Every Dog Must Have Its Day

IN HER SENIOR YEAR, Jennifer Kennedy '90, a Women's Studies concentrator, spent a long time thinking about Rousseau's dog. Her Hoopes-winning thesis, entitled, oddly enough, Rousseau's Dog, analyzes several theories of women's education using Rousseau's dog as a key to understanding the French thinker. The paper now resides in the Harvard University Archives, along with many other, far less titillating Hoopes-winners.

Professor Alice Jardine, Kennedy's adviser, said this about the thesis in her Hoopes recommendation: "I have directed many senior theses over the past eight years. Several of them have received the Hoopes prize. I can comfortable say that this thesis by Jennifer Kennedy is the best of them, and deserves your recognition."

Kennedy's wit is astounding; she starts the paper off at a brisk clip, with a brief, but precise, justification of her topic: "Every dog must have its day: this thesis is about Rousseau's dog." "Kennedy goes on to explain her treatment of the poor creature, "By 'dog' I will mean, first, the dog as metaphor, the dog as such in Rousseau's thought. Second, there are Rousseau's actual dogs, of whom he was very fond."

Rousseau's Dog is not meant to encourage spinoffs, or copycat theses. Kennedy warns that her method was suggested naturally by Rousseau's own thinking and should not be used as a widespread model: "It would be presumptuous and vaguely absurd of me to propose the dog as a new category for general use in feminist analysis: the last thing we need is another set of cumbersome and contested terms. I am far from suggesting that we should take up the question of Nietzsche's dog or Dostoevsky's dog."

One should not get the impression that Kennedy limits her discussion to dogs. She is quite lucid on the subject of Rousseau's urinary tract, for instance. Commenting on Rousseau's fear that a piece of a broken catheter had lodged there, Kennedy writes, "but it makes a certian kind of sense that Rousseau, starting with a lifelong urinary problem, would then graft the fantasy of a baby inside his penis onto his illness."

Rousseau's Dog manages to teach painlessly. Kennedy's delight shows through her writing, as in the punny title of her introductory chapter, "Cherchez Le Chien." Most of all, the thesis surprises its reader constantly. Kennedy does not stop with Rousseau's dog, or even his urinary tract; her irreverence continues into the modern era, with her bizarre discussion of Allan Bloom's desire to revive the homosexual relationships between teachers and students of ancient Greece.

Perhaps it is Professor Jardine who best captures the essence of Rousseau's Dog. "Who would have ever thought that an understanding of the history of women's education in the West required an understanding of Rousseau's dog? Jennifer Kennedy has taught old dogma some new tricks." Thanks to Noab Feldman '92 for the tip.