Creativity as Wager?

April 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

This semester, in the spirit of Joan Retallack’s ideas of “essay as wager” and “poethics,” I decided to make the first high stakes paper assignment of the semester (for my Composition II courses) something fun. Something a little “creative.” I asked my students to write a manifesto—to think about this first paper as a piece of writing they can have fun with, a piece of writing that would express their own unique and specific argument about “happiness” (the course’s theme), a piece of writing meant to be read out loud.

A handful of students really explored the form. But, the majority of the class were delighted when their second paper assignment was to do a (fairly straightforward) close reading. I was pretty surprised. It seemed strange to me that my students would choose a prescribed assignment over one that leaves the door wide open. And, in a lot of ways, this student bias goes against my general theory of essay writing—one that tips its hat to essay’s French ancestry— essayer (to try). Joan Retallack frames this approach by positing, “the source of vitality for the essay is its engagement in conversational invention rather than ordinal accounts of things (including thoughts) that have already taken place” (“Essay as Wager”).  In other words, to write an essay is to explore, to follow thought in motion and then see what shape it takes, and to engage with the world around us. As Lex Runciman writes, “to write is to think, or to try to think.” But, then again, I occasionally call myself a writer, I don’t mind writing essays, and I might be a tiny bit naïve.

*

I attended the Conference on College Composition and Communication a week or so ago. I heard Richard E. Miller give a talk in which he spoke about standards and standardization and said something like (and I am paraphrasing here), one of the failures of our system is “the eradication of ambiguity—we train people to create arguments that bear no relation to the complexity of lived reality.” This felt like a big (to borrow the age old adage) “aha moment” to me. Of course, how could I expect my students to feel comfortable being “creative,” imagining and owning their own manifestos, when they were probably taught to do just the opposite.

I left the session, sought out some WIFI and immediately blogged on our course site. My post included the following questions: “How often do you feel that you are able to be creative? How does that manifest itself? What does it look like? And, how comfortable do you feel “living with ambiguity”? Do you feel okay not understanding something from time to time? Is it exciting to be confused? Why?”

I also offered them links to the following videos:

Daniel Pink: Education and the Changing World of Work

Teaching the Action Horizon

Ken Robinson Says \”Schools Kill Creativity\”

I felt certain that my students would respond. As we all know, blogging is very different from paper writing. My students occupy this space fairly comfortably. I do not think they would describe blogging in the same way that they described their experiences writing the paper one manifesto. However, it is rare that I give them a specific prompt to blog about. In this medium, the ambiguous is somehow okay.

A sampling of responses: “classes that support creativity are usually joke classes”; “before college we were always taught to pass standardized tests”; “I keep everything within certain acceptable boundaries”; “I always perceived creativity as being something worthless”; and “I am not that creative at all (or at the very least, a person whose creative instincts were not nurtured and was left to wither and die in a small, desolate place in my mind).” The students who (reluctantly) admitted to being creative said that it manifested itself in “doodling and daydreaming.”

My students’ writing about not being “creative” was overwhelmingly creative. They used images and media, they “showed” instead of “telling.” I am tempted to attribute all of these things to the medium that they were composing in, but at the same time, I wonder how often we take a step back and ask ourselves and our students how often we/they are creative? Or, perhaps the real question is…what does creativity look like today, particularly in a space where so much of what we do exists in “virtual”? Do our students even connect the words “creative” and “writing” anymore?

For me, the composition classroom represents a rare opportunity for students to re-engage with “the composing process…as a continuum of making meaning” (Berthoff, “Learning the Uses of Chaos”), and to rediscover or discover the real “pleasure of the text,” always keeping in mind Roland Barthes’ definition of “pleasure,” “there will always be a margin of indecision…the paradigm will falter, the meaning will be precarious, revocable, reversible, the discourse incomplete.” And, for me, this rare opportunity is creative and demands creativity from its participants. But, am I the only one in my proverbial classroom subscribing to that definition?

A few wagers in the form of quotes:

from Joan Retallack’s “The Woman in the Chinese Room”

She-1.
now that we think we know that the world is not all that is the case the case in question the space of the case sad but fierce with light upholds the dark it seems to utter itself must there be subtitles must there be translation she thinks she knows but doesn’t want to accept that in order to write or read or speak there must be a division between light and dark

from Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons

NOTHING ELEGANT.

A charm a single charm is doubtful. If the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it, if inside is let in and there places change then certainly something is upright. It is earnest.

Filed Under: Art, Asides, Baruch College, Blogs and Blogging

Gagarin and Limahl walk into a bar…and talk about school curriculum

April 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

April 12th was the 50th anniversary of Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin’s first flight into space in the Vostoc 1 space ship, when he Orbited the earth.

No doubt, the man deserved the Hero of the Soviet Union medal awarded to him, and the glory and fame that came with it.

I learned about Gagarin during a class called “ Knowledge About Society”. The curriculum was build around several themes such as Polish patriotism, building a close relationship with the Soviet brothers, and self defense in case of impending attack form imperialists (yes, that means you!).

From http://www.aerospaceguide.net/spacehistory/yurigagarin.html

It is there that we learned he was Brave, Patriotic and Handsome. A true Soviet Man.

This reminiscing took me down memory lane. What else did I learn in the 1980’s Poland?

The “Knowlegde About Society” class was a catch-all for propaganda and weird pieces of information that did not fit neatly into other subjects. We did not take it very seriously but some of the class trips were rather fun.

We learned how to shoot during a single trip to a shooting range, where we also practiced cleaning and assembling a Kalashnikov. When I arrived in America I was the only teenager in my class with this special skill set.
There were many class exercises when we were told to wear old, decommissioned gas masks and run around the soccer field with them on because it was supposed to help us react in case of a gas attack. The theme of some sort of a danger coming from the USA was common, not surprising given that we were in the middle of the Cold War.

This poster reads: “Be Cautious of the Enemy of the Nation”

From http://c.wrzuta.pl/wi13542/99fc9a1d001fcdc84745f002/Plakaty%20PRL%27u?type=i&key=maM14bouGD&ft=f

 

For a common image of the America-the land- of -social- inequalities, check this poster titled: “The American Advertisement for Shoes.”

From http://www.polskaprl.rejtravel.pl/pp/41.jpg

 

This is a uniform worn by all school children in the 1980s: easily improvised to more or less resemble the basic design, it was customized by different collars, and for the rebels among us, making a statement meant opening up the buttons on the front to reveal some more individualized clothing item, likely made by your grandmother, but still, cooler then the synthetic, clingy, navy blue tent.

From http://www.polskaprl.rejtravel.pl/szkola/2.jpg

 

The school was decorated with few old posters, praising the Communist Party and the Friendship with the Soviet Union, much like this:

From http://www.polskaprl.rejtravel.pl/pp/3.jpg

The letters on this poster: “ ZSSR” is Polish for “the USSR”, and the signs means: “Defender of peace and a friend of children.”

Another theme was the pride in the accomplishments of the nation and socialism.

In this image, the dude walking away from the construction site, hands in his pockets, is described as “a bum”: “ The bum, a deserter from the front of the fight for peace and strong Poland.”

From http://niepoprawni.pl/grafika/bumelant-plakat-propagandowy-prl

 

The economic situation of Poland was often explained to be partly due to the effects of rampant capitalism elsewhere: we in the Soviet block had to manage and help each other in the face of the rest of the world.

From http://republika.pl/printo/warszawa/80te2/w03sl%5B1%5D.jpeg

The stores really did look like this.

And the real economy was taking place on the black market, which the state never attempted to regulate or banish, because it really was central to any survival in the economic system of constant shortages of necessities and all consumer goods.

From http://republika.pl/printo/warszawa/80te1.htm

 

Yummy meat. And here is sugar:

From http://republika.pl/printo/warszawa/80te1.htm

If, walking to school, you happen to see that a delivery truck has arrived at a store, bringing a product, whatever it may be, you would skip class, stand in a long line, and hopefully triumphantly secure some much desired product, like… toilet paper.

From http://m.onet.pl/_m/f81b3974c3f210496819cd5891fcffd2,14,1.jpg

 

Industrializing the country was a point of pride for the Polish Communist Party and a popular topic of propaganda:

“The buildings of socialism are our pride.”
Or:
“1971- 1980: From those years of toil and creativity comes the strength and well being of the fatherland.”

From http://www.polskaprl.rejtravel.pl/pp/16.jpg

 

What else do I remember, ehem, fondly?

From http://europe-band-guides.blogspot.com/2011/04/final-countdown.html

From http://upperplayground.com/wordpress/?p=15361

 

From http://www.wallpaperbase.com/music-depechemode.shtml

 

Filed Under: Art, Asides, Politics

Horror-Movie Capitalism?

March 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

As Tina’s post earlier this week attests, the ideas of Karl Marx live on, in ever clever guises. Her anonymous student vociferously wished to avoid intellectual contact with the thinker/giant bronze head (eww, commodity fetishism!), but once he got to know Uncle Karl a bit better, he could, at least for present purposes, better satisfy the stern critical eye of his anthropology professor. But wait, there’s more, so listen up:

Kids of the world, you have nothing to lose but your student debt, dire job prospects, and terribly overpriced cell phone plans!

Karl Marx would be a huge Twilight fan, at least if we consider the following quip:

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.

Greenspan hunnngrrry for morrrtgages rrrrawwwrrr

Yes, I believe that is as close as we get to actually claiming that Marx said, effectively, “Capitalism sucks.” But what draws my attention is the personification move. Marx was always making this rhetorical maneuver, giving Capital its own agency so that he could identify how it behaves and thinks. Many times, actual human capitalists are rendered “capital embodied.” It walks among us… Beware!

I won’t deny that I am pointing to a hint of paranoia, even behind the (attempt at) humor here. I think that is one of the main modes of popular resistance to Marxism today. McCarthyism and red-baiting as an American Tradition™ may have not completely faded as effective ideological tools, but in classroom and colloquial settings there is a common reliance on articles of faith still associated with our dominant economic system: “Capital is no vampire; just look at how He fosters creativity, drives innovation, defines property and individual identity, acts as a fair arbiter of the value of goods and labor,” one might argue. Well, if you put it that way, Capital sounds like a whole different kind of bloke.

Let’s concede that Marx was paranoid. As Marx also said: “If things appeared exactly as they are, there would be no need for science.” Marx considered himself a scientist, interested in getting past the surface appearances of the world toward an underlying reality. That is the mentality of a paranoiac, to be sure, but it is the foundation of any critical enterprise to doubt things are as they seem. Freud did the same with human behavior, for example, by positing that we must be at least partially governed by something we can’t see or touch, an unconscious. That idea is now commonsense and lies at the heart of, say, all advertising and politics in consumer societies, if you follow the argument in this documentary, “The Century of the Self” (below is just Part 3: “There is Policeman Inside all our Heads, He Must Be Destroyed”):

One recent attempt, by actual comedian and voice of animated rodent gourmet Remy, to define the world through dominant social figures is Patton Oswalt. But he doesn’t see vampires. The eponymous chapter of his new book, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland seems an attempt at popular sociology. It’s kind of beautiful in its daring but laid-back tone. The essay is part bong-hit musing, part exercise in bringing clarifying order to a confusing human universe. In Oswalt’s formulation, if we can call it that, everyone from adolescence on conforms to one of three social types: you’re either a Zombie, a Spaceship, or a Wasteland. Let’s let Patton summarize these figures:

“Zombies simplify… Every zombie story is fundamentally about a breakdown of order, with the infrastructure intact… Zombies can’t believe the energy we waste on nonfood pursuits.” (pp. 96-98)

“Spaceships leave. No surviving infrastructure for them. No Earth, period… Spaceships figure it’s easier for them to build a world and know its history or, better yet, choose the limited customs and rituals that fit the story.” (p. 98)

“Wastelands destroy. They’re confused but fascinated by the world. The wasteland is inhabited by people or, for variety, mutants… Variations of the human species grown amok–isn’t that how some teenage outcasts already feel? Mutants bring comfort.” (p. 100)

Behind the archetypes, however, is a more interesting insight. The world of zombies, spaceships, and wastelands is something created, somehow. He locates these categories’ origins “as aspects of a shared teen experience,” but, in a typical academic move, I want to make a bigger, lamer deal out of something that was meant mainly as a joke and a memoir of a science-fiction nerdom upbringing.

For Oswalt, until misfit teens grow into adults, “anything we create has to involve simplifying, leaving, or destroying the world we’re living in.”

The more I look at these musings, the more they sound like Raymond Williams’ concept of structures of feeling. What I enjoy about Oswalt’s way of writing here is that these social types are not altogether models fabricated in any conscious kind of way. They are skins people inhabit but can’t quite get out of. They are not only found in movie tropes and protagonists (“Darth Vader is, essentially, a Zombie, born in a Wasteland, who works on a Spaceship,” p. 99) but are also spaces and ways of being. They are inside and outside of us, in living practices and landscapes.

All I would do here is to expand Oswalt’s concepts with the question, “what kind of world produces Zombies, Spaceships, and Wastelands, makes those imaginable, workable worlds?” What is it that makes practices of simplifying, leaving, or destroying viable and even creative? In Oswalt’s examples you can discern all kinds of things and people: suburbia, punk rock, hipsters, Star Wars, excess, fast food, college. It’s as if he’s trying to think, on the widest possible level, how all these things come together. All three are alienated types, to be sure, and this is what may connect them to Marx.

What Uncle Karl would have to say about zombies, spaceships, and wastelands might be a way of defining what most of contemporary critical theory is grappling with today. The villains, the scenes have changed, and we don’t yet have a language to understand it–critically, at least. These days it might not be only about sucking dry the blood of the laborer, but also about after-lives of the dead, utopian launches, and broken ruins?

Oswalt, to close: “Weirdly, Wastelands are the most hopeful and sentimental of the bunch. Because even though they’ve destroyed the world as we know it, they conceive of stories in which the core of humanity–either in actual numbers of survivors or in the conscience of a lone hero–survives and endures. Wastelands, in college, love Beckett.” (p. 101)

Patton is apparently guarded about his writing

Filed Under: Asides, edupunk, Language, literature, Politics, To Ponder

Starting at the top: Notes on cliché and seduction in academic titles

November 4, 2010 By 4 Comments

As a writing fellow, I’ve had a few glimpses into the importance, faculty tell their students, of doing research. Part of this activity inevitably involves going to the library, or at least the library website, and scouring publications for pertinent scholarship to one’s inquiry. Since conducting “original research is a novelty for undergraduates, and since the electronic media offer myriad sources of information ready for the cutting-and-pasting, it make sense that a professor would be concerned with (1) making sure the student does not plagiarize others’ work and (2) instilling a sense that one’s research must enter an already ongoing conversation. So much of instructors’ pedagogical emphasis tends to lie in two fields: the moral and the intellectual, oftentimes in that order. I suspect that students do not make the connection between the two, too terrified of not (appearing to) tread on someone else’s intellectual toes to recognize that the point is to stand on their shoulders. Or, for those enterprising cheaters, the exercise may consist in, as Hillel Schwartz puts it (since I have no original way to put it), “mak[ing] their name by standing on shoulders buried in sand.” But my point here is to draw attention to a third register of the research experience: the aesthetic. Every stroll down the stacks aisles, every click through JSTOR articles, what faces the browsing scholar are titles, titles, and more titles. There soon appear patterns, styles, conventions, some kind of comforting regularity to the vastness of knowledge. Here I want to make some observations of the norms of titling in academic writing. These remarks are not (all) disparaging or snarky about the re-use, mis-use, or abuse of certain linguistic conventions in academia; I simply want to draw attention to how scholars label their work, reproducing in playful or unintentional ways specific kinds of headlines.

  • Present participles: This seems to be a symptom of the interest in and championing of processual approaches, that is, to present the world as in motion, in circulation, always becoming. The title of this post is parodying this cliché of the -ing verb. I am looking at my bookshelf right now and can spot them everywhere: Re-Presenting the City, Losing Control, Colonising Egypt, Exploring the City… I also see some clever variations on the theme: for example, where the title referencing another, more famous title (Coming of Age in Second Life), or where the present participle suggests multiple meanings (Enduring Innocence). Generally, however, the present participle has become a tired trend in titles. (I credit a former boss in publishing for bringing this to my attention and making it a minor obsession of mine.) Moving on…

  • The colon: You know you’re reading academic work when the title is cloven in two by the two dots. There’s not a precise anatomy, but generally the title proper is allusive in tone. The subtitle buttresses it with an explicatory phrase, as in: Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism. The latter part is the only bit you really need to get a sense of the topic of the book. Usually the title itself is, ironically, a stylistic flourish, as if to communicate that the book also contains some panache and wit (not a guarantee).
  • Quote as title: I feel like this became vogue during the 1990s when high postmodernism celebrated the voice of the Other and pastiche between high and low culture. But you will still encounter titles, especially in anthropology, that headline a pithy phrase uttered by an ethnographic informant, or a Biblical or other textual bit. I suppose the function of this strategy is to convey some sense of the author’s egalitarianism vis-a-vis her subject.
  • The casual approach: This can go either way. “Notes on…” or “Reflections on…” or even “Some thoughts on…” can communicate the sense that the text will not be especially pedantic, written merely as some loose ideas that suggest more than they argue. Of course, if upon reading the piece disappoints and betrays the airy mood of the title, it can become a marker of pretentiousness.

In a winking gesture, I’ve tried to incorporate all these features in the title to this post. But I wonder what the undergraduate novice, wading through vast oceans of titles, makes of these kinds of conventions, if she makes anything at all of them. The title is not only the first thing you see about an article or book, but in the case of those you don’t actually sit down with–that is, the majority, the title can also be the last thing you read.

Filed Under: Acacademic Integrity, Art, Asides, Copyright, Education, Fun, Higher Education, Language, Literacy, literature, Pedagogy, Plagiarism, Scholarship, Style, To Ponder, What if . . .

Afghanistan in American Ads: The Treasures I Found while Moving

September 20, 2010 By 3 Comments

Last month, I moved out of my childhood home of Sheepshead Bay to another section of lovely Brooklyn. In the process of moving, I found these beautiful vintage ads. I am not sure how I got these — some were eBay discoveries and others were things my father had collected. Framed and set in my living room, they had become so ordinary that I had forgotten my ambitious goals to write about these and weave them into my dissertation. Sharing them here is a great opportunity to chat about my favorite pieces.


The Great Game is not everyone’s cup of tea, but Arbuckles Coffee Co. in NYC printed these limited edition cards in 1889 that came with their teas. Afghanistan made up card No. 100 and depicted The Great Game. The round image, although seems like an Arab outfit, may be Shah Shujah, the king that wanted to reclaim his throne in Afghanistan (the one the British were sponsoring). It seems to be the entrance of the British into Afghanistan via The Khyber Pass.

I can’t imagine cigarettes coming with anything other than skull&bone images or warnings of cancer — but back in the early 20th c. they came with fun cards.

This one, part of a series of Great Battles by Wills Cigarette Company, depicts the Retreat of Cabul. The sole survivor of the British attack into Afghanistan returns to the British India.

In 1958, Ford went around the world to prove itself to American drivers. Here a Ford car drives through the unpaved streets of Herat (it began somewhere in Greece and traveled through Turkey, to Iran, to Afghanistan). The contrast is clear. If any car can make it in the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, well it’s a car you can trust.

The Girls Scout is not just an American thing, you know. Afghanistan had their own girls scout. Perhaps it was influenced by the presence of the American Peace Corps but these Afghan stamps are my favorite. They are dedicated to Afghan girls scouts called: Sarandoy (applies to either gender)

There is a lot more… but I’ll save that for my ahem… brilliant… to be written… soon to maybe appear… writer’s block resistant essay on all of my American-Afghanistan postcards/stamps/money/ads… (fingers crossed, two ear tugs and open-palm prayer hands… inshallah)

Filed Under: Art, Asides, Language

A Memorial: Saul Bruckner

May 27, 2010 By 7 Comments

When I heard that my high school principal Saul Bruckner had died in his Mill Basin home on May 1, I was shocked, but in an aimless sort of way. It felt huge, impossible—a massive loss and somehow a very personal one. And yet while I had a vast sense that Mr. Bruckner had influenced me deeply, I had no luck when I tried to articulate that influence to the people around me. “My high school principal died,” I told my roommate. “He was really incredible.” And then I’d trail off.

So, like legions of other Murrow alums, I’ve been spending time thinking about just what it is exactly that makes me feel like I want a bust of Mr. Bruckner in my living room. Many of us appreciate the important teacher figures from our pasts, but what of the folks who didn’t necessarily teach us long division or what the Rococo period was about? What of the learning that comes from that dispersed thing known as educational leadership?– from administrators, of all people?

The first thing to mention about Mr. Bruckner is just how old school he was, in a new school kind of way. He was a truly progressive educator who didn’t need to appropriate slang or wear a whistle in order to “connect” with young people. He rose up the ranks in the New York City school system (back when it was still a Board of Education, and not a Department) as a social studies teacher, became assistant principal at Dewey High School, and eventually opened Murrow in 1974.

Edward R. Murrow High School is known for the many progressive aspects of its structure and approach, but Mr. Bruckner himself came across as a pretty subdued, non-controversial guy. You’d imagine that a principal who allowed students freedom of choice in their academic pursuits, outlawed bells and hall sweeps and detention and sports teams, gave students the benefit of the doubt when it came to unstructured time, and fiercely defended music and arts programs might be more of a hippie crusader in moccasins than a buttoned-up older gentleman in neat tweed suit jackets. Not so.

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

Still, those are the facts. When the Times published a short article about his memorial service, I started honing in on what I found so unique about Mr. Bruckner.  The photo that accompanied the article did it; Mr. Bruckner, with his arms folded, his red name tag jutting out from his jacket, listening intently to three students surrounding him, all of whom look like they’ve got more than one bone to pick with the guy. That was his usual posture—arms crossed, ears open, completely committed– and it wasn’t rare for Mr. Bruckner to be outnumbered. I stood in front of him this way many times, standing with my friends and shooting off at the mouth about something or other, while Mr. Bruckner stood stock-still and listened—sometimes with a bemused smile, sometimes with a look of mild judgment. Perhaps the man closed the door to his oblong office (where he also taught his 7:30am AP American History course) and privately screamed into a rattan pillow—if he did, we never caught on.

The man was consistency itself, and I’d guess that he realized just how important that was to us, to see him standing by the main entrance every morning as we entered clutching our bagels. He was an eloquent man of few words, but clear actions. Students at Murrow were allowed to lounge in the hallways during “free” periods (which weren’t called “periods” at all), but if we were obliviously sitting next to a clump of trash, Bruckner would suddenly swing around a corner to pitch it in the garbage, reminding us at once that he was boss, it was our building, and no task was too insignificant for him– or us.

Mr. Bruckner’s death crystallized for me even further when I read an article penned by one of my former English teachers at Murrow, Katherine Schulten. Ms. Schulten is now editor of The Learning Network, and she identifies five poignant lessons for educators that she took from working with Mr. Bruckner.  The final one, “Kids come first,” coupled with her description of Mr. Bruckner—kindness, intelligence, commitment and vision—packaged up exactly what I’d wanted to say all along. How remarkable to observe someone with so little (discernable) ego, a fellow who never went out of his way to strut his feathers and yet implemented such a strong vision at the same time. To be an educator who skips the bloviating and lingers on the students while constructing a school culture that follows his thoughtful concepts– and then he hangs out long enough to really see it flourish and sustain? A term that Mr. Bruckner himself taught me is the only one I can think to use: rara avis.

Ms. Schulten’s article got me thinking: as someone who routinely stands in front of clusters of young people and some days finds the crown of educator a very difficult one to wear, ignoring Mr. Bruckner’s legacy outside of its most general terms shouldn’t be an option. Sure, the life of an adjunct lecturer and Communication Fellow is very different from that of a high school principal, but that’s no excuse to disregard the challenge that his example puts forth. I heard the news about Mr. Bruckner’s passing during the crowded and frustrating end-of-semester crush, when students were filling my  inbox with frantic emails arguing about grades, contesting plagiarism charges, pleading for forgiveness. Some days it’s incredibly difficult to maintain empathy, priorities, and focus—the kind of focus, I realize, Mr. Bruckner persisted with, day in, and day out, for so many years.

Numerous Facebook groups have already popped up paying tribute to Mr. Bruckner, and an accompanying campaign to have the street outside of the school renamed in his honor would be a fitting memorial to a life’s work that thrived at the humble intersection of Avenue L and 17th Street. An equally moving tribute is represented by the many students who, like me, have been newly considering just what was in this special sauce and where  we might apply it ourselves. I’d suspect that it won’t just be about picking up that lone piece of trash in the hallways, but also about that particular blend of action and patience. Still, it’s an educational riddle worth committing time to: how did he do it? And how can we?

Filed Under: Administration, Asides, New York, Pedagogy, Process, Style, To Ponder Tagged With: ,

Greetings from Yamagata, Japan

August 27, 2009 By 1 Comment

RIMG0066
Creative Commons License photo credit: youthkee

Here is a (belated) quick note saying hello from a former BLSCI Fellow now in Yamagata, Japan. Since past April I have been part of Yamagata University (also see their fairly well-written wikipedia page), and only a couple of weeks ago I finished my first term as a full-time faculty. I am part of their foreign language education center, which is in charge of running first-year language classes. In my case, I am on the executive committee for freshman English.

These few months went by faster than anyone can imagine. Not only I moved from the US (where I spent the last 8 and a half years of my life) to Japan, I moved from the big city to a not so big of a town which I had never lived in or even visited in my entire life (I am from the big city in Japan). I am living on my own in Japan for the first time, working as a full-time faculty for the first time, working for a Japanese university for the first time…it’s a lot of firsts and firsts in a long while. But day by day I am growing less overwhelmed and more comfortable with the environment. The place is really nice with lots of things to see and all kinds of delicious food and drinks. The people are nice and the students are really polite and sweet.

I will leave more reports and thoughts on my work for future opportunities. Meanwhile, I just wanted to say that it has been a great pleasure working with you all and I am looking forward to keeping in touch with you all. I would love to learn about all the exciting projects and events going on over there and to keep you posted on mine. I hope everyone is well and all the best for the start of the new year!

Filed Under: Asides

Zine Fest…’09?

June 23, 2009 By 9 Comments

zinefest1There’s a Zine Fest at the Brooklyn Lyceum this weekend. When I told my former zine co-creater about it, her response was, “Who knew people still made zines?!” I had the same thought. Turns out, they still do.

Hearing about this upcoming event presented a nice occasion to revisit my zine-making past. The information for the Fest seems to refer to real zines, the cut-and-paste kind, not some sort of newfangled virtual version. Do zine-creators distinguish between the two these days? Are you kind of lame if you make an online zine (but not a blog?), or are you pathetically retro if you bother with the paper kind? Some brief research suggests that they’re existing cozily side-by-side— online resources are archiving the material stuff in searchable ways, interested readers are finding them more easily and a community is sustained and expanded. (Back in 1994, I usually found zines to order through the self-styled ads in the back of other zines, a process both haphazard and mysterious.)

My furious bout of zine Googling also led me to the Barnard Zine Library. Barnard College is the first academic library to circulate zines, and their collection numbers in the thousands, focusing primarily on Riot Grrrl and Third Wave Feminist Zines. (And, if you’re feeling confused right now, their website has a concise FAQ to get you up-to-speed on zines.) Thanks to this Zine Library, you can even search for zines in CLIO– Columbia Library’s Online Catalog– which is where I was surprised to find one of my old zines, Electric Mayhem, listed. That’s either entirely embarrassing or extremely cool.

Turning to legitimately talented zine writers, I’m thrilled that one of my favorite zine grrrls continues to make distinctive creations as a graphic designer, and shares them on her blog, Miss Sequential. I was somehow relieved to discover that the same elements that made me wait by the mail slot for each new issue of /nothing/ and Red-Hooded Sweatshirt were still there for me in her current work.

painting by Marissa Falco

painting by Marissa Falco

And, giving a little shout-out to the readers and writers whose zines are languishing in childhood bedroom closets around the globe, she occasionally posts her cartoons from the good old days, when we were all into “intense autobiographical chronicles.”

originally printed in RHS #4

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originally printed in RHS #4

Filed Under: Art, Asides, Fun, Media

Rachel Maddow’s Intelligent Glamour

February 24, 2009 By 2 Comments

rachelmaddow1I almost choked on my Sunday morning pancakes when I read Daphne Merkin’s recent piece on Rachel Maddow’s “Lesbian Glamour” in the New York Times Style section. Aside from a score of other issues I have with this article (probably best for a different blog), Merkin seemed to miss, I think, one of the more interesting aspects of Rachel Maddow’s popularity, especially for people interested in communications.

Putting aside Merkin’s bizarre summary of the history of gay male sexuality, or her weird analogy between lesbians and wallflowers, the article trades in the worst kind of stereotypes by attempting to provide a sort of taxonomy of lesbian cultural icons, from “lipstick lesbians” to “unstylish dykes” (trotting out poor Gertrude Stein and Fran Leibovitz!). As evidence she offers up the testimonials of an anonymous gay friend of hers and a celebrity hairstylist who decides that the only “giveaway” to Maddow is her haircut. Oy.

By blathering on about pantsuits and Converse sneakers, Merkin misses the point. Maddow is a thrilling arrival on the scene when it comes to the representation of gay Americans in the media in part because her politics, intelligence, and rhetorical swagger have culled her a fan base that feels linked and deeply relevant to the last election and new administration. I don’t always agree with Maddow when I tune in, but it’s hard to deny that she was a particularly well-timed breath of fresh air, and is an idea machine and nuanced policy wonk as well as a strong debater: she’s got the politics, the policy, and the mic. None of that seems to hold much weight with Merkin; the photo that was published alongside the article was telling– her mouth is photoshopped out, leaving just the “giveaway” hair and glasses.

I know; this is the Style section, so maybe it’s ridiculous to expect an article about Maddow that thoughtfully analyzes how a former AIDS activist and Rhodes scholar manages to sell herself and her ideas to more 25- to 54-year-olds during the 9pm cable slot than Larry King Live. But if we’re sticking with style, Maddow herself has made some interesting comments about how she’s had to change her appearance to get TV-ready, from ditching her glasses for contacts to needing to dress up “like an assistant principal in order to meet the minimum dress code.” And, besides all that, as we suggest to our students, style is just one element of oral communications that’s worth analyzing; isolating one presentational quality and evaluating it in a vacuum is pointless if trying to snap a bigger picture…but then, well, I guess that wasn’t really wasn’t the point, was it?

Filed Under: Asides, Fun, Gender, Media, Politics

Continuously Communicating

November 25, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Imagine a nanny texting her young ward in the next room to ask, “Juice or Milk?” Imagine a young girl awakened in the middle of the night by her father’s video-chat invitation from Mumbai. Imagine a young man so isolated that the idea of being in the same city as his girlfriend is considered too much commitment. Shocked yet?

Probably not. Still, these are some of the tidbits from our wacky wired world that take center stage in Continuous City, a recent multimedia piece at the Brooklyn Academy of Music created by the tech-savvy Builder’s Association. According to its marketing tagline, the play “explores our accelerated relationships in a sprawling multimedia world.” J.V. (Rizwan Mirza) is an internet entrepreneur trying to strike it big with a new social networking tool, XUBU, by tapping into markets in expanding cities around the globe. He has enlisted Mike (Harry Sinclair), an urban anthropologist, to trot from metropolis to metropolis, attempting to drum up financial and popular support for this revolutionary (and potentially lucrative) new tool. At home in the states, Mike’s daughter Sam (Olivia Timothee) grows distant and depressed while her nanny Deb (Moe Angelos) works on her new video-blog. Poor Mike begins unraveling as the stress of travel and distance from Sam begins to gnaw away at his faith in the power of the product. (Perhaps not surprisingly, the director’s note mentions both Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” and Mike Davis’ “Slum Cities” as inspirations for the piece.) Here’s the trailer:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HISxK5Pr_ok[/youtube]

In theory, there seemed to be a lot in this performance that would be of interest to students of communication, which is why I brought my COM 1010 class to see it. And the play earnestly tries to raise questions about our faith in digital communication (particularly in connecting “global cities”) and its limits. There are two conventional stage spaces (depicting the Xubu office space as well as Sam’s bedroom), and, thanks to a dizzying array of video screens, we jump between cities with a pace that would probably wear out even Bill Clinton.

Within this media mess, some genuinely fun innovating goes down: J.V.’s videochats with his family are actually live and unrehearsed videochats with the actor’s family members, and the video blogging done by Deb changes with every city the show tours. Perhaps coolest of all, there’s a phony website for Xubu.cc where anyone can record a message that might be used in the show as an example of Xubu.

My students were unexcited by the prospect of recording their own Xubu video messages, and they claimed to be confused by the frenetic non-linearity of the performance. They seemed to be more attracted to the slickness of its screens than anything else, and at one point during the show I turned around to find two of them sharing i-pod buds; a strange confirmation that perhaps some of the themes of the play both resonated and didn’t.

It is true that, as my friend put it, some of the conceits behind Continuous City felt a tad cliché (“We can’t communicate! Or remember our daughter’s birthday!”), even while it would seem that this is a company on the cutting edge of exploring the uses of this technology in performance. All of the miscommunication seemed to fudge up the rhythm of the dialogue in a way that was more distracting than anything else— the frustration that motivates many of us to just hang up on someone when we have a really bad connection is the way I would explain the emotional response that the play elicited in me. As an audience member, watching other people unsuccessfully multitask or attempt to navigate the impossibilities of time zone coordination tended to alienate more often than engage.

Along with all of this, Continuous City also allowed me reflect a bit on my own relationship to video chatting, as I’ve very recently become acquainted with this weird plane. While it of course hasn’t been a perfect experience, it’s made a tough long-distance communication situation better, not worse. (I couldn’t help wondering if Mike would have been a crappy father even if he lived in the same city as the neglected Sam.) Trying to sustain a meaningful conversation over video chat can be strange and self-conscious; at one moment it feels like an invaluable alternative to the tinny-ness of cellphone, and at others it feels boring and fractured.

For all its benefits, my v-chat experiences have also made me dubious about people actually doing business over this thing, which was also exposed in J.V.’s frantic video-conferencing; video chatting seemed to reveal itself as a horrible way to try to be productive and/or efficient. It didn’t surprise me to see that the video chatting done by the characters in the play was most successful during the simple moments of visual playfulness—like when Mike puts his computer camera on the grass in a park and plays virtual hide-and-go-seek with Sam. In its current incarnation, it often feels like a blessedly unproductive medium somehow, maybe because it creates intimacy by forcing you to sit down and focus on someone (on a screen) in an engaged, patient way; there’s no masking of any other activities, and, most of all, you need to really work to catch the freaky rhythms of the conversation. All of which, of course, we don’t necessarily manage to do even when we happen to be sharing time zones.

Filed Under: Asides, Audience, Blogs and Blogging, Cross-Cultural Communication, Fun, Media, New York
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