as was her wont in other books she wrote, too...) Ok - I promise, that was the last digression!
 | Let me finsih with one more note about E. L. Konigsburg. Her most famous book, "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" sets up Mrs. Frankweiler as the lady who holds the key to the secrets that are puzzling scientists and scholars from around the world. But instead of joining their ranks and/or getting in touch with them, Mrs. Frankweiler chooses to keep her knowledge secret, sharing it only with Claudia, a young girl who loves the idea of keeping it secret, too. I wonder if this whole situation says something about a general mistrust, at least as reflected in YA fiction, felt by its women characters, for the Academy - and/or vice versa. Mrs. Frankweiler even hides behind her dead husband's name (what's her own Christian name??), but seems content to stay in the shadows with her files and her secrets. (Please tell me that a whole lot of people have already written papers about this.) |
Another YA model for this relationship between women and the academy is found in Ursula K. LeGuin's "Tehanu" - a book about how women don't even enter into scholarly circles in the fictional world of Earthsea, not because they have no knowledge or power, but because their version of how to use knowledge and power is just a completely different way of being, something that doesn't fit into the existing, available academic boxes.
Maybe these fictional women "professors" - the role models, the teachers, the Mrs. Frankweilers, the Tehanus - are out there, in books everywhere - but they just aren't wearing caps and gowns and lecturing at universities. I want to find them all and introduce them to the scholars and get them into the schools (if they want to come). And then I want to sign up for all the classes they would like to teach.
Maybe these fictional women "professors" - the role models, the teachers, the Mrs. Frankweilers, the Tehanus - are out there, in books everywhere - but they just aren't wearing caps and gowns and lecturing at universities. I want to find them all and introduce them to the scholars and get them into the schools (if they want to come). And then I want to sign up for all the classes they would like to teach.
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