Would any students or even teachers/profs be willing to give me feedback on my (very) short essay?
It’s an essay about how Bisclavret: The Werewolf (a medieval story) is a queer allegory about coping with human nature being different than what is described in Adam and Eve (i.e cis heteronormative monogamy) which was and is the dominant Christian view of human nature.
Most of the essays on Google/DuckDuckGo that come up when you look up “Bisclavret” are queer essays, including an essay published by the foundation of original author, but my prof told me:
-
you didn’t even talk about the major point of the story which is that Bisclavret is a werewolf
-
I don’t know why you think the king and Bisclavret are engaged in a sexual relationship
-
the connections to homosexuality are tenuous at best
I just want to know if he’s docking my marks based on his personal bias or if I’m genuinely not meeting the rubric. I’m second guessing myself and I’m worried I’m overreacting, I’m very sure that I met the rubric requirements but I feel like he just doesn’t like my analysis or wants to shut it down because it was using a queer lens (white presumably religious cis het male prof from a religious university/college). I’m afraid if I dispute it he will retaliate and grade me even worse but I also feel very discouraged so if I’m not overreacting I want to dispute it.
I can send an anonymized link to a scrubbed essay and the professor’s feedback through DM if anyone wants to help 
Do you think a paper explaining why you believe that what you wrote actually reached his criteria would do more harm than good?
You could submit a paper thoroughly detailing the points you wanted to reach and the process you used to do so, then explain why you feel this meets his criteria if you don’t think he would react negatively.
Example: he says the main point is that bisclavret is a werewolf and that the connections to homosexuality are tennous at best; well if you could explain what in the story leads you to a different conclusion; then maybe top it with a citation of the essay from the authors foundation (but don’t use that as primary justification), would he take that well or as a challenge on his authority?
It really depends on the professor, but if you don’t think it would do more harm, this could either 1) change his mind, or 2) make it more clear his reasonings depending on his response, allowing you to move forward with the accurate understanding of his POV. Whether it be dismissal of analysis through LGBTQ lense, or a genuine belief your paper just didn’t reach the mark.
His feedback was that everything else in the paper was good. He said he doesn’t see how Bisclavret is an allegory for homosexuality and that I didn’t follow the prompt of discussing how human nature is explored in Bisclavret.
I don’t understand how talking about cis heteronormativity and monogamy and werewolves as an allegory for otherness isn’t talking about human nature. Medieval Christian peasants, the people that created this story, were extremely sexually repressed like wtf.
He said that what I wrote wasn’t related to the source material when the queer allegory was so dense I would end up quoting half of the text, and I had to consciously avoid accidentally plagiarizing other queer writers because it’s the most common essay topic when googling Bisclavret. Notably literally none of his course materials mention queerness at all even though “werewolves are gay” is such a common take that even TERF Rowling uses it as a trope 🤢. To the point that it feels like a conscious exclusion or erasure of any queerness in his medieval studies curriculum.