publicintellectual

I Will Survive...

2010-11-19T10:05:00.001-05:00

First, I Was Afraid. I Was Petrified...

or something like that...

I must admit that I struggled with the Deschooling reading for today. Something deep and, seemingly, primal screamed out in slo-mo, "NOOOO!!!!" when the author appeared to belittle the hierarchical order and engagement with knowledge.

"Of course one needs to find and engage with knowledge in order. It's obvious." Or, additionally, the "reorganization" of schools in a deschooled environment, a web of learning, would resulted in further divisions between the haves and have-nots.

But I Spent So Many Nights Thinking How You Did Me Wrong...

Then, however, I began to think as I encountered different examples about how resources were used in ways similar to the author's descriptions, like the tape recorders and mechanical donkeys, that mirrored my experiences in teaching. I teach about half of my day at a relatively lower privileged high school where money seems prevalent for football and computers that remain locked in closets. I see textbooks that cost hundreds of dollars that cost only that much for the reason that they control the flow of information and are driven by the profit motive.

I was also angry about the article's assertion that it was the teachers who held onto this structure. I would love nothing more than to let students be self-directed. In fact, I've structured my final paper in my freshmen writing class to be inspired by a reading of their choice and tried to serve more as guide than a "TEACHER". I encourage them to ask questions that they are interested in and follow the directions that their research sends them. However, they have been so strictly trained against inquiry that these appears to cause the same anguish as ordering them to kill their pet rabbit.

Clearly something is NOT right.

I Grew Strong. I Learned How to Carry On.

The problem that I see in this debate, and the reading itself, is that educators and policy-makers seek answers rather than a dialectic. Just as Ms. Gaynor states in her totemic song, the strength comes from struggle, not the solution. It comes in the realization that the narrator has about what they should have done in the distant and recent past AND in their practical response to what they should do now.

The error of complete reconstructionalists is that they can imagine the world and relationships in that world in any way that they want. They have the luxury of a known fantasy. Gloria Gaynor, along with the vast majority of educators today, knows that the what-if's are as self-interested as the no-good-nic attempting to return.

Perhaps, just maybe, the solution to the education/tech debate rests in the song as she sings to not just focus on

all the strength I had not to fall apart kept trying hard to mend the pieces of my broken heart and I spent oh so many nights just feeling sorry for myself

But rather on the direction provided by the example...

Now I hold my head up high and you see me somebody new. I'm not that chained up little person still in love with you

Yes, we could completely recreate ourselves to meet the expectations of one constituency or another, but then we succeed only in demonstrating something of the lack of value of the very thing that we offer to provide.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Where Does He Get Those Wonderful Toys?

2010-11-15T17:21:00.001-05:00

A bit of background is necessary before I get into my belated discussion of Turkle (which I thought I had put on timed release but did not, I suppose).

First, I love games of all sorts. One of my favorite things to do with my family has always been to play games. My brother and I used to fight over the monthly arrival of the Games magazine. We love crosswords, computer games, arcade games, car games, and any other sort of game known to mankind.

I believe that this game-centric lifestyle has warped me to no end. I constantly play games in my mind at almost all times. One of my favorites is to take things that people say and try to think of songs or quotes from movies/TV that fit or follow from this. "Come on!" almost always elicits an internal completion of "Eileen" and a subconscious break-out into "toora loora toora loo rye aye" etc. (Albeit, my version is the Save Ferris version rather than the Dexy's Midnight Runners').

Second, I did not have a console gaming system for a long, long, long time after all of my friends had one, other than an Atari 800, which was ostensibly a computer. So, Nintendo, Sega, and Playstation systems were always a bit of a fetish item for me. I did eventually buy a PS1 and a PS2 after they went down in price, but by that time, it was not cool.

This means that my sort of my gaming came a series of fits and starts that depended on what my friends had and were playing. It meant that I never got really good at any of the games that other people played and would constantly have to submit to the query of, "Do you want to have me help you through is part?"

Conclusion
Combining these, I feel a polarity that I'm not sure I see in Turkle's work, although I might see it reflected. It is that gaming, whether it was a form of social connection and/or mental expansion and challenge, was never, for me at least, a matter of this zen-like connection that Turkle observes.

For me, it was a battle with the movable parts that Turkle claims to not exist in video games, despite my battles with sticky controller buttons, high ping/lag, or have the less-than-modern mouse or joystick. it was a battle with not being able to devote the time and energy to claim some social status.

Even in the faculty seminar with the fact that I'm more gamer than most of my colleagues, I am noob of all noobs in comparison to those around me. My student toss off their kill ratios and ask me about whether I've played the new Fallout (no), and I'm left without a response. A couple years ago, I taught a mass media intro class and had a day on identity construction in video games. I brought in my PS2 and Guitar Hero II, a wonderful example of mastery and the zen-like meditation that Turkle describes, and I was pawned in ways that I'm sure you can imagine.

Fortunately, now, I can retreat to my farm and enjoy a leisurely time of planting tomatoes.

Or, better yet, I can turn down the lights and watch "Dory" mate.

-Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Laurel: Where's the Hardy?

2010-11-05T12:02:00.001-05:00

Oh, That's Right It's in the Humanities!

It's argue ably not the first approach that we've seen from the Humanities, both Nelson and McLuhan have some pretty humanistic undergirding. However, Laurel makes no excuse for her roots AND their usefulness in the realms of the digital.

It's the Story, Stupid!

Consider me biased, but I think that throughout all of the reading to date a large quantity of great ideas have been given, a lot of these ideas have been tied to potential ways of seeing the world of work and thinking in new and original ways. What has been missing, and I think Nelson was pointing to the to a degree, has been the ability to analyze and critique these stories of the digital age.

It is to here that Laurel brings her thinking and from whence that I think people like Tom Chatfield and Jane McGonigal draw their ideas for their, relatively recent TED talks, Found here, where they begin to draw out some interesting potentials for human-computer interaction.

What's It To You?
Well, to me, it's nearly everything in terms of research but also filters down to my teaching to a large degree. The concept that the interaction between agents involves their actions and also the motivations and beliefs behind those characters and actions is a powerful one. It clearly filters into any number of situations: advertising, politics, history, and even science. The structure of the narrative affects its meaning.

In almost every class that I teach, I give at least one example of how looking closely at the form of something can give us an understanding of how it works. This hierarchy, or should I say hierarchies, presents a method of analysis that not only goes beyond the efficacy of something being studied but also can contain and explore the discussion of efficacy itself.

In other words, it gives a process for both the exploration of the process but also for the reasons behind the processes that is not always available to more scientific approaches to phenomena. In this way a researcher can employ a transmedia approach to interactions that could be analyzed as narrative.

An Example?

Really? I'd love to.

Let's say, hypothetically, that you were interested in the changes in characters/agents that one might commonly call "detectives". Let's say that you want to also look at agents that seem to border on the definition of that character based on their actions, language, or motivations.

Well, traditionally, one would need to do literary analysis on the literary examples, applying film theory to the cinematic examples, and mass media approaches to the televisual sorts. Additionally, techniques might need to be formed for musical, video game, comic, and advertising examples to name a few.

Applying Aristotelian approaches to narratives and ins that we agree on as narratives is not new, but the idea of applying them to non-narrative characters and interactions is very valuable. now, we can compare the driving of a character in a 1940s noir to the use of a controller in playing Max Payne. We can unpack the agency of the characters involved and compare the different modes of thought and ethical questions behind them in a way that more resembles the ways that individuals use media and engage in narrative.

The modern human agent does not really differentiate between computer time and movie time and TV time and Video Game time. it's screen time and needs to be studied as such.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The Fable of the Porcupine and the Car

2010-10-29T11:19:00.004-05:00

As I prepped for teaching a course on short stories this term, I struggled a great deal with where to begin. The longevity of a "short" story is well recorded, with myths and folk tales, as is its potential to become ephemera, with "You'll never guess what happened last week." Because of the vast distances that stories both can and cannot travel, it grows difficult to ensure relevancy beyond the discipline. Sure, short stories are a form that rose to popularity with the growth of subscription publications like newspapers and magazines in the early 19th Century, but they are more than that.

Viola's "Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space" gives perhaps a perfect example of the relevance of the short story in his use of the fable at the end. While it is told as a personal anecdote, this, combined with the personification of the porcupine and the merging of the "I" with their car, has all the hallmarks of a folktale or fable.

As with many of Aesop's fables and those collected by the Grimms, the location is both described but also vague, "Late one night while driving down a narrow mountain highway." Additionally, the players, porcupine and the man/car, each take on aspects of society or human nature. The porcupine is proud, stubborn, and natural, while the man/car is large, powerful, kind, and technological. The conflict is obvious and reflects the conflicts that Viola traces throughout his writing. It is a call for progress and and acknowledgment of the limits of personal perspective, but the framing as a fable has additional importance.

GK Chesterton writes, in his introduction to a translation of Aesop's Fables,

This is the immortal justification of the Fable: that we could not teach the plainest truths so simply without turning men into chessmen....by using animals in this austere and arbitrary style as they are used on the shields of heraldry or the
hieroglyphics of the ancients, men have really succeeded in handing down those tremendous truths that are called truisms.

To us, this means that Viola's use of a nearly universal and ancient narrative form communicates and demonstrates the points about tradition and technology that he seems to point out at various places in the chapter that there is

the importance of turning back towards ourselves...The sacred art of the past has unified form, function, and aesthetics around this single ultimate aim. Today, development of self must precede development of the technology or we will go nowhere

This reminds me of some recent trends in sacred spheres to return to more traditional forms of representation in order to recombine and recreate the now, including the monastic walk/prayer labyrinth:

and the both ironic and non-ironic appreciation of religious icons:

Interestingly enough, a friend of a friend's blog gives a very simple explanation of why icons look they way they do, and its theological importance. Not unsurprisingly, it has a lot in common in the discussion of space and ideas that comes up in Viola's chapter.

Note: I somehow lost the two posts that I did for last week. I'm going to recreate them from my notes and post them on Monday and Wednesday of next week.

Some Ideas About Tech...

2010-10-18T14:43:00.006-05:00

I'm going to take a break from discussing and interacting with the readings until later this week. Don't worry, I have plenty of things to say about Nelson's "Computer Lib/Dream Machines" and Kay/Goldberg's "Personal Dynamic Media", and in some ways, I want this post to bridge between my Nelson-esque rant from last week to a discussion of implications for actual use.

All of this ties into the fact that...
I got an iPad!

This is fascinating to me primarily because I have always had to be supremely self-motivated in my technological direction. Other than my father's devotion to the sadly overlooked and under-appreciated Commodore Amiga,

most of the technology in my life has had to have been self-selected, vetted, and thoroughly argued for/purchased with my own money.

From my alarm clock to my numerous Walkmen, personal cd players, laptops, desktops, pager, cell phones, iPods, flash drives, home theater system, video consoles (PS, PS2, Wii), Kindle, and anything I might have left out, I have spent hours talking to people, checking out Consumer Reports, surfing the web, all in the service of not purchasing something that I would not get solid use out of.

This iPad gives me to opportunity to interact with a media technology on a different level, a reactive level, which has been quite informative.

I want to give one negative aspect and then a bunch of positive things.

Bad- Difficulties of Output
The abilities of the iPad to connect, combine, store, and access a wide variety of media is fabulous, but the difficulty of getting things off of the iPad. I assume that these will be corrected/simplified as things progress, but I would love a couple things: higher quality audio/video output, easier wireless printing, and data/file transfer via bluetooth/WiFi.

Yes, before you start inputting comments, I know that these all have workarounds that are ok, but for my use, as an educator who goes to different rooms with different set-ups (often of widely varying decades of equipment), I'd like to have one thing that I can carry with me with my presentations, online encyclopedia, Kindle access, gradebook, streaming audio/video, etc. all in one. Right now, I have to install Silverlight/Kindle on the computers that I use in the classroom (assuming that the priesthood allows such things), have a selection of flashdrives, and a connection to Google Docs.

I have to say that it's not bad. I like it much more than making overheads/copies, tapes, VHS, posterboard and so on that was the norm when I was learning to make presentations, in undergrad, but how nice would it be to walk into a classroom with my iPad, have the projector automatically recognize the iPad, establish a connection (with log-in), and allow me to type, draw notes, show videos, play audio, all without cords, remotes, or a big console?

Good- Community of Discoverers
One of the most exciting parts of new technologies is the growth of supportive communities towards the use and maximization/enjoyment of their use.

I remember the weekly Amiga BBS/SysOp meetings at the University of Delaware campus that we'd attend. We've all seen the continuance of such communities for longer periods too (motorcycles, HAM radios, classic cars). The iPad seems to have some potential towards these sorts of connections, and I'd like to share a couple:

One, is the TWIT network's iPad show, "iPad Today" (if the link is not active, it's because it is blocked by Websense, which is causing some problems). The Twit Network is an interesting podcasting network helmed by Leo Laporte, who I first saw 10 years ago on Tech TV. More interesting than the weekly show alone is the establishment of live, chat communities, wiki's, Buzz's, twitter accounts, blogs, and other outlets that grow up around it.

Second, is the "ideaplay" website that a friend at the tech and Ed, PhD program at Michigan State turned me on to.

These sorts of discussions and communities not only serve to teach one the rules and possibilities of the central subject, but they also test those rules and abilities. We can weigh the costs of "jailbreaking" an iPad without having to put yours at risk (not that there's really a big risk). In other words, they establish boundaries but also push against these, or at least they do in the best of potential worlds.

Mobility

The potentials to move and interact with content is really excellent with the iPad. The screen is clear, sharp, and just begs to be touched. I don't find the keyboard overly difficult to type on for most purposes, although I do wish a wider shift key and more ready access to number keys. I'm sure that different keyboards will come in time. The sheer portability and design profile of the iPad make it very easy to pop into a bag, even more so than a laptop or netbook.

Accessibility
The use of the iPad is very simplistic (overly so in some's opinion). There are a select number of apps per page arranged without much variability. Clicking in and out to single applications fits most uses on a daily basis and simplifies a work-thread in a way that might be advantageous for a creature that cannot truly multi-task.

Pure Potential
There is nothing really innovative to the iPad. As many have said, the tablet PC is not new, and others have actually done it better in some ways. What Apple provides is a a convergence and synergy that makes the iPad a potential and simple locus for almost all connection/access, in a similar way to what some Microsoft people have seen with the XBox 360 with Zune-pass.

I cannot wait to see where things go and test out trails going forward.

The Problem of People: Why I Really Don't Hate Tech

2010-10-01T13:55:00.006-05:00

In reading Engelbart's reports laying out the research center, I had no problem engaging with the text. Perhaps it is my love of bureaucracy and reports, but I enjoy seeing a vision/idea laid out in such specific terms that they seem manageable.

In these not-too-lengthy pages, Engelbart lays out a plan that would lead to all sorts of amazing things: the mouse, Cloud computing, YouTube, and We Rule. What's not to like? What's not to admire?

Well, here you go:

Yup, the information for Pandora is blocked. It's exciting to have an iPad and look at ways that I might incorporate it into my teaching. I love audio and would love to find clips of NPR stories or better yet the C-SPAN app to discuss rhetoric and give us specific content to respond to, but as I go to the App Store....

You want to know why? Well, on the campus system and WiFi, iTunes, NPR, C-SPAN Radio, Pandora, etc are all blocked because Engelbart's dream of a Research Center is not really progressing to the sort of organized and informed opportunity for self-managed and designed computer systems.

As frustrating as it is, it's understandable to a degree. After all, the system is not the closed one of ARC. It is vulnerable. Those vulnerabilities cost money and leave information to be potentially stolen, altered, or destroyed. There are all sorts of reasons why a community college might want to protect their wired and wireless networks, but they all boil down to one thing:

PEOPLE

People are the problem. The people that design, the people that manage, the people that use, the people that misuse, and all the rest form a constantly fluctuating mass that is dangerous, powerful, and unwieldy. They are nowhere near the "skilled user" that Engelbart and English keep referring to being able to do things like "readjust his view to suit immediate needs very quickly and frequently."

Those managing and paying for our contemporary networks want as little "readjust"-ing as possible from the user's perspective. "Readjust"-ing costs money in fixing things when they go wrong. Allowing users, apparently even faculty in new media seminars, to actually use and test their abilities to integrate that technology is a cost without sufficient benefit.

Sure, having all the kids on campus with their phones and computers connected to Pandora constantly would probably eat up some bandwidth. That is a problem in need of a solution. However, this brings us back to Engelbart and English's "A Research Center for Augmenting".

The beauty in this plan is that they PLANNED for it to be manipulated and changed before they let people into it. Our current systems is not designed or planned, it's patched and stretched. It's the same as the difference between a tailored suit and one that's "adjusted" for your rental.

Darn it! I want technology to be tailored, and I want in on the consultation because whoever makes these decisions clearly does not think forward. They think backwards. It is not about using technology to make connections and explore possibilities on the campus now. It's about controlling access.

This is a fundamentally different process that is, sadly, a necessary evil to some at least.

"The Wow Factor is Gone": Our Limitations

2010-09-24T13:51:00.006-05:00

Problems:

The main problems with getting excited with Douglas Engelbart's visions and plans for us reading today are two-fold:

1) We are not NACA engineers:
2) We have the expectation of the technology that we've always had.

The combination of these factors leaves us underwhelmed by the descriptions and details of the process by which Engelbart performs what is essentially an amazing feat of combining vision with engineering and programming.

In short, we are not impressed because many of us have lived with this level of technology for 20+ years. Our students and younger colleagues have even greater difficulties in imagining the amazement at being able to coordinate data in the ways suggested.

However, I do not want to stay on why it is difficult to engage with Engelbart. I want to engage with his vision and ideas. As the former winner of the Delaware BASIC team programming challenge in 6th grade, I am fascinated by the level of detail and attention needed to get a machine to coordinate these different categories of information that lead to the invention of the personal computer (even as Engelbart does not really intend to envision a personal, consumer computer).

Engelbart v. Engelbart

In reading the first Engelbart/vision essay and comparing that with the second (Engelbart/English proposal) and the video of his presentation, I'm really seeing two different ideas.

On one hand, Engelbart/English propose a work terminal system to analyze and support research into ways of analyzing and supporting research, but in the renowned live presentation, Engelbart introduces the potentialities of the technology in word processing and mapping, interestingly combined with the narrative of his wife calling and asking for him to do the shopping. The development of handheld organizers in the late 1980s, PDAs in the mid-late 1990s with devices like the Newton & Palm Pilot, and continuing with advertising for smartphones and tablets also often confronts the consumer with the ability of this hand-held device to help with....gasp...shopping, maps, and relationships.

Palm ads here and here. (Interesting history of Palm Pilot here from the Computer History Museum)

The Case of Newton
Apple's Newton Intro Video here shows that a direct connection exists between Engelbart's vision and this kind of device. Watch the video and be amazed as the Newton users are excited about being able to get down and manipulate their thoughts on the device in a variety of ways, including drawing/design/handwriting, etc.

But, there's an interesting addition about a minute in. Now, the Newton will do things for the user, not just be an augmentation. Don't know how to put text and images together well? Don't worry. Newton will do it for you. Newton will not only assist you. It knows enough about what you are doing to do it for you.

This sort of personification and extension of technology beyond being an extension is even clearer in this Newton TV ad. Newton is now not just a thing or an assistant, an adjunct. It is a separate being who is friendly and worldly and intelligent.

While this might appear to be a minor shift from helper to friend used to achieve a marketing goal, it also reflects a vital shift rhetorically that has real consequences. Engelbart envisions a device that works on a hierarchy of symbols that he and his team devise and program into the system.

In fact, he envisions that these sorts of machines will always comes as a product of a team that analyzes needs and wants and develops a system that serves to allow users to manipulate those symbols in meaningful ways to achieve their goal. In essence the technology becomes a product of individual/small-group's needs and wants.

However, as we see the evolution to the PDA world, we realize that what has happened is that devices have been produced on the large scale where the individuals need to now be assimilated into the system of symbols developed by the engineers and programmers. In effect, the augmentation has taken over.

It is not just a tool to be used and shaped at will. Jobs, actions, wants, and needs must be shaped to fit into the use of the tool, as shown by the instructional videos on how to use a PDA.

And while the Newton perhaps tried to do too much and cost too much, the iPad and other augmentations of today seem to be facing less resistance. Built on an iPhone UI, the iPad seems "instinctive" and "responsive". No, it's more than that.

Apple wants it to be "magical"

And it is, but what is lost is the knowledge of how it works and the ability to shape the technology to the standards and hierarchies or OUR symbols. The process of learning about how we learn has been sublimated to make invisible what might be better made visible: the construction and sharing of symbolic systems.

Without an understanding of the logic behind the systems of symbols, students and users become consumers of symbols and leave their creation and manipulation to "magic."

The problem, from a cultural studies POV, is that these systems of meanings and symbols are not segregated from reality in an ether of pure entertainment. They are heavily ensconced in the networks of economics/class, culture, language, race, ethnicity, politics, gender, sexuality, and differences of all kinds. The order and preferences that are given to some symbols over others carry with them ideological values and meanings beyond the symbol and its meaning alone. Pure data connection is not possible.

Therefore, shouldn't we be aware of how, why, and when these sorts of decisions get made and by whom?

Bush-y, Bush-y, Bush!

2010-09-17T13:39:00.008-05:00

The Good:
Bush's article clearly articulates that technology holds vast potential beyond the ability of engineers and scientists to develop ways to kill more people more quickly or more efficiently. In fact, it can help fellow researchers more readily share information about how past peoples have used technologies to kill more people more quickly and/or more efficiently.

All joking aside, Bush's attempt to look towards a future of connection and relative interaction is fantastic and exciting. What hipster would not want a memex? It's got a cross between Mad Men and steampunk aesthetic and does all the work of a mid-90s Palm.

Ok, I wasn't quite done with being sarcastic yet. I'll admit it. I love technology. I love being able to take pictures, like the one below, on the fly and not have to worry about getting it developed.

It is truly amazing to be able to follow my college acquaintance as he drove across America on a Craftsman lawnmower this summer.

The Bad:
One might immediately notice the potentials for abuse (or at least not positive use) of tiny cameras that people can take anywhere. A surveillance culture, every success or failure living on indeterminately, pornography, and cats, lots of cats, appear to be the products of the tiny cell-phone camera.

This remains to be the problem with almost any advance in technology. The technology always precedes the abilities of the culture to incorporate the possibilities in primarily positive ways, at least to the status quo.

And to some degree, that is a good thing. It allows technology to even the field between the oppressor and oppressed, a la the use by Iranians of twitter to subvert media blackouts and connect to the rest of the world. We love to hear this. It's exciting and hopeful. It turns our attentions away from the fears that technologies bring with them and that technologies distribute even more quickly and constantly than before.

However, it is this technology that allows for our attentions to be diverted so quickly. Recently, I listened to a Fresh Air where Terry Gross interviewed Matt Richtel, a writer for the New York Times, who has been working on investigating issues of technology, society, and the science of the brain for the past year or so ("Your Brain on Computers" articles: here and here). In short, he has discovered that the research is beginning to show that our brains cannot take the quantity and diversity of information being presented to it on a near constant basis. The pleasure potential of a new e-mail coming in keeps us constantly checking the inbox like a rat with a randomly distribution of food from a slot. I find it fascinating that technology is beginning to have the equivalent effect of allowing, nee forcing, us to carry little slot machines with us (Yes, there is an app for that.)

I see it in both myself and my students. I check my e-mail right when I leave my office, and 20 minutes later, when I get home, I feel a strong urge to open up my laptop and check again. I know, intellectually, that nothing of significance has come in during the last 20 minutes. I know, emotionally, that I should sit on the floor and read or play with my son rather than reconnect to the screen, but the "pull" is powerful.

The Dangers:
What's amazing to me is that so many seem willing to plow headlong into more reliance on technology that increasingly proves to be dangerous or detrimental when used on a broad basis. I can't drive anywhere in this city without nearly getting plowed into by someone on their cell phone or texting. At Baylor's campus, I've repeatedly heard of students nearly being hit as they are walking, absorbed in their phones or iPods, and not noticing that they are going into traffic.

Would these people engage in dangerous or distracting behavior of one kind or another anyway? Sure, why not? But, the point is not that technology presents the only danger of violence, distraction, or incipience of whole levels of intelligence or thought vanishing, but rather, that technology makes those problems easier to develop and harder to resist. Furthermore, the culture places a negative value on those places or people that choose to not use those technologies.

I think that E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" gives a highly astute and prophetic view of the dangers of these kinds of connections of knowledge and thinking to machines. It is not so much the problem of storage that Bush's plan helps to solve. The danger lies in losing the ability and inclination to train the mind and body to work together through diverse media to obtain information and synthesize it.

It's precisely because it IS so easy to "Google It" that renders to desire and pursuit of knowledge as a process only the tiniest of realms within society, pushed back into the Ivory Dungeon, only to be let out to service the cry that a populace with more "higher" education will fix fundamental problems in the economy.

Forster's story describes technologies and interactions not to far afield of Bush's, only with an oppositional perspective and thirty-six years before. Forster describes the use of machines to encode knowledge, making actual research unnecessary and accessible at the touch of a button. Forster's dystopia does not end well (like any do), and human beings die in droves in the dark as the machines run down with no one to understand their processes after generations of efficiency.

Final Thoughts:
Rather than end on a negative note of complete ruin, I want to propose a solution or a potential solution. In recent years, STEM education has represented a significant push for American education at all levels of schooling. However, in reviewing much of the literature, little is done to pair discussions of technology's abilities with the potential ethical issues of that technology and science. The focus has been on the question, "Can we do X?" not "Should we? How should we? What are the social/cultural costs of X?"

No, it's been left largely to specialists within fields, secondary/tertiary debates at conferences, or, more likely, those crazy "humanities" people who keep saying, "Umm...remember this other time that we did something like that? It didn't turn out well."

If we could institute education of STEM that includes the implications of these actions and ideas, from the earliest of levels, then we might have a population more prepared to adapt to new technologies in healthier ways, rather than getting bloated on the processed/technological "food" that Bush praises in his article.

A Step Closer to "Public"

2010-09-17T12:27:00.002-05:00

Hey, happy, happy-ish news! I'm beginning to live my "public" part of intellectual a bit more than in conferences and classrooms (stupid article publishing being so hard and long). I was contacted a while ago by Anna David (I thought it was a joke/spam at first) to talk about my use of reality TV in the classroom, something that I've blogged about at times and been trying to publish here and there.

Well, the article is finally here. I think that it does a fairly good job of giving an overview of the approaches to reality TV including, but not limited to, it's study as a genre in media studies. Since I've shifted my teaching and research to be more of using popular culture in order to get to other academic points, I've felt a bit of the outcast. This did a fairly good job of bring these odd threads together. Maybe I'll propose that TWOP needs a "higher ed" column or Chronicle needs a "Reality TV" column.

Thanks, Anna. I'm sorry that I thought you were porn spam initially.

Forgive My Ignorance: Thoughts on Murray

2010-09-16T15:23:00.004-05:00

Excuse my confusion. I was criticized frequently in graduate seminars that I quibbled too much with the linguistics and bought into the myth of needing to "tear down" or challenge a reading, and I desire to avoid that pit.

However, in the course of reading Murray's introduction, I couldn't help but twitch at certain moments that rankled. Let me give an example.

...the term "new media" is a sign of our current confusion about where these efforts are leading and our breathlessness at the pace of change, particularly in the last two decades of the 20th century. How long will it take before we see the gift for what it is--a single medium of representation, the digital medium, formed by the braided interplay of technical invention and cultural expression a the end of the 20th Century?

She asks a question, and I assume that means an invitation to dialogue. How long will it take indeed?

A "Gift"?
Well, let's set aside the large presumptions that this is a "gift," implying both a singular entity and a "giver," along with the supposition of some measure of benevolence.

A "Braid"?
So, assuming that "new media" is "good", "singular", and a "gift", then we have the issue of whether it is formed by this "braided interplay of technical invention and cultural expression". Like the gift metaphor, the "braid" carries a purposefulness with it that I'm not convinced exists in the new media today. It seems much more like when one tangles a mess of yarn and then has a few people work to untangle it. Some, will take the time to methodically find and work from a loose end and carefully wind the end as they move. Others will grab joints and try to loosen/organize these nexuses. Still others, mostly my son and cats, spend time enjoying themselves. Finally, some might find ends, unravel a bit, knit what they want, and then charge for access.

Whatever the case, new media are not braided together. This is something,
but it's not a braid.

A "We"?
Finally, the question assumes that "we" most/all have access to technologies of production and consumption. Of couse, Murray could be referring to the "we" in the educated, elite, but that appears to reinforce the "us" v "them" mentality that was appropriated by critics of higher education. The simple truth is that the class divides that are increasing carry with them significant digital divides in terms of access and literacy. The ability of peoples without training in the access and understanding in these media have placed them behind the curve that increases term by term to require fundamental knowledge of using computers, e-mail, twitter, Blackboard, and other new media elements.

But, that deals with "selection", which will be a major part of my interest in V. Bush's "As We May Think"

I'm Back!: New Media Faculty Seminar!

2010-09-10T13:39:00.008-05:00

After a hiatus of a couple years (including blogging over at a Relief for a while; please feel free to go and seek them out), I'm baaaaack!

This is due entirely to signing up for a Faculty Development Seminar on New Media Seminar that I'm very excited about. Although my field is not really in "New Media", I feel that I'm quite often pushed into this role within my department by virtue of being 10 to 20 years younger than most people in the department.

In addition, I'm beginning to see a lot of overlap between my research in the ethics in and of genre narrative and the ways that communication is and might change.

So, I'm going to be taking the questions of the course "How do we use new tech?" and "Do we use it as it's intended?" and applying them to my thoughts in movies, popular novels, TVs, and video games, particularly with those connected to the moral quandry of the individual within the corrupt world with flawed social institutions (what I refer to as "noir").

In the next post towards the beginning of next week, I want to provide some of my first impressions based on Janet H. Murray's "Inventing the Medium" intro to The New Media Reader

The Importance of Being Ernest...

2007-09-10T13:24:00.000-05:00

Names are so important in life, but at the same time, they don't really matter because they ARE arbitrary. My wife and I are struggling to find names that might communicate the perceived possibility of our baby. Of course we have no real idea what this child will become, but being first-time parents, we want to positively influence our oldest child to be the coolest, smartest, etc that they can.

I've been told and heard that this radically changes with a second and subsequent children. Being a second/middle child, I understand why and how this occurs, yet I am not immune to my psychology's attempt to determine the need for us to choose THE perfect name for our son.

Furthermore, being a student of semiotics and cultural studies, so many different and competing drives enter the equation. I want to choose a name that will give my son some gender fluidity because I don't want to force hegemonic (yeah, I used that word, whatcha gonna say about it?) masculine ideals on him, say "Hank" or "Dick". At the same time, knowing the strength of power in culture, I do not want to be too out there and leave them open to painful and potentially scarring him by the years of jeers and beatings that my sons will probably be subject to just by the fact that they have me for a father, say "Claire" or "Rene".

In addition to gender distinctions, there are obvious ethnic, racial, and ideological influences. We want to communicate our faith and family backgrounds but do not want to force that on our child but would prefer that they express that interest as a choice.

This does not really represent a wholly intellectual pursuit either. We also want to have a pleasant aesthetic sense in a name that will will probably end up calling and saying and yelling for the rest of our lives.

All of this rigamoral of discussion is just to say: If you have suggestions of guides or names that would fulfill all of these criteria, then I am open to suggestions.

Making the Geezers laugh...

2007-09-07T14:11:00.001-05:00

As a new lecturer/professor, whatever I am, I've been trying to figure out who I am and what in the wide world of sports I am supposed to be accomplishing in each class. These students pay a fair amount of money to be in a classroom with me, but it is not a commercial relationship. This has lead me to an observation.

Teaching is a hell of a lot like being a stand-up comedian in an old-folks home. While I have not ever held this position, but I can guess from my experiences in church and band when we played or sang for old folks. My imagination gives me an image that is remarkably similar to what I do every day.

Nearly every day, I stand in front of a group of people who are...

confused as to why they are there and
who would prefer to be in bed.
Many of them are on drugs or the influence of something.
Without fail at least one of the audience falls asleep during my spiel, and
they resent all attempts to make them get up, move around, or interact with each other.
None of the audience really trusts other members of the audience, and
they displace these feelings by revealing cynical/skeptical opinions about me, my topics, and my being there.
The fact that I dress up or down results in criticism from some quarter.
I have no real idea where they are coming from or what they might be interested.
Many of the members of the audience miss their home and familiar surroundings.
The male members of the audience wish to find the prettiest thing in the room and stare at it or touch it.
The females wish to be pleasant and not attract too much attention.
There is drooling.
I am expected to do my little song and dance, but actual attempts to be cute/charming/etc are frowned upon.

Of course, this implies some stereotypes, but it is close enough to keep me up at night.

Back to Normalcy...

2007-08-22T06:07:00.000-05:00

Now that we are finally in our new place and I am in my new job, things will hopefully return to something like a routine. Routine is good for me because it allows me to begin writting and working again. Part of this will mean that I can again start posting my thoughts here, although I'm not sure how brilliant they might be. As soon as I get the photos that my brother took, I can post a few, non identifying, pics of our new house, which is fun.

Recently, other than moving and starting a job, not much has been happening. We got DVR, which is super exciting. I had resisted the temptation for the longest time because I liked having to search for shows and I believe in a sort of comraderie that surrounds being able to watch things at the sae time as other people, but with the fracture of audiences and the amount of programs that I follow, both professionally and personally, I found that we really needed a DVR/Tivo device.

Additionally, of the many friends that we have that have recently had babies, almost all of them very strongly recommended something like the DVR or Netflix. Since I really was unimpressed by Netflix's time for return and some of their selections, we settled on the DVR. I am told that there is nothing quite as helpful for being forced to be up with baby as being able to have something that you actually want to watch on TV.

My wife and I recently saw a few films, most notably the adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Stardust, which I cannot recommend for reasons that I will go into in another post, and Judd Apatow's Superbad, which I recommend to those who love the sort of teen/high-school night-in-a-life movies. Think "License to Drive" or "200 Cigarettes" only much much funnier.

Anyway, I need to continue my progress into becoming an honest faculty member. So, I'm off.

Yay! Things are Happening. Lot's of Things.

2007-07-23T14:34:00.000-05:00

Well, my frustration and remorse for the past few posts about getting things done has exploded, calmed, exploded, and now seems to be calm for a couple of weeks, at which time it will explode again before hopefully settling into a nice, calm year of fun teaching.

That's right. I have a job, but that is not the most exciting thing. My fun, knitting-loving wife and I now have a special someone to knit for this coming January. Yup. We're expecting a baby! So, I will have the opportunity to use this blog as a desparate attempt to remain connected and expressive, like so many others. Oh, the hilarity that will ensue.

Ok, back to the exciting job front and impending move. I have been hired at Penn State - Erie for a lectureship. Yeah, I know. It's not tenure-track, and I only have a one-year contract at the moment. However, that leaves me free to pursue only the jobs that I really want this year, and if I really like it, like I think I might, then I have a very good chance to apply for a three-year contract beginning next year.

There was a momentary phase where my wife and I were considering buying a house too. We looked into it and found some great places at very affordable prices, but with so much going on, we figured that it would be better to rent for a little while.

The dust is settling and it looks like I will be teaching half composition classes and half something like the classes that I taught for the last two years. Expect some funny if vaguely described stories.

It is finished...er...yeah...no, really...It is...

2007-06-19T07:59:00.000-05:00

I think...that is, I'm pretty sure that all of my paperwork is in for me to be officially considered Dr. Me. After the past week of going crazy trying to figure out the innane instructions for electronically submitting my dissertation and getting all of the last-minute signatures on my final draft, I have officially turned in my dissertation entitled "The Stranger in the Dark: Levinasian-Derridean Ethics in Noir".

It should be available to download on Ohiolink and various dissertation databases soon for all those of you who are dying to get your hands on this brilliant treatise on the confluences of genre, philosophy, and narrative. When I began this, most people thought that I was crazy to try to link these different ideas in one work. However, the most recent PMLA journal has a very conceptually similar essay that examines the Lemony Snicket books in terms of their ethical statement that grows out of a Post-modern/Gen-X perspective.

I think that I have some quibbling about whether the interest in ambiguous and self-refertial storytelling belonging just to my generation, but the author seems to indicate that she is not bounding the practice, just exploring one of its expressions.

On another front, I had a very nice interview about 12 days ago, and I am waiting to hear back about that sometime between now and July (nice focused window they have). Additionally, I have an interview this Thursday and Friday for another position that would be equally nice.

So, hopefully, I will soon be able to inform all of my beginning on truly kicking off my academic career from the other side of the educational fence.

Things keepin' on...

2007-06-12T09:18:00.000-05:00

I want to post briefly before class starts in a few minutes. Of course, none of my students are actually here 10 minutes before class, but what can you do. It is a paper turn-in day. So, they are probably all down in the computer lab printing them as I type.

Let's see. I had a great interview at RIT last week, or I thought it was great. I immediately meshed with the faculty and felt very comfortable. There was a small snag, when the DVD player that I had requested for my little presentation lacked a remote. I took it casually and just explained the clips that I had planned on using and how they related to my research and teaching. I haven't heard anything yet, but then the department chair had said that it could be decided last Thurday or in July. It just depended. Apparently, everyone take two or three weeks off in June. I get to hurry up and wait.

I have all but about 20 pages of my disseration revised into a form that is at least not embarrassing. I have to keep reminding my self that the best dissertation is the finished one. Besids, even with electronic databases, no one will read my work until I get it published.

We are excited because some of my bestest friends from college are coming to visit for a couple days in a couple of weeks, but we ar sad because some of our bestest friends in the area are moving. Some are going to North Carolina, and others are starting grad school in Bloomington, IN. So sad. I suppose that it would be easier if I didn't feel like I was always treading water and waiting for something to happen. The zen thing to do would be to become more comfortable with the water and accept where I am, but I'm not very zen.

Anyway, students are finally showing up, wih 5 minutes to spare!

More news...

2007-05-23T15:33:00.000-05:00

Well, while I still lack a "real" full time position for the fall, I did manage to pick up two 5 week composition courses at the local CC, which is very nice. I have two days to prepare syllabi for two different comp classes (one is the intro and the other is the second level writing class) that will meet for two hours Mon through Thurs for five straight weeks.

I actually prefer teaching this kind of class. It is condensed and students do not have as much time to let things slip out of their heads. The problem comes when the students do not expect this sort of vigorous course. Since I have to meet the standards of local 4-year college comp classes, there are a certain number of pages and papers that the students must complete. This means that the drafts must come right up against one another.

This can be really tough with a class of only a dozen or so students and a press for time. I try to warn everyone that this is hard and make myself available, but it never fails that I have a few students who do not realize until too late that they will not be able to make it.

On a separate note, I am saddened by the fact that "Veronica Mars" was cancelled after this season. I'm told that one of my more effective chapters in my dissertation was the one on this show. I had hoped that there would be at least another season or two, which would bring more opportunities to write about it.

I suspect that the audience just couldn't find an audience. It was not really aimed at the target young woman/girl audience that I guess the CW was gunning for, and it's not really the kind of show that the uber-male 18-34 crowd would get into. It was a show that fell between definitions in terms of audience and storytelling. This resulted in a sort of unevenness that probably led to its downfall.

Let's see...not much else going on here. So, I guess I'll get back to my revisions.

La...La...La...

2007-05-21T14:48:00.000-05:00

Well, folks. "Lots and none at all indeed" aptly describes current events.

On the positive side, I successfully defended my dissertation on May 3rd. I am now technically a Doctor of American Culture Studies. So, if there are any symptoms that your American Culture is experiencing, I might be able to help diagnose them.

More positive is that Jenna and I found out that our landlord was over charging us by about $200 per month compared to other properties. So, we talked her into lowering our rent for the forseeable future. Woohoo!

On the more negative side, my committee had lots of "suggestions" for revising my manuscript of my diss. That's what I get for taking on the history of narratives and one of the most beloved genres in the history of film. Oh, and I am also throwing in a redefinition of the idea of ethics in there for good measure. Blech. So, I have been redrafting large sections of my diss to answer some of their questions and concerns.

On the wholly negative side, I was not able to land a full-time teaching gig for the coming year. It looks like I will be working as an Adjunct Professor at our local Community College, which isn't so bad, but they can get away paying us very, very little. Thankfully the people there are very nice, and I like the students for the most part.

Also, after much fretting and the serious consideration of selling my nearly paid off car, it looks like I might have enough income this summer that this is not necessary. Yay!

The best part is that my wonderful wife has been super supportive and excellent about everything, at least as excellent as I was myself.

I wish that I had the energy to bash all of those short-sighted schools that did not hire me and the stupidity of the strict disciplinary boundaries that kept me out of a number of positions that I was perfectly qualified for, but I don't have the heart. I've been blessed, even if not in the ways I might prefer.

Now, I just have to finish the manuscript, send it to some publishing friends, turn some chapters into articles, and rock the next year of job searching. It is sad that I probably will not be able to see most of my friends at all of the conferences that I like/need to attend, but it is not in the cards.

I really hope to be posting more often now for the handful of you who read this. I had the hardest time when Blogger switched over to this google thing. I had to change my name and password multiple times. I think I have it now.

I have so many things that I want to write about, but I have to get the important things done for the moment.

Quote Quiz

2007-03-07T09:07:00.000-05:00

A couple of commentors have requested that I post the quote quiz that I give to my students. I had meant for this to be VERY easy extra credit for the students, but they ended up only able to get about 12 right.

If you are taking this, please don't cheat by using IMDB or Google, etc.

Name the movie which each quotation comes from. Each is worth 1 pt, but partial credit can be received for creativity and relative accuracy.

1. “I’m the king of the world.”
2. “Luke, I am your father.”
3. “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
4. “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
5. “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
6. “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”
7. “I’ll be back.”
8. “You talkin’ to me.”
9. “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!”
10. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”
11. “I feel the need – the need for speed.”
12. “Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac…It’s in the hole! It’s in the hole! It’s in the hole!”
13. “They’re here!”
14. “I wish I knew how to quit you.”
15. “The rules of hair care are simple and finite.”
16. “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?”
17. “You’ve got a baby…in a bar!”
18. Person A: “…why does the floor move?”
Person B: “Give me your torch” drops torch “Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes?”
Person A: “Asps. Very dangerous. You go first.”
19. “Say ‘hello’ to my little friend!”
20. “I've seen an agent punch through a concrete wall. Men have emptied entire clips at them and hit nothing but air, yet their strength and their speed are still based in a world that is built on rules. Because of that, they will never be as strong or as fast as you can be.”
21. “There’s no crying in baseball!”
22. “Look around! You couldn't find a whiter, safer or better lit part of this city. But this white woman sees two black guys, who look like UCLA students, strolling down the sidewalk and her reaction is blind fear. I mean, look at us! Are we dressed like gangbangers? Do we look threatening? No.”
23. “You had me at ‘hello’”
24. "Rule #76: No excuses. Play like a champion!”
25. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
26. “What’s your major malfunction, numbnuts? Didn’t Mommy and Daddy show you enough attention when you were a child?”
27. “In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the... Anyone? Anyone?... the Great Depression, passed the... Anyone? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression.”
28. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
29. “No, she gets a special cologne... It's called Sex Panther by Odeon. It's illegal in nine countries... Yep, it's made with bits of real panther, so you know it's good.”
30. “I realize that when I met you at the turkey curry buffet, I was unforgivably rude, and wearing a reindeer jumper.”
31. “I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.”
32. “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”
33. “It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.”
34. “Summer romances begin for all kinds of reasons, but when all is said and done, they have one thing in common. They're shooting stars, a spectacular moment of light in the heavens, fleeting glimpse of eternity, and in a flash they're gone.”
35. “Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts.”
36. “We have front row seats for this theater of mass destruction. The demolition committee of Project Mayhem wrapped the foundation columns of a dozen buildings with blasting gelatin. In two minutes, primary charges will blow base charges and a few square blocks will be reduced to smoldering rubble. I know this... because Tyler knows this.”

>12 right = more culturally aware than 18 and 19 year olds.
>24 right = more culturally aware than 24-25 year olds.
>30 right = geek

Quarterly Update...

2007-03-07T08:53:00.000-05:00

Hey, all.

I have had a few complaints about the dearth of posting on my blog, but I have many, many excuses. I am finishing my dissertation, publishing a book I edited (Battleground States: Scholarship in Contemporary America), teaching, presenting at conferences, representing the grad students at BGSU, and looking for a job.

Things are going as well as can be expected. Jobs are tough to come by, which is to be expected. Dissertations are hard to write, especially when you end up taking on the history of narrative from classical Greek drama to contemporary noir films, television shows, and graphic novels. D'oh!

As soon as I get some of these things done, I promise that I will put more time into posting wacky, yet insightful things on my blog again.

Just for Kicks...

2006-11-06T09:05:00.000-05:00

I know that it has been over a month, but, hey, I've been busy teaching, applying for jobs, editing a book, representing grad students on my campus, oh yeah, and writing my dissertation.

'Tation Update: I now have ONE complete chapter with three others in various states of completion.

Also, I have had a number of friends completing this little blog-thing, I though I would as well. Theoretically, one is a movie geek/nerd/has no life if they have seen 85 of these movies. I might be all of these things, but I also study film for a living (of sorts).

(x) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(x) Grease
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean
(x) Boondock Saints
(x) Fight Club
(x) Starsky and Hutch
(x) Neverending Story
(x) Blazing Saddles
(x) Airplane
(x) Braveheart
Total: 10

(x) The Princess Bride
(x) AnchorMan: The Legend of Ron Burgandy
(x) Napoleon Dynamite
(x) Labyrinth
(x) Saw
( ) Saw II (Saw I pretty much did what was needed in this area.)
( ) White Noise (My wife saw it, thought it was incredibly stupid, and since no one else saw it, I let it go.)
(x) White Oleander
(x) Anger Management
(x) 50 First Dates
(x) The Princess Diaries
(x) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
Total: 10
Running Total ('cuz I'm bad at math): 20

(x) Scream
(x) Scream 2
( ) Scream 3
( ) Scary Movie
(x) Scary Movie 2
( ) Scary Movie 3
( ) Scary Movie 4
(I'm not actually sure which "Scary Movie" I saw, but I saw one of them.)
(x) American Pie
(x) American Pie 2
(x) American Wedding
( ) American Pie Band Camp
Total: 6
Running Total: 26

(x) Harry Potter 1 [Philosopher's/Sorceror's Stone]
(x) Harry Potter 2 [Chamber of Secrets]
(x) Harry Potter 3 [Prisoner of Azkaban]
(x) Harry Potter 4 [Goblet of Fire]
(x) Resident Evil
(x) Resident Evil 2
(x) The Wedding Singer
(x) Little Black Book
(x) The Village
(x) Lilo & Stitch
Total: 10
Running Total: 36

(x) Finding Nemo
(x) Finding Neverland
( ) Signs
( ) The Grinch (Do they mean the TV special?)
(x) Texas Chainsaw Massacre ( I will assume that they mean the original, even though they probably don't.)
( ) White Chicks
( ) Butterfly Effect
(x) 13 Going on 30 (Mark Ruffalo is so adorable in this movie. It is very well-done for the genre.)
(x) I, Robot
( ) Roots
Total: 5
Running Total: 41

(x) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
(x) Universal Soldier
(x) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
(x) Along Came Polly
( ) Deep Impact
(x) KingPin
(x) Never Been Kissed
(x) Meet The Parents
(x) Meet the Fockers
(x) Eight Crazy Nights
(x) Joe Dirt
() KING KONG
Total: 11
Running Total: 52

( ) A Cinderella Story
(x) The Terminal
( ) The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
(x) Dumb & Dumber
( ) Final Destination
( ) Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3
() Halloweentown
(x) The Ring
( ) The Ring 2
( ) Surviving X-MAS
(x) Flubber
Total: 4
Running Total: 55

(x) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
() Practical Magic
(x) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
(x) From Hell
(x) Hellboy
(x) Secret Window
( ) I Am Sam
( ) The Whole Nine Yards
( ) The Whole Ten Yards
Total: 5
Running Total: 60

(x) The Day After Tomorrow
( ) Child's Play 1
( ) Child's Play 2
( ) Child's Play 3
( ) Bride of Chucky
( ) Seed of Chucky
(x) Ten Things I Hate About You
(x) Just Married
(x) Gothika
(x) Nightmare on Elm Street (I'm a bit confused as to why the creator of this list has listed all the sequels to everything else, but not this series.)
(x) Sixteen Candles
(x) Remember the Titans
( ) Coach Carter
( ) The Grudge
(x) The Mask
( ) Son Of The Mask
Total: 8
Running Total: 68

(x) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
(x) Lucky Number Sleven [sic] (This title is spelled wrong. It should be "Slevin".)
(x/x) Ocean's Eleven (original and new)
(x) Ocean's Twelve
(x) Identity
(x) Lone Star
( ) Bedazzled
(x) Predator I
( ) Predator II
( ) The Fog (Original)
(x) Ice Age
( ) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( ) Curious George
Total: 8
Running Total: 76

(x) Independence Day
( ) Cujo
(x) A Bronx Tale
( ) Darkness Falls
( ) Christine
(x) ET
( ) Children of the Corn
( ) My Boss's Daughter
(x) Maid in Manhattan
( ) Frality
(x) War of the Worlds
(x) Rush Hour
(x) Rush Hour 2
Total: 7
Running Total: 83

( ) Best Bet
(x) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
(x) She's All That
( ) Calendar Girls
(x) Sideways
(x) Mars Attacks
(x) Event Horizon
( ) Ever After
(x) Wizard of Oz
(x) Forrest Gump
(x) Big Trouble in Little China
(x) The Terminator
(x) The Terminator 2
(x) The Terminator 3
Total: 11
Running Total: 94 (Ooops, I'm already over the limit. Let's go for uber-geek status.)

(x) X-Men
(x) X-Men 2
(x) X-Men 3
(x) Spider-Man
(x) Spider-Man 2
(x) Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
( ) Jeepers Creepers 2
( ) Catch Me If You Can
(x) The Others
(x) Freaky Friday
(x) Reign of fire
( ) The Skulls
( ) Cruel Intentions
( ) Cruel Intentions 2
( ) The Hot Chick
(x) Shrek
(x) Shrek 2
Total: 11
Running Total: 105

( ) Swimfan
( ) Miracle
(x) Old School
( ) The Notebook
(x) K-Pax
( ) Krippendorf's Tribe
( ) A Walk to Remember
( ) Ice Castles
( ) Boogeyman
(x) The 40-year-old-virgin
(x) Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
(x) Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
(x) Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
(x) Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
(x) Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
(x) Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
(x) The Matrix
(x) The Matrix Reloaded
(x) The Matrix Revolutions
(x) Kill Bill
(x) Kill Bill Vol 2
Total: 14
Running Total: 119

On an ethnographic note, I find it interesting that those who have watched three or four sci-fi/horror series' are already well on their way to "having no life". While, in general, this might be true from traditional nomenclature of what it means to "have no life," I think that this might be falsely skewed away from movie types that people who "have a life" might regularly view.

Perhaps it just goes to show what an odd academic I am that I seriously consider trying to craft a more indicative list or one which might give an insight into one's general pop culture literacy.

One of the things that has amazed me in my teaching is the lack of general cultural knowledge that is considered to be part of common knowledge.

On a recent quiz, I listed 35 quotations that most people in America should be relatively familiar with, with a definite angle towards things that students might have seen in the last few years. So, in addition to quotes from "The Wizard of Oz", I included major quotes from "The Notebook" and "Fight Club". Out of these 35 quotations, most people were unable to get the location of more than 10.

Now, I understand that not everyone pays attention to the details of film, like I do, but it should be general knowledge that, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," is from "Gone with the Wind".

Maybe it is just me.

Early Mornings...

2006-09-25T07:41:00.000-05:00

I don't know who thought that it would be a good idea to have a three hour, Intro to College Composition class at 8am on Monday mornings, but they should be publically flogged. I know that I am not the best comp teacher ever, but the blank stares and tiredness is driving me nuts.

I give a fairly simple assignment: here are different types of support and argumentation, looking at that list, work with a group and identify the types of argumentation in your assigned essay, but there is nothing but sitting around with the look of, "what do I do?"

I know that self-motivation is not the highest on the list of 18 year olds, but come on! (To quote Rob Corddry)

I Will Have a Book!

2006-09-20T14:32:00.001-05:00

Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that the book that a number of us in my department have been laboring to get published for the past few months has finally found a publisher. Yay!

So sometime next Spring, you will be able to go on google or amazon and type my name in and get a book to buy that i have edited and written the introduction to. Woot ! Woot!

However, it will be yet another reason that things go slowly for me.

Update! Finally!

2006-09-20T14:15:00.000-05:00

Ok...ok... The three of you that check blogs frequently have been after me for months to stop slacking and get it together. Well, I'm sorry, but I am a bit busy. I'm trying to graduate on time and get a decent job for next year.

I totally love working PT at a community college, but the lack of benefits, low pay, and little future progress does have some drawbacks. So, I have about two dozen places that i am planning on applying. The problem with this is that each and every school has their own little way of doing this. Some want no letters. Some want 5 letters. Some do not want writing samples, while others have very specific instructions on the kinds of writing samples that will be acceptable.

Of course it does not help that i am interdisciplinary in nature and thus applying to film, communications, and English programs among others. It takes up a lot of time. At first, i liked dreaming up possible upper-level undergraduate courses that I might like to teach, but at this point I just want to write, "I will assign a list of fantastic and life-changing works of fiction and criticism. The students will read about 30% of it and refuse to discuss in class. Their papers will, in general, be weak but acceptable in the contemporary climate of grade inflation, and I will fight constantly to find time to write my research, publish, and present. Students will simultaneously find me pompous and overly casual based on their tastes and expectations. About five in a class of twenty-five will absolutely adore the class."

Does that come across as too cynical? Probably. I will have to paste on my happy face and talk about engaging students as co-learners and creating a discourse between practice and theory where the classroom becomes a space for playing with ideas. It isn't that i do not believe these things. I do. I was in classes where this happened, and it was magical. I would leave class talking to some cute girl about how Jane Austen must have had a lot of closeted fans from the manly-man class during her time. There are too many little hints...etc.

However, for the most part, I teach and just get blank responses to questions like, "Now how does globalization of culture affect your life? Anything? It could be that you can go to the same McDonalds everywhere or see brand new movies around the world that are all from the US. Does anyone have a single example of how this cultural and economic process enters daily life?...No....right then."

Where am I?

2006-04-11T13:06:00.000-05:00

"Sometimes I really just feel like screaming very, very loud, but that is usually just indigestion or a lack of exercise. " -I don't know, but someone should have said it.

Well, things keep moving on. I am approaching the end of the semester. I need to get my final exams in line, approved, and xeroxed. I have decided to be super mean and give all essay finals where the students must choose 5 out of 7 choices and write 1.5-2 page essays on the topic.

I know that it is cruel, but the department is trying to work on its assessment. We are trying to get away from objective based tests. In general, I agree, but I think that they will be surprised when half of my class gets a D or F on the final because they have never been forced to write a decent essay.

In other news, I received a small, named scholarship for my work on faith, culture, and communication. It gets me a small honorarium and attendence at a super-cool banquet. I know that it is small, but it is very exciting to be recognized for my work, even if it is from my alma mater. It still counts right?

Also, I have been working on my dissertation. In my search for sources on philosophy and noir, I found the work of Thomas Hibbs, a prof at Baylor. He is working on a book on noir that looks at it somewhat similarly to my approach, only using different philosophers and a more "Christian" view of the redemption/responsibility of the protagonists.

Anyway, he was kind enough to send me a draft copy of his book, and I was surprised when he asked me for my input and comments. I tentatively sent him a couple observations and questions on the first chapter. He wrote back that they were very helpful, and he would love if I wouldn't mind to do that for each chapter.

Now, I know, on one level, that I am somewhat being used to help find typos and act as a sounding board, but on the other side, I am hoping to use him in the future as a potential contact, maybe even a fourth member of my diss committee. He is the Dean of something at a very prestigious school, and he has written the cover comments on a number of books on philosophy and noir. So, it might not hurt to get used a bit.

Finally, Jenna and i are moving up to Toledo in a month. I will really miss being able to ride my bike to school on nice days like this, but in all honesty, Ohio is not really this nice but for 6-12 weeks a year max.

An Important Message for My Friends...

2006-03-24T13:15:00.000-05:00

Friends,
I had just succeeded in convincing my wife that we did not NEED to have babies right away. We are both young and just struggling to get by. Babies are wonderful, and I love them. I want a couple of my own some day soon. However, this whole message becomes difficult to support and hold to when you al keep getting pregnant and having babies.
At first, I was upset at myself and others, but I have realized that the real fault lies with the procreating pals (PP). While some might say that you are doing nothing wrong, I argue that the pressures to have children at remotely the same time is of vital interest in maintaining the myths that we have learned through "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" and "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood". Groups of friends must at least have the potential for their kids to be friends.
Not only does it give us all something to talk about, but it give us the option of producing a sequel with younger, smarter, and prettier versions of us. Think of the montages, people! They are beautiful. Our children grow up all around the country and the world not knowing that they are the inheritors of our legacy. Some day they will have to assume the mantel of troublemaking. They too will have to chain doors shut, burn pizzas, and waste hours watching television shows about a man in space and his robot pals.

Think of the Future! Unless I give up this dream, I will have no choice but to join the PP's.

Thank you.

Keep on keepin' on...

2006-03-24T13:06:00.000-05:00

Well, all. As Brandon says, I am still working on my dissertation. I would really like to get a complete draft done by the end of summer, and I think that is possible. Unfortunately, I have two writing modes:

1. Staccato: In this writing mode, I must just put little ideas down here and there throughout the day whenever I think of it. This is a great way to get started and still do the work that I need for teaching, living, and loving. However, progress is very slow and can end up being very disjointed.

2. Largo: The other option is for me to just lock myself to my keyboard and write for 8 hours/day. This is incredibly effective but also very unpleasant. I wrote my thesis this way, and in addition to getting a bit crazy, I got nasty carpal tunnel, especially in my right wrist.

I am hoping to merge these two styles for my dissertation. My plan is to have a three month period of gathering ideas, reading, watching my films, putting down general ideas and thoughts, and having deep discussions over pints at Beckett's or Grumpy Dave's. Then, I will spend the summer writing a lot and meeting with my advisor once a week to go over things and keep fresh and interested. Finally, next fall, begins the clean-up phase, which I'm quite good at. All I have to do is to do rewrites and fix little errors.

So that is the plan. I was going to write something deep comparing Christian fundamentalists and those Islamic Imams who are calling for the prosecution of the journalists who printed and reprinted the Muhammed cartoon, but frankly, it is too easier and will just make me mad.

I hope that you are all doing well and are content.

Spring Break...yadda yadda yadda

2006-03-05T09:42:00.000-05:00

I love Spring Break although I have never gone anywhere at all. I love it because, for me, it comes at just the right moment in the semester. I've been running on all cylinders for eight weeks now, and I've just been getting to the point where the engine starts glowing white-hot. Then, magically, there are a few days where I can run a little slower.

I've never had a "break" per se since I've been working from the time I was 14, but it is nice to take a bit extra time and do something different.

Yesterday, my wife and I went to drive around the area in the city where we are moving to. It was fun for me because I could just not think about getting copies made or coming up with a creative activity that the students would enjoy. I could just drive, look out the window, and keep on the search for a good bar somewhere near my house. (not much luck, by the way)

On a side note, I've been reading the book of Jeremiah recently because I heard an evangelical minister using passages from this book to blame the homosexuals and liberals for Katrina. Anyway, there is a large quantity of time spent in the book talking about how the fault for the coming disaster comes from the chosen peoples of Israel and Judea pretending that they are doing nothing wrong and pointing the finger elsewhere.

I think that the more significant parallel (if one is actually to believe that God uses hurricanes to punish people in the active way that many fundies and evangelicals seem to believe) would be to the way the Church and its leaders are doing the same thing as Israel and Judea were when threatened by outside powers. They pointed their fingers at each other and did whatever they needed to in order to maintain physical, earthly power.

It seems that the prophet is trying to communicate that God desparately wanted to avoid punishments but that the leaders of the Hebrew people prefer to trust in the strength of their swords and their alliances with other nations rather that trusting in God to protect them.

Just a thought.

On still another note, I had the last day of classes at the CC that I teach at PT. It was so cute. One of my students broke down and started crying because class was going to be over. I will miss that class. It was honestly the best class that I ever had. For the most part, they worked hard and came to class mostly prepared. I hope that this summer tha tI can get another good class.

The Joy of Computer Lab Days...

2006-02-24T08:20:00.000-05:00

There is something extremely satisfying in teaching composition. At the end of the semester (I'm teaching an 8-week version of my class), it becomes so exciting to see all of my students dutifully sitting behind their computers editing and revising their research essays.

They ask each other questions that show that they have paid at least some attention throughout the class: "Would you check this paragraph for passive voice?" or "I know that something is not correct in the predicate here, but I don't know what it is."

The improvement in my CC kids is so drastic that I don't know what to do with myself. It certainly isn't my teaching. There is no real way to force composition down someone's throat. They either pay attention to the book and work hard on drafting and revision, or they don't.

A bit O' Sadness...

2006-02-20T16:52:00.000-05:00

I did not get the super cool job at the school north of Boston. It would have been super neat, but I would have had to really hustle to get my work done. Now I have a whole year to get my diss written and send some chapters out for publishing.

A funny thing about my committee...They all agreed that I need to spend MORE time talking to myself.

It kinda makes sense. They said that I was much more adept at teaching my dissertation than i was at communicating it in written form. So they have recommended a combination of me talking with my micro-cassette recorder and getting together with them to just talk about my project, while recording our conversation.

Anyway, just wanted to touch base. For those who are counting, I have picked up another job. So I now kinda have 4 jobs...eeek. It will be ok...Just remember "Don't Sleep...the Clown will eat me."

A Conspiracy of Gay Witches...

2006-02-14T14:03:00.000-05:00

Well...sorta.
I had a phone call last night from my Grandfather, who is a retired Baptist missionary. I love my grandpa very much, but sometimes he just really confuses me.

First, it is important to note that he almost never calls me just to chat. Generally, he sends e-mails with links to conservative Christian groups that will assist me in fighting off the liberal bias in my university. While he means it to be a form of assistance, I have to take it as something of comic relief.

I don't mean to make light of his beliefs. He is very sincere in his faith, and he has had a long and fruitful retirement career of serving prisoners, which is something that I really think the modern church ignores.

Still, I was a bit surprised when he began to talk about this speaker from the Christian Coalition who had come to urge their church to really strive to vote for a PA bill that would limit marriage to one man and one woman. This in and of itself was not surprising. This is part of the main reason that he calls me, to make sure that I am still a Christian...and a conservative one at that. (If he only knew)

I was a bit surprised when he said that his county had voted democratic in the last election. It had always seemed like such a staid and conservative hotbed...like most of Ohio. I asked him, "How did that come to be?"

His answer was, "Well, just to the east a bit, there is a community where we have a daughter church [I'm not sure what a daughter church is or why it is different from a son church. I didn't know that churches could procreate in that way or have defined gender.]. They are really struggling with the large number of homosexuals and people interested in witchcraft who are really giving them a hard time."

This immediately called to mind an image of a smoke-filled room with a large circular table. Around it sit the cast of Queer Eye, Rosie, a number of people who look like extras from "Manos the Hands of Fate," some fourteen-year-olds in pale make-up and black clothes, and in the gloom, I can kinda see Usher. I don't know which side he supports. They begin to plot and scheme about how they can destroy this small Eastern PA church. Cackles abound.

I know that in many places in the world the Church is really under attack. Christians are daily killed because they are Christians. To equate that experience with being responded to angrily when you try to force tracts down people's throats at an antique fair seems a bit problematic.

Check out Reb. Michael Lerner's "The Left Hand of God".

What I've been up to...

2006-02-04T12:56:00.000-05:00

Hey, All!
How you all doin'? I know that I've been slacking for the past month, but let me explain. I have been super duper busy. Let's see, what have I been up to?

Well, I am applying for a job at Gordon College. I am only recently going to be ABD, but it was the perfect job for me, so I figured, "Why not?" They are looking someone who can teach video production, editing, communications ethics, media studies, and culture studies in media. This is a fairly rare combination, let alone having Christians who can do all of that. So, I feel like I have something of a shot, which is nice.

Secondly, I have been furiously attempting to complete my dissertation proposal and, what's harder, getting my committee to meet all at the same place, at the same time. It looks like I will be defending on Feb. 17th. So those of you who pray, please do so between the hours of 12:30p and 3p.

Thirdly, I have been trying to keep balanced three jobs: two teaching and one online tutoring. I would like to quit one or more, but I need the money and am sick of taking out tons of loans. Fortunately, one of these ends in another four weeks. Then, I'll only have two jobs, yay!

Finally, i have been trying to make time to exercise and relax. Exercising takes tons of time, what with all of the jocks and waifs hogging the good machines for hours on end, while the porcine among us must waddle around the indoor track. I don't mind waddling, but then some speedster comes along and gets all grumpy that we dare to walk while they can run a 6-10 mph for 30 min. I want to just yell, "Hey! We would love to get out of your way, but there are too many fuzzy bunnies chatting about how drunk they got last night rather than paying attention to the 25 min limit."

Not that I'm bitter or anything. I find that a steady diet of music that moves between Johnny Cash's Unearthed, Nirvana's Unplugged, and Ben Harper does a great deal to deal with almost any situation that arises. Music is definitely a blessing....and a curse.

I have also been reading a great deal. In addition to the books for my dissertation, a collection of film noir texts, novels, Sin City, and continental philosophy of ethics, I have been enjoying cheap mysteries. I am currently reading Ian Rankin's The Black Book, Alexander McCall Smith's Tears of the Giraffe, and I just finished listening to Elmore Leonard's The Hot Kid. Fortunately, since they are all mysteries, I can pretend that they are part of my research, since noirs and mysteries have a common ancestry.

You know what else is super cool? Stand-up comedy. Not all of it obviously, I hate Dane Cook, but for the most part, I am really amazed at how diversely the same sorts of issues are raised.

I mean how many comics do a bit about, "You know what the difference between men and women really is...?" Still, there are minute differences that make them hilarious. There are also those moments when the comic does something completely different and unexpected. I love stand up comedy and have since i discovered my parent's Bill Cosby records. "Himself" is still my remedy for even the worst day.

Name that comic: "Probably...one of the toughest times in anyone's life...is when you have to murder a loved one...because they're the devil...but...other than that though it's been a good day."

The Nature of Peace...

2005-12-22T14:30:00.000-05:00

With recent events, both in the world and locally, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to want "peace". In an effort to not get too academic, I will neglect the philosophical and academic citations and footnotes.

Traditionally, many people think of peace as something perfect, heavenly, and without conflict. We imagine sitting in a warm, sunny glade with animals cavorting in the treeline. Of course, for some it might be a beach or a mountain top, but the idea is the same. When mothers say, "I want peace and quiet," the two are linked inextricably.

Peace=quiet and quiet=peace, but this is clearly not the case in most cases. One can easily imagine many cases where just because things are quiet, they are not peaceful. We can think of "the calm before the storm" or "Things are quiet...too quiet." as simple examples of different common cultural understandings that quiet does not equal peace.

At the same time, peace does not equal quiet. In my assertion, peace demands there to not be complete quiet. I can think of cases of international conflict where, despite the silence of gunfire, tensions remain and discourse, an audible conversation, is necessary to begin to step towards peace. However, even in this, it seems to be an incomplete view of peace to see it as a goal where we will no longer need to speak or express conflict.

This brings me to another important aspect of peace that is rarely discussed. Even if one was willing to imagine perfect peace w/o quiet, we would assume that it would contain calm, consensus. No voices would be raised and differences would be bridged or negated. To me, as a student of culture, attempts to create peace by the elimination of dissent tend towards two goals: totalitarian control and apathy.

Neither of these seem to be desirable as a peaceful society or way of life. What does this mean for those of us who seek to follow the Prince of Peace, or even those of us who don't but want peace?

Obviously, I have no answers, just more questions. Fortunately for me, a number of ways of seeing the world of morals and ethics have elevated the importance of questioning over the importance of answering. This does not mean that we stop looking for answers, just that we cease to claim ownership of THE answers. I see a strong connection between this idea and that of peace.

Peace is not a dialectic, a conflict that we endure or synthesize in order to have a new and better peace. It is a constant questioning and discourse. Therefore, I envision peace as a rowdy discussion. The key between a brawl and peace is how the members of the sphere/community react to the disagreement with others. This does not mean that we accept everything that is objectionable. I, in fact, do not know what it would mean. That would be having an answer.

I don't know what this blathering means, but we must keep thinking and asking ourselves about the ways that we define concepts like peace, ethics, and justice. Any thoughts?

A couple weeks...

2005-12-10T16:58:00.000-05:00

It HAS been a couple weeks since posting. However, as much as I love posting on the blog world, I have figured that keeping healthy, sane, and gainfully employed are all more important than ranting about my opinions.

Fortunately, soon my schedule with be more free soon, and I will be posting on some topics that have been in my head recently: Carter's book, the nature of peace, and more on my office walls (which now seem to alternate between breathing and chuckling).

I hope that the few of you who check with me regularly will keep coming back and feel free to post on these topics.

I would like to open up my blog to any potential topics that you might think are worthy of time and attention. Please post a comment on anything that you might want to hear me rant about. I would love you hear your opinion.

I had a tough experience yesterday that I wwould like to share. I gave back my students' papers, and I made the mistake of going against my rule to hand assignments back at the end of class.

My students were so plantive that I gave in. This resulted in one class of having a couple of my female students spending the hour weeping openly about their grades. I really felt for them.

One girl, who is one of the sweetest girls in my classes, had turned in a paper that was only half as long as the assignment called for, and I had no choice but to fail it. She sat through the class silently with tears streaming down her cheeks. I couldn't say anything to her because that would only single her out and make it even more obvious.

Sometimes teaching just sucks.

On writing, working, and travelling...

2005-11-21T11:30:00.000-05:00

Hello, all! For those of you who asked, the walls seem to have quieted down a bit. I gave them an offering of my Squirtle figurine. They/It haven't taken it yet, but it is understood that the walls have possession of my Burger King toy.

Anyway, I haven't written because i have been preparing an article for submission for publication, reading and commenting on rough drafts, working on my dissertation, and travelling to Boston for a conference. Fun fun fun!

It has actually been fun, but I am tired. Despite the drain on resources, I have discovered that, for the most part, I really get into the academic life. One example might be that in the sessions that I went to at NCA, I was one of the only people to ask probing questions in response to the panel.

This is impressive because there is a deep difference in the academy between "probing," "prosecuting," "plugging," and "praising." (Wow, what alliteration! It looks like the points of a wacked out sermon.) Anyway, most of the comments made in the last few minutes of a session usually fall under the latter three categories.

There is nothing wrong with these in their places. Sometimes it is important to laud a significant effort, necessary to advertise the work that you do, or take a presenter to task for a major error. However, there is also a great need in the academy, especially in the Christian members of the academy to engage one another critically.

This does not mean that we should be more cruel, but over the course of the conference, i found that the kind of communication that was interesting me at the moment was the ways in which academics talk to one another. Theoretically, NCA should be a gathering of the speech, media, rhetoric, and various comm studies profs from across the nation. Also theoretically, these profs, more than any others, should be able to communicate in the most effective ways possible, since their daily tasks revolve around the need to problematize and solve the methods of communication that surround us. This was certainly not the case. Despite the failings, some very bright spots remained.

The best example of scholars actually getting down to the business of discourse was in the workshop hosted by "The Calvin Workshops in Communication" which took place on Wednesday in the basement of the Boston Public Library.

I think that the key to these sorts of positive interactions comes in a fundamental shift in the consideration of ethical and effective communication. The important information in communication is not the answer, but the question. This might seem crazy to those not involved in these issues, but I see this as very important and potentially revolutionary, if enacted.

An answer presents a finite and finished piece of information. It approaches the listener as a dead end of sorts. It does not encourage further interaction except by "praise," "prosecution," or "plugs." One must either accept the answer, ignore it and present one's own, or attack some or all of it.

On the other hand, further questioning presents openings of a nearly infinite variety. This might seem very daunting and counterproductive to the pursuit of Truth, and in some ways it is. It does not contribute to forms of knowledge built on accumulation. It does not add. In math terms, the approach to a dialogic discourse multiplies meaning.

Many Christians, especially, are afraid to multiply meaning, and rightfully so on some levels. However, if we believe in an infinite God and a fallen/finite world, then we must at some level accept that there will be a large quantity (if not infinite number) of finite opinions on the infinite of the universe. I can tell that some of you have your eyes glazing over, but stick with me for a second.

In some ways it is like the old story of the three blind men and the elephant, only multiplied by the number of people who have lived and all engaging with the elephant who is truly infinite and unknowable in a total way in this present world. There will be clusters of people who have similar ideas of God and the Universe, and those clusters will probably think that they are right based on their ability to understand what they can connect to.

However, wouldn't it be more effective if cluster A approached the problem by asking cluster B by asking, "Well, I am pretty sure that I am dealing with a wall because X, Y, and Z, but what do you have over there and why?" This seems much more communal and full of potential than saying, "This is obviously a wall because I know I am right."

This is not just relativism because cluster A is not giving up their beliefs. Rather in a greater effort to understand that which they have contact with, they seek out others who also seek to understand their contact without the goal of "winning".

Just a couple thoughts. I will probably write more this week on the conference and the things that it led me to think about.

My office is haunted...

2005-11-04T10:34:00.000-05:00

This has been a tough week. So I am going to go off on something completely frivolous and meaningless to maintain sanity. For those of you who want things to think about, check out the NPR interview with Jimmy Carter. I am very excited to check out his book, and I will probably get a post organized once i read it. It could make very good airplane reading.

I don't know if it is because my office is in the basement of an ill-treated building that is going on 100 or if it is because the walls keep making noises, but I think that my office is unhappy with something.

I used to have a nice, clean office that had a huge plate window and a new door that opened onto a friendly hallway full of people to gab with. Now, I switched teaching assignments and have been sent to the dungeon. There is probably a direct connection there, but that is another issue.

It is always fun to describe to students how to get to my office. "Well, you go to H Hall and go in a main door. Then you walk as far as you can, find the stairway that goes down, and go down until you can't descend any more. If you pass the place where the school stores dead furniture and keeps old mops, then you are on the right track. If you get to the boiler room, then you need to turn around.

I know that there is a sort of mystique surrounding being a grad student in which scholars and artists are expected to dwell in a tumbling garret, but frankly, I like the sun. I like heating and AC that works, and I would really like my walls to stop bulging like in "House on Haunted Hill".

Some might pass over the fact that my walls breath in and out rhythmically. I'm sure that some people would even like for inanimate objects to have spirits. I know my landlord refers to our house as a living thing, but it gets creepy after a while.

Creepier than the breathing itself is the fact that when my walls sleep, they occaisionally suffer from sleap apnea. They will go silent for a minute or two and then suddenly will burst into coughing snores.

Rather than fight the myterious nature of my living office, I've decided to embrace it. There are some problems. First, I don't have a name for the walls in question. Should I address them as a singular unit? Would that offend them if they actually thought of themselves as separate identities? After all, we really should never refer to American Indians as a total group. There is a significant difference between Seminoles and Sioux. On the other hand, if I name each wall separately, then the walls might think it rather comical, much as if your friends didn't talk to you but spoke to your limbs as each distinct beings. [Bob, could you pass me the salt? Oh, sorry. It is closer to Al. Al, if you don't mind passing the salt to Bob...]

More importantly though, I need to know if anyone has a Breathe-Right strip that is about 6 ft long? That would be great.

Similarities between Movies and Worship...

2005-10-26T11:06:00.000-05:00

I've been reading brandon's discussion on worship, and it came to mind that one of the potential problems with contemporary worship, in my eyes, is that people want it to be like their movies.

Ultimately, what is desired is something that makes one laugh and cry but ultimately does not really outlast the event itself. Most individuals that I meet would like something uplifting, with the appearance of being challenging. It might be even more accurate to compare many contemporary church services, especially the sermons, to the local nightly news or 60 Minutes.

Even more interesting than the desires that both of these rituals seem to invoke is the growth on these events to become more and more like one another. I should say that the majority of this confluence comes from the churchs' integration of visuals and mood music to create an "atmosphere of worship". In addition to the house bands and laser lights, I have been surprised to see visual scenes crop up during the sermon. So the pastor will be talking about the piece of God, and the projectors will cut from the Bible verse to pastoral scenes of lambs and waterfalls.

Without even getting into the problems that I have with churches no longer asking the congregation to bring and open their own Bibles, what purpose does this projection serve but to act as an emotionally manipulative act? Are the members of the church unable to imagine for themselves what "peace" means?

Even if we allow this trend, I was amazed a couple of months ago to see a pastor mention an experience that they had had, and he actually cut to a flashback. Lo, we see a video in which the pastor engages in a recreation of said event intercut with interview footage of him talking about the event. Is it so hard for pastors and congregations to actually listen to the person who is right there on stage that we need to have a package?

i know that this makes me sound like an old fogey, but I remember sitting and listening to the pastor work as a story-teller. He would craft an entire picture for the listeners. I understand that not all pastors are "great" orators, but must we reduce them to anchors who merely man the desk and present an editorial at the end of the hour, like some Andy Rooney? Have seminaries dropped so low that graduates can get out with a bit of biblical study and a knowledge of how to edit their own video and play three chords on an acoustic guitar?

Must every pastor be a great theologian to be a good leader of a spiritual flock? Absolutely not! However, they should be able to connect with their congregation on a real and present basis. There should be more than an intro and outro framing a 15 minute "Features" story. I want a pastor who is a teacher! I want a Rabbi! Dammit, I want a leader! I know that I live in a college town and that that influences the sorts of congregations that are available, but I don't want a VJ or Mister Rogers (as cool as both these might be in their own way). It would just be nice to walk into a church and find a critical thinker at the front, not a cheerleader.

History and Identity...

2005-10-24T11:26:00.000-05:00

I recently drove with my EW (Enduring Wife) to see "A History of Violence." Granted, we were supposed to pay $9.75/ticket, but my lovely EW had complained about the crappy sound/picture quality of our previous experience that we had free passes, yay!

Anyway, that is besides the point. I wanted to write a bit about the message of this film and how I see it interacting with some contemporary issues in the Fundagelical church.

The film is pretty basic. We have small-town, Indiana diner owner who is forced to take action during a robbery. Surprise, surprise...he is super handy with weapons and is soon visited by a Philly tough who thinks he is some hit-man/thug who disappeared years ago. The film centers primarily on the reaction of his family to this accusation and the decision that he must make.

The plot itself is not a super huge issue, but i think that the debate that it engages with is incredibly fascinating. What is identity? Are we a set of performed roles, as is indicated by many PoMo and Post-PoMo theorists? Or, is there an innate identity chosen by God/Nature/the Universe which we can choose to adopt or resist? Or, yet another option, we might be an accumulation of experiences that some how "add up" to us, as some Freudians/Psychoanalytic scholars might perceive?

I am amazed at how a relatively simple film can evoke such strong debates about issues that usually reside only in philosophical or theoretical conversations. Many people have written about the dumbing-down of Hollywood and the increase in stupidity and violence (Michael Medved is my personal nemesis), but it seems that many cannot look through the graphics and see the essential questions that reside inside of many of these narratives.

The most electrifying aspect of films like "A History of Violence" and the ways they address these concerns is that rarely do they come out and present THE definitive answer to these complex questions. One can look at films like "Blade Runner" and its question of humanity and technology or "Memento" and questions of memory and identity. Not only are these thrilling narratives that engage on a visceral, experiential level, but they also can allow for a public realm for those who engage in non-academic inquiries into the nature of their world.

Sometimes this debate and engagement is refused. For example, in our viewing of "A History of Violence," audience members down the row from us were very uncomfortable with the openendedness of the narrative and with a striking rape/abuse/lovemaking scene between Bello and Mortensen. They laughed at inappropriate times and complained loudly over the credits that this was, "The Worst Movie They Had Ever Seen."

I don't want to say that people are not entitled to their opinion, but this reaction shows that a problem with Hollywood is not that it promotes the wrong values or the films are too stupid or too difficult for people to understand. Even "stupid" and "offensive" films can challenge our perceptions. It is that they are unwilling or unable to engage in the dialogue with the film.

Now is this the fault of the film? Maybe/maybe not. It is difficult to approach the dramatic scene between Mortensen and Bello on the stairs and not feel something. The question is"What do we do with that feeling?" Also, "Is discomfort something we accept as 'entertaining?'"

We have been taught that being happy involves having no pain. My pastor once said how excited he was that he could look forward to going to Heaven where we would no longer get tired when he played basketball. I can understand the underlying feeling, but where does the joy caused by the testing of the mind and body that God has given us?

This is not the way that most audience members would look at thing, but the sentiment is important. Why are we so happy when we can "tune out"? My students constantly tell me that I am crazy because I try to force them to think. "Why do I need to think like that? Can't you just tell me what i should write my paper about?"

The same practice goes on in film. We have become accustomed to being told what to enjoy. We have soundtracks, genres, actors, and visual cues that all tell us what to think when. Those challenging Hollywood or "The Media" should be taking up arms against the way that stories are told and accepted, not the message of these institutions. This process has become so standardized most people think that it is "stupid" or "bad" when things do not fall into standard limits.

Unfortunately, the same effect can be seen in independent films. If you want to make a bit of money and garner some critical attention, grab a couple of desparate B-list character actors, make one of them angst-ridden, homosexual, a murderer, throw in quirky but intellectual dialogue, maybe a different editing speed or style, and a digital camera, and you are set. I have no problem with any of these things by themselves, but I do have a problem when they become the standard for a norm.

In the end, as much as I liked "A History of Violence" and the dialogue which it attempts to foster, I, prompted by my fellow-audience members, must not become caught up in an alternative culture that is as totalized as the mainstream one which we mock. We must be prepared to criticize the criticizers.

And I-uh-I will always love YOUUUUU!

2005-10-19T10:31:00.000-05:00

No, I haven't forgotten about my blog. I have however been very, very busy with my concrete research. The weekend before last was my big, important prelim exam to prove that I am indeed intelligent enough to write a dissertation without wasting everyone's time.

Since then, I have bee defragmenting a bit. I have been working on a short presentation that I will make to a workshop in Boston in November, and I have had two or three calls for papers that I need to kick stuff out for.

I have, however, seen a good number of decent films that I want to talk about for a variety of reasons including "History of Violence," "The Big Kahuna," "The Station Agent," "Miller's Crossing," and "Love Song to Bobby Long" Unfortunately, they will have to wait until I get my work done.

Until then, adieu.

Happiness...

2005-10-05T10:01:00.000-05:00

I'm so excited. My wife just found out that there is a probably chance of her finally getting hired as a full-time, salaried employee at her job. I am so impressed and proud of her. I remember how sad she was going from being offered the opportunity to take over a very lucrative wedding planning business in Grand Rapids to having to work a temp, data-entry job.

However, she is really good at details and directing people (She can direct me anytime that she wants.), and I was always confident that if she stuck with it that eventually she would be recognized for her efforts.

It has only taken 2.5 years of working full-time PT, hourly, no benefits after getting a good, useful Communications degree to find a job. Granted, I didn't help by moving to a place where employment is not the best.

Here's to wonderful SO's who can really stick it out with the slovenly wretches among us.

Hopes and Dreams...

2005-09-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

Every so often, I realize that I do not always have an eye on my end-goal. Recently, my friend, Brandon, wrote a post on his blog about thinking about what our hopes and dreams are for our lives. I have been trying to give it some thought. My hopes and dreams fall into a couple different categories:

1) Community: One of my professors at my undergraduate institution wrote a great deal about using communication in a way that promotes shalom. Often "shalom" is translated from the Hebrew simply as "peace," but it connotes so much more. It indicates a peace that is centered on being and living in community with one another. It is not an individualistic peace, as one might imagine the lone philosopher on the mountain might be at peace. It is a peace, together.

I have a dream/hope that no matter where my wife and I end up, we will be able to foster a movement towards the peace of togetherness. We try to do this now by doing the simple things. We get our friends together as much as possible. We make a point to contact and spend time listening to each other and those who we come in contact with. We say, "Come over any time," and mean it.

This might sound simple, but it becomes really hard. This is not just because we have to keep the house relatively neat (Neat is subjective, especially since most of our friends are grad students who are amazed that we actually have a table to eat at.), but we also have to work to overcome the innate cultural and personal belief that people hold that, "They couldn't possibly actually mean for me to just drop by." It also means that we have to resist the temptation to make people coming over always mean something. There doesn't always need to be a reason for having friends over. It is so nice to just sit and talk sometimes or maybe even just watch TV or listen to music together.

Community seems to be a big goal in my faith-work too, as if you could divide it so easily. It seems interesting to me that Jesus really kept this group of people, the disciples, with him that much of the time. There seems to be something there. I was reading the Gospel of St. Mark the other day, and it struck me that there are a number of stories that begin with something like, "As Jesus and the disciples ate...." This means that much of what Jesus gave to them, and they to him, I must suppose, was their presence.

Even at their most frustrating, the disciples were with Jesus. One must imagine that they could not keep up a deep theological conversation at all times for three years. They must have discussed normal things of the day, but this is not a message we hear often from the pulpit on Jesus and culture. However, this is an aspect of culture, and Jesus undoubtably participated in it.

2) Teaching: This is much harder, but a large part of my hopes for the future rest on being able to teach and work with young people. For a time, I was tempted to enter seminary and become a pastor (youth or otherwise), but I could get past the institutional requirements that seminaries place on their students.

Maybe this is a topic for a future post, but I am amazed at how a large quantity of conservatives see public academic institutions as bastions for training unthinking, uncaring liberals, but they do not observe the same trends in their own churches, schools, and seminaries. A friend of mine, who I will not name, had a large number of very choice words about the ways that seminaries prepare the future clergy. He compared it to his experience in law school. It was not encouraged to ask questions about why things were seen as they were. It was emphasized that one must become the best at manipulating the given system rather than working to change it.

Granted, this is a generalization, but looking at seminary websites, I notice a large reliance on words such as "orthodox" and "tradition." To paraphrase a great man, "Three thousand years of history from Moses to Sandy Koufax, you better believe I'm living in the past."

My teaching really aims at giving honor to the past but not, as Walter does, making the mistake that the past is the best that we can do. So often, teachers just mark time. Sure, we are busy all the time, but it is very hard to break out and do something different. Students resist it. Administrations resist it, and institutions resist it. How then can teaching make a difference?

I don't know, yet, but I aim to find out. I'll let you know if I discover anything.

Teaching and other fun things...

2005-09-19T11:29:00.000-05:00

I know that it has been a while, but I have been busy. That seems to be a common thread in the blogs of fellow grad students that I run across.

Let's look at Steve's hats currently:

Teaching Assistant: Pop Culture Dept., BGSU
Instructor: Composition II, Owens CC
E-structor: Smarthinking.com
Doctoral Student: American Culture Studies, BGSU
Representative-at-Large: Graduate Student Senate, BGSU

This does not include my duties and responsibilities as a friend, husband, pet-owner, gardener, or sane person.

This all keeps me on my toes, but it does have certain positives. I don't have much time to get bored. I greatly value my down time, even if it is just working out or sitting in the sauna at the Rec Center. I really have appreciated the little things that my wife does for me.

She has been nice enough to not bug me about my smoking on occaision. She also has been very calming by keeping things in perspective.

This is all to say that when I had a surprise visit from my supervisor to oversee my teaching this morning at Owens, I was bit less-than-thrilled.

Fortunately for me, I had done my prep for my lesson plan, and it was a very simple class to teach. I even had an awesome activity that involved group work and competing for candy. We are studying argumentation in the written form. So today's class on the different varieties of logical fallacies would have been perfect to be observed for.

I had chosen magazine ads that all had logical fallacies in them. After reviewing the general types, we were going to break into 4 or 5 teams that looked through the ads and tried to pick out the various logical faults and why.

Unfortunately for me, I only had 9, out of 19, students show up for class this morning. It is very hard to engage in a lively discussion with 9 kids, half of which have not done the reading.

Granted, this is sorta my job, to inspire and drive the class, but I was a bit tired this morning and missing three of my best and most engaging students. This meant that when I broke them up into three teams of three, it was likely that they would not have the sort of motivation that I had thought Tootsie Roll Pops would inspire.

It all worked out fairly well. I kept the class flowing. A couple kids came up with great examples of fallacies in their experience with arguments. I remembered to bring the class back and review the things we learned and went over the assignments, which impressed my boss.

So, whew! Now, I just need to completely finish fixing my syllabus, grade, and return their last assignment that they turned in. It is good that they are so likable. I don't know what I would do if they were a class full of jerks.

The Contemporary Church and the Enlightenment...

2005-09-07T10:53:00.000-05:00

I have thought about writing a longer, slower philosophical genealogy, but

that is probably boring and meaningless to my ultimate goal.

Rather, I think I will point out the problems that the Enlightenment has brought to the church in its myriad forms.

1. Literalism and Dictionaries- It seems to me that with the advent of scientific method, there also came an assumption that language could be tested and proven in some sort of quantifiable way.

Therefore, during this same period of time, intellectuals began to compile dictionaries in which the meanings of words and their uses were fixed and regimented.

Most of you can probably see where this would become a problem (or series of problems) in the modern world.

Since people assume that the meaning of language is fixed, they can also assume that their interpretation is Correct. Sure, prior to the reformation, the Church fixed meaning, but there at least was a large quantity of debate about that meaning. We know about this quantity of debate because the loser was usually torured, imprisoned, etc as a result.

This leads to the difficulties today in synthesizing science and religion. If the Bible says "days," then obviously it meant days in the contemporary 24 hour period, regardless of the fact that the twenty-four hour day, with time zones etc, would not be set for centuries. This also does not take into account the possibility of nuance for the original Hebrew source material.

Of course, modern Christians will understand that when I write, "In the days past...," I am not refering to a specific period of time denoted by the revolution of the clock hand, but to suppose that this would be a valid understanding of something in the Holy Bible is absurd to some.

2. Printing, Authorship, and copyright- While I am thrilled that we have movable type, etc, I think that one of the problems that comes with it is the assumption of profit-making and setting a text in some sort of bound and commodified way. We must be able to print a definitive Bible that contains the approved text.

As Christians, we believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. Therefore, God is the author of the text. Now, what does this mean? Most Christians would not argue that God literally put pen to paper, but it amazes me at how unaware most Christians are about the actual source of the books that we now consider to be part of the Bible. Gasp, you mean Matthew, Mark, and Luke did not actually sit down and write their Gospels? Nope, ladies and gentleman, if you go back and look at an older edition (and I mean much older) of your Bible, you will often read "The Gospel according to St. Matthew as recorded by..."

Does this mean that Matthew is not an accurate testament to the life of Jesus of Nazereth? Nope, not at all, but it might make us pause before we base any major decisions on our understanding of any single passage or word.

I do not mean to impugn the Bible in any way. I believe that it is the Word of God, but I believe that it is the Word of God that has been filtered through the imperfect human authors, translators, and fallible and imprecise language.

This means that it is up to every generation and church to decide what "sexual immorality" is and what to do about the members of their church who practice it.

Lost, or never was, the need to look at the directives in the Bible as directives that must be analyzed in light of other directives.

That is probably enough babbling for now. I would like to talk about the evolution of the Law and contemporary understanding of the role of the Law in the Bible, but we will just have to see. Tah Tah for now!

Sin City and Boundless...

2005-09-02T11:50:00.000-05:00

Boundless' review of "Sin City"

Sure "Sin City" has a number of flaws, but if anything is puerile, it is the immaturity of the contemporary Christian press. If only they were able to look at any story beyond the surface level of violence, sex, and nudity.

After all, if we made a literal cinematice version of the Bible, it would be infinitely worse than "Sin City". "But," they say," you have to look at the whole. You must look at how God has a plan to get us out of this. Your movie/song/whatever doesn't have that." True, and it never will until we learn to tell meaningful and powerful stories from a Christian perspective that are not also pedantic.

I must note that in general these sorts of reviewers are willing to look at an entirety of the Bible without looking at the entirety of the narrative genres. They look at how the books of the Bible fit together but not how "Sin City" comes from a tradition. It is raising and answering questions of previous narratives.

No, I am not saying that film noir is like the Bible, but we should be able to look at the ways we read these narratives.

We MUST engage in the debate. We must be conversant with the rules and subjects of culture. Otherwise, we are dinosaurs who think that kids still idolize Jimmy Kimmel and that "Sin City" is geared towards 13-15 year old boys.

They see pictures in stories and assume "Childish." I've seen some pretty childish evangelical tracts, but there is no acceptance that these are immature.

I'm going to stop before I blow a gasket.

Love you all! Even authors of Boundless articles.

On a side note, one of my favorite Boundless writers has a great article in this week's edition, on making a house a home w/o buying out Pottery Barn (something that I want to do constantly)

I also have great memories of falling asleep while my parents chatted with friends. Mine played Rook more than Scrabble, but the purpose remained the same.

Exile and Suffering...

2005-09-02T10:50:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking a lot recently of the struggle for survival in the Gulf Region, both of them. Between Katrina and the horrible stampede in Iraq, I have had a very hard time maintaining any sort of faith. I began to read the descriptions of men who found themselves in equally trying times, the OT prophets.

I came across this verse as I read my Bible today:

"For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope...and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile." Jeremiah 29: 11, 14b

I have been looking through the prophets because I can't but help to look to the solace of the Exiled in Israel and those of New Orleans. This is not to say that God is punishing anyone or anything stupid like that, but it is a reminder of the presence and purpose of God.

Little solace, I know, to those who have lost everything and/or someone, but the alternative is anger and frustration purely for their own sake. I am not a very devout person in many ways, but I cry and pray for those suffering everywhere. How we see and respond to the suffering of others everywhere is the true measure of our ethics.

I think it is horrible tragic that with all of the coverage of the admittedly horrible events in LA, AL, and MS, that we have forgotten the nearly 1000 Iraqi citizens who were killed just by the rumor of a bomber. What has gone even less observed were the dozens and possibly 100s of Iraqis who were poisoned by traditional gifts of sweets and drink given by the road while on pilgrimage.

You can bet that is ONE child was poisoned by Halloween candy, it would be cause for a 60 Minutes investigation.

I just want to cry, go to bed, and not get up for a very long time.

Something positive for a change...

2005-09-02T10:15:00.000-05:00

Let me just say upfront that I really do not care for crusades.

This holds equally for THE Crusades as well as those held for more contemporary evangelical means.

That said, I really have begun to appreciate the life and work of Billy Graham. Often in the media, we hear the words, "Evangelical leaders, such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and Billy Graham say..."

I understand the perceived need to circle the wagons and to not drive rifts between members of the church, but these four men, as close as they might be theologically, each hold radically different perspectives and methods in directing the future of the Christian church in America and around the world.

The reason that I single out Billy Graham is much the same reason that I used to make fun of him and his movement when I was in sixth grade and forced to watch the horrible films that were put out in the 70s and 80s.

Let me just say in my defense that when you are in bible camp, and you are forced inside because of inclement weather (or one time because everyone got food poisoning), the last thing you really need is to be told that you need to give your life to God.

I mean, the vast majority of the kids who took the effort to work through the memorization of scripture in three or four workbooks already had accepted Christianity, and if after all of that they were not saved, then I doubt that the story of a 50s Korean war vet and his biker friends getting saved would really help the situation.

Now that I have laid out why I bemoaned the Graham Crusade's cinematic enterprised, I must point out that in addition to this, there were quotas in Sunday School and Youth Group every time that a Crusade came through town. We were expected to invite at least one friend with us, whether we had a friend or not. I usually had "conveniently" scheduled an alternative activity on the night when we were to go.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that this is not really the fault of Graham. This was how my churches thought that evangelism was supposed to be done. Billy Graham has a very simple agenda. He wants people to hear about his God and His plan for salvation.

Whether you agree with Graham or not, this mission is simple and admirable. One man would stand in a stadium and tell the gathered people about his experience. In addition to the simplicity of method and message, I must also admire Billy Graham's eagerness to welcome a broad variety of people.

He has met with almost every president in the last fifty years, and some might say that this is purely political. That might be true, but I can tell you that Graham made no bones about meeting with Bill Clinton in the midst of the "Scandal".

In reading Johnny Cash's autobiography, I am amazed at the times when these two very different men, in some ways, would meet and lean on each other for encouragement and support.

I don't see any contemporary mainstream Christian leaders meeting with Brian Welch, lead singer of Korn. (MTV coverage here). Granted I am a little confused by the many directions that Welch has taken since his conversion, but he enthusiatically wants to reach out and touch people. One would think that this would bring connections, but from Welch's website, it looks like he is forming his own group. I don't know whether or not this is because of a conscious choice or a snub, but it seems a shame to not be enthusiastic to connect with Welch, not because he is a celebrity who can help reach youth today but because he is a Christian eager to serve.

We, as a Christian community, need to really stop the craziness, legalism, and divisive politics. So many people, especially in the online/talk radio communities, WASTE so much time debating whether this person or that person is REALLY a Christian.

I would like to know where in the Bible it tells the Church to sit around and pass judgement on each other. Surely, we are supposed to hold each other accountable, but that is clearly a two-way street.

Shit, now I am just getting angry. (Yes, I know that writing "shit" means that I am no longer a Christian in many peoples' eyes.)

A short exercise in fun

2005-08-27T07:59:00.000-05:00

Well, it is fun to me. One of my past acquaintences has this survey on his blog, and I thought it looked very fun.

1. Number of books you have owned: I'm going to assume that this means the number of books I currently own and keep in my house or office. Otherwise, I would have hundred of wonderful children's books to also count. I probably have around 300 books right now.

2. Last book I bought: Introduction to Theory of Popular Culture. It is for a pedagogy class on how to teach popular culture classes.

3. Last book I completed: Of Hospitality by Jacques Derrida. I know what you are thinking, but it is a good book and short.

4. A few books that mean a lot to me: This list is not ordered in any way, nor is it the books that mean the most to me.

1. Ethics of Freedom by Jacques Ellul This a great culmination of a great deal of Ellul's work. he brings together his ideas about the technological society, how it functions, ethical thinking, and a very orthodox but revolutionary Christianity. The result is a powerful argument about why Christianity offers something particularly meaningful. It also points out how much damage that fundamentalist Christian Righters are doing.

2. God, Death, and Time by Emmanuel Levinas. Makes a striking argument about why views of knowledge lead to unethical behavior. He sets up a description of personal and relational ethics that gives Christians a very strong connection between faith and secular humanist philosophy.

3. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. A very awesome story that takes the detective story a long way from Agatha Christie. It is interesting to read this book at the same time as Levinas' book above.

4. Of Hospitality by Jacques Derrida. This is not your standard PoMo linguistic theory. In fact, it is not really linguistic at all. Rather, Derrida sets out to ask why and how we should treat a stranger in our home. He draws on a wide variety of narratives and metaphors from Oedipus to cell phones.

5. Watchmen by Alan Moore. This is not your daddy's comic book. Moore crafts a fascinating story by weaving together a number of threads that touch on the important questions of the 20th and 21st centuries. Power, sex, politics, fear, and justice all are questioned in a meaningful and vital way.

6. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. Not only is this an Oprah book, like that should mean something, but it delves into questions of race, faith, and culture in a brilliant story of South Africa in the middle of the 20th century. In addition to talking about fascinating topics in a new way, Paton writes in a beautiful prose in which he tries to use the rhythms of the many native South African languages while telling his story in English. I honestly cry every time that I read this book.

7. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Many people would put Lord of the Rings on a list like this, but I think that this story touches on something equally as epic but in a different perspective. There is something truly magical when one reads about Bilbo's journey because it is not a huge quest to save the world. It is just one little person who gives into their desire for adventure and finds themselves much deeper than they had supposed. I also love the end so much when Tolkien has Bilbo knocked out fairly early where he must hear about the battle in hindsight.

8. There is a teen knitting book that I can't remember the title of that is really cool. I began knitting to relieve stress, but it is fun too. Oh! It is called Teen Knitting Club. Thanks, Amazon! Knitting books have a wide variety of crapitude of instructions for beginners. This book has excellent pictures, directions, and some really fun beginning projects for people of any age.

5. What are you reading right now?: Well, i was reading the Book of Daniel an hour ago. I will have to do a post on why Daniel, a very devout man of God, allowed himself to be named for Big N's god. What is the difference between this an bowing down to the idol? There seems to be a lesson there. I just started Cash by Johnny Cash. It is really very good. Many autobiographies are obviously, wholly ghost-written, but this has a great deal of effort by Cash and the "with" author to make the book read in a very effective and oral manner.

This post has taken me much longer than I had meant. But please feel free to send me your ideas and readings.

Sex and Christianity...

2005-08-26T11:18:00.000-05:00

As I take a bit of a break from my walk through philosophical development, I would like to comment on the complete inability for Christian publications and cultural analysts to understand how narratives work.

Let us take for example the recent review by Plugged-In of "40 Year-Old Virgin." In this review, Marcus Yoars makes a number of huge blunders in understanding not only how this movie works (and doesn't work) but also of how the presence of movies like this should present a hopeful view for Christians.

First of all, Yoars does not understand the MPAA rating system. He writes, "Andy Stitzer is a virgin. And he's 40. Hence the movie's title. Hmmm, I wonder what could possibly happen next in this should-have-been-rated-NC-17 smutfest." I am not sure if Yoars intends this to be a joke, but due to his lack of a sense of play throughout the rest of his review, I doubt it.

NC-17 is a rating reserved for films that display repeated graphic violence and/or sexually explicit material that would be detrimental to viewers under the age of 17. Now, while I agree that this is not a kiddie movie, there is very little depicted that would be encountered by the average 13-17 year-old that is willing and able to convince their guardian to take them to this movie.

Secondly, he makes the supreme blunder of mis-identifying the purpose of the film. He writes, "I understand the subtext here. I do. In a backhanded way, writers Judd Apatow and Steve Carell give props to celibacy by surrounding Andy with ludicrous, sex-crazed friends, neighbors and co-workers. In contrast to these characters' absurd foolishness, Andy's convictions (if you can call them that) stand out. The writers even keep him virginal until he's tied the knot. And they convey the frustrations of every virgin who's tried to remain unashamed about their celibacy while being bombarded with social messages that mock them."

One wonders if he really does understand the subtext when he follows this astute summary of the purpose of the film by saying, " But none of that—can I make this any clearer?—warrants or redeems The 40-Year-Old Virgin's outrageously abusive conversations, actions and situations. "Why does everything have to be about sex?" Andy yells in frustration at one point. My feelings exactly."

Indeed it is exactly the fact that Mr. Yoars is so offended by the context that shows that the film has accomplished its goal.

How else should one show the absurdity of the sexual drive of our culture, unless we show it? Sure one can imagine a movie-of-the-week approach where Jane or John is assaulted by their "bad" friends to engage in all sorts of activities that their parents warn them of. They could struggle and fall, only to be forced to face the reality of their situation and the costs that loose sexuality present, but in some ways this approach gives too power power to the sexual tones of our culture.

Anyone who has spent any time in a sports bar near or on a college campus will hear 18-22 year old men and women speaking about sex constantly. We see advertisements that constantly tell us that we are ugly and not sexual enough.

Apatow and Carell take a step back and show us (the American culture), through hyperbole, how stupid this sort of approach is.

Are there problems with the film? Sure. It does use f*** a lot, but then so do my students and friends. Should Trish push her daughter to wait until marriage? Sure, but is this realistic at all given her own life and the nature of today's culture? Does the average viewer "get" the complexity? Or do they just laugh at Carrel with an erection?

The important thing to keep in mind about comedy, and satire in particular, is that is must walk a very thin line between hyperbole and reality. It has to place a distorted lens up to things that the audience encounters daily.

Rather than tear the film down, or laud it outright as many critics have, Christian critics must take the time to outline for parents and kids how films and stories work. What is the film saying? How does it say it? What is admirable, and what needs work? My question above about whether the average viewer "gets" it comes into play here. We, as Christian scholars and writers, must go out of our way to make Christians better-than-average readers of cultural texts, rather than just ordering them what to see and what to avoid.

Plugged-In and Focus on the Family have a fantastic opportunity to reach out to their readers and teach them how to do more than tune out every time that they see a breast or hear f***. They could create media savvy Christians who can navigate and choose for themselves what they and their family encounter as well as what they take from it.

However, this does not seem to be what mainstream Christian organization want. They want followers. They want subscribers who will adopt the "right" path. There is no/little desire to have individuals who can find the Truth on their own, in consultation with other believers.

This has led to the acceptance of the graphic depictions of "real" events, such as in Gibson's "Passion," while they refuse to accept another graphic representation of something that is even more present in contemporary society, sex.

Foundations...

2005-08-22T11:47:00.000-05:00

Before I discuss anything further in my main thread, I think that I need to set up what kinds of things I am opposing. To do this, we must look at the foundations of the current philosophical and theological position.

For today, I would like to talk a bit about the Enlightenment.

Ahhh...yes...the Enlightenment. That magical time when the European branch of mankind progressed out of the Dark Ages. Philosophers, artists, mathematicians, theologians and scientists all looked at the previous millenium or two and asked, "Why have we always done it this way?"

While I cannot claim any solid expertise in the realm of philosophical history in any significant depth, I have gathered some understanding of some of the major trends. For the purposes of this post, I will focus on three major ideas: resurrection of reason, rise of empirical evidence, and adoption of individual identities.

First, I must note that these are very clearly interelated. There is no way to separate the process of devloping a concept of the individual from empiricism or reason. Nor would we want to. Still, it is important to talk about these as different processes in light of how they have evolved in contemporary society. Second, we should all be fully aware that these are not processes that can be said to reach a "conclusion". We should think about these as new lenses which became more readily available to the general populace, although in fact this was limited by gender and class identity.

Let's start by talking about bit about the resurrection of reason. I say "resurrection" because it is fairly clear that the ancient Greek tradition had a significant reliance on the reason and spent a good deal of time defining and refining it. However, with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, among many other events, reason as it is classically defined became a small concern to almost everyone in the Western world.

With the advancement in the arts and sciences, reason began to be seen as a very real way to improve the lot of humanity. By following a logical process, one could exert some measure of control on the environment and be considered more fair. Furthermore, reason represented a significant separation between humanity and the wilds of the earth. It separated man from beast. (Indeed, it was seen to separate man from woman as well.)

Moving into the realm of faith in the Enlightenment, this separation presented a valuable tool for a church in crisis following the beginning of the Reformation. On one hand, reason allowed Luther to see the reasons and ways that he opposed the policies of the Church and, on the other, it presented a valuable weapon for advocating a position of humanity in a special role above the natural world.

Empirical evidence and methods give a method for framing and repeating operations of the mind. Again, these are ideas that existed in the ancient Greek traditions. The Enlightenment served to reintroduce and broaden the scope of inquiry with the resulting advancements of technology and communication.

Side Note: Empirical evidence seems tied in many ways to the advancement of printing and navigation. With these tools, information could be reproduced relatively quickly and disseminated quickly as well. The production and export of ideas, especially facts, provide a mode of consistency that furthers the sense of order and control that directly opposed the chaos of previous eras.

Finally, we must note that philosophers of the late Enlightenment (17th-18th century) began to spread some of the individualism of the reformation theology into the political spheres. This advances the concept of individual rights, which, in turn, begins a significant understanding of people (at least economically stable people) as individual moral agents that think and act alone.

The genealogies of these sorts of ideas are most important when we look at the movement of the contemporary church. Many of the current assumptions of Conservative Christianity go back to the philosophical changes of this period rather than having a basis in the presented authority of the Bible.

Next week, I will talk a bit about how these ideas changed with the rise of industrialization and modernism.

Aside (Marriage and Divorce):

2005-08-12T13:57:00.000-05:00

As I work my way through this process of writing my huge view of the problem of evil, postmodernity, and faith, you will find that I will often take a post or two to have a bit of a creak and vent about something that I have read.

I am a devoted reader of Focus on the Family's "Boundless" e-zine. I was raised on Dobson on the radio, and I read the many magazines throughout my child and young adulthood. Much of this was because my extended family often gave subscriptions as gifts, but I think that more than this, I have always been intrigued with how Christians, including myself, view themselves and the world.

This week, I think there is an article that shows one of the biggest problems in contemporary Christianity and more specifically in Christian intellectualism. In this article, "Scott M. Stanley, Ph.D." seeks to enlighten the "twenty somethings" about the "Myths of Divorce".

Now, I have no problem with Christian publications bringing their own scholars and experts to the public sphere in order to give a more well-rounded view of significant issues. I think this is great, but I also think that they must hold themselves to a higher standard of scholarship than those whom they oppose.

Stanley's argument itself is good. He seeks to point out that too often, in contemporary society, married couples go through a tough spot and do not see any hope for it to return to the magic that they had at the beginning. He writes that many people in a downturned marriage think that since they are unhappy, then their kids might be better off with divorced parents, and so they pull apart.

I couldn't agree with Stanley more. I think that, in general, this is tied to the "youth"-centered idea of beauty and success. (This is not a realistic picture of youth, meaning actual kids with real thoughts, feelings, and problems, but that is a topic for another time.) If we saw happiness as something other than toned bodies, perfect smiles, and a plethora of exciting sexual intercourse, then we might start looking for positives in other places. Also, all conflict is not always bad. Furthermore, to make any real relationship work, both people need to be willing to lose their pride and be vulnerable.

Having said that, Stanley's thesis, "That brings me to some advice for those of you who are married, have children and have a lot of conflict in your marriage: Learn to handle it better," leaves something to be desired in the gritty world which the rest of us live in.

Yes, if you have a marriage where both people are actively engaged in making it work, then this is great advice. Theoretically, this is what Christian marriages should be shining beacons for, but realistically, this is not so.

I can't pull statistics to prove this statement. I don't have colleagues doing research on this topic. So, I will have to defer to Dr. Stanley on making positive factual statements.

So before I talk about the flaws in the argument more specifically, I want to say which points I agree with.

1. Yes, divorce can have bad effects on children. (psychological, sociological, spiritual, etc)
2. Yes, there is such a thing as a "good enough" marriage. (see article for definition. It is a bit different than it sounds.)
3. Yes, if both people are committed to change and are willing to be vulnerable, then it can be extremely rewarding to stick it out.

Here are the problems:
1. Domestic Abuse: It is clear that domestic abuse is a huge issue in society today.

Statisticians say it is up, down, changed, more against men than thought before, more unreported all around than ever before, and numerous other things of that ilk. The numbers themselves do not matter. The point is that it exists, and that it exists in greater numbers than we imagine. This means in the Church body as well.

Stanley's response to this huge issue is,

"If you are in a dangerous relationship, do all that is needed to be safe. Get help and advice and support. You may need to call a domestic violence hotline. If you are in a high-conflict but non-dangerous marriage, the single best thing you can do for your children is to change the pattern with your spouse by doing all you can to treat one another differently."

So, if you are being beaten, verbally, or sexually assaulted, Stanley's advice is to, one, call a hotline and, two, change from both sides.

Ummm...I don't want to be a wet blanket, but the men, women, and children that I have met who have been victims of a variety of forms of abuse would love to pick up the phone and change their situation like they were ordering Domino's. However, that does not happen. Generally, women (and I say women because most of the studies on domestic abuse focus on women) who are killed as a result of domestic violence have repeatedly run away but returned to "work it out" or because "he's changed."

2. The Church's Views on Divorce and Masculinity:
I have read the Bible, and I understand why the church frowns on divorce at the very least. However, I also know that the contemporary Conservative Christian church is not really doing its best job of creating a new generation of men who can and will participate in marriage in the ways in which Stanley advises.

Yes, I know that the men is meant to be the head of the household, but I also know that that house is meant to be run as a joint partnership in the image of Christ with the Church. There is to be love, respect, honor, and obedience from both sides.

Now, how does this mesh with the support for leaders who refuse to admit wrongdoing or error? If we were to look to W as a role-model, which many pastors have advised from my personal experience, then let's not look at the way he treats his wife. Let's look at the way he treats his nation.

In addition to the Church's view on leadership and masculinity, we must look at the ways in which the Church, specifically youth groups, treat the differences between genders. How can we expect men to really relate to women on a realistic level, when for the decade-plus between most of us reach puberty and when we get married, we are told that to spend time alone with a girl is tantamount to ripping one's clothes off and fornicating in the grass.

You might say, "Steve, buddy, that is a complete exaggeration of the truth. We have to teach kids to respect themselves and their bodies, otherwise they would be off in the woods having sex at every church camp." Youth pastors, you all need to lean in here. THEY ARE!!! It happens. Not all the time, not in every church, or every youth group activity. I could provide examples, but that would just be gratuitous.

Ok, but I will provide only one. I went to a bible camp from the time I was in 6th grade through college. One year, we had a very athletic high-school girl come to camp. She was in training for the Junior Olympics, but despite the advice of her coach who told her to stay at home and train constantly, she loved God and Bible camp so much that she came anyway.

Now it was not allowed for kids to be out of their cabins before a certain time, but the girl had to get up at 5am in order to get her run in, since she would be unable to train during the rest of the day. It was feared that she would run by the boys cabins and raise thier interest. (I'm not kidding. I was a counsellor at the time, and this is what was argued.) She was finally allowed to get up because she convinced a female counselor to get up with her and make sure that nothing crazy happened.

She was unable to wear the actual outfit that she trained in because it was a skintight singlet and soccer shorts. So she had to wear a bulky t-shirt and long shorts.

Finally, she was used to training with her younger brother, who was about 12 or 13 and also in training, but there was a huge uproar when it was discovered that training involved helping each other stretch out. It was stated in my hearing that it was "unseemly" for a brother to hold his sister's leg and push it to stretch the hamstring.

The problem is that when the leaders and parents tell kids constantly that these are the prescribed gender and sexual roles, that kids might actually believe them!

For example, boys are told that girls are to be cared for and treated nicely, but they also raise up sinful thoughts by their exposure of legs, breasts, arms, ankles, or whatever. We were told that girls who raised these thoughts by dressing in a certain way were not good godly girls. Girls, on the other hand, were told that their bodies were dangerous weapons that could cause these hormone bombs, called boys, to go off at any moment. They were also informed that sex was the sole motivation and desire of every male, or so I am told by reliable sources since we were instructed separately in these secret truths.

Now, if we are constantly taught that sex is the central fear and desire, then might we start to assume that these feelings of tenderness or "like" always meant sex? Furthermore, if the girls who were raising these impure thoughts were doing so because they were not godly, then it is not a long jump in logic for the boy to think that it is not entirely his fault if his desires lead to rape or sexual harrassment. After all, if she didn't want boys talking about her breasts, then she shouldn't have them.

No, of course, not every youth group will spawn a rapist. I know that, but my point is that these sort of perspectives of the contemporary chruch contribute as much to marital problems as the wider culture's push for "happiness".

I mean, how can we expect men and women to know how to converse about important and trivial things, if they are never given a chance to learn? It is vitally important for young people to learn how to interact with one another meaningfully in a way that does not immediately mean, "I want to love you madly." Otherwise, the church is buying into the popular cultural concept that it is all about sex. Sex, Sex, SEX!

What does this mean for Stanley and his article? Well, I guess that I all of this long diatribe was just to say that I think that it is a supreme oversight for people like Stanley who claim to be scholars and intellectuals to not bring up a valid counterargument.

Stanley glosses over domestic abuse. He never mentions the alternative reasons that divorce might be MORE likely in young Christian couples than in the general population. He fails to acknowledge the limitations that the Church might be hardwiring into the boys and girls in its youth groups. Finally, there is no mention that the forbidden nature of sex outside of marriage might, JUST MIGHT, nudge Christian young people to get married for the wrong reasons.

Hey, yeah, let's take the culture to task for its views on sex and happiness! But let's also turn a critical eye to ourselves and look at the ways that we might be contributing to the same problems through what we are doing. We, as Christian academics, scholars, and thinkers, must not only act as watchdogs for the culture at large but more importantly for the hypocracy in ourselves. I think that Jesus had some opinon along those lines...

Talk to you later.

Problem of Evil...

2005-08-11T11:40:00.000-05:00

The problem of evil has a couple different manifestations in my mind. (Yes, in my mind, I use words like manifestation regularly. I am such an elitist nerd. I am truly sorry.)

First, there is the religious view that I learned as I grew up. This "problem of evil" centers on the question of, "Why would a good God allow bad things to happen to good/innocent people?" This cuts to the nature of the relationship of the divine to the created world.

Secondly, an alternate, but related, question comes from the secular front: "What does it mean to be evil?"

These two questions rest at the center of my intellectual pursuits. It is my goal to work of outlining the connections between these two inquiries.

Sure, this sounds great and deep, but why should anyone care about my little game with language? I recently read an article by a French philosopher, Badiou, who wanted to diagnose one of the problems of contemporary philosophy as its dependence on playing with language.

This article wanted to reestablish the realistic and practical approaches to the questions of the universe by refocusing on reason and rationality. What amazes me and makes the combination of these two different perspectives on evil so important is that both take an issue of life, "evil," and point to the problem of relatibility that is embedded within these questions.

Both questions point out an unknowability of the answers to these questions. Knowing indicates some measure of certainty. In the first question, even though there is God to act as an independent measure of the truth of the answer(s), our ability to know God's answer means that we function, to some degree, on faith and assumption.

In the second question, asking what it means to be or do evil indicates that the meaning is not set. There is a cultural aspect that manipulates the understanding of the question.

Since both of these ideas point to some measure of the impossibility of gaining a definite epistemology of "evil," then one aspect of the meaning of being human centers on dealing with, not resolving, these sorts of locations of fluid knowledge. Dealing with good and evil as fluid terms is one of the perspectives that the contemporary church has taken up arms against in their conflict with postmodernism.

In the future, I want to look into some ways in which a postmodern understanding of morality and ethics might provide more room for a Christian perspective in contemporary culture than the traditional, rational, enlightenment approach to thought that the American conservative church espouses.

Bad Christians...

2005-08-10T15:19:00.000-05:00

In a time where the Internet is cursed as a source of the vacuousness of society, I would like to take this chance to point out a couple websites that I find very useful for very different reasons.

In the first, brandon writes daily (I know it is very impressive) about his struggles and thoughts in life. Brandon gives me an interesting and envigorating jolt of togetherness in growth as academics and Christians.

Reading his writing not only makes me jealous of his ability to communicate deeply personal and deeply fundamental issues that he comes across, but it also makes me mad that I am unable to contribute to my own forum of thoughts as readily.

Recently, Brandon has been working on a series titled "Why do I write what I write (a christ haunted life)". The title really explains a great deal, but I would like to take some time to explain why I write what I write.

1. Why write:

First, I have explained in the past that I see alternative venues, no matter how poorly attended or presented, represent viable places for new ideas and connections to be developed.

Secondly, I have talked about the need for Christian academics to speak out. This need to speak out must not be limited to academic matters or just Christian matters. Rather, by expressing ourselves, we place ourselves in a vulnerable position where we are open to community, even in its weakest forms.

Finally, I have struggled a great deal in the past two years with the place and role that God has placed me in. I found that I had been very fortunate to find the places and friends that I had had in my undergrad and masters program. Moving to my current program, I have found much more fighting and discord, and I still recognize that my position is less tenuous than many. All of this is to say that writing about my feelings and thoughts, even if only my friends and a couple colleagues check them, really helps me maintain an even keel.

2. What do I write:

This is a more difficult problem. Unlike Brandon, I lack a central theme in many ways. I have left the door of ideas open too wide. To rectify this, I am going to begin to discuss a cluster of ideas that revolve around questions of faith, identity, story, and culture.

A few posts ago, I mentioned my opinion and enjoyment of the film "In America". In many ways, that article represents a number of my goals for writing this blog. I want to examine the problem of evil in the world and how we have, should, and will deal with this problem.

You might state that this is no less broad than before, and you might be right. Still, we all have to start somewhere.

Tommorrow or maybe later tonight I will start by defining the problem, at least one of them.

Comedies...romantic and otherwise...

2005-07-25T12:34:00.000-05:00

The plus to all of this effort and struggle is that my parents gave my wife and I free passes to a movie. While this might seem fantastically exciting to a pair of people living below the poverty line, the restrictions on said tickets made it much more difficult to redeem than we had thought.

We were not allowed to use these for any film that had been released in the last two weeks, since these are considered "special engagements." In years gone by, this would not be a major problem, but in the last couple of years, it has become very rare for any but the most successful and/or family oriented films to last more than two weeks in major theaters.

Finally, we noticed that a special preview of "Must Love Dogs" for some reason was not considered a "special engagement." I defy you to tell me the logic of this process.

Now, I did my master's thesis on teen comedies of the 1980s, so I was excited to see the progress of Mr. John Cusack. Furthermore, he starred opposite the beautiful and talented Diane Lane, my example of how older women are often much more alluring than the teen of the week (Take that Lindsey and Hilary!).

I am glad to report that while the film is pedantic and totally predictible, it goes to show how even the simplest script and direction can become something entertaining when combined with enough talent.

I have in the past discussed the difference between "entertaining" and "great" cinema, but I will recap for those of you who do not know me personally. "Entertaining" means that neither my wife or I had any desire to request our time or money back following a film. "Great" cinema makes the audience sit back and look at the world in a slightly different way. This should not be reserved for the epic, Academy Award winning films that tackle a huge issue or event, although sometimes these do a credible job.

For the purpose of illustration, i will include a couple lists of films that fall under either, both, or none of these categories.
Great Films: These films made me rethink the world around me but are not necessarily the kind of thing that I want to watch regularly.
Chuck and Buck
The Apostle
The Sweet Hereafter
The Conversation
Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye

Entertaining Films: These are fun but do not really stand up to a lot of repeated viewing. They are also usually great examples of genre filmmaking.
In Good Company
Sense and Sensibility
Most things with John Wayne or Clint Eastwood
Some Kind of Wonderful
Spies Like Us

Great, Entertaining Films: Generally, I put films in this category that take a genre and stretch its boundaries a bit, or maybe more than a bit.
Next Stop Wonderland
Sliding Doors
Hero (Ying Xiong), not the 1991 film with Dustin Hoffman.
The Seven Samurai
The Princess Bride

Neither Great nor Entertaining: There are really too many of these to even give examples of, but these are often genre films that do nothing but fulfill the most basic requirements of said genre. Don't hate me if your favorite film is here.
Armageddon
Bad Boys II
Alien vs. Predator
Wedding Crashers
Kramer vs. Kramer
Thirteen Ghosts

Sure, I realize that these groupings are subjective. They are also based on genres to some degree, which could cause some problems for theorists. I also realize that not every film is made to be great or entertaining. Many films are made to make money. Maybe in the future, I will write a bit about why this is intrinsically a destructive force in American narratives across all media.

For now, i should get back to work.

Hardwood floors and other tests of patience...

2005-07-25T12:20:00.000-05:00

Rather than beginning with my usual apologies for not posting for a while, I'm going to explain the reason that it has been a month since my last post.

I mentioned a few weeks ago about the fun of dealing with parents and ideology. Well, let me just advise those of you who think that you get along with your folks well that you should never volunteer to help with large renovation projects unless you are sure that you will be good working with said parents.

This past spring, I offered to help my parents in the renovation of their kitchen and dining nook. Part of this process was the tearing up of their old linoleum floor and installing a beautiful hardwood floor. This, by itself, is not the central problem. I spent a few years in college earning a living by my adaquate carpentry skills.

The problem evolves when you are dealing with homeowners who have no clue about the problems of tearing up a central living area for a matter of weeks. I wrote out a detail list of the things that would need to be done before my wife, my friend, and I would go down and actually put the floor in.

Needless to say, none of this was accomplished. None of the required tools and materials were purchased. The area was not prepared, and all of a sudden, my parents had decided that they wanted to try to retain a large quantity of moldings that I had said, "would be incredibly difficult to salvage."

So this last weekend, I went down to my parents' house to try to finish off the final stage of trimming the floor and installing the baseboards. Of course, none of the issues were really resolved. So for 14 man-hours later, we had about 7 pieces installed.

On the plus side, two of the transitions between the reconstructed area and other rooms is complete, but the negative side is that the baseboards are not finished. We found that a number of the walls do not contain the normal spacing of studs to affix the baseboards to, and my parents want to retain the complete height of the molding, rather than sink the wood below the floor level.

What does this have to do with being a public intellectual? I have no real clue, but I know that the fact that, between the four of us, we have eight-and-a-half degrees in a wide range of disciplines. None of them helped us develop an approach to a project that would result in a simple accomplishment of the task.

So the next time that you look down on any one in any of the various trades, stop! Think about the large quantity of work that it would take for you to do that for yourself. Offer them a cup of coffee or order a pizza or sandwiches for lunch. Then thank them profusely for their efforts.

The Academic's Point of View...

2005-06-20T12:05:00.000-05:00

Those of you who have read my blog know that I am sorely remiss in my efforts to post frequently. I regret this, but such is the nature of blogging.

Finally, I hope to complete my series on Academic Freedom and why I find myself horribly lost in an almost untenable position.

Those of you who need a refresher, please read this (http://publicintellectual.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_publicintellectual_archive.html)

You will find my general overview on the problem on academic freedom and my summary of David Horowitz's perspective.

Today, I would like to write a bit about the radical/academic perspective. I know that not all academics are radicals. I use this generalization merely to simplify my argument and avoid bogging down in particulars.

These views are my experiences with a few individuals and those whose writing I have read in various magazines and online. Take this presentation with a large grain of salt.

People opposing Horowitz seem to hold one or more of these positions:

1. The purpose of education is always to challenge the status quo/canon.
-to some degree, I agree. I think that education must incorporate the establishment of critical thinking abilities.

2. The instructor/professor/academic has the right and obligation to abide by some form of liberal iconoclasm.
-Indeed, it would seem that there are relatively few outlets for the voiceless to be given voices than the academy.

3. Iconoclasm, therefore, represents critical thought, and anyone who supports any aspect of the status quo/canon hold the potential betrayal of "progress" and is not educated.
-This is where I begin to have problems. It seems that this perspective leaves the academic community open to fall victim to a tendency to throw the baby out with the bath water. More on this later.

4. Any method necessary can and should be employed against those who resist the progress of the "right" or "tolerant" perspectives.
-Clearly, not everyone who opposed Horowitz believes this, but it has been argued to me that any concession that any academic has behaved inappropriately in the classroom or through their research represents a personal failure.

Therefore, the image of the academics' desire for institutions of learn quickly become as problematic as Horowitz's desire for lecture halls filled with quiet students absorbing "objective knowledge".

It seems that the desired state would allow anyone who is hired by an educational institution to have free reign to express themselves in any way they thought suitable for the education of the students as they see fit.

Is it wrong for professors to expect the right to show how historically almost every field of intellectual knowledge has been shaped by oppressive regimes of power?

Obviously not, but by the same token, we cannot say that every result of an oppressive regime is worthless. Or more importantly, we cannot say that those who have benefited from such regimes hold complete complicity with the instutitions and individuals who shaped and maintained oppression.

This is not quite as clear as i wanted to make it. So please, don't come after me. I hope to clarify it in my next post where I present my opinion on what to do and why.

Yay! Finally! and a short thought on parents...

2005-06-06T11:26:00.000-05:00

I just got word, all, that my prof has finally figured out how to access my blog and graded it. I know that my posting has probably eliminated any readers that I might have had, but I got an "A"!

So I will begin posting more regularly after my month-long forced hiatus.

For today's post, I want to share part of a conversation that some of my friends and I just started having about the challenges of enacting and speaking a new perspective of Christianity.

My friend, Brad, wrote:
>And yeah, those few days w/ my parents, while largely enjoyable, also
>reminded us of the sorts of issues that will need to be confronted if
>we're going to establish a healthy relationship w/ them. Most of you
>know that my relationship w/ my parents has never been great, and has
>often been strained. The problem is that my values won't let me just
>ignore them - nor, I suppose, wld that allow me to be an emotionally
>whole person.

And I responded:

I am very glad that you have shared this with us.

Jenna and I just spent basically two weeks with my parents: first, we were helping them install a new
hardwood floor in their kitchen, and second, we hitched a ride with them to my cousin's wedding over
Memorial Day weekend. It was such a struggle all the time.My dad wants to have these phil and theo.
debates with us kids so that he feels that he is doing his duty as a spiritual leader of the family, but his
definitions and understandings of things stretches things so thin.

You all know that I have never been the most subtle person to argue with, and my dad and I got into a
heated debate about the role of Paul's epistles in the canon. I have personally been growing more and more
dubious about why Paul's writings are any more "divinely inspired" than any other Christian thinker, read
Lewis, Chesterton, Ellul, etc, and this obviously worried my father a great deal.

He and I would begin to get in this cyclical arguments that went no where. When I would cut off the
argument and say something like, "This is getting us no where. We are speaking about different things, and I
don't think you are really getting what I am trying to say," then he would get mad that I was backing out of
the argument because I was beaten. This would make me mad, and then my mother would start thinking
that we hated our parents. She would cry and ask, "Why are you SO cynical?" This made the many long car
rides VERY uncomfortable. Especially since my dad's idea of an apology is a statement of the obvious,
"There's a cow. Hm...aluminum fabrication. That would be an interesting job."

Any tips would be welcome.

This holds true for anyone out there reading this. Advice is needed.

On one hand, I could just keep my mouth shut and smile and nod and then go do my own thing, but that just seems dishonest in so many ways.

In the coming days, I am going to finish my diatribe on David Horowitz and also talk about some of the movies that I have seen recently. Now that I am out of class, I can talk about a broader range of issues.

David Horowitz' Point of View...

2005-04-22T09:36:00.001-05:00

In an effort to not be labeled as a complete Stalinist, I would like to present a discussion of what I think are some of the valid critiques that Horowitz and his promoters sponsor.

1. Academics are predominantly liberal: Yes, they are. Most of the professors that I have had, excepting some of those at my Christian undergraduate college, have been solidly Democrats.

2. Some of these liberal academics make it their personal mission to foist their opinions and views on others: Almost everyone who has attended college has had at least one professor who has spent at least part of the beginning of nearly every class ranting on how those **** Christians and their Bush are dragging everything into a collective cess pool where they will hope to rule with ruthless and totalitarian fists.

In addition to opening class rants, I have personally endured attacks on myself as an individual where I was told any or all of these things:

No sane person would ever believe in a Christian God.
Christianity leads directly to fascism.
There is no room for being both Christian and progressive.
There is no such thing as Christian feminism.
When, in philosophy, we discuss the existence of God, we actually are talking about how historically God has been used as a support for evil things, thus we have grown beyond such childish fairytales. Therefore, the purpose of talking about ontotheology is to disprove God's existence.
All Christians believe X,Y, and Z.
You have no business talking about religion informing philosophy or ethics because religion always leads to a will to knowledge.
"You kinds of students who think you can be a thinking Christian make me want to quit teaching. You are parasites on those of us who want to give you 'real' knowledge."

Needless to say that all of these not only are personally offensive, but they also show the complete lack of willingness on the part of many academics to discuss issues of faith, values, or ethics unless it is completely on their terms. You are, after all, either with us or against us.

3. Many times this sort of abuse goes unchecked and threatens a students quality of life and ability to function within the college or university system: also true. I am a big burly intelligent white male who most people would assume brimmed with advantage and self-confidence, but I have been reduced to tears many days after a particularly difficult day of classes.

Sure alcohol and nicotine can help at times, but I hardly think students should be reduced to self-medication to get through college.

Furthermore, with the appeals process at most university being nothing but a vestigial nod to students' rights, if a situation occurs where a student's grade is in question, there are few, if any, roads of accountability. At my current institution, even if a student proves that discrimination occurred and that it affected their grade, no one can force the professor to change their grade.

Something needs to be done. Some of my colleagues disagree with me, but I think that Horowitz and his supporters are not on a completely arbitrary witch-hunt. If there were not professors abusing their position as teachers in order to become evangelists, then students would not rally to his cause as readily.

Too often, I hear professors in the lounge gleefully talking about how they can't wait to fail a student who dared write a paper on why they think abortion is wrong or why their faith is important to them. Rather than carefully challenge all students to learn to critically engage with what they think and where that came from, they want their students to reject all of their past and learn to spout a new rhetoric without thought.

In the next few days, I promise, I will be posting on the types of audacious claims that make it impossible for me to ever join with Horowitz. Surprise, surprise, many of them are the same.

Until then, "May all of your sorrows be patched and your joys be quilted."

David Horowitz Hates Me...

2005-04-08T09:05:00.000-05:00

Or at least hates my campus. Now, I know that it has been a while since I posted, but I have been super busy with the end of the semester approaching. Still, when I posted on March 30th on the upcoming presentation by David Horowitz, I could never have imagined the debacle that would result.

I must give some background in order to explain my discussion which will follow. When Mr. Horowitz came to speak, I assumed that significant opposition would result, especially from the highly political members of my department, but I have to admit that I was surprised by the vehemence of their expression of disagreement.

It all began with a vocal rally outside of the doors to the hall where he was going to speak. Members of campus liberal groups gathered and shouted at those who entered to hear the lecture. The abuse continued inside of the lecture as opposition forces booed, hissed, and generally heckled throughout Mr. Horowitz's "lecture."

Following the repeated breakdown of order and a disorganized question and answer period, Mr. Horowitz stated that BGSU was the worst place at which he had ever spoken, and I eagerly awaited his comments on his blog.

Well here they are: (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17594).

In his article, "Bowling Green Barbarians," Horowitz cites BGSU as the prime example of everything that is wrong with American higher education: "there seem to be no adults around to mind the playground."

In my next post, I will directly respond not only to Mr. Horowitz's accusations but also to the behavior of my opposition minded colleagues.

Academic Freedom and Me...

2005-03-30T10:03:00.000-05:00

Well, folks! It has been over a week since I have been able to make the time to communicate with you.

This evening, my university is having David Horowitz speak, famed mentor to Students for Academic Freedom, www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org. So there has been a big push from both sides of the political spectrum to attend and voice opposition/support.

I feel that I must weigh in here for two major reasons. First, this blog is at least ostensibly about issues of intellectualism in the academy, and this might be the biggest issue at the moment on that particular table. Secondly, I co-author and sponsored a bill (click http://www.bgnews.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/02/21/42196b25bff71?in_archive=1 for the news reporting the bill's passage) in my school's Graduate Student Senate that expressed opposition to Ohio Senate Bill 24 ( see http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/BillText126/126_SB_24_I_Y.pdf for the exact text).

The problem as I see it is multivariate. First, many professors are in fact or in appearance taking as part of their mission as teachers the goals to inform/force students' views on political issues in such a way as to make this information tangential to the course topic and to cause students to fear reciprocity for writing on, researching, or otherwise expressing views that the professor find naive or ill-informed.

I have been in a number of classes over my twenty-year history in the education system that I have felt that the teacher presented their own personal view as the correct one without much room for discussion. At the same time, I have had numerous professors who spent a great deal of time fostering a useful and lively discussion of ideas. In some ways this might result from divergent types of professors, and in some cases there are fundamental problems with instructors.

In other cases, though, the problem lies with students who have not been taught in elementary or secondary schools how to investigate, reason, and present controversial opinions. There is next to no instruction on critical thinking, a process not assisted by "No Child Left Behind"/test-based assessments of progress. Therefore, oftentimes students reach the college level and are surprised when they are confronted by an oppositional viewpoint that a professor has had years to craft and form. The students are unarmed for intellectual combat, and the question becomes, "How do we best teach individuals how to fight mental fights?"

There seem to be two basic camps presenting solutions. Members of both the left and right inhabit both of these solutions, and each brings their own set of presuppositions and biases.

1. We challenge the students openly by questioning and interrogating their presentations of unformed viewpoints. This approach can take the form of lectures, class discussion, responses to speeches/presentations, or the grading of papers.

The problem with this is that students often feel attacked and assaulted throughout their class day. This places them on their defensive posture. Rather than drawing the student out and forcing them to fortify their ideologies with thought and research, they more often either retreat and accept the point of view in order to get a good grade or turn to outside sources for reinforcements.

2. We present the student with facts that support a variety of different perspectives and encourage them to draw from these texts in an effort to construct a personal viewpoint that is more open to considering differences. This is attempted in survey courses.

The problems with this sort of approach basically rests on time and money. In order to adaquately present the vast quantities of perspectives that exist and could come to bear on any one issue would take an equally vast class-length.

It also assumes that students have the ability and desire to truly test and research on their own. This process of self motivation and discernment would require a preknowledge of critical thought. In my experience, students prefer to be told what they need to memorize for a test and then just given a test on that material.

Furthermore, it assumes an ability of instructors to equally and deftly present viewpoints with which they might personally disagree and which does not become merely a multitude of canons from which the student must choose. This is an extremely difficult proposition and is not very easily accomplished.

What I advocate is a combination of the two. I think that the benefits of a truly Socratic style of teaching are huge, but I also know that many times professors have no real desire to hear the opinions of the students but prefer to undercut them or show them how wrong they are.

Therefore, graduate students and professors must be taught how to guide students to find the errors in their own and each other's arguments. This requires confrontation with facts and texts that force a process of questioning. It also requires an openness on behalf of the instructor to being interrogated with equal ferocity, something that causes many professors to shut down into a mentality I call "Agree OR Else" aka "Well I Have a Doctorate and Am Teaching the Class".

Fundamentally, I agree with authors such as Ellul and Levinas who advocate that society as a whole needs to shift a focus from seeking answers to seeking the right questions. I think that judgements must be made, grades must be given, but how we gauge that process might look much more different than A's= 92-100%.

Short of a complete change in society (something I am aware is utopian), all members of this discourse must become more accountable to each other and to themselves. There must be more sources of communication and feedback. There must be something like a campus ombudsman created for students to have an advocate who is not directly affiliated with any particular department or program.

"In America"

2005-03-21T11:29:00.000-05:00

As an American Culture Studies person, and also a film studies nut, any film with a title like "In America" holds a great deal of attraction and deserves some attention. In addition to the attraction of the title and a contemporary immigration story, the critical response to this film make it highly fascinating.

Last week, graduate school forced me into a small breakdown. No, not the kind with Kurt Russell, but I was getting very frustrated with the continuous academic focus of my life. I love the academy as much as any other insane person, but sometimes we all need a chance to switch off the constant drone of critical approaches and just enjoy a story.

Now I am going to try to avoid delving into a the genres of film review or from a critical perspective when I talk about Jim Sheridan's "In America". Rather I would like to give an idea of my experience of engaging with this beautiful film.

In "In America" Sheridan tells a semi-autobiographical story of an Irish family moving to America following the death of their son, Frankie. Though many films would make the death of the son and the tendency to blame each other and oneself for his death, Sheridan picks up on the family in the midst of recovery (a la "Ordinary People" but with way fewer WASPs). So there we are, as an audience, introduced to this foursome on the upswing of grief (if there can be an upswing). They are crossing from Canada into the US, illegally I might add, in their beaten up station wagon, and we follow them for roughly a year as they struggle to find a place to live, make enough to stay alive, and come back to some semblance of "together."

I am well aware that this film, on the superficial plot level, seems more appropriate for the movie of the week, but the way it is put together and shifts focus deftly allows us to really see into each character. Once there, we are given a full range of complex emotions or being in a new place and relearning how to associate as four where there once were five.

In tone, at times, I think this film plays more like a more personable version of Egoyan's "The Sweet Hereafter". The is not just because they both center on groups dealing with purposeless grief, but that is part of it.

At this point, I need to share that my family of five became a four when my younger brother, Peter, died of a rare heart defect (long q.t. wave syndrome, you might have heard of the Maryland b-ball player who just dropped dead on the court after a game), and so in many ways, I cannot separate my experience of the film from my own experience. However, in many ways, "In America" touches on issues of humanity without drifting far into the melodramatic.

Many films deal with the complexity of life and death in simple ways: there was an overarching purpose, there is a need for revenge (through violence or legal means), there is the carnival of pain, etc. This does not meet my personal experience with grief (being someone who has attended more funerals of friends than weddings has something to do with this). I do all of the normal things. I think the thoughts. I pray the prayers. I sit in grief groups' meetings, but what Sheridan does is deal with the fact that at some point, you must make a decision to either move on or remain in your grief.

Sheridan deals with death and grief on a level that does not deny the need to remember those who are gone, but he does not either feel the need to memorialize them. At the end of the film, the narrator's face, Christy(Sarah Bolger), is shown briefy on screen before fading to the New York skyline. She asks if we remember her face. She then says that she wants to rememeber her brother and Mateo (Djimon Hounsou, one of my favorite actors), their neighbor who dies of AIDS, in the same way.

I have been in the middle of a seminar on memory, history, and identity. So, I thought hard to remember what she looked like, and the image had been there just seconds before. The film does not say that memory is perfect. It holds no panacea for emotion or grief, but it does allow us a luxury that is rare in today's digital age. It allows our minds to soften the edges of grief in time. Maybe remembering everything is not the goal. Emmanuel Levinas writes about a form of ethics that is based on the remembering the face of the "Other" who has died, but it is not a clutching to the hereafter. It is the acceptance of the responsibility that the possibilities symbolized by those faces. It is keeping in mind that others are "Others" and taking on their labor as our own. I know that I promised to try to not be "intellectual", but it is hard.

There are a great number of things that I would like about this movie, and this is not to say that the film can be saccharine as moments, but films like "In America" present the power of film to allow for a connection at the same time as it forces some distances.

I will be writing more thoroughly, and in a more organized fashion in an article that I am compiling that looks at "In America" from a memory standpoint for the Society for Reflective Consumption. www.consumeandreflect.org This has been an excellent opportunity to get some of my thoughts down. Thanks for your time and attention.

The Infrequency of Intellectualism...

2005-03-21T11:26:00.000-05:00

Now, I know that I have been somewhat remiss in my duties in posting for the four or five of you who might check here regularly. The difficulty in posting regularly comes from a desire to somehow step my writing up a level and write in preformed, well-thought compositions.

Some things that come to mind is that perhaps I am thinking of intellectualism as a purely cerebral activity. While my daily escapades might not be "intellectual", being a bit more personal with an audience might provide an ability for some to connect to me in a way that adds to any academic argument that I could make about Lacan, Ellul, or Weil.

So I think my next couple posts will be about somewhat more mundane ideas.

Negotiating the Middle Ground...

2005-03-14T10:21:00.000-05:00

I mentioned in my last post that I would be posting more on my experience and thoughts on how I navigate being both an intellectual (of the academic order) and a Christian (of the psuedo-Reformed/Evangelical order). More specifically, I mentioned that i would be talking about how I see my ability to negotiate these spheres in relation to postmodern cultural and social theorists.

This is not my goal today. Today, I would like to take a moment, breathe, and give a few examples of others who negotiate this same process of self-identification.

First, there are the blogs that I have listed in my "Links" section to the left. These are friends and groups that are spending a great deal of time on the same issues that I often find myself struggling with. I point them out not only because I want more people to look at their sites but also because I want to prove that I am not an outlier of culture. There are a great number of individuals who are struggling with me over the same issues.

In addition to these blogs I would like to make special note of the following:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110002380

This is the article in the Wall Street Journal that talks about some of the pressures on graduate students have to face when they bring their personal ideology (in all its changing forms) into their work.

The story of Laura Winner, a Columbia graduate student, who went from Orthodox Judaism to being baptized into the Anglican church is not as strange as some might think, and it cannot be merely tossed into a labelled bin of another thinker desiring to just turn off their brain and submit to a false consciousness. Her book, "Girl Meets God: On the Path to a Religious Life" (Algonquin)" (although I've only read excerpts) seems to detail a journey very similar to those by such respected intellectuals as C.S. Lewis (I know everybody loves to bring him up), Jacques Ellul, and Simone Weil who not only transitioned in a very rational manner from different ideological positions into Christianity but also detailed their thoughts about this journey in excellent books.

Another such intellectual, Charles Towne, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, recently received the Templeton Prize (also won by Mother Teresa) for those who advance spiritual knowledge. This BBC article give an interesting introduction for those who feel that science and faith cannot mix:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4333801.stm

For more daily exposure to the kinds of questions and discussion that other in my position examine please check out at least one of the following:
http://www.badchristian.com
http://churchgalposts.blogspot.com/
http://evangelicalexpat.blogspot.com/
http://nbierma.blogspot.com/
http://www.dialogicalcoffeehouse.com/

I know that many people have extreme misgivings about trusting blogs and with good reason, but if you take these as expressions of people's personal journey rather than any sort of polemic, then i think it might help understand how others, besides myself, are working through this problem of belonging.

Some Thoughts on Religion and Intellectualism...

2005-03-10T12:14:00.000-05:00

One of the major ideas that I hope to begin incoporating into this site is a discussio of ways that I can integrate one major sphere of my life (intellectual pursuits) with another major sphere (my faith). The problem with this is that members of one sphere all label the members of the other sphere as dogmatic, unthinking, self-centered, political brutes.

The additional problem is that, in general, they are both right. I have written before on the ways that some theorists of the public intellectual, Nancy Fraser mostly, feel that in order to have a truly discursive society, we need to acknowledge and embrace an idea of the public that includes multiple publics which also integrate some aspects of what has typically been called the private sphere (made up of sexual, familial, and personal religious belief.)

In order to accomplish this feat, members of both of my sample spheres (I have many other groups that I self-associate with, but that would only complicate things much further) need to recognize that they both are behaving with a degree of negative dogmatics that they both criticize in the other group. Unfortunately, if history is any guide, the only way to resolve these tensions is some sort of violence, whether political, ideological, or rhetorical.

So the task for those of us (read, "me") who negotiate these intersections is to limit the trauma caused to the necessary for the task while at the same time retaining the sense that we respect the ability of those whom we disagree with to hold the beliefs with which we disagree.

One way that this comes out is in small arenas like the blog to which my friends and I contribute. (Society for the Reflective Consumption of Media) Recently, one of my friends, Brad, wrote a piece of literary review/criticism that used Madeline L' Engle to talk about the ways in which Art, as a modern concept, owes a significant debt and connection to a certain understanding of Christian Art.

The problem arose when one of the founders of the site found that the title and obvious Christian perspective of the article too preachy. Dan claimed that while he supported discussions of faith in an abstract sense as a necessary aspect of someone's life, he did not want to be preached at. While as someone who has been preached at from the Left and the Right for most of his life, I understand this inclination, I also understand the philosophical difficulty in allowing one group to police the definition of something like "preaching"

In larger perspectives, like the classroom as a teacher or student, we have to negotiate these ideas constantly. Am I preaching at my students when I present a form of written expression like the essay as the standard for educational expression. In some ways, I am adopting a ideological stance that is similar in form and presentation to another person standing up and saying that they believe that Jesus is the son of God.

yes, I know that there are radical differences in the passions attached to the essay versus the foundations of the Christian faith. Few people would choose to be tortured and die for their belief that the essay with synthesized sources is the correctly dominant form of academic communication. Still, both of these beliefs involve a level of attachment of the individual to a particular institutional tradition.

Therefore, when we present ourselves within these spheres, we need to recognize the connections, obligations, and biases that we bring with us from academic as well as religious traditions. The importance of thinkers like Foucault to a Christian intellectual such as myself is that they present ways of looking at the history of thought that places all discourses within a framework of tradition, power, and history.

Did I just say that an academic such as Foucault was important to a Christian? Yes. Yes, I did. That should give us enough to think about for today. I will probably elaborate on this connection between Postmodern thinkers and my placement within the border space between these spheres at a later point, but for now, that is all.

A Break from Seriousness...

2005-03-04T10:05:00.000-05:00

I keep getting the sense that I am being to serious. I mean, yes, this is for a class at least to some extent, but why can't I talk about fun topics as well?

There's no reason, except that I find being serious to be fun in its own way. I guess this points to a more general trend that might or might not relate to some of the issues that I have been bringing up. Why is it that having fun is divorced, for the most part, from the serious things that we do?

It seems that somewhere along the courses of histories that somehow the linkages between seriousness and fun were broken. Sure, we could blame it on the Church or the Puritans at least. Mr. Foucault, i agree that the Christian pastoral has contributed to the categorization of most aspects of desire as sins, but is there something else?

Why can't I just have fun and analyze the film/tv show/music that I am experiencing? There seems to have been some filtering down from the turning of sobriety and seriousness into virtues. While pleasures have been eliminated as unproductive.

Even if we assume that the Christian Church has made it unacceptable to have fun, we have two aspects or perspectives emerging. On one hand, we can look intellectually at how the Church has spread this message throughout the American culture and its institutions, but the other, and the one I am more interested in exploring, comes when we begin to look at how the interpretation of the central text of the faith changed and continues to change to maintain a particular perspective and orientation of power and knowledge.

Oh, darn! Now I've done it again. I start out with the intention of something lighthearted to talk about, and I am already embroiled in a deep cultural and theological discussion.

Well, I will put this off for the time being, just sit back and listen to the soothing tunes of Kajagoogoo. Till next time when I will try to look at some sources within hermeneutics that point to a need for balance within the Christian tradition, and then I can begin looking at how the current state of understanding of desire, pleasure, and virtue play out in a couple specific cultural arenas. So try not to get too excited.

Argumentation and Students...

2005-03-02T10:10:00.000-05:00

Now, I understand that this is a bit off topic from my usual posts, but I am having some problems in my teaching. Since this blog is ostensibly about pedagogy and its relationship to teaching and intellectualism as it is expressed by teaching, I figure this is applicable.

For the composition class that I teach, my students are required to write three papers that take a stance within a particular topic and argue it using sources and argumentative organization that relates these sources to the writer's perspective and to one another.

However, despite my experience and training in teaching composition, I have reached something of an impasse. How does one tell another person how to argue a position? My students come to me with ideas that are almost entirely summaries of the information that they have read without any sort of comparative or imperative representations of opinion.

Now, being a graduate student for a few years now, I am well aware of the ways that one can argue for a definition to be reformed or reexamined. This, however, takes some knowledge and skill at formulating arguments and understanding of the context of the original definition.

So I am at a complete loss of how to get students that are primarily 18 to 19 years old to take a stand on anything. Is this a result of growing up in a PoMo world where students assume that either nothing really matters because it is all opinion or because they don't have any sort of authority to speak, so why bother?

Teaching Towards the Utopian...

2005-02-28T10:23:00.000-05:00

Recently, I had to read a book by Jill Dolan called "Geographies of Learning". In it Dolan, primarily a theater and performance scholar, attempts to take perspectives on feminist and queer theory and apply it to a broader perspective of learning and intellectualism.

At the end of every chapter, she includes lists of questions or ideas that provide a sounding board or reaction point for the reader to think and interrogate the concepts brought up in that chapter. In one of the chapters, "Performance as Feminist Pedagogy," Dolan gives "My 'Ten Commandments' for Teaching" In an effort to foster understanding of my response, I include these here:

My "Ten Commandments" for Teaching

Finally, my ten personal commandments for teaching. I have to stress that these are my own; they've worked for me and they might work for others.
1. Teach to the highest common denominator. Students will rise to the occaision. Learning should be hard.
2. Teach for questions, not for answers. Focus on the gaps, the omissions, the whys, the maybes, but always take a stand around the knowledge you share or discover.
3. Teach to unsettle, not to create a safe space. Learning should be dangerous, because ideas and what they can do have real meanings and real effects.
4. Teach to learn something. Never teach the exact same syllabus twice, but always look for different readings, new input. Learn in front of your students, as you teach.
5. Believe that good writing is fundamental to learning anything and insist that students do it well.
6. Believe that students have a lot to teach one another. The teacher isn't the only one in the classroom with something important to say.
7. Believe that humanities/arts classrooms should be about learning the skills of analysis, about how to ask questions more than about transmitting correct readings of canonical texts.
8. Believe in embodied learning and teaching. Everyone's body should be on the line in the classroom, even if no one leaves their chair.
9. Be responsible to your own authority and power as a teacher. I give ths grades, so I have to be as organized, committed, and well prepared as I expect the students to be.
10. Believe in a classroom in which pleasure circulates freely: as desire, as humor, as intellectual inquiry, as the passionate commitment to ideas, theories, and practices.

Jill Dolan, Geographies of Learning. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2001.

I have a response that I have composed, but I will wait a day or two to post my opinion. Let me know what you think.

Blogging as an intellectual?

2005-02-23T07:49:00.000-05:00

A couple of my friends and colleagues have asked me why I, or anyone, would blog as an effort in spreading intellectual ideas. It seems somewhat antithetical that the Internet, and the egocentric Blog movement, would possess any real key to creating a form of intellectual communitas.

It is a good point. However, the use of the blog is not really that much different from a combination, of sorts, of the millenia old practice of the academic society presenting ideas within a rhetorical mode and the centuries old practice of keeping a personal thought-diary or journal. It seems to me that the blog has the very real potential of reifying the word and written discourse as a way of self-expression.

Yes, not as many people write real letters or articles. No longer do the ideological broadsheets and pamphlets exist that allowed a wide range of individuals to express their thoughts and opinions on contemporary issues and disseminate them (and get punished for them).

There was another story on CNN this morning in which news organizations were questioning the new "fad" of political bloggers. This is not a fad. The method of communication might be different, but I feel that the drive and content are similar to early colonial authors such as Payne and Adams and the authors of the Federalist Papers. These were not functionaries of accredited new agencies. They were individuals with axes to grind. Granted, for the most part, the successful ones were privileged individuals who wanted to retain their wealth, but that is another story for another time.

The specific impetous for me to throw my hat in the ring comes from reading the transcript of a roundtable forum from early 2001 that was published in The Nation. In this article a number of threats and responses to the goals and challenges of the public academic intellectual are brought to light. One of the most hopeful comes from Steven Johnson who writes about the potentials of the Internet,

"The ability to center your intellectual life in all of its different appearances in your own 'presence' online, on the home page, so that you can actually have the equivalent of an author bio. Except that it's dynamically updated all the time, and there are links to every thing you're doing everywhere....The web gives you a way of rounding all those diverse kinds of experiences and ideads....the web is finally all about linking....And it also involves a commitment to real engagement with your audience that perhaps public intellectuals have talked a lot about in the past, but maybe not lived up to as much as they could have."

In an effort to connect things would encourage you to go and read this forum. Then feel free to share your thoughts here.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010212&s=forum

Pedagogy and Reality...

2005-02-22T09:51:00.000-05:00

I have been learning all sorts of ways in which I, as an instructor, am supposed to inspire and enlighten my students through brilliantly innovative handouts and wonderful discussion. These lessons in pedagogy always transpire the same exact way, and I wonder what sorts of things that one must do in order to break the cycle.

Let me walk you through a typical class session:

I show up, walk in the door, and find a seat. I have been a good student and read the assigned essays on the topic of the day. Now, as I read these essays, which declare that as long I actively involve the students with each other and with the subject matter, you know "make it real" to them, then I will see exponential returns on my intellectual investment, I find myself frowning more and more often as I remember that morning's class that I taught. I prepared. I engaged. I did all of these things that this person is telling me, but there is nothing but blank stares and meaningless nods.

Needless to say, I go into the pedagogy class a bit skeptical that this will really improve me as a teacher. Over the course of the class, there is plenty of opportunity for questions, and I continually raise my hand and ask for advice in given situations that seem to defy this presentation of a new approach to teaching. However, every time that I emerge with a brilliant stumper, the professor has either a brilliant response at her fingertips or she simply states, "Sometimes there is nothing you can do."

Gradually, I begin to succumb to the logic of these arguments. I return to my office and type out new assignments and exciting changes. "Yes," I think, " I can do it! And if I don't, then it is not my fault! I can change the world!" I meant this in the least "Ruler of the Universe way."

Then the next morning, I stride into the classroom, rearrange the desks (if the pedagogy of the day indicate), I place some mellow music into the cd player, and we are ready to learn!

Or not.

I think the problem with pedagogy as a discipline is that it, to some extent, assume students who genuinely have some desire to learn and to express their opinions. I many ways education makes the same assumptions as democracy. It assumes a populace who cares.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. I know that I am generalizing. There are many students in America today who care greatly about learning and challenging themselves, but it seems that most of these have not been instructed on how to begin such pursuits.

The other day I asked the students about what their opinions were in regards to the readings we had been doing, and they sat blankly, staring at me. Now I could understand this if we had been studying quantum mechanics, Heidegger, or economics, but we had been reading about the trends in the world of people becoming fatter and fatter and the potential causes/solutions thereof.

You would think that these young students would have *some* opinion on the matter. After five minutes of complete silence, I just called on someone. (the five minutes of silence is another "brilliant" pedagogical tool that is supposed to play on the discomfort of contemporary students with silence, ha)

So I guess my question to the universe today is, "What can possibly be done?"

The Meaning of Life...

2005-02-18T07:47:00.000-05:00

Let me introduce myself. I am Steve. I go to school at a mid-sized state university in the mid-west where I am working on earning my Ph.D. in American Culture Studies. This blog is in part an exploration of the concepts that are coming up in one of my current classes as I work towards my Ph.D. at BGSU. It is an opportunity for me to put some of my thoughts, as well as daily happenings, down for my classmates, friends, and anyone who might be interested.

The concept of the public intellectual extends back at least as far as Plato and continues to be a major issue today, just look at the uproar over Ward Churchill in recent weeks. So for thousands of years we, as members of societies, have struggled in one way or another to deal with the meaning of being someone whose primary goal was critical thinking while at the same time working and living in a world where that is fundamentally different from the lives of most people.

Yes, I know that for many people day-to-day living takes a priority over sitting around and theorizing of the meaning of being both in the public sphere of life and in the intellectual mode, but Antonio Gramsci, Italian Marxist Theorist, writes that everyone possesses some interest in thinking about significant things. He surmises the existence of an "organic intellectual" who is a member of the working/labor class that possesses a drive to think about the location and tasks of his class. This seems significantly different from the life of an Ivy League professor with the endowed chair. (Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with that. I think that many of us in academic pursuits would jump at the offer) One of my goals is to enact a form of connection through this blog in which I compose and present my thoughts and open them up to discourse by anyone who happens to find my blog.

My interests broaden out from this initial starting point quickly. In addition to hard core theory about the purpose of academics, I also write about culture, film, music, philosophy, and issues of faith and spirituality, and I would imagine that some of my time here will be about more simple and "organic" things.

To come...THE BEGINNINGS OF A PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL