HU Queer Press

My undergraduate institution was Harding University. Though there are many good things about Harding, it is one of the most conservative colleges one could hope to attend. Nearly all students are required to live on campus in dorms; there are nightly curfews for all students living in dorms; and students (and faculty!) can be kicked out (or fired as the case may be) for drinking alcohol, having sex, being gay, or even dancing. Along with the rules of conduct, students are required to attend daily chapel and Bible classes each semester. The rules are strict, but many students–most student’s parents, too–don’t mind them too much. Things don’t often change at Harding but something new is afoot.

An anonymous group known as HU Queer Press published a zine chronicling the stories of queer students who did or do attend Harding. In the zine (which can be read on their site) are many stories of queer students who have been ostracized, bullied, and belittled by their peers, educators, and administrators. Though there may not be much hope for immediate change on campus, I am excited that these brave students and former students have stood up and made their voices heard.

One note: I was not involved in the production or hosting of HU Queer Press, and I don’t know who they are. I just received an anonymous email a few days ago asking me to help with getting the word out since I have a blog.  In fact I think it’s more powerful not knowing because they could be anyone I knew at Harding. (this note is directly stolen from Brett Keller’s much more thorough write-up of the zine)

On Coming to Voice

“A distinction must be made between a shallow emphasis on coming to voice, which wrongly suggests there can be some democratization of voice wherein everyone’s words will be given equal time and be seen as equally valuable (often the model applied in feminist classrooms), and the more complex recognition of the uniqueness of each voice and a willingness to create spaces in the classroom where all voices can be heard because all students are free to speak, knowing their presence will be recognized and valued. This does not mean that anything can be said, no matter how irrelevant to classroom subject matter, and receive attention–or that something meaningful takes place if everyone has equal time to voice an opinion. In the classes I teach, I have students write short paragraphs that they read aloud so that we all have a chance to hear unique perspectives and we are all given an opportunity to pause and listen to one another. Just the physical experience of hearing, of listening intently, to each particular voice strengthens our capacity to learn together. Even though a student may not speak again after this moment, that student’s presence has been acknowledged.”

-bell hooks in “Confronting Class in the Classroom”

Meeting Expectations

As the semester draws to a close, professors/instructors everywhere anticipate grading, finals, and a well-deserved holiday break. For many, the end of the semester also brings course evaluations to mind. While I am not here to debate the merits of student evaluations (that is well covered elsewhere), I do want to draw attention to a notable course evaluation from UNC-Chapel Hill.¹

The student describes what, to me, sounds like a wonderfully developed second-semester freshman composition course that incorporates teaching methods from many different sources and works to appeal to many different types of learners. Her complaint is that though the course was interesting, it did not teach her how to write for her upcoming humanities course. The student’s expectations were not met, though the instructor’s goals seem clear enough.

For this student, a course, titled “English Composition and Rhetoric,” should emphasize composition, and the instructor seemed to put more weight behind rhetoric. Instead of teaching the hows of academic writing, the professor emphasized communication and thinking–skills, as lamented by Bessette, that most high schools no longer teach.²

I suppose this highlights the need to explicitly state course goals and objectives to our students. Composition, of course, is an important skill for college study but the broader skill of communication is a vital skill for every facet of life.

That being said, I’m rather excited to get my course evaluations back.

Image by Flickr user billso / Creative Commons licensed

1. College Ready Writing, a wonderful blog maintained by Lee Skallerup Bessette, brought this course to my attention. [↩]
2. I don’t mean to over-simplify rhetoric or, for that matter, insult high schools. Please do forgive me. [↩]

The Instructions by Adam Levin

Here in the US (at least in central Arkansas) Thanksgiving break has descended on the land. A relatively free week to enjoy while being generally thankful. To celebrate, I plan to take on The Instructions by Adam Levin. At 1030 pages, this does not promise to be a swift read but from every review and comment I have encountered, it promises to be enjoyable.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for giant, potentially unwieldy novels.

Here is a description from the publisher, McSweeney’s:

Beginning with a chance encounter with the beautiful Eliza June Watermark and ending four days later with the Events of November 17, this is the story of Gurion Maccabee, age ten: a lover, a fighter, a scholar, and a truly spectacular talker. Ejected from three Jewish day schools for acts of violence and messianic tendencies, Gurion ends up in the Cage, a special lockdown program for the most hopeless cases of Aptakisic Junior High. Separated from his scholarly followers, Gurion becomes a leader of a very different sort, with righteous aims building to a revolution of troubling intensity. The Instructions is an absolutely singular work of fiction by an important new talent. Combining the crackling voice of Philip Roth with the encyclopedic mind of David Foster Wallace, Adam Levin has shaped a world driven equally by moral fervor and slapstick comedy—a novel that is muscular and rollicking, troubling and empathetic, monumental, breakneck, romantic, and unforgettable.

The plan, as it stands, is to finish the novel before classes resume next Monday. I will be updating my progress here and giving my impressions as I go along. In addition to the blog, I will be relatively-live tweeting the reading with the hashtag #TGivingInstructions.

Feel free to join and let me know how it’s going.

Mad Men, Aca-Fans, and Online Scholarship

A (now-not-so) recent article by Jason Mittell (On Disliking Mad Men) has sparked several excellent discussions ranging from the value of fans-as-critics to whether Don Draper is a likable guy. Prompted by Mittell’s article, videogame theorist Ian Bogost wrote out his thoughts (Against Aca-Fandom) which, naturally, elicited a response from the critical founder of aca-fandom, Henry Jenkins. It should be said that these three scholars (and nearly everyone who contributed to the discussion in the comments) wrote with respect and kindness with genuine questions and intrigue.

When thinking of aca-fandom, I cannot help but think of Matthew Arnold. Just as scholars are expected to view their subjects objectively, aca-fans have a vested interest in their subjects that cannot be ignored. While studying and investigating texts and subjects that are not personally interesting is a chore and most likely results in dull criticism, fandom undoubtedly complicates (must resist problematizes…) objectivity.

Please excuse the lengthy quote, but here is where Arnold fits in:

It is of the last importance that English criticism should clearly discern what rule for its course, in order to avail itself of the field now opening to it, and to produce fruit for the future, it ought to take. The rule may be summed up in one word,–disinterestedness.¹ And how is criticism to show disinterestedness? By keeping aloof from what is called ‘the practical view of things’; by resolutely following the law of its own nature, which is to be a free play of the mind on all subjects which it touches. By steadily refusing to lend itself to any of those ulterior, political, practical considerations about ideas, which plenty of people will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps ought often to be attached to them, which in this country at any rate are certain to be attached to them quite sufficiently, but which criticism has really nothing to do with. Its business is, as I have said, simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known to create a current of true and fresh ideas. Its business is to do this with inflexible honesty, with due ability; but its business is to do no more, and to leave alone all questions of practical consequences and applications, questions which will never fail to have due prominence given to them.

from The Function of Criticism at the Present Time

While I may be misreading Arnold here, the ideas that a critic must remain wholly disinterested and promote what is best for his/her surrounding culture are at odds. Can one consider what is best for society while excluding “those ulterior, political, practical considerations about ideas?” His notion that a critic could remain disinterested while deciding what is best for his/her society it, as best, naive and, at worst, completely foolish. Why, then, do we believe that scholars can function both as critics and fans or any particular subject?² Though no particular field (at least in the humanities) is exempt, those in the field of popular culture seem most susceptible to the siren song of fandom. Whether music, film, art, or video games, pop culture critics and scholars research texts that love and their lack of objectivity is often apparent.

The rise of aca-fandom, to me, seems to be an unconscious revival of Arnold’s goal to educate the philistines and refine their cultural tastes until they match ours–the educated cultural elite–while maintaining a critical distance from the subjects that we adore. As Mittell notes,³ pop culture research is not concentrated on what may be considered low-brow entertainment. Instead, aca-fans study what they consider to be the best in hopes that their opinions catch on. This insularity, of course, does not aid the study of popular culture at large.

Since many scholars (particularly those in the pop culture camp) are avowed nerds who cannot help but express their fandom, what is to be done about aca-fandom? The answer, I believe, is not in distancing ourselves from the topics we love. Instead, we can strive for more balance. Like Bogost has done with Cow Clicker, scholars can stay within their preferred field but venture into parts that seem undesirable (such as Facebook games for a video game designer and scholar). For the music culture scholar, perhaps she can investigate the rise of Ke$ha although she typically avoids mainstream pop music. Maybe a visual culture critic could trace the history of Thomas Kinkade–painter of kitsch and light.

I do not pretend to have a good answer to the problem of aca-fandom but it is certainly something worth considering.

1. Objectivity, independence of judgment. [↩]
2. Mea culpa: I am chief among the offending aca-fans. Much of my research has begun as fandom which had to be reverse-engineered into some for of scholarly endeavor. [↩]
3. “While media scholars do not solely write about what we like, the prevalence of books focused on “quality television” shows that appeal to academics like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, and now Mad Men – especially when compared to the lack of similar volumes or essays about more lowbrow or mainstream programs – suggests that taste is often more of a motivating factor for our scholarship than we admit. We should own up to our own fannish (or anti-fannish) tendencies regarding our objects of study, not regarding fan practices as something wholly separate from our academic endeavors by acknowledging how taste structures what we choose to write about.” [↩]