b l o g o s

hypotheticals: Pittsburgh

It is both comforting and disconcerting to wake up in a city you lived in for a year, a city you fell in love with instantly and left abruptly.

JM, the bean and I woke up in Pittsburgh, to its snow-spitting skies, its ash-tinted slush, its gray, taupe, and brown buildings. We trudged over to the Rite Aid on Forbes, through the bottom floor of the Cathedral with all its gorgeous arches, where JM confessed he never went past the fifth floor (those elevators are pretty scary); by the little restaurants where we had drinks or an occasional lunch; by the bus stop where we shivered under coat hoods with other people heading to the east end, the other side of Frick Park.

As we walked, and the Bean stared with wide eyes at the store windows and buses and stone, we tried to work out what happened here, why we left, what might have happened had we stayed, whether we would have ended up exactly where we are now, whether we would have had the bean.

All these questions are as unavoidable as they are unanswerable. I tend to agree with the horse dealer in True Grit: "I do not entertain hypotheticals. The world as it is is vexing enough."

Even so, we sure do miss the food trucks, the baseball, and the bridges.

techno-teach

This term I am teaching a newish course called Liberal Arts 101H: Rhetoric and Civic Life. It combines oral, written, and visual communication. How does it do that, you ask? By means of the digital. I will not touch paper this term, and yet my students will probably write double or triple what they write in a typical FYC course.

The course has two platforms: our classooms (in the plural because we have two different locations we meet--a regular classroom on Tuesday and Thursday, and a computer lab on Friday for our short lab session), and our blogs. Penn State has a typepad-based blog system. It isn't perfect--in fact I still have a damn rooster as the lead image--but we are all starting to get the hang of it.

I would position my technology skills directly at the midline of some imaginary spectrum, where the one side is very, very, very advanced (this side includes my buddy Spencer), and the other is "what's a URL"? So I'm not particularly good at this, and it took a lot of time to re-train myself on the blog system after my parental leave. But the thing is, students are both forgiving and helpful. Today in class, for example, we did some collective troubleshooting on the blog comment features. Two students, J and S, showed us how to allow people to comment. (But, "Air Jordan Shoes" or "Gucci bags," if you spam me and my students, I will lose it.)

I imagine the chaos of such collective finding-our-way would be offputting to a lot of teachers. But if you like to think of teaching as learning, then this might be a cool direction for you. Yesterday's class, for example, met at one of the campus's multimedia commons labs. We had a tour and an introduction to garage band (during which S and R laid down some goofy tracks), and to the video recording studio with a green screen (how cool is that?), the collaborative spaces, little cubicle-like rooms equipped with overstuffed chairs and/or conference tables, and more recording and editing equipment, and the whispering booths, little soundproof booths which are for recording podcasts, not for making out. And I learned about all of this right along with my students.

The chaos of getting settled in to the course is already giving way to focused collaboration. The students had a draft workshop today, conducted in our computer lab, using the blog comment features to respond to peer writing.

This class, in essence, is one semester-long experiment. I am looking forward to seeing where it ends up.

 

 

 

CDD **FLASH FORUM**

CDD **FLASH FORUM**: Civic Discourse, Civic Violence 

The recent shootings at an Arizona “congress on your corner” meeting have lent a new sense of urgency to conversations about the state of civic discourse in the United States. When Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik cited “vitriolic rhetoric” as a factor in the shootings, he sparked debates about the metaphors, images (think crosshairs), slogans, and commonplaces that comprise American political discourse. In response to these debates, the Center for Democratic Deliberation presents a “Flash Forum”—an event organized with due speed to respond to the exigencies of the moment—to give members of our campus and community an opportunity to consider the issues raised by the tragedy in Tucson.

Does language matter? Are violent metaphors partly to blame for the tragedy? Are the calls for civility misguided or on point? What traditions offer helpful approaches to the debates about language and action, about individuals and communities, about freedom and responsibility?

We have invited leading scholars on campus from a wide range of disciplines to share their thoughts on these matters, and we invite you to join our discussion.

Featured Presenters:

Matthew Jordan, College of Communication

Jeremy Engels, Department of Communication Arts and Sciences

Ellen Dannin, Dickinson School of Law

John P. Christman, Philosophy, Political Science, and Women’s Studies

Date: Friday, January 21

Time: 2:00-3:15 pm

Place: Foster Auditorium, Pattee-Paterno Library

 

scattershot 6, whatever-it-takes edition

1. My pilates instructor is a lovely, fit, compact woman with a lilting English accent. (So, a little bit the opposite of moi.) When we are reaching the end of a particular sequence on the reformer, she will say something motivating like "that's it, ladies," or "you're nearly there." The latter is my favorite, because of the way it plays her accent*. She sounds for all the world like Natasha Khan of Bats for Lashes. Earlier today I caught myself repeating this phrase while working at my desk. Having just re-edited our chapter on Delivery, I set it aside and whispered to no one but myself, "ya neely theh."

*another fave is "beautiful," which is deliberately divided syllabically, more like "beeyouTEEfull"

2. There is an item on my to-do list that says "get started on X, so you don't lose your mind." This is what it's come to.

3. I will spend most of next month fantasizing about spring break when we will stay home, and I will finish writing a couple of talks and paint the baby's room.

4. All the time you hear "you've got to learn to say no." For me, it's less about learning to do this--Nancy Reagan must have taught my generation well--and more about being realistic about what one person can take on. What this means is that I have had to turn down things I really really wanted to do, and that three years ago I would have said yes to in a snap.  But that was because I was doing less three years ago, national service wise and admin-wise. And my life was such that I had lots more cracks into which I could wedge yet another thing. But with those cracks sealed up, I have had to re-learn, not how to say no, but that I have to. And to realize that the world won't end when I do, but instead I will have energy and time for the stuff that I find most vital and energizing (teaching, my work for RSA, the CDD, lectures, and my book).

5. Relatedly: energy can beget energy, but there is a limit, and you gots to keep an eye on quality.

6. My co-author rocks.

 

 

 

history, science, and the sublime

This morning I am writing for our textbook revision (ethos chapter) about Tim White et al's 2009 report of the Ardi discovery. They begin the utterly groundshattering piece with a solid dose of history of science, including a compact but rich discussion of Darwin's concern that people might not buy his theory of evolution without a more complete fossil record. This point is underscored by a quote from T.H. Huxley hoping that "'the fossilized bones of an Ape more anthropoid, or a Man more pithecoid' might be found by 'some unborn paleontologist.'"

That paleontologist be Tim White.

Sometime science straight up blows me away.

 

Oh, here is the citation for the piece in case anyone wants to check it out:

White, Tim D., Berhane Asfaw, Yonas Beyene, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, C. Owen Lovejoy, Gen Suwa, and Giday WoldeGabriel. “Ardipithecus Ramidus and the Paleobiology of Early Hominids.” Science 326 (October 2, 2009): 75-85.

language is as language does

Like many of you, my mind has been reeling since the reports of the Arizona shootings. As a scholar of rhetoric, of course, I have been most interested in the way the debates so swiftly turned to debates about, well, rhetoric. The turn began almost instantly with the Pima County Sheriff's remarks about "vitriolic rhetoric," bigotry, and the like. Jennifer Mercieca lays things out nicely here.

A strong contingent of smart people have been implying (or outright arguing) that the talk about language is crazy talk--that the shooter had to be deranged, end of story. But that point all too easily overlooks the unpredictable (and yes, almost untrackable) but no less real effects language, gestures, and dispositions can have. And even if the political climate or all the M-16 metaphors or crosshairs images had nothing at all to do with the shooter's motives, the issue of charged language is nevertheless alive, and we ought to talk about it.

I will say this, though. To say, as David Brooks does, that "the political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible," is to ignore the way issues work. The way issues work will be the lesson in my "Rhetoric and Civic Life" class next week. That lesson centers on the greek notion of kairos, opportunity, and the way that rhetors ought always be on the lookout for opportunities to make arguments about things they care about, or things they believe. The Sheriff in Pima County no doubt has a lot of experience from which his statement came--the stories we have been reading about some of the hate-based billboards and gun-based rally language probably only begin to do justice to the sheriff's vantage point, the charged town-hall meetings or vandalism cases he had to attend (to) as part of his job. I don't think he was talking about motive per se, but about a climate of hate and violence. And I'm glad people are listening. 

Jeremy Engels and I (as interim co-directors of the Center for Democratic Deliberation) are organizing a forum on this very topic--a "flash forum" I'm calling it because we are quickly putting it together to respond to the exigencies of the moment. More details coming soon to a twitter account near you.

inauspicious pre-beginnings

Around these parts, this week is the week before the semester starts, which means it's a week of trying to get my head around the new schedule. The ever-changing schedules used to be something I loved about academia, and now that we've added an extra family member, it's become way more complicated. This semester is particularly complicated, with childcare swappage, meetings that happen every second Wednesday and every fourth Monday, and a class that meets Tuesday-Thursday-Friday. Add in a couple of regular class sessions of the bodily kind (yoga and pilates), and if my online calendar could sag momentarily and then explode, it would.

This is why when I successfully scheduled my pilates reformer sessions for Thursday afternoons, coordinating my co-sufferer's schedule with my insanity and our instructor's kid's bus schedule, I had to consider everything from my new office hour schedule to the route I would take to get there after my class to make sure that time would work. When it appeared to work, I rejoiced!

Until I realized--two days later--that the appointed time is also the designated time for my other course, which meets once a week. Blam.

in Memoriam: Melissa McCray-Dukes

It’s something of a cliché to say a player is the “heart” of a team, but our  ’88-’89 team had an entire cardiovascular system—heart, lungs, blood—in Melissa McCray, “Emma” to her teammates and friends. That year there were five—FIVE—new freshmen, and we were known variously as “the fab five,” “the eat-em-up crew,” and a pain in Pat’s, well, behind. We were a rambly, unfocused bunch, heavy on personality, humor, and appetite, and we needed to be brought into line now and again. This is how Melissa, a senior that year, earned her nickname “mother hen.” Her henny mothering ranged from late-night dorm room visits to tell us how things were, to a cut of the eyes when one of us slumped with inattention, to a whoop of a holler and a big broad grin when one of us came off the bench to score.

Before every game Emma’s job was to write “Let’s do it” in a curly script on the top corner of the board, small enough not to interfere with Pat’s game-plan space, but big enough to remind us that we needed to show up: it was Emma’s collective imperative.

Our “stopper” on defense, Emma taught us through example how to play it (the trick: get down looooowwww and keep those hands moving). She also taught us how to be serious college students (always keep something to read or do). She helped us remember everything from our playbooks to our appointments. At night and on busses, she wrapped her head up tight in a rag, shut her eyes, and fell asleep with purpose.  When we had to run distance, she put that head back and ran, chattering to us all the way. Same thing when we had to sprint. I’ve never known anybody whose head could go back like that. I wondered if it made her faster. Emma could roll her eyes like anybody, but she NEVER did it at the wrong time, not like the five of us.

On the night of the championship, Melissa wrote her words on the board, turned around, and put the chalk in my hand. Issuing the collective imperative was to be my job for the next three years, and our mother hen, our Emma, had prepared me well.

 

 

scattershot 12: career highlight edition

1. The Chicago Humanities Festival was really a wonderful experience for any number of reasons, chief among them the way it asked me to present my research to a lay audience, a task that is not the equivalent of "dumbing it down," but rather broadening its appeal. What fabulous questions they asked, too! My first session (a talk on my first book--the festival theme was "The Body"), was a total blast.

2. At lunch with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, my interlocutor for the second event ("program" as the CHF folks call them), he seemed a little distracted at first until I started talking about my presentation as a way to answer his agent's question about what the CHF is all about, and then he sat forward in his chair.

3. [With apologies to FB friends for the repeat]: as I explained that I presented on my first book about the intersections between rhetoric and athletics and ancient Greece, how training in oratory resembled training in wrestling, KAJ cocked his head and said, "you mean like when Demosthenes put gravel in his mouth to practice his speeches?"

4. !!!!!

5. !!

6. The time leading up to the interview--from the dead time in the "green room" to final instructions from the walkie-talkied production assistant to turn on our mikes-- gave me a glimpse of what it might be like to be on television. And it was not unlike waiting to run out for warmups before a big game (except I was waiting with KAJ who was wearing a tie and sportcoat, and there were no basketballs in sight).

7. The interview was a total blast. The audience was riveted by this KAJ, and not just because he is a basketball legend (though there is that), but because he had so many thoughtful things to say about bodies: Eastern v. Western approaches to them; what he learned about Apache culture when he coached for a season at a Reservation High School; how John Wooden taught him that great things could be achieved without belittling people (LOVED that part of the discussion); how he made a deliberate decision to model his game on Bill Russell instead of Wilt Chamberlain (because Russell had the championships); how he researched his book on a battalion of black WWII veterans who uncovered grizzly scenes at Nazi camps; and how he started working on his skyhook in the fifth grade. (FIFTH GRADE.)

8. I had a hard time finding my "interview face." I think it looks a lot like the facial expression I have when graduate students talk in my seminar. But fortunately, people were not there to look at my interview face.

9. One of my favorite moments came during the Q&A when a woman asked him to talk more about his acting experience, e.g., the movie with Bruce Lee and his role in the Star Wars film. (He was not in a Star Wars film.) His response--"I think you might have me confused with another dashing black man, Samuel Jackson"--was both charming and hilarious, and even in its own way, humble. Great things can be achieved without belittling people, indeed. 

10. After it was over, I got the motion from his agent to "get him out of there." Which meant I had to play the bad guy and wrest him away from the sweet little ladies showering him with presents and taking his picture.

11. And then it was back to my hotel, to my sweet, sweet baby girl (who loves to travel, incidentally), and home to a pile of work.

12. !

 

CHF, T-minus a couple of days

Today, I picked up my hemmed--yes, hemmed!--pants, put out clothes and gear for me and the Bean, practiced my talk in front of John, Tillie, and the Bean (though the Bean seemed more interested in crawl-lunging for the dog water bowl than in staring at my 28 slides), added a new section to the talk and printed that thing OUT.

Tomorrow, I will teach, pack, transfer my interview questions to index cards,  practice the talk yet again, and then I will be ready to go to Chicago, my favorite city, for the Chicago Humanities Festival. I can't wait to introduce the Bean to Chicago (Chicago Children's museum, here we come!)

The theme for the Chicago Humanities Festival this year is "The Body," and I've been asked to speak about my first book. It's very bizarre to be speaking about a book that was published six years ago, and that I finished well before that. But it's also fun to boil things down to 28 slides, a couple of key arguments, and a smattering of fun anecdotes. I see this talk as kind of a highlight reel from the book.

And speaking of highlight reels, let's face it, interviewing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in front of a live audience on Monday night is likely to be a career highlight. As I told my friend S whose office is  across the hall from me, I probably won't do anything this cool as an academic again. Ever.