Via Scribbling Woman, this, an archive of manuscripts and images, a good way to get lost for quite a while.
This will be useful for the people in the New Media class I am teaching this semester, quite a few of whom are researching in local archives the lives of women in the Keweenaw Peninsula in the early 20th century.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Friday, October 13, 2006
tenure review overload
How would Kar Wai Wong write a tenure review? I need something to help me reinvigorate for this.
I'm working on my fourth review for the season (and have said no to others) and it should be an easy one, a case that is no question, but I look at the screen and want to go play. Maybe I have simply run out of words, or am feeling genre fatigue, or perhaps it is that the weather (rain/snow, lots of dripping noises) is universally agreed to be the sort that requires staying in bed watching good movies from other climates.
Would that I could write, "This person has earned tenure, anybody can see that, give it!!!" (With a smiley face, of course.)
I'm working on my fourth review for the season (and have said no to others) and it should be an easy one, a case that is no question, but I look at the screen and want to go play. Maybe I have simply run out of words, or am feeling genre fatigue, or perhaps it is that the weather (rain/snow, lots of dripping noises) is universally agreed to be the sort that requires staying in bed watching good movies from other climates.
Would that I could write, "This person has earned tenure, anybody can see that, give it!!!" (With a smiley face, of course.)
Saturday, October 7, 2006
Saturday morning
The slow down-drifting leaf movements outside this morning are my models. This semester, my to-do list is as absurdly long as my email inbox, and I am trying -- not hugely successfully -- to cultivate a slow acceptance that it will ever be thus: more requests and demands and projects than I can ever ever ever satisfy. Why not take this as a sign of the vibrance of this life?
My last five conversations with academic friends and colleagues -- and even one academic person on the other end of the phone with whom I have never spoken before -- have all been about this, about the apologies we continually make for not being in complete utter and total control.
And, well, f*** that.
If I ever think I am in total control, that's when I will scare myself and ought rightfully to be taken out behind the barn.
My last five conversations with academic friends and colleagues -- and even one academic person on the other end of the phone with whom I have never spoken before -- have all been about this, about the apologies we continually make for not being in complete utter and total control.
And, well, f*** that.
If I ever think I am in total control, that's when I will scare myself and ought rightfully to be taken out behind the barn.
in response to Veritas Chick and MsLaoShi75
Back on September 28, VC and MsLS brought up some points that shape a discussion we need to have, ongoing and ongoing.
The tension is huge between acknowledging the backgrounds of people in classes and their efforts and holding them to an "objective" standard. That is, we want everyone to get 5s in their portfolios (the objective level), at the same time we want to acknowledge, first, that people in classes come from all sorts of different backgrounds and, second, that they then put in all kinds of different efforts.
In other words, someone who had all sorts of AP credits ought not to receive an A in class for never doing drafts, never really pushing, but still producing a shiny well-written research paper -- right?
All this make me think of Lisa Delpit's work in Other People's Children. The book is now over 10 years old, but is still provocative and important to me. Delpit was writing in response to arguments that we don't need to teach grammar and other 'basic skills' in (elementary) schools because children pick those things up anyway. She argues that this position is based in class structures: children who grow up in homes of privilege will learn -- without direct instruction -- the 'basic skills' that signify privilege and power.... and children who grow up in non-privileged homes will not. So we need to be providing overt instruction in 'basic skills,' Delpit is arguing, and we need to be aiming for a high bar.
But what is most compelling, to me, about her argument, is that Delpit didn't stop there. She didn't stop with arguing, "So we need to be giving overt instruction in 'standard' grammar." She argues, instead, that we need to teach grammars, that we need to help people in our classes see what their 'home grammars' give them, and what that other -- "standard" -- grammar gives them. She gives an example of a teacher in a Native community in Alaska, who helps people in her classes learn that their home language is about connectedness, family, closeness -- and that Anglo English is about distance, formality, hierarchies, etc. Delpit also has examples from teachers in other kinds of communities. Her examples -- about the real psychological and lived experiences of others -- are tremendously compelling.
So -- her argument (as I understand it) is that, if you want people in your classes to have the most cultural fluidity and agency, they have to know how to suss out AND USE the grammars of the powerful. They have to understand why trying to achieve that matters -- at the same time that they have to understand that doing this is not giving up on any home grammars.
In classes at Tech, this is weird, I think, because people in Revisions are either in the powerful grammar already (those students with all the AP credit) -- or they come from a nebulous middle/lower class background that hardly seems to be a community or a culture with its own grammar.
But if we can help people in Revisions understand that what we mean, in part, by 'choices' in the composition of texts is that they can be in a position to choose among a number of registers for writing -- including the so-called 'highest, most polished, most proper, most formal' (and that they have some understanding of how and why that register is considered 'highest, most polished, most proper, most formal') -- boy, if we can do that.... then we are golden.
So we can talk with them directly, I think, about this tension in teaching. We can talk with them directly about how we acknowledge their backgrounds and efforts, and how we also want them to have the agency to move among the different communities they will need to....
(Which means that those people with all the AP credit have to learn how to move in different communities, too... What would be ways to make THAT happen????)
The tension is huge between acknowledging the backgrounds of people in classes and their efforts and holding them to an "objective" standard. That is, we want everyone to get 5s in their portfolios (the objective level), at the same time we want to acknowledge, first, that people in classes come from all sorts of different backgrounds and, second, that they then put in all kinds of different efforts.
In other words, someone who had all sorts of AP credits ought not to receive an A in class for never doing drafts, never really pushing, but still producing a shiny well-written research paper -- right?
All this make me think of Lisa Delpit's work in Other People's Children. The book is now over 10 years old, but is still provocative and important to me. Delpit was writing in response to arguments that we don't need to teach grammar and other 'basic skills' in (elementary) schools because children pick those things up anyway. She argues that this position is based in class structures: children who grow up in homes of privilege will learn -- without direct instruction -- the 'basic skills' that signify privilege and power.... and children who grow up in non-privileged homes will not. So we need to be providing overt instruction in 'basic skills,' Delpit is arguing, and we need to be aiming for a high bar.
But what is most compelling, to me, about her argument, is that Delpit didn't stop there. She didn't stop with arguing, "So we need to be giving overt instruction in 'standard' grammar." She argues, instead, that we need to teach grammars, that we need to help people in our classes see what their 'home grammars' give them, and what that other -- "standard" -- grammar gives them. She gives an example of a teacher in a Native community in Alaska, who helps people in her classes learn that their home language is about connectedness, family, closeness -- and that Anglo English is about distance, formality, hierarchies, etc. Delpit also has examples from teachers in other kinds of communities. Her examples -- about the real psychological and lived experiences of others -- are tremendously compelling.
So -- her argument (as I understand it) is that, if you want people in your classes to have the most cultural fluidity and agency, they have to know how to suss out AND USE the grammars of the powerful. They have to understand why trying to achieve that matters -- at the same time that they have to understand that doing this is not giving up on any home grammars.
In classes at Tech, this is weird, I think, because people in Revisions are either in the powerful grammar already (those students with all the AP credit) -- or they come from a nebulous middle/lower class background that hardly seems to be a community or a culture with its own grammar.
But if we can help people in Revisions understand that what we mean, in part, by 'choices' in the composition of texts is that they can be in a position to choose among a number of registers for writing -- including the so-called 'highest, most polished, most proper, most formal' (and that they have some understanding of how and why that register is considered 'highest, most polished, most proper, most formal') -- boy, if we can do that.... then we are golden.
So we can talk with them directly, I think, about this tension in teaching. We can talk with them directly about how we acknowledge their backgrounds and efforts, and how we also want them to have the agency to move among the different communities they will need to....
(Which means that those people with all the AP credit have to learn how to move in different communities, too... What would be ways to make THAT happen????)
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
the trees who whisper
talk to Chris Plummer:
the trees outside walker, suspended speakers (and hidden): motion -- and slow, continued motion -- brings on Ojibwe stories told by quiet voices, multiple stories overlapping, like water or breezes, for only a few people at a time
the trees outside walker, suspended speakers (and hidden): motion -- and slow, continued motion -- brings on Ojibwe stories told by quiet voices, multiple stories overlapping, like water or breezes, for only a few people at a time
Tuesday, October 3, 2006
duh
In thinking about the presentation for Miami, I realize that my problem with the visual part of the presentation brings up exactly the same old word-picture problem. How to make the 'background' presentation something more than illustration, without it becoming distracting or overwhelming.
Lessig's presentation *is* illustration, with emphasis. His speaking and the projections play off each other beautifully... but what is up on the big screen is still illustration, still "here are my main points" -- just done with wit.
How do I want to go? Need to think on this... and how to compose the two parts together? As a whole?
Lessig's presentation *is* illustration, with emphasis. His speaking and the projections play off each other beautifully... but what is up on the big screen is still illustration, still "here are my main points" -- just done with wit.
How do I want to go? Need to think on this... and how to compose the two parts together? As a whole?
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