“One could let all these facts and things lie alongside each other like laminations, not like growing cells. This laminated knowledge produced a powerful sense of freedom, truthfulness and even selflessness, [...] She sensed that the idea of lamination could provide both a model of conduct and an aesthetic that might suit herself and prove fruitful. It would, she decided, as in the event it did, take years to work out in the implications” (209-210).
A. S. Byatt, The Virgin in the Garden
A most amazing public speaker. That is exactly how I would describe Dalton Sherman. You can see rhetoric at work in the speech of this Dallas public school student. I was so motivated by this video that I blurted out at the beginning of class to my unknowing, much-too-sleepy, and completely shocked comp class, "I believe in you!"
It was so weird because Sherman talks about something so simple and yet so complex. We sort of got into this last week when talking about feminist teaching and the de-centering of authority in the classroom. Are there ways to avoid it? One pessimist in class just kept harping on the fact that we still have to turn in grades at the end of the semester/year and that no matter what this is an authoritarian position we will never be able to escape. (She even decried my methods of my equal power as silly. As if letting students grade themselves will allow them to learn anything. Well, wouldn't they be able to learn how to evaluate others?)
Things have just sort of fortuitously happened that we read Marjane Satrapi’s “The Veil” in my class this summer. I happen to have a female student from Saudi Arabia, and it has been really interesting to get her own perspective on issues in the Middle East that I remain uninformed of or that I have been taught to think of a certain way. One of these issues is the veil.
Satrapi is the graphic novelist whose biographical work, Persepolis, was recently turned into a film and nominated for an academy award. She is of Iranian heritage, so it has been interesting to read about her responses and reaction to the Iranian Revolution from a couple decades ago and then compare them from what I have been absorbing from today’s events in Iran.
Below is a trailer of the film. I recently watched it on Netflix, and I have to admit it is quite the gem. I really think her animation is great, and the story itself is very interesting. I like how I could identify with her so much, even though I didn’t actually experience what she did.
We read this chapter of Satrapi’s Persepolis that is in our textbook, Seeing and Writing. I have been getting students to think about visual culture this semester, and one of the units is on gender. One of the things that I think about the veil is that it so clearly marks the gender of the woman. It is the woman that wears the veil. So, it made sense to me to include this on the course schedule. At the time, I had no idea that I was going to have a Saudi Arabian female in my class, but I am so happy I did because she able to enliven our discussion of the veil and gender issues from her own experiences. I have included some images for your consideration.
My Saudi Arabian student chose to write about this chapter. Her paper was really interesting. It was basically a response paper in which she talked about things she agreed and disagreed with in the chapter. I remember in class, she couldn’t understand why the children were so angry about having to wear the veil. I had to explain that one interpretation (at least the one that I was thinking of) was that it forced these children to lose their individuality. By all looking the same, they aren’t able to be unique, which can be a big deal to children. Granted this is my own interpretation, but it was about all I had to answer her.
I just purchased the book today at the bookstore because someone used it in a 1063, advanced writing class in the spring. I would like to start reading it this weekend on vacation as soon as I finish this other short-ish novel that I have been reading rather slowly this week.
My students and I just spent about an hour talking and writing about this painting by Edward Hopper entitled “House by the Railroad.” I am teaching 1004 right now, and I am trying to integrate visual culture studies into writing. I choose this topic because I figured it would be something that all of my students (all three of them) would be familiar with. We look at the world around us all of the time. It is in fact one of the major senses through which we experience life.
Today’s class was just one of those days that was kind of rewarding. I met a fellow teacher in the stairwell just before getting to class, and I talked about how I feel so awkward teaching sometimes—that I talk to much, that I make a big deal out of nothing, that I am interested in the topic and my students are just little bobble heads nodding agreement. When I got to class and one of the students was not there, I was kind of shocked and thought it might be a bad day, but I was luckily rewarded with her reassuring presence.
We talked a lot about place and space because we started with the chapter, “Coming to Terms with Place.” We spent time talking about the difference between space and place, and my students were getting the really theoretical stuff that I wanted them to understand, which felt great. We ended talking about this poem by Edward Hirsch—an ekphrastic poem about Hopper’s painting. We then learned how to incorporate MLA into our writing and talked about introductions and rhetorical questions. Good discussion.
But what I was most happy about is that I started to realize how awesome Hopper is. Of course, I am very familiar with Nighthawks, his most famous painting. And this one time I downloaded some random podcasts from MOMA about him. I think there might be some research going on Hopper in the near future. What do you think about the painting?
How fitting that one of my last times in office hours this semester, I would come across a painting called "For Eighty Cents" in my A Year in Art book. Although this wasn't necessarily a pittance in 1895, I understand that the back-breaking work portrayed in the painting was not that easy. And while I know that I am very fortunate to have a job, funding, and a pretty awesome career, I can't help but relate to these women in the painting. Work is hard, and I feel like I always have to bend over backwards to get the job done. Some amazing feat always needs to be accomplished, and I now know that my sense of hyperbole is overtaking me right now. So please feel free to disregard my analogies above.
The painting is quite pretty. I guess you could or may have noticed that I haven't exactly done an entry for each day about the paintings in my book. So o course, I only pick out the ones I like, and one of the things that I love about this painting is the color and reflections that Alessandro Morbelli paints into the canvas.
I know I have been posting a lot lately, so if you are sick of hearing from me, I'm sorry. [I have been using blogging as a coping mechanism, I think.] Anyways, aside from that, I am truly outraged at some news that I just read on feministing. I was saddened to hear that Georgia republicans want to ban the liberal arts. I don't want to copy the whole blog entry, but you have to read this quoted part:
"This is not considered higher education," [State Rep. Charlice] Byrd said. "If legislators are going to dole out the dollars, we should have a say-so in where they go."
Byrd and her supporters, including state Rep. Calvin Hill, R-Canton, said they will team with the Christian Coalition and other religious groups to pressure fellow lawmakers and the University System Board of Regents to eliminate the jobs.
"Our job is to educate our people in sciences, business, math," said Hill, a vice chairman of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee. He said professors aren't going to meet those needs "by teaching a class in queer theory."
It's bad enough that people are losing jobs across the nation, but now Republicans want to eliminated entire academic fields in college classrooms. Disgusting! What does this mean for people who don't "business, math, and sciences"? Are our subject no less valuable? Maybe we need subjects like history and English because they teach acceptance and difference.
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