Three harassing comments from a person who was a homophobe and a misogynist. He predictably accused me of censoring him, but I would censor anyone who used a four-letter word in a comment, even a comment I liked. He also slandered a well-known feminist critic by name. A no-brainer.
Unlike the (many) other trolls I've had over the past 8 months, this one left a paper trail -- I have his hotmail account and his (pseudonymous) blogger/blogspot URL. Does blogger accept complaints?
Rohit Gupta's Blognovel: Le Spirale Fantastique
Other people have linked to this, but a dude in Bombay is selling his novel online for links.
Dude. It's sort of a genius thing to try. The thing I find especially interesting is the way all this linking-shinking might dismember the narrative he's trying to tell.
[Via Jill/txt]
I'm writing a blognovel. If you like a quotation from this novel, tell me about it. I will link that text, less than 50 words, to your blog or website. In return, you use that quote as a link to my novel on your site. It's a gift-exchange system, and that simple. After this, you own that quote. I own nothing, and nothing owns me.
Dude. It's sort of a genius thing to try. The thing I find especially interesting is the way all this linking-shinking might dismember the narrative he's trying to tell.
[Via Jill/txt]
Monkey blogging
A new species of monkey has been discovered in Arunachal Pradesh. They're going to call it the Arunachal macaque.
I don't know why, I'm a sucker for monkeys.
"In a major blow to patriarchy..."
"In a major blow to patriarchy..." -- only in the Indian media do you get such beautiful lead-ins!
It actually applies to something quite serious:
About time. This is the kind of thing that people like Githa Hariharan and Madhu Kishwar have been talking about for years.
The "coparcenary" problem is also one of the issues that makes the debates over the Uniform Civil Code more complex than people often like to admit. While the Muslim Marriage Act is certainly the more backward, the fact is, there are further reforms that need to be made to the Hindu Marriage Act as well. This is one of them.
Well, let's see if this thing passes.
It actually applies to something quite serious:
In a major blow to patriarchy among Hindus, the Union Cabinet today cleared a legislative proposal to introduce equality between men and women in their rights over joint family property.
Amending the Hindu Succession Act 1956, the proposed Bill gives the daughter entry for the first time into the “coparcenary” of her family—which means she will be counted among those members who are entitled to seek partition and get equal shares in the ancestral property. The Bill states that in a joint Hindu family, the daughter of a coparcener shall “by birth become a coparcener” and have “the same rights in the coparcenary property as she would have had if she had been a son.” As a corollary, the daughter will be bound by the common liabilities and can even become the “karta” (or loosely the head) of the joint family.
About time. This is the kind of thing that people like Githa Hariharan and Madhu Kishwar have been talking about for years.
The "coparcenary" problem is also one of the issues that makes the debates over the Uniform Civil Code more complex than people often like to admit. While the Muslim Marriage Act is certainly the more backward, the fact is, there are further reforms that need to be made to the Hindu Marriage Act as well. This is one of them.
Well, let's see if this thing passes.
William Safire is right for once -- stem cells, cloning, and "pro-living"
It's not often that I can praise William Safire.
The best twist phrase in this piece is "pro-living," which is a clever rhetorical response to the phrase "pro-life": "I'm with the hopers on this, and also hope President Bush opens his mind to the medical scientists' patient-oriented, pro-living position." I hadn't come across the phrase before. I did a google search on "pro-life pro-living", and it looks like a few others are using it the way Safire is here, but not many.
A challenging point in this piece is the bit about therapeutic cloning. We're all against reproductive cloning, but what if science could clone a defective kidney? An amputated limb? Wouldn't we support "cloning" research that might lead to such possibilities?
The best twist phrase in this piece is "pro-living," which is a clever rhetorical response to the phrase "pro-life": "I'm with the hopers on this, and also hope President Bush opens his mind to the medical scientists' patient-oriented, pro-living position." I hadn't come across the phrase before. I did a google search on "pro-life pro-living", and it looks like a few others are using it the way Safire is here, but not many.
A challenging point in this piece is the bit about therapeutic cloning. We're all against reproductive cloning, but what if science could clone a defective kidney? An amputated limb? Wouldn't we support "cloning" research that might lead to such possibilities?
Some India-related panels at MLA 2004
The Modern Language Association Convention ("MLA") meets every year at the end of December, at a rotating North American city. I've been going to them since early in grad school; I remember going to ones in Toronto, San Francisco, New York, and Washington DC (twice). This year it's going to be in Philadelphia.
It's a huge convention. There are usually more than 1000 panels, with 3-4 participants each. And a total of 10,000 attendants overall (the MLA as a group has about 30,000 members). It's where most preliminary academic job interviews happen in both English and Comparative Literature. There is also a huge book display, with stalls from 50 academic publishers.
Because of this it might seem like heaven for lit/theory nerds. But there are many reasons why it doesn't always work out that way. For one thing, the immense size of the conference and the short panel times make it difficult to get intellectually focused -- not impossible, but it takes work and concentration. And the papers are not of a consistent quality. Some people really put time and effort into the papers they give, but others think of it as more of an academic obligation to give a talk at MLA every so often; papers are often hacked together out of something used earlier in another context. Or they are excerpted out of long chapters, with only minimal effort made to offer adequate context or transitions. The flamboyant titles of some MLA papers get a lot of media attention, but the real scandal is that many flamboyant titles are attached to papers that are quite staid.
Also, quite a number of the people present at MLA every year are either interviewing for jobs, or conducting interviews; going to panels (or giving talks) is the last thing on their minds. And finally, many people go to MLA primarily to socialize. It's the one conference of the year when a significant number of people you know from graduate school (and other contexts) are likely to be around. [In some cases, it's a chance to make new friends; this year there will be an attempt at a "Blogger Meetup", which I'm looking forward to]
That said, if you look you will find. There are a few India panels that I'm probably going to this year One is a panel that I'm chairing. I've taken the times and locations off the panels; I'm listing them just to give some idea of what the papers are about. If you want to attend, you should get the exact information through the MLA website. If any of you are waffling about going, all the interesting paper titles might cause you to think twice:
The idea behind my panel was to look at the "next generation" of South Asian writers, who aren't especially preoccupied by the legacy of colonialism, and for whom "hybridity" is an a priori, and fairly uncontroversial fact of existence. There is a new set of issues that are beginning to come up in the books, and in some cases new spins on old issues. Is it time to move past the term "postcolonial" as an umbrella term to describe what these books are about?
I'm also going to several other, non-India panels (and I probably won't make it to all of these). But it's interesting -- some authors I haven't even heard of here (Gopinath Mohanty). Some panel topics seem somewhat familiar (I seem to recall there being a panel on Caste and Race in SA lit at an earlier MLA... and I seem to recall being on that panel!). Others are new -- I'm pleasantly surprised to see that others in my field are starting to talk about secularism! You can bet I'll be in the audience there, the first to ask a question.
It's a huge convention. There are usually more than 1000 panels, with 3-4 participants each. And a total of 10,000 attendants overall (the MLA as a group has about 30,000 members). It's where most preliminary academic job interviews happen in both English and Comparative Literature. There is also a huge book display, with stalls from 50 academic publishers.
Because of this it might seem like heaven for lit/theory nerds. But there are many reasons why it doesn't always work out that way. For one thing, the immense size of the conference and the short panel times make it difficult to get intellectually focused -- not impossible, but it takes work and concentration. And the papers are not of a consistent quality. Some people really put time and effort into the papers they give, but others think of it as more of an academic obligation to give a talk at MLA every so often; papers are often hacked together out of something used earlier in another context. Or they are excerpted out of long chapters, with only minimal effort made to offer adequate context or transitions. The flamboyant titles of some MLA papers get a lot of media attention, but the real scandal is that many flamboyant titles are attached to papers that are quite staid.
Also, quite a number of the people present at MLA every year are either interviewing for jobs, or conducting interviews; going to panels (or giving talks) is the last thing on their minds. And finally, many people go to MLA primarily to socialize. It's the one conference of the year when a significant number of people you know from graduate school (and other contexts) are likely to be around. [In some cases, it's a chance to make new friends; this year there will be an attempt at a "Blogger Meetup", which I'm looking forward to]
That said, if you look you will find. There are a few India panels that I'm probably going to this year One is a panel that I'm chairing. I've taken the times and locations off the panels; I'm listing them just to give some idea of what the papers are about. If you want to attend, you should get the exact information through the MLA website. If any of you are waffling about going, all the interesting paper titles might cause you to think twice:
Hybridity’s Children: Paradigm Shifts in Contemporary South Asian Literature
Session leader: Amardeep Singh, Lehigh Univ.
1. “Beyond Nations and Nationalisms: Rethinking Modern South Asian Literature,” Kavita Daiya, George Washington Univ.
2. “Unfamiliar Relations: Incest and the Postcolonial Novel,” Sangita Gopal, Univ. of Oregon
3. “To Understand Me, You’ll Have to Swallow a World: Salman Rushdie and the South Asian Multitude,” Mrinalini Chakravorty, Univ. of California, Irvine
The idea behind my panel was to look at the "next generation" of South Asian writers, who aren't especially preoccupied by the legacy of colonialism, and for whom "hybridity" is an a priori, and fairly uncontroversial fact of existence. There is a new set of issues that are beginning to come up in the books, and in some cases new spins on old issues. Is it time to move past the term "postcolonial" as an umbrella term to describe what these books are about?
Africa in India, India in Africa
Presiding: John Charles Hawley, Santa Clara Univ.
1. “South Asian Africans and Indian Literature,” Jaspal Kaur Singh, Northern Michigan Univ.
2. “Bombay’s Africa,” Sharmila Sen, Harvard Univ.
3. “Where Gandhi Became Indian,” Amitava Kumar, Penn State Univ., University Park
4. “Sam Selvon and the Romance of Creolization,” Gautam Premnath, Univ. of California, Berkeley
Framing the Secular: South Asian Contexts
Program arranged by the Discussion Group on South Asian Languages and Literatures
Presiding: Hena Ahmad, Truman State Univ.
1. “The Panchatantra and Secular Tale-Telling in the Premodern World,” Brenda Deen Schildgen, Univ. of California, Davis
2. “Secular Literature in Preindependent India: A Look at Ismat Chughtai and Saadat Hasan Manto,” Deepika Marya, Univ. of Southern Maine, Portland
3. “Re-presenting the Burdens of South Asian History: Narayan and Rushdie,” Pradyumna S. Chauhan, Arcadia Univ.
4. “The Vernacular of Doubt,” Amitava Kumar, Penn State Univ., University Park
Race, Caste, and Class in South Asian Literatures
Presiding: Anushiya Sivanarayanan, Southern Illinois Univ., Edwardsville
1. “Race and Class: Reflections on Chitra Divakaruni’s Short Fiction and Poetry,” Bruce G. Johnson, Univ. of Rhode Island
2. “Gopinath Mohanty’s Paraja: An Intertext on ‘Tribal Problem,’” Amiya Bhushan Sharma, Indira Gandhi Natl. Open Univ.
3. “The Unspeakable Limits of Caste: A Reading of Bhabani Bhattacharya’s So Many Hungers and He Who Rides a Tiger,” Rajender Kaur, Ridgefield, CT
4.“The Bhil Woman’s Plums: Dalit Counter-Offerings in ‘Times of Siege,’” Cynthia Ann Leenerts, George Washington Univ.
Masculinity, Ascetic Nationalism, and the Indian Nation
1. “British Colonial Discourse and Ascetic Nationalism in Colonial India,” Chandrima Chakraborty, York Univ., Keele
2. “Ascetic Nationalism and the Muslim ‘Other’ in Colonial India: The ‘Case’ of Swami Vivekananda,” Gautam Kundu, Georgia Southern Univ.
3.“Gandhi, the Father,” Rachel V. Trousdale, Agnes Scott Coll.
I'm also going to several other, non-India panels (and I probably won't make it to all of these). But it's interesting -- some authors I haven't even heard of here (Gopinath Mohanty). Some panel topics seem somewhat familiar (I seem to recall there being a panel on Caste and Race in SA lit at an earlier MLA... and I seem to recall being on that panel!). Others are new -- I'm pleasantly surprised to see that others in my field are starting to talk about secularism! You can bet I'll be in the audience there, the first to ask a question.
Asia Blog Awards
Someone nominated me for best India blogger at Simon World.
If I weren't so vain, I would probably vote for Sepia Mutiny, since they are so maddeningly entertaining over there. Though really, both they and I should be under a separate category ("Diaspora Blogger" -- maybe I'll suggest it next time around). And if I were being a serious policy wonk I would be voting for The Acorn. Nitin is one step away from writing professional op-eds for the Indian media. (Indeed, he's probably a step above much of what's published in The Times of India)
But I'm neither serious nor honest, so I voted for myself. When I looked at the results so far, I was a little aghast to see that I was the first vote for me! (Then again only three votes have been cast so far, which means I am tied for first. If no one else votes, I might actually win)
The only serious thing here: exposure to a list of blogs from all over Asia, most of which I've never encountered before. Go check them out.
If I weren't so vain, I would probably vote for Sepia Mutiny, since they are so maddeningly entertaining over there. Though really, both they and I should be under a separate category ("Diaspora Blogger" -- maybe I'll suggest it next time around). And if I were being a serious policy wonk I would be voting for The Acorn. Nitin is one step away from writing professional op-eds for the Indian media. (Indeed, he's probably a step above much of what's published in The Times of India)
But I'm neither serious nor honest, so I voted for myself. When I looked at the results so far, I was a little aghast to see that I was the first vote for me! (Then again only three votes have been cast so far, which means I am tied for first. If no one else votes, I might actually win)
The only serious thing here: exposure to a list of blogs from all over Asia, most of which I've never encountered before. Go check them out.
"Smart Criticism" vs. Good/Useful Academic Writing
Jeffrey Williams in the Chronicle of Higher Education historicizes the idea of "smartness" in scholarship. He is primarily focusing on literary criticism, though I presume his argument could apply to other disciplines as well. In the old days, smartness was valued less than soundness:
The first move to smartness came with Lionel Trilling's "The Moral Value of Being Intelligent," though it manifested itself at an institutional level in the move to technocracy and standardized testing that swept academia in the late 1960s, and turned the Ivy Leagues from simple bastions of privilege to bastions of privilege where you have to a) be intelligent, and b) work like a dog.
I find this part of Williams's essay a little confusing -- why did the rise of American technocracy (which Williams also connects to the Cold War) require more "intelligence" than before? Also confusing is how English departments in particular then went on (starting in the early 1970s) to leave "intelligence" behind for a time, to take on a new emphasis on quasi-scientific "rigor," whose chief proponent and examplar was Paul de Man. One can see why rigor became popular from a disciplinary point of view -- the seductions of literary theory. But since Williams is trying to historicize intellectual trends, I would expect a historical explanation for this trend.
At any rate, now "rigor" and theoreticism is apparently gone again, in favor of a new cult of smartness. And here is where I think Williams makes a great point.
There is much that I agree with here. I have on my bookshelf a long list of academic books that make exactly the sort of "sharp connection" Williams is describing. Ironically, most of them are not especially "useful"; when I prepare to teach a course on 20th Century Indian literature (as I am now preparing to do), very few of these very smart books are suitable as secondary materials to recommend to undergraduates. There is no chapter summarizing Indian literature before the twentieth century leading up to Tagore, which mentions ancient and medieval Sanskrit writers, the different language traditions (i.e., the Bengali Renaissance), the influence of the Mughal tradition (Ghazals; Mehfil; Shayri), and finally, the transformative role of the British. There are fifty books out right now dealing with Indian literature in one way or another, but if I want a ten page excerpt that covers major concepts along the lines mentioned above, I pretty much have to write my own. (No shame in that, of course... keeps me busy)
Side-note: Another factor affecting the utility of smart criticism is also jargon. Williams doesn't say it, but over-use of jargon is one dire consequence of the plague of smartness.
I don't advocate, as Williams seems to, yet another turn in academic fashion -- yet another return to pseudo-science, or strictly utilitarian criticism. I think there ought to be room for publishing books that do several different kinds of things. On the one hand, we need textbooks that collect and propagate information (not just anthologies; I believe we need textbooks on literature, and maybe also on cultural studies topics). There is an art in putting together the kinds of arguments, and the style of writing, that is designed to offer information to undergraduates.
That said, the field continues to need studies that do aim to represent what I still naively think of as "new knowledge." In literature, this might involve discovering literary texts that no one has read; proposing a new, contrarian reading in texts that everyone has read; various kinds of archival work; and, the surveying of new forms or genres, to name just a few. And though I think Williams makes a very good point, I do feel that smart criticism can potentially belong in the category of "new knowledge" -- if it is either exceptionally well-written or thoroughly original.
Q: Is "smart criticism" a problem in other disciplines?
Q2: Is the smartness trend tied to jargon, as I've suggested?
Q3: Is the smartness trend tied to "academic groupthink">
Q4: Do you buy Williams's argument? Are there other holes?
In literary studies -- I take examples from the history of criticism, although I expect that there are parallels in other disciplines -- scholars during the early part of the 20th century strove for "sound" scholarship that patiently added to its established roots rather than offering a smart new way of thinking. Literary scholars of the time were seeking to establish a new discipline to join classics, rhetoric, and oratory, and their dominant method was philology (for example, they might have ferreted out the French root of a word in one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales). They sought historical accuracy, the soundness of which purported a kind of scientific legitimacy for their nascent discipline.
The first move to smartness came with Lionel Trilling's "The Moral Value of Being Intelligent," though it manifested itself at an institutional level in the move to technocracy and standardized testing that swept academia in the late 1960s, and turned the Ivy Leagues from simple bastions of privilege to bastions of privilege where you have to a) be intelligent, and b) work like a dog.
I find this part of Williams's essay a little confusing -- why did the rise of American technocracy (which Williams also connects to the Cold War) require more "intelligence" than before? Also confusing is how English departments in particular then went on (starting in the early 1970s) to leave "intelligence" behind for a time, to take on a new emphasis on quasi-scientific "rigor," whose chief proponent and examplar was Paul de Man. One can see why rigor became popular from a disciplinary point of view -- the seductions of literary theory. But since Williams is trying to historicize intellectual trends, I would expect a historical explanation for this trend.
At any rate, now "rigor" and theoreticism is apparently gone again, in favor of a new cult of smartness. And here is where I think Williams makes a great point.
Individual specializations have narrowed to microfields, and the overall field has expanded to encompass low as well as high literary texts, world literatures as well as British texts, and "cultural texts" like 18th-century gardens and punk fashion. At the same time, method has loosened from the moorings of grand theories; now eclectic variations are loosely gathered under the rubric of cultural studies. Without overarching criteria that scholars can agree upon, the value has shifted to the strikingness of a particular critical effort. We aim to make smart surmises among a plurality of studies of culture.
[...Omitting a couple of paragraphs on further historical changes in the academic environment...]
Smart still retains its association with novelty, in keeping with its sense of immediacy, such that a smart scholarly project does something new and different to attract our interest among a glut of publications. In fact, "interesting" is a complementary value to smart. One might praise a reading of the cultural history of gardens in the 18th-century novel not as "sound" or "rigorous" but as "interesting" and "smart," because it makes a new and sharp connection. Rigor takes the frame of scientific proof; smart the frame of the market, which mandates interest amid a crowd of competitors. Deeming something smart, to use Kant's framework, is a judgment of taste rather than a judgment of reason. Like most judgments of taste, it is finally a measure of the people who hold it or lack it.
The promise of smart is that it purports to be a way to talk about quality in a sea of quantity. But the problem is that it internalizes the competitive ethos of the university, aiming not for the cultivation of intelligence but for individual success in the academic market. It functions something like the old shibboleth "quality of mind," which claimed to be a pure standard but frequently became a shorthand for membership in the old boys' network. It was the self-confirming taste of those who talked and thought in similar ways. The danger of smart is that it confirms the moves and mannerisms of a new and perhaps equally closed network.
"Smart," as a designation of mental ability, seems a natural term to distinguish the cerebral pursuits of higher education, but perhaps there are better words. I would prefer the criticism I read to be useful and relevant, my colleagues responsible and judicious, and my institution egalitarian and fair. Those words no doubt have their own trails of associations, as any savvy critic would point out, but they suggest cooperative values that are not always inculcated or rewarded in a field that extols being smart.
There is much that I agree with here. I have on my bookshelf a long list of academic books that make exactly the sort of "sharp connection" Williams is describing. Ironically, most of them are not especially "useful"; when I prepare to teach a course on 20th Century Indian literature (as I am now preparing to do), very few of these very smart books are suitable as secondary materials to recommend to undergraduates. There is no chapter summarizing Indian literature before the twentieth century leading up to Tagore, which mentions ancient and medieval Sanskrit writers, the different language traditions (i.e., the Bengali Renaissance), the influence of the Mughal tradition (Ghazals; Mehfil; Shayri), and finally, the transformative role of the British. There are fifty books out right now dealing with Indian literature in one way or another, but if I want a ten page excerpt that covers major concepts along the lines mentioned above, I pretty much have to write my own. (No shame in that, of course... keeps me busy)
Side-note: Another factor affecting the utility of smart criticism is also jargon. Williams doesn't say it, but over-use of jargon is one dire consequence of the plague of smartness.
I don't advocate, as Williams seems to, yet another turn in academic fashion -- yet another return to pseudo-science, or strictly utilitarian criticism. I think there ought to be room for publishing books that do several different kinds of things. On the one hand, we need textbooks that collect and propagate information (not just anthologies; I believe we need textbooks on literature, and maybe also on cultural studies topics). There is an art in putting together the kinds of arguments, and the style of writing, that is designed to offer information to undergraduates.
That said, the field continues to need studies that do aim to represent what I still naively think of as "new knowledge." In literature, this might involve discovering literary texts that no one has read; proposing a new, contrarian reading in texts that everyone has read; various kinds of archival work; and, the surveying of new forms or genres, to name just a few. And though I think Williams makes a very good point, I do feel that smart criticism can potentially belong in the category of "new knowledge" -- if it is either exceptionally well-written or thoroughly original.
Q: Is "smart criticism" a problem in other disciplines?
Q2: Is the smartness trend tied to jargon, as I've suggested?
Q3: Is the smartness trend tied to "academic groupthink">
Q4: Do you buy Williams's argument? Are there other holes?
What Have You Invented For Me Lately?
Erich Kunhardt, a Physics professor writing in the Times, says academics should be required to invent things, in addition to doing research and teaching.
Start filing patents, people!
Or not.
Start filing patents, people!
Or not.
'Sugar in the milk': Bombay Parsis (Zoroastrians) on NPR
Photos by Sooni Taraporevala, and an interview on NPR with Jennifer Ludden.
She talks about the religious origins of Zoroastrianism, and tells some stories about the arrival of the Parsis (originally from Iran) in India. Also see Wikipedia on Zoroastrianism. Other famous Parsis include Freddy Mercury of the rock band Queen (who was actually of Indian origin), the conductor Zubin Mehta, and both Homi Bhabhas (the literary theorist and the nuclear scientist, no relation as far as I know).
She talks about the religious origins of Zoroastrianism, and tells some stories about the arrival of the Parsis (originally from Iran) in India. Also see Wikipedia on Zoroastrianism. Other famous Parsis include Freddy Mercury of the rock band Queen (who was actually of Indian origin), the conductor Zubin Mehta, and both Homi Bhabhas (the literary theorist and the nuclear scientist, no relation as far as I know).
God in Elementary School: Steve Williams
Joanne Jacobs has been posting about a 5th grade history teacher at a public school in the Bay Area who has been told to stop using religiously-inflected supplementary materials in the classroom. The teacher is named Steve Williams.
The San Jose Mercury News has an article. One sentence that stood out to me was this one:
But there is no reference to God in the U.S. Constitution! (See for yourself) There are of course many references to God in the various state constitutions. So that part of the Mercury-News's sentence is ok at least.
In her posts on Williams, Jacobs is playing this as another case of extreme intolerance of religion. Among other things, Williams has apparently been told to stop using historical documents that seem to reference God, like George Washington's "Prayer Journal." The implicit argument of Williams's defenders is, it should ok because it's historical. But that's a fallacy, because any historical period or event can be 'spun' differently depending on which documents are used. You can spin the Founding Fathers as religious zealots or as raging freethinkers, deists, and atheists. (The second case is much more persuasive to me -- especially regarding Thomas Jefferson) Williams's choice of documents, while not legally actionable, reflects a particular bias on history that is not appropriate for fifth graders in a public school. At a university, I wouldn't complain about it.
Secondly, Jacobs (and the Williams legal team) are arguing that the ways in which Williams brings a little extra God into the classroom (no one denies this) are petty. But I don't know about that:
Clearly, when the students have felt it to be an issue, and complained to their parents, it's a little too much. When he's sending students home on a non-holiday, it's too much. (I don't object to his choice of religious apparel.) Williams has left very little hard evidence of his approach to teaching, but I suspect that were a video camera in that classroom it would be "God, Jesus, let me tell you about what the Bible says on that... come to my Bible study class..."
I appreciate that the school board has been taking the gentle approach (stop with the supplementary stuff; stick to the textbook). But can't they just fire this guy?
The San Jose Mercury News has an article. One sentence that stood out to me was this one:
Among Williams' controversial teaching handouts are excerpts with multiple references to God from the U.S. Constitution and from various state constitutions.
But there is no reference to God in the U.S. Constitution! (See for yourself) There are of course many references to God in the various state constitutions. So that part of the Mercury-News's sentence is ok at least.
In her posts on Williams, Jacobs is playing this as another case of extreme intolerance of religion. Among other things, Williams has apparently been told to stop using historical documents that seem to reference God, like George Washington's "Prayer Journal." The implicit argument of Williams's defenders is, it should ok because it's historical. But that's a fallacy, because any historical period or event can be 'spun' differently depending on which documents are used. You can spin the Founding Fathers as religious zealots or as raging freethinkers, deists, and atheists. (The second case is much more persuasive to me -- especially regarding Thomas Jefferson) Williams's choice of documents, while not legally actionable, reflects a particular bias on history that is not appropriate for fifth graders in a public school. At a university, I wouldn't complain about it.
Secondly, Jacobs (and the Williams legal team) are arguing that the ways in which Williams brings a little extra God into the classroom (no one denies this) are petty. But I don't know about that:
"Mr. Williams discusses his Christianity in the classroom,'' said Dorothy Pickler, who has two children at Stevens Creek. "He slants lessons in that direction. Parents have complained.''
Armineh Noravian, whose son had Williams last year, said that the teacher wore a Jesus ring, a cross near the collar of his shirt and talked to his students often about his Bible study classes.
Noravian said that when Williams sent his students home with a proclamation for national prayer day from President Bush, she and other parents complained to the principal.
Clearly, when the students have felt it to be an issue, and complained to their parents, it's a little too much. When he's sending students home on a non-holiday, it's too much. (I don't object to his choice of religious apparel.) Williams has left very little hard evidence of his approach to teaching, but I suspect that were a video camera in that classroom it would be "God, Jesus, let me tell you about what the Bible says on that... come to my Bible study class..."
I appreciate that the school board has been taking the gentle approach (stop with the supplementary stuff; stick to the textbook). But can't they just fire this guy?
A Lecture on Literature: 12/3/04
1. Prologue: the point of this post
We literary critics often get accused of not talking enough about actual literature. On one's blog, that is probably forgivable, partly because it generally seems more pressing to talk about what is happening currently in the world than to do long close-readings. Writing about literature in a meaningful way every day is hard!
Still, here is an excerpt from the final lecture I gave in one of my classes this fall. Maybe it will give readers who do other things in life some idea of what people like me do in the classroom. And for my colleagues in English, I'm posting this with a request for feedback and criticisms.
2. Another Prologue: the course
This fall I taught an introduction to the major course we have at Lehigh called “Working With Texts.” Though the course is supposed to have a particular focus (on developing close reading skills and the methods of criticism), how we teach it is actually up to us. I decided to do a unit on each of the three literary forms –- poetry, fiction, and drama. With the poetry, I used an old textbook called Understanding Poetry, edited by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren. I had found this anthology in a used bookstore, and was really impressed by both the selection of poems and the analyses of many of the poems included. I find this better than the usual poetry anthologies. With those, students are highly dependent on my (subjective) readings of the poems. In Brooks and Warren, studying poetry is at least partly a matter of objective comprehension. They also helpfully had sections of poems without analysis, which are necessary if you want to get students to apply lessons they learned from the textbook editors to something else. In fiction, I decided to go with just short stories –- no novels. Novels in a course like this can bog you down. Swamped with short story anthologies, I went with Updike's The Best American Short Stories of the Century, probably a little arbitrarily (it worked out just fine). And finally, I used a more-or-less generic drama anthology, edited by R.S. Gwynn, for the drama section of the course. There are several good drama texts out there, but this one seemed to be a bit cheaper than some others. And the introduction is helpful.
The result was a course in which students got exposure to stuff by the following authors:
William Shakespeare (some sonnets, and also Othello), Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Walt Whitman, A.E. Housman, T.S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, Robert Frost, Theodore Roethke, Billy Collins, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty, Vladimir Nabokov, Katherine Anne Porter, John Updike, Raymond Chandler, Sherwood Anderson, Jean Toomer, Richard Wright, Alice Munro, Carolyn Ferrell, Tim O'Brien, Gish Jen, Jhumpa Lahiri, Henrik Ibsen, and August Wilson. Not bad, for 14 weeks.
Blog. I also used a course blog to get students to find out more about the authors we were reading. For the most part they used simple web searches. Some students took it a little further, and wrote more opinionated or personalized comments on the blog. It was moderately successful. The students didn't comment much on each other's entries, and I got the sense that they weren't reading each other's entries all that much either, so some of the functionality of the blog format might have been lost. Maybe next time around I'll try and evolve the uses of the course blog a bit more.
3. The lecture itself (excerpt, with emphasis on the sections where I was talking about poetry)
Working With Texts is not meant to be a definitive course, in the sense of “I'll never look at a work of literature the same way again.” Studying English and American literature is an incremental process – you'll only know it all once you've read lots and lots of books. Over the course of a good English major experience, you should read upwards of 100 novels, 300-400 poems, and maybe 50 plays. But even if you've read that many books (and I mean, you've read and understood every page – you've given a real block of time to each text), you've actually only scratched the surface of major literature. For each author you read, there are likely to be 10 other authors from the same period you haven't read. And the same goes for even the authors you have read – there are ten other books waiting for you. The point is, English literature is very, very big.
Unlike, say, an Engineering major, you don't graduate with an English major as a capable expert in literature. A graduating English major is probably better described as an exceptionally well-prepared novice, someone who might be able to pick up a novel or a poem from virtually any period, and make sense of it. Also, English majors have a pretty good sense of how to continually find new things to read, which might capture their interest. It’s partly a matter of recognizing names and titles in the library or bookstore, but it’s also the ability to size up new things you haven’t heard of, that you might just happen to pick up.
Though we did do some close technical work at various points in the term, the course was not meant to be highly technical in nature. We did the most technical work with poetry and poetics, and the reason for that is that poetry – especially poetry from early periods really requires it. The romanticized notion that you pick up a poem and are vaguely moved by its contents doesn't hold up for any except the easiest poetry. The best poetry involves the reader (or the listener) in an intensified experience of language itself. It can't be read casually.
I believe it's extremely important that English majors develop some familiarity with the incredible diversity and complexity of English language poetry. The idea of a serious awareness of the inner workings of poetry is kind of a dying art in English departments around the country, and its decline suggests that poetry as a whole may be in a little trouble. In earlier eras, people gathered around campfires to hear poetry recited. People memorized poems, people felt it in a very natural, organic way. Now, however, it's not always clear what the role of poetry is for ordinary people (i.e., for people who aren't English majors, and even for many who are). How many people actually seek it out? How many people would read poems if their English teachers didn’t require them to do so?
During the semester, I did mention one situation in which poetry seemed to be spontaneously important, and that is in finding language that helps us deal with extremely difficult events. Poems were important all around America after 9/11, and people dealing with smaller, more personal kinds of grief (such as the death of a loved one) often turn to poetry for some kind of solace. You heard people reciting Auden on the radio. So: another role for poetry might be as a kind of substitute for religion – which can also provide such solace – in a secular society. It’s a potentially universal language of reflection. But that turn to the reflective, while a hopeful sign for poetry as a literary form, is still a somewhat more limited role for poetry than what one saw in earlier eras. What about poetry that celebrates life, that celebrates love? What about romantic poetry, comic poetry?
Is romantic poetry now just a joke?
Is comic poetry now the exclusive territory of “slam poets” and rappers? (When was the last time you heard or read a “literary” poem (meaning, not a rap song) that actually made you laugh?) [Discuss. Students pointed out that one way in which poetry stays alive is in the lyrics to popular music. James Taylor and Bob Dylan were mentioned. The students have a point, though poetry set to music is nevertheless something different from poetry for the page. Still, there is a whole course waiting to be taught – not sure if it will be by me – on the relationship between poetry and music.]
If we had this class to do over again, I might have started the work on poetics earlier and shown the value of it in somewhat greater depth. It's good if you can figure out the meter or rhyme scheme of a poem now, but it's also important that you see how these aspects of style might affect the fundamental meaning of a poem.
The other place where some technical details are important is with drama, so I asked you to study theatrical terms like the 'tragic flaw' (hamartia), open and closed denouements, and catharsis (release). The significance of these was a bit easier to identify. Most people would certainly agree that characters like Othello or Desdemona have a tragic flaw, though we might not necessarily agree on what it is. Most people would also agree that it's very important to a play like A Doll's House that it ends with an open denouement – Nora is leaving her husband, but what happens next is wide open. And finally, the fight between Troy and Cory near the end of Fences seems to be the moment at which a kind of catharsis is occurring. The fight between them is a big, physical one that brings to the surface all the suppressed (or merely verbal) hostility and tension that seemed to be building up throughout the earlier part of the play. After the fight ends – and Troy wins – something is different, both for him and for the other characters. It's not so important whether he wins or loses the fight, so much as he gets to have it all out.
Interestingly, these technical terms of drama might be helpful in understanding other kinds of stories, including novels and films. They are essentially terms that have to do with human psychology – how human beings experience conflicts, and respond to them. Serious drama is always driven by conflict. And good actors in serious plays have the potential to show us the visceral experience of individuals who genuinely don't know what they are going to do next. Is Othello really going to kill Desdemona? Is Nora going to leave her husband? The actor will always know what is going to happen (and the audience will sometimes know), but a good actor will show us the experience of a person who is genuinely unsure. At its best, the result is that the audience itself doesn’t know what it would do in that same situation. (This is very hard to do)
The essential definition of poetry
All cultures have some form of poetry. And nearly all early poetry was written in some kind of formal meter. The essential quality of poetry then was that it was meant to be recited aloud. It descended from a pre-literate tradition of epic storytelling. Rhyme helped people remember how poems went.
But modern poetry goes by different rules. When it doesn't rhyme, and when there's no meter, it's nevertheless true that there is an essential element, something that all poetry must have for it to be called “poetry” and not “prose,” and that is the rhythmic use of language. There also many, many secondary characteristics that we discussed. Chief among them is the intense and precise use of language (especially important in modern poetry). The best modern poets aim to crystallize some observation or insight about the world around them in such a way that it causes us to look at the same things they are looking at in a fresh way.
A great example of this is William Carlos Williams's poem again: So much depends/ Upon a Red Wheelbarrow/ glazed with rain water/ beside the white chickens.” That line, “so much depends” does everything in this poem. The first thing it does is, heighten your sensibilities. Whatever this poem is about, it is about something that is very important to the speaker. Secondly, the line makes us look at the wheelbarrow differently. Perhaps we are (at first) a little incredulous. So much depends on that? It's an everyday object. But then... but then... a wheelbarrow is, in the life of a farm, a very important object. It potentially carries everything. And it is, despite its incredible features as a tool for farmers, kind of a beautiful object. Imagine a red wheelbarrow, sparkling wet and clean after a rainfall...
In just a few words, Williams's poem changes the reader's perception of an everyday object. In some sense, then, those brilliant first three words are also even bigger. They might be a kind of commentary on language itself. Williams, in my view, reminding us how much can be done with just a few words, how powerful language itself is. He is saying, not just that so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow, but rather, “So much depends upon -- the next five words of this poem.”
That is poetry at its best.
We literary critics often get accused of not talking enough about actual literature. On one's blog, that is probably forgivable, partly because it generally seems more pressing to talk about what is happening currently in the world than to do long close-readings. Writing about literature in a meaningful way every day is hard!
Still, here is an excerpt from the final lecture I gave in one of my classes this fall. Maybe it will give readers who do other things in life some idea of what people like me do in the classroom. And for my colleagues in English, I'm posting this with a request for feedback and criticisms.
2. Another Prologue: the course
This fall I taught an introduction to the major course we have at Lehigh called “Working With Texts.” Though the course is supposed to have a particular focus (on developing close reading skills and the methods of criticism), how we teach it is actually up to us. I decided to do a unit on each of the three literary forms –- poetry, fiction, and drama. With the poetry, I used an old textbook called Understanding Poetry, edited by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren. I had found this anthology in a used bookstore, and was really impressed by both the selection of poems and the analyses of many of the poems included. I find this better than the usual poetry anthologies. With those, students are highly dependent on my (subjective) readings of the poems. In Brooks and Warren, studying poetry is at least partly a matter of objective comprehension. They also helpfully had sections of poems without analysis, which are necessary if you want to get students to apply lessons they learned from the textbook editors to something else. In fiction, I decided to go with just short stories –- no novels. Novels in a course like this can bog you down. Swamped with short story anthologies, I went with Updike's The Best American Short Stories of the Century, probably a little arbitrarily (it worked out just fine). And finally, I used a more-or-less generic drama anthology, edited by R.S. Gwynn, for the drama section of the course. There are several good drama texts out there, but this one seemed to be a bit cheaper than some others. And the introduction is helpful.
The result was a course in which students got exposure to stuff by the following authors:
William Shakespeare (some sonnets, and also Othello), Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Walt Whitman, A.E. Housman, T.S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, Robert Frost, Theodore Roethke, Billy Collins, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty, Vladimir Nabokov, Katherine Anne Porter, John Updike, Raymond Chandler, Sherwood Anderson, Jean Toomer, Richard Wright, Alice Munro, Carolyn Ferrell, Tim O'Brien, Gish Jen, Jhumpa Lahiri, Henrik Ibsen, and August Wilson. Not bad, for 14 weeks.
Blog. I also used a course blog to get students to find out more about the authors we were reading. For the most part they used simple web searches. Some students took it a little further, and wrote more opinionated or personalized comments on the blog. It was moderately successful. The students didn't comment much on each other's entries, and I got the sense that they weren't reading each other's entries all that much either, so some of the functionality of the blog format might have been lost. Maybe next time around I'll try and evolve the uses of the course blog a bit more.
3. The lecture itself (excerpt, with emphasis on the sections where I was talking about poetry)
Working With Texts is not meant to be a definitive course, in the sense of “I'll never look at a work of literature the same way again.” Studying English and American literature is an incremental process – you'll only know it all once you've read lots and lots of books. Over the course of a good English major experience, you should read upwards of 100 novels, 300-400 poems, and maybe 50 plays. But even if you've read that many books (and I mean, you've read and understood every page – you've given a real block of time to each text), you've actually only scratched the surface of major literature. For each author you read, there are likely to be 10 other authors from the same period you haven't read. And the same goes for even the authors you have read – there are ten other books waiting for you. The point is, English literature is very, very big.
Unlike, say, an Engineering major, you don't graduate with an English major as a capable expert in literature. A graduating English major is probably better described as an exceptionally well-prepared novice, someone who might be able to pick up a novel or a poem from virtually any period, and make sense of it. Also, English majors have a pretty good sense of how to continually find new things to read, which might capture their interest. It’s partly a matter of recognizing names and titles in the library or bookstore, but it’s also the ability to size up new things you haven’t heard of, that you might just happen to pick up.
Though we did do some close technical work at various points in the term, the course was not meant to be highly technical in nature. We did the most technical work with poetry and poetics, and the reason for that is that poetry – especially poetry from early periods really requires it. The romanticized notion that you pick up a poem and are vaguely moved by its contents doesn't hold up for any except the easiest poetry. The best poetry involves the reader (or the listener) in an intensified experience of language itself. It can't be read casually.
I believe it's extremely important that English majors develop some familiarity with the incredible diversity and complexity of English language poetry. The idea of a serious awareness of the inner workings of poetry is kind of a dying art in English departments around the country, and its decline suggests that poetry as a whole may be in a little trouble. In earlier eras, people gathered around campfires to hear poetry recited. People memorized poems, people felt it in a very natural, organic way. Now, however, it's not always clear what the role of poetry is for ordinary people (i.e., for people who aren't English majors, and even for many who are). How many people actually seek it out? How many people would read poems if their English teachers didn’t require them to do so?
During the semester, I did mention one situation in which poetry seemed to be spontaneously important, and that is in finding language that helps us deal with extremely difficult events. Poems were important all around America after 9/11, and people dealing with smaller, more personal kinds of grief (such as the death of a loved one) often turn to poetry for some kind of solace. You heard people reciting Auden on the radio. So: another role for poetry might be as a kind of substitute for religion – which can also provide such solace – in a secular society. It’s a potentially universal language of reflection. But that turn to the reflective, while a hopeful sign for poetry as a literary form, is still a somewhat more limited role for poetry than what one saw in earlier eras. What about poetry that celebrates life, that celebrates love? What about romantic poetry, comic poetry?
Is romantic poetry now just a joke?
Is comic poetry now the exclusive territory of “slam poets” and rappers? (When was the last time you heard or read a “literary” poem (meaning, not a rap song) that actually made you laugh?) [Discuss. Students pointed out that one way in which poetry stays alive is in the lyrics to popular music. James Taylor and Bob Dylan were mentioned. The students have a point, though poetry set to music is nevertheless something different from poetry for the page. Still, there is a whole course waiting to be taught – not sure if it will be by me – on the relationship between poetry and music.]
If we had this class to do over again, I might have started the work on poetics earlier and shown the value of it in somewhat greater depth. It's good if you can figure out the meter or rhyme scheme of a poem now, but it's also important that you see how these aspects of style might affect the fundamental meaning of a poem.
The other place where some technical details are important is with drama, so I asked you to study theatrical terms like the 'tragic flaw' (hamartia), open and closed denouements, and catharsis (release). The significance of these was a bit easier to identify. Most people would certainly agree that characters like Othello or Desdemona have a tragic flaw, though we might not necessarily agree on what it is. Most people would also agree that it's very important to a play like A Doll's House that it ends with an open denouement – Nora is leaving her husband, but what happens next is wide open. And finally, the fight between Troy and Cory near the end of Fences seems to be the moment at which a kind of catharsis is occurring. The fight between them is a big, physical one that brings to the surface all the suppressed (or merely verbal) hostility and tension that seemed to be building up throughout the earlier part of the play. After the fight ends – and Troy wins – something is different, both for him and for the other characters. It's not so important whether he wins or loses the fight, so much as he gets to have it all out.
Interestingly, these technical terms of drama might be helpful in understanding other kinds of stories, including novels and films. They are essentially terms that have to do with human psychology – how human beings experience conflicts, and respond to them. Serious drama is always driven by conflict. And good actors in serious plays have the potential to show us the visceral experience of individuals who genuinely don't know what they are going to do next. Is Othello really going to kill Desdemona? Is Nora going to leave her husband? The actor will always know what is going to happen (and the audience will sometimes know), but a good actor will show us the experience of a person who is genuinely unsure. At its best, the result is that the audience itself doesn’t know what it would do in that same situation. (This is very hard to do)
The essential definition of poetry
All cultures have some form of poetry. And nearly all early poetry was written in some kind of formal meter. The essential quality of poetry then was that it was meant to be recited aloud. It descended from a pre-literate tradition of epic storytelling. Rhyme helped people remember how poems went.
But modern poetry goes by different rules. When it doesn't rhyme, and when there's no meter, it's nevertheless true that there is an essential element, something that all poetry must have for it to be called “poetry” and not “prose,” and that is the rhythmic use of language. There also many, many secondary characteristics that we discussed. Chief among them is the intense and precise use of language (especially important in modern poetry). The best modern poets aim to crystallize some observation or insight about the world around them in such a way that it causes us to look at the same things they are looking at in a fresh way.
A great example of this is William Carlos Williams's poem again: So much depends/ Upon a Red Wheelbarrow/ glazed with rain water/ beside the white chickens.” That line, “so much depends” does everything in this poem. The first thing it does is, heighten your sensibilities. Whatever this poem is about, it is about something that is very important to the speaker. Secondly, the line makes us look at the wheelbarrow differently. Perhaps we are (at first) a little incredulous. So much depends on that? It's an everyday object. But then... but then... a wheelbarrow is, in the life of a farm, a very important object. It potentially carries everything. And it is, despite its incredible features as a tool for farmers, kind of a beautiful object. Imagine a red wheelbarrow, sparkling wet and clean after a rainfall...
In just a few words, Williams's poem changes the reader's perception of an everyday object. In some sense, then, those brilliant first three words are also even bigger. They might be a kind of commentary on language itself. Williams, in my view, reminding us how much can be done with just a few words, how powerful language itself is. He is saying, not just that so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow, but rather, “So much depends upon -- the next five words of this poem.”
That is poetry at its best.
Another sign that listservs are dead
It's not just the spoons lists. Even much more professionalized lists like C18-L are having problems, according to Little Professor. I think it's a generalized problem; it's really time to try and get academics to change their behavior with regard to informal professional conversations over the Internet.
"Our civil service was designed to rule a colony"
Indian Express reports on a speech given by a junior minister named Prithviraj Chavan yesterday, calling for major reforms in India's government bureaucracy.
The best line quoted is the title of this post. (True, all too true.)
But the specific government reforms being proposed are good ones too:
The best line quoted is the title of this post. (True, all too true.)
But the specific government reforms being proposed are good ones too:
Political and electoral reforms so that political parties become more transparent about their funding. Elections, the Minister said, were funded in such a way that this not only bred corruption but bred a parallel economy. In the areas of police and judicial reform the Minister said there would be no more police commissions but implementation of the many reports that have gathered dust for years.
On judicial reform he admitted that it takes ‘‘forever to punish anybody’’ and irrelevant laws made a hundred years ago are still being implemented. The Minister went on to talk about reforms in economic governance, meaning more regulatory bodies rather than controls, and the restoration of the fundamental right to property.
Leftists respond to Niall Ferguson
Ann Talbot of the World Socialist Web Site reads Niall Ferguson's Colossus. She makes him sound further to the right than I had previously thought him to be. For instance, she characterizes him as follows:
Is this a position he holds consistently?
Also, she challenges his version of the Cold War, where my knowledge is, I must admit, pretty superficial. Is she right about Macarthur and the Korean War, or is Ferguson?
Also see Part 2 of Talbot's critique; and Part 3.
The trouble with America, Ferguson complains, is that its citizens “like Social Security more than national security.” In his eyes it is a country burdened by too many policies that date back to the New Deal. Bush’s failure, according to Ferguson, is that he has simply not done enough to bring welfare spending, especially Medicare, under control. “The decline and fall of America’s undeclared empire may be due not to terrorists at the gates or to the rogue regimes that sponsor them, but to a fiscal crisis of the welfare state at home,” Ferguson writes in Colossus. If America is to succeed as an imperial power, he argues, the government needs to cut welfare spending more aggressively.
Is this a position he holds consistently?
Also, she challenges his version of the Cold War, where my knowledge is, I must admit, pretty superficial. Is she right about Macarthur and the Korean War, or is Ferguson?
Also see Part 2 of Talbot's critique; and Part 3.
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