How I Spent My Summer

Today at lunch the chair of our department, Laurie McMillin, mentioned a great idea she’s had. Since everyone in the department is so busy doing such a wide range of things, we often don’t get a chance to share with each other what we’ve done, where we’ve been, or what we’re thinking. We have to report much of that when we file personnel reviews for the College, but those are often simple lists, with limited space for description. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could find another way to post information about ourselves that our colleagues might find interesting?  Her thought was that we might use Google Docs for the task, but blogging immediately occurred to me.

I’ve been trying to think of a way to kick start this blog again and add entries more regularly. Laurie’s observation gave me a quick moment of clarity about how to do that because it trimmed my sense of audience down to a size I can manage. If I think of myself writing to Nancy, Laurie, Linda, Nick, Len, Ferd and Anne, and perhaps after next week also to my students, that may make it easier for me to find manageable topics.  Let’s see how it works.

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Laurie’s observation came up in a lunch conversation about what we’d been doing this summer, so I’ll start with that, hoping not to turn it into the reviled How I Spent My Summer Vacation essay.

My summer began with a two week trip with a friend to Maine, the first week of which we spent at a lovely cottage on Isle au Haut.

The view from our cottage porch--see the ocean beyond that big rock?

While my friend photographed tide pools and baby owls, I finally taught myself hand spinning yarn, using a bottom whorl hand spindle, something I’ve been trying to do for years. And I finally caught up on some of the sleep that fibromyalgia had stolen from me in previous months. In the second week we went on a 2 day sea kayaking trip to a small island off the coast at Bar Harbor and stayed at a sheep farm in Vermont on the way home.

When I got back, I conducted a couple of workshops for the Oberlin Summer Research Institute of the Office of Undergraduate Research. Through that experience I got to hear what some exceptionally gifted Oberlin College students were working on, and was inspired to think more deeply about what I can do with the students in the new course I’m teaching this coming semester, Writing to Learn and Participate. Several of the OSRI students even showed me drafts of their final reports, teaching me more than I’d known before about such topics as how residential water in Lorain County is purified, the biology of vaginal infections, and the experience of sexualized racism among Black Queer women in the American military.

I also conducted research of my own. Last year I became very interested in documentaries on lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered topics, and refocused a course that I teach, Queering the Reel, on documentary films. While teaching that course I found that Mackey Alston‘s work enacts a set of issues at the intersection of race, gender, faith, and region that are particularly interesting to me. I’ve been looking this summer to see if much else has been written about him and I’m starting to look into some of the background scholarship I think I need to review to write something about my reactions to the issues in his films.

Finally this summer I spent the first two weeks of August with my family in Auburn, Alabama. CoCo (my dog) and I had a great time with them. One of the many highlights was finally trying out the Koolade method of dyeing yarn with my mother, nephew and a young neighbor.

See--it worked!

A good way to start a shortened week

[written 26 May 2009]

I’m listening to NPR’s coverage of President Obama’s announcement that he will nominate Federal Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. She sounds excellent, both in the President’s introduction of her and in her own remarks.

It is exciting to teach in a time when such an accomplished person with so many diverse experiences is nominated for the Supreme Court. I have taught numerous students in the past 25 years who aspired to go to law school and who saw the study of the law as the highest form of public service they could perform for their home communities, as well as for the country as a whole, despite all the bad lawyer stereotypes alive in our society. Judge Sotomayor reminds me of many of those students, albeit with additional layers of experience and wisdom, layers that add to the breadth as well as depth of her knowledge.

I can only imagine the inspiration Judge Sotomayor will be for younger people who are working in the federal and local court systems in this discouraging time of bankruptcies, corruption scandals, and overburdened penal systems. Anyone can easily see the inspiration she will provide for young New Yoricans and women of any background who aspire to join the justice system. But I think her influence will extend even farther.

Most of all I am reminded of the bright, concerned Latin@ students I heard speak out on campus on the first Saturday of this month [I will try to link Oberlin Review coverage of those events after it is posted]. Their purpose was to tell the campus how an inconsiderately-themed party held 2 weeks before had shaken their sense that they were living–some for the first time in their lives–in a community that fully valued them, their backgrounds, and the immigrant parents or earlier ancestors from whom they’d come. The Office of the Campus Ombudsman facilitated a campus dialogue afterward, to encourage anyone who so desired to discuss the events precipitating the speakout and the ways in which students from different backgrounds experience the democratic ideals of our community differently.  

A considerable amount of pain and confusion, as well as some ignorance was expressed with emotion but calmly in both the speakout and the community dialogue. One of the most telling comments that caught my attention was made by a student of color who urged others to contribute to campus publications like In Solidarity, which create spaces for students of color to “write about our experiences,” to which she ruefully added “and when was the last time you were asked to write about your experience at Oberlin College?”

As a writing teacher who believes in the learning power of writing, the opportunities it can provide to writers to reconcile their external worlds and internal memories, values, and aspirations, as an Oberlin faculty member I was shocked anew by this statement, although its content was not unfamiliar. I had been spending the whole semester struggling with my RHET 104 Queering the Reel class, trying to convince them that we are here to use writing to think, not just to report (although at times that may be our primary task).  And that in many situations at Oberlin the assignments they perceive as “abstract” or “vague” are actually invitations to pursue what matters most to them, through whatever methods and contexts of thought the classes they take present. And that as adults, despite having recently arrived in this academic community of high standards of argument, their previous experience matters. It is their best resource for judging the value of what they hear, read, discover. Its parameters are always shifting, and hopefully will do so the rest of their lives if their minds remain open. But already it is of equal value with the new tools that they are gaining.

Sometimes, however, only hearing from someone from a similar background, at a later stage in life can convince students of the value of their experience. That is one reason why I am anxious to hear more about this New Yorican woman, aged 54, and what she has to say about the American system of justice. What will she teach us all about what a Supreme Court Justice should be and do? How will her experience of Senate confirmation affect my students’ sense of their own possibilities?

A great semester draws to a close

This semester has been a good one. Teaching RHET 305 Writing Grant Proposals and Reports for the first time was a bit of a roller-coaster, as I couldn’t be very sure of exactly how the pacing and readings would go. Thanks to having a bright, enthusiastic group of juniors and seniors students (who were patient with a somewhat wobbly schedule) and a smart Writing Associate to assist, it was an intellectually fun ride. RHET 104 Queering the Reel: Documentary was comprised of one of the most co-supportive, self-challenging groups I’ve ever taught.  The last class for both groups last week was both celebratory and a touch sad. But I have a feeling I’ll be hear much about–and I hope from–them in the future. 

Now it’s time to read everyone’s final drafts and self-evaluations. I like to do that in a marathon session for each class, reading straight through, with only breaks for food or a stretch. That way I get a collective picture of a class, as well as looking at the individual submissions of work. Because the semester of classes has been so interesting I’m looking forward to that process.

duh

Please excuse my bile, but this article makes me want to stop reading the NYT. Of course they’d set it in Atlanta instead of their own fair city. I can practically hear the southern drawls in the quotes.

Not that I haven’t found that neck of the southeastern woods hard to believe the last couple of visits I’ve made to see  relatives in eastern Alabama, only a couple of hours away from the Big Peach.  Compared to rusting, foreclosing northern Ohio, which never fully recovered from the last recession, downtown Atlanta still looks like Disneyland. 

I’d feel more charitable toward the Atlantans–and the NYT above all–were there signs that we’re replacing conspicuous consumption with something more constructive than saving for a rainy day. Like a desire to share with those who have trouble finding enough food to eat or a place where they can afford to live.

The Great Depression may have created a whole generation (in my family two generations) of savers, but it also created a lot of wrecked family wealth, and deservedly.

end of week 1, spring semester 2009

The first week always seems the longest to me. It’s a little destabilizing not to know who is definitely in or out of a class till add/drop–how many handout copies to make? How many chairs to arrange in the first discussion circle? How to convince the three people who misunderstood what the class was about that they should find another class better suited to them?

Trying to start a class I’ve never taught before and overenrolled is also a little nerve wracking. I’ve only been doing this for 32 years at this point (which includes a couple of years at U of AL in Tuscaloosa and 6 years at U of Iowa). This one is even further out of my comfort zone and farther into my convictions than usual. Grant Proposal and Report Writing.  Just as I imagined, it has attracted non-profit organizers, scientists, visual artists, and musicians. I’m a little worried because they have high expectations that I will be conveying the secret but surely mutitudinous knowledge of how to write the perfect proposal in little to no time.  Needless to say it won’t work that way. But it should be interesting.

I’m even taking a radical new turn in a course I’ve taught for over ten years, Queering the Reel. It’s meant to be a course that entices people reluctant to take a writing course by offering somewhat unusual subject matter. Yes dear oponents, I’m recruiting, but to writing rather than the gay “lifestyle.” Always before it’s included a majority of fiction features. But this year I wanted to address the role of documentary film in creating lesbian, gay male, bisexual and transgender culture.  Would you believe I have a list of 56 lgbt-focused documentaries–and that’s just what’s scattered around my bookshelves. I’m having ta hard time choosing which to use, so I surveyed my students to see which ones they’d already seen and/or studied. Practically zero. That didn’t make my choice any easier. I think I’m just going to pick the ones that I find the most baffling and we can all think our ways through them together. That will make for fun papers!

Trying as the first week of classes may be, all the trouble is compensated for by meeting a new bunch of students. I’ve just finished ten hours over three days listening to the plans that my grant proposal writing students have for their semester projects. What a fabulously creative, socially committed group!  I had an equally enjoyable hour and half with Queering the Reel class yesterday discussing how they’d learned language for identifying sexual identifications. So many analytical perspectives, listening so hard to each other.  

That’s probably enough for now, except I’d like to leave you with the following tidbit, linked  from 365 Gay, entitled Satire: Marriage in limbo.

Enjoy!

syllabus construction is the new cramming for finals

Finalizing syllabi for my courses is like end-of-the-semester writing research papers or final exams when I was a student.

I fume about them for weeks before they’re due, pondering alternative approaches, debating choices of readings, pretending I can’t start until I find the perfect banner graphic. I usually end up finishing them about 2 seconds before the class meeting in which they’re due. Often I deem that to be the second day of classes rather than the first, just so I can check with students about their expectations for the course before I finalize the schedule.

Having Blackboard to work with has helped the matter considerably. I can store external weblinks, documents, even sketched out assignments while I’m in the pondering stage, sort of like caching notes and citations when doing research.

Every year the OCTET staff also adds new functionality to our Blackboard site. My favorite so far is the appointment-making function. Enough already with the hastily hand-scrawled list of times, which inevitably either I misplaced or my students forgot to note in their calendars. Now we have a central website listing the appointments, and people can change times on it without having to catch up with me face to face (or face to hastily scrawled list of times on my office door).

But that’s jumping ahead. This semester I’m teaching a brand new course (RHET 305 Grant Proposal and Report Writing) and totally refocusing an old one (RHET 104 Queering the Reel–now to be about documentary traditions in LGBT film). It feels like I’m starting from scratch. It’s great fun. And a little nerve-wracking.

let’s get started

My nephew has been talking for the past two days about “revolutions,” his term for new year’s resolutions.  For various health reasons I haven’t felt like making resolutions in at least a decade, but this year, especially while talking with my nephew, I’ve decided they will be useful. One of the “revolutions” I’m making is to take up blogging about my observations of academic life at Oberlin College where I’ve taught various kinds of writing since 1984.

This is my start. My current plan is to write about the small but meaningful everyday revelations I experience in my academic work. I also hope to occasionally write about events and people outside the bubble that is my workplace and how they affect those of us inside.

Mostly I’m thinking of this as a way of sorting through the tasks, ideas, images, and memories that pile up on my desk–even if I don’t happen to be at that desk in King Building at the moment.  Feel free to comment, although I regret to say that I may not always have time to reply.