Quintin claims: "It=B4s hard to imagine a literature student saying: " This Madame Bovary is sexist bullshit. I abandoned it in page 90."" Well, actually, it's not hard at all. Students have said exactly such things, whether they are "literature" students in a general education course or graduate literature majors. The continuing periodization of literature courses contributes to this: modernists will refuse to read Pope; Renaissance scholars will give up on Pynchon; and so on. A few years ago, one of our Master's degree students more or less refused to answer a question on her comprehensive exam that dealt with Melville and Hawthorne because of their sexist approach. I could have handled a hearty bashing of said authors in an answer but the refusal to speak or acknowledge an object of study always bothers me, whether it's from the left or right. But I suspect the problem applies to all sorts of artistic production--whether film, literature, painting, sculpture, theater or whatever. Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN) ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]