Brother, Can You Spare 15 Minutes?

To help out some NYU researchers by filling out their survey? And post the link (with comments closed) on your blog? Please don't do anything to bias the survey results...thanks!

Fredonia State Protests Intolerance

Jessica Kalny (words) and Mike Wayman (photos), two students from my Intro to Grad Studies in English seminar this semester, collaborated on the following report.

***

On October 7, 2008, a man named “Jim” obtained permission to enter campus for the day. He has been visiting several SUNY campuses to spread his message. However, it is not the kind of message that one would want to pass on to the next generation. His message was one of intolerance, particularly against the “typical college lifestyle” and homosexuals.



Rather than responding with violence or cruelty, over 2,000 students and faculty members of Fredonia State gathered together to protest his bigoted message. When you consider the fact that there about 6,000 students and faculty members total, you can imagine how big this event truly was.



Having been there, I can tell you that it was an extremely powerful scene. To see so many peers coming together to prove that intolerance is not acceptable. We did not show any disrespect towards Jim, and I’m sure that he expected us to. As a campus, we wanted to show him that it is not right under any circumstance to discriminate against any group of individuals.

After a number of students spoke their minds about this topic, the percussion guild showed their support by playing several songs which many of the students danced along to. I can honestly say that this protest made me proud to be a part of such a tolerant campus community.

***

For more on the spontaneous protests, check out coverage in the local newspaper. Here's one of the many youtube clips that went up soon after the protests:



[Update 1 (10/30/08, 8:11 pm): My old sparring partner The Objectivist sees the protestors as the agents of intolerance here. And there's a vigorous debate on the faculty listserv I may comment on later.]

Using Hawthorne in Meiji Japan

Waiting for the day when I can research the following topic in the middle of the night from the comforts of home to my satisfaction: could Kyoka Izumi have been consciously alluding to Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" at the end of the first part of "One Day in Spring" (1906)? The answer is most likely "no." Not only does the standard list of conscious Japanese Hawthorne-alluders start in 1908 (with the exception of one 1887 novel by Kososhi Miyazaki), but Izumi would also most likely had to have read Hawthorne's tale in English, as it wasn't a favorite of his early Japanese translators. Still, there are enough textual (journey into woods, bizarre encounters, possible dream, chilling effects) and generic (gothic, fantastic, romanticism) parallels to warrant further investigation. Charles Shiro Inouye mentions in his critical biography The Similitude of Blossoms that Izumi read Hawthorne's Peter Parley's Universal History, so it's at least possible he could have read Hawthorne's short stories before 1906. Looks like I'll also be interlibrary-loaning Susan Napier's The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature.

When I get onto campus in a few hours, it'll be a nice break from grading to check out the MLA Bibliography and email Inouye and Napier. I'll let you all know what I dig up.

Amazing Colleagues, Part Ia

I introduced you all to my colleague Aimee Nezhukumatathil awhile ago, so I'm sure you'll be pleased to find out how she turns close reading into an interdisciplinary art form in a brilliant response to Linda Pastan's poem "The Deathwatch Beetle" that ranges from Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" to entomology, from word choice and sound to bodies and spirits.

Bloggers and Gentlemen

Just a quick note to publicly acknowledge the utter awesomeness of Rob MacDougall and Marc Bousquet. Rob and his family drove much farther than I assumed they had to in order to meet the Constructivist clan at the Canadian Falls late this summer, while Marc put up with the perils of a skype-mediated conference call with my 11 students in Introduction to Graduate Studies in English yesterday afternoon (his time) in order to answer our questions on his book How the University Works.

We actually pushed the call with Marc back an hour later than planned because I had given my students the option of witnessing/documenting the largest campus/community protest I've ever heard of at my university--actually, an impromptu counter-protest, complete with speeches, musical performances, and skits against an anti-gay nutjob individual with full free speech rights whose point of view the more-than-2,000 people over the course of the afternoon respectfully but firmly declined to assent to--and three-quarters of tbe class took me up on my offer of extra credit to respond to it on our ANGEL discussion forum and perhaps more publicly. I'd like to think our campus made one transplanted western NYer proud. And I'm hoping at least some of my students make good use of the temporary privileges of Citizen SE authorship I've extended them. Stay tuned!

For those clickers from Inside Higher Ed checking out the obscurest blog on teh internets for the first time, please do pay a visit to Rob's and Marc's sites. Their writing, their voices, their scholarship, and their generosity make the academo-critical blogdustrial complex a better virtual space.

What Department Listservs Are For

I know, Scott is great at explaining how not to use 'em. But how about some examples of best practices?

Like one colleague of mine linking to this. Which provokes this:

Rocket ships
Are exciting
But so are roses
On a birthday

Computers are exciting
But so is a sunset

And logic
Will never replace
Love

Sometimes I wonder
Where I belong
In the future
Or
In the past

I guess I'm just
An old-fashioned
Space-man.

And this. And that.

If you can top this exchange (or simply name the poet I quoted), I'd see that we hired you in a heartbeat. If it weren't for that pesky $4.2M shortfall and hiring freeze we're muddling through right now....

Anyway, do leave a link or report on a good exchange on your department listserv. Berube shouldn't get all the best commenters.

The Bills Are 4-0 and Other Improbabilities

Just surfacing for a moment to note that the novel I'm teaching for the next two weeks in one of my classes--Patricia Grace's Potiki--is highly relevant for thinking through the political situatedness of the PGA event going on 15 minutes from my hometown at the Turning Stone resort complex this week. I did not plan this, but it's pretty neat.

[Update 1 (1:46 pm): Speaking of 1992....]

The Kind of Search Engine We Really Need

The Full Metal Archivist was just trying to recommend a book on writing about literature for my students in my Introduction to the English Major course: a thin book with a pale green cover and a kind of polka-dot-like leafy pattern surrounding a title in a cream-colored square by a female critic that's now out of print which she borrowed from me about 5 years ago and hasn't seen since. It describes the elements of poetry, drama, and fiction, includes a glossary of key terms, and uses such examples as Chopin's The Awakening and James Joyce's Dubliners to flesh out its concepts. That means it's not John Ciardi's How a Poem Means.

When she has a chance, she's going to dig through her notebooks from that time (which means a trip to our attic) to try to figure out the title and author. But why do we have to rely on such easily-forgettable information when searching for a book on-line? Assuming the google gods aren't regularly checking in on the obscurest blog on the internets, I'm leaving it to my most loyal remaining readers to identify this test before she does!

Go, Jenn!

Jenn Stuczynski is a Fredonia H.S. grad, college basketball standout, and world-class pole vaulter who's competing in Beijing next week. Going by past results, she'll need something of a miracle to get the gold, but don't put anything past her.

I first heard about Jenn a few months ago from onechan and imoto's day care provider, who was wondering about her chances of making it on the LPGA after her pole vaulting career is over. (Yes, Jenn loves golf.) I was skeptical then and I remain so now, but more on that later (and elsewhere). The key thing is, Fredonia is going nuts about our very own Olympian. Onechan entertains herself as we drive through town by saying "Jenn" every time she sees one of the yard signs Fredonians have been buying up in droves to help her parents afford the trip to China, which makes driving through town rather less than entertaining for the Full Metal Archivist and me, but is a small price to pay in the greater scheme of things.

Since we still don't have cable, we'll be relying on YouTube for video of Jenn's Olympic performances. Send her some good vibes the next few days, will you?

[Update 1 (8/20/08, 3:52 am): Well, she got the silver. Seeing as how her Russian rival broke her own Olympic and then world record after Jenn couldn't clear 4.90 m, that's a pretty great result!]

[Update 2 (8/22/08, 4:04 pm): Fredonia's own Dan Steinberg, of the Washington Post's DC Sports Bog fame, devotes two posts to Jenn in his Chinese Sports Smog.]

On That Day in Golf History: The Ward Wettlaufer Story

A story from golf history with Hamilton College and western NY angles? How could I not take the opportunity to pass it along to my colleagues? While I'm trying to educate academia's golfy philistines, I'd better link as well to some of my somewhat more analytical golf writing thus far this summer....

I'm Back*

*Well, kinda. Just here celebrating Hawthorne's birthday by linking to this (read all the comments there on the only movie I've seen in a theater in, um, I believe, since onechan was born), which is one of the many great posts I've missed in the last month and a half while I've been away. And, yes, there is a (boring) story about that last part. But, no, I'm not telling it now. Got fireworks to go to!

More on Hamilton's First National Champions

From the Utica Observer-Dispatch. Real blogging to follow the rest of the summer!

Non-Western Literature Student Learning Analyses: On The Satanic Verses

I'm experimenting this year with adding blogging into the mix of things students do in my courses. So this semester I'll be posting post-group research/teaching project learning analyses from students in my Non-Western Literature course. The students' task in this assignment, one dimension of many they're being assessed on in this project, is simply to identify the one or two most interesting things they learned about the text and or writer on which they presented as a result of the planning, research, teaching, and reflection/assessment process they went through in doing the project. These are not meant to be full-blown analytical/interpretive/argumentative critical essays, but instead little personal, subjective pieces on what the text they taught meant to them.

Here's the last batch, from Team Wolverines, on Salman Rushie's The Satanic Verses. I wanted to start the course off with this novel, but the paperback wasn't available until later in the semester, so I decided to end it with a bang!

***

Mike leads off:

Over the course of this project I learned a great deal about the life and mind of Salman Rushdie. I learned first and foremost about the hardships that were placed upon him. For our presentation I focused primarily on the life of Salman Rushdie.

On February 14th, 1989 Khomeini, a Shi’a Muslim scholar, issued a fatwa on Salman Rushdie. A fatwa is a death sentence that calls the general Muslim population to hunt and kill someone that a scholar decrees. Khomeini issued this fatwa without giving a legal reason for his judgment. So between 1989 and the present Rushdie has had 11 assassination attempts on his life. On a funnier note every year on February 14th Rushdie reports that he still receives a “Valentine's Day” card from Iran letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him.

Another interesting fact is that the fatwa didn’t suppress the book at all. In fact it glorified it. In mid-January after the fatwa the book flew off the shelves. In 1989 he sold more than 750,000 copies and earned 2 million dollars.

Now our team on the other hand focused on several issues. One was Rushdie and his political views on 9/11. We also focused heavily on his personal life. In class we discussed his love life as well. Apparently having a death sentence put on you makes you very attractive to the ladies. Salman Rushdie has had 4 wives in the last 30 years and all of them had been famous models or actresses.


***

Jen picks up the ball and runs with it:

Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses is a very interesting read. Given more time to read it, I think I would have really enjoyed it. I had a hard time grasping everything within the novel because there was so much to absorb and not only was it the end of the semester, but I had to present on it and I chose to write a final paper on the novel. I would really love to give this book another chance and reread it because I know there is so much that I missed in reading it over such a short period of time.

After reading just the first few pages I knew I was in for an interesting read. I couldn’t tell yet if I was going to enjoy it or absolutely hate it. In the end, it was a little bit of both. It was rather enjoyable to read, but I got lost in the words sometimes. The dream sequence chapters confused me the most of anything and I had to go back and read them a few times. As I read, I jotted down important events on post-it notes and put them at the beginning of each chapter just to summarize what happened because I kept forgetting.

Salman Rushdie really crammed a lot of things into one novel, but I can easily see why this is one of his most, if not the most, successful novels he has written. Ultimately, I most enjoyed the idea of an ambiguous narrator throughout this novel. I am writing my final paper on the possibility of multiple narrators in The Satanic Verses and the significance of this. The narrator, although he only addresses himself as “I” a few times, is what kept me going while reading this book.

There are many instances where the narrator hints to us who he could be, but each of these instances hints at a different narrator. Although we will never know who Rushdie intended the narrator to be, I love that. Had the first line of the book been, “I am Satan and I’m going to tell you a story,” I don’t think the novel would have been as interesting. There is a lot going on in The Satanic Verses and the fact that the narrator never actually reveals himself is what made the novel so enjoyable for me to read.

I also really enjoyed the pairing of good and evil and the idea that they can be one in the same. Obviously we can’t have one without the other, but the idea that good and evil are one in the same leads to the idea that the narrator could possibly be God and Satan, or even a human. I am still exploring the many possibilities and I am really enjoying it. I know that I will never know exactly who the narrator is or who Rushdie wanted it to be, but the research on it and the quotes from the novel pertaining to it are very interesting.

***

Shane continues:

I think the most interesting things I discovered about Rushdie during this would need to be his perception of good and evil, the falseness of religion and the idea of judging based on appearances. Rushdie does a lot with good and evil--for example, Chamcha is, essentially, the devil. His physical appearances resemble those of a demon, but he portrays mostly good traits early after his transformation. Beyond the judging a book by its cover thing, Chamcha is mostly good. He doesn't get wrathful with his (ex)wife; if anything, he is more understanding than most would be. However, he does do his best to ruin Gibreel, who he feels hasn't earned his good fortune. I got the impression Rushdie feels people are inherently good unless they feel they have been unjustly wronged. Even so, Gibreel, after being ruthlessly ruined by Chamcha, saves his life from danger, even though he was the one who put him into it.

The biggest thing I took from The Satanic Verses is that Rushdie really doesn't like organized religion--he thinks it's a joke. Although it can be assumed he is targeting Islam specifically, the situation he represents with Mahound is very similar to the story of the Mormon faith, slightly disillusioned. Mahound checks with God to find out the legality and purity of certain decrees, but all he does is walk off into the mountains and return with God's decree. He makes, even more so than the actual Mormon story, religious figures to be con artists, intent on swindling and confusing innocent passersby.

I think you'd be happy to know that I actually don't hate Rushdie. The first chapter of his book is terrible--it's a torrential jeremiad of ridiculous stream-of-thought writing that not only confuses readers but accomplishes nothing. However, once I got into the story I found it compelling. I wish Rushdie had dropped his pissing contest with Islam, however, because I feel the actual fictional story (without religious dreams and flashbacks) would have made a better stand-alone novel than with it.

***

Tom concludes:

My original goal for my portion of the presentation was to present the essay, “Introduction: Reading Rushdie after September 11, 2001,” by Sabina Sawhney and Simona Sawhney. I was going to present their points and show the way in which Salman Rushdie seemed to be obviously affected by both the Fatwa put on him and the events of September 11th. However, I learned that essays such as this one cannot be taken at face value. It should never be assumed that anyone (even those who claim to be experts worthy of producing a collection) necessarily reads any author of fiction or political writings the same as any other person. They describe the shift between Rushdie’s pre and post political views and discuss them as if there is a huge contradiction from one to the other. However, upon reading some of the articles he writes that they cite in one light, and based on my own reading of The Satanic Verses, it seemed obvious to me that they were not reading him correctly. The quotes they used seemed out of context and unfair representations of what I felt were his views on the politics they discussed. I attempted to show this in my presentation but I didn’t feel that I had grabbed the attention of the class sufficiently enough to make them want to listen to me go on about something they hadn’t read. I wanted to present many more points of issue, but the class looked tired, uninterested (sans a few faces), and generally unenthusiastic about what I thought was an intriguing topic.

I think that I did a better job at bringing them into the discussion within our small groups and did notice that my presentation set the stage somewhat for the small groups to have some idea of where I wanted discussion to go. We ended up focusing on “World Policing” policies that are prevalent in western politics. We discussed the Kashmir conflict as Rushdie presents it and compared that to our own thoughts on the USA/Iraq issues that we have a closer association to. I did try to relate to the text somewhat; however, I was aware of the lack of reading that occurs near the end of semesters and felt good about not trying to get them to talk about the book more closely than they were able to.

Go Blue!

The Hamilton College women's lacrosse team just won the Division III National Championship! It's the first team national championship in any sport at my old college. I'm turning this blog Continental Blue in honor of their feat.

[Update: Here are almost 175 photos of the team's triumphant return to Clinton--see if you can find my dad on page 3.]

Non-Western Literature Student Learning Analyses: Team Shortstack on Kincaid and Devi

I'm experimenting this year with adding blogging into the mix of things students do in my courses. So this semester I'll be posting post-group research/teaching project learning analyses from students in my Non-Western Literature course. The students' task in this assignment, one dimension of many they're being assessed on in this project, is simply to identify the one or two most interesting things they learned about the text and or writer on which they presented as a result of the planning, research, teaching, and reflection/assessment process they went through in doing the project. These are not meant to be full-blown analytical/interpretive/argumentative critical essays, but instead little personal, subjective pieces on what the text they taught meant to them.

Here's the sixth batch, from Team Shortstack, on Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place and the first two stories from Mahasweta Devi's Imaginary Maps.

***

Here's Terry:

Although we covered two works for our group presentation I was most interested in Mahasweta Devi’s Imaginary Maps and decided to cover that as my contribution to the group effort. In doing my research I learned a lot about Devi as an author, the history of and present day India, and gained a deeper understanding of what she was trying to accomplish with Imaginary Maps.

One thing that really surprised me about Devi was that she did not come from the indigenous tribes that she is fighting for, but from a somewhat privileged background with literary parents. She writes with such a passion I assumed she had a stake in her struggle to get the message out that these people are being oppressed. It was a powerful notion to me that this was not the case; she simply saw a great injustice and decided to try to do something about it. In being both a writer and an activist Mahasweta Devi reminded me of Arundhati Roy, another powerful Indian author that I read this semester. Though I didn’t bring it up in class I found it interesting that they both received the Sahitya Akademi award, an organization supported by the Indian government. While Devi accepted the award, Roy declined. Although Roy is much more critical of the Indian government, I would think that Devi would make that decision also since the Indian government still bears some of the responsibility for many of the injustices she fights against.

I didn’t know anything about Devi before I dived into reading her work. Something that surprised me was that when reading Imaginary Maps I felt that these stories must be taking place in the 19th century, or at least the early 20th. The stories are so rife with themes of slavery and organized oppression that I felt like there was no way that they could be taking place in a contemporary country. I thought an industrialized nation like India would be making strides in human rights. I got a real sense of futility for these tribes because it seems as though the this practice of a hierarchical caste system and bonded-labor system are so entrenched in rural India that despite the fact that both discrimination based on caste and bonded-labor are illegal they still exist in society de facto. After learning about Devi and her activism I feel like she is a hero to the forgotten peoples of India, and I sincerely hope she experiences success in her struggle.

***

Here's Kelly Jean Doherty:

Out of the two books that my group presented I think that Kincaid had a greater effect on me. I had never really thought about what it meant to be a tourist, especially in a small and poverty-stricken place. I realized that what may be vacation to some is hell for others. It is not right to disregard customs of a place simply so that one can get away for awhile. The book was touching in that one sees how the natives may view the tourist. I will think twice about going to other places now. I may be more aware of the fact that I should be enjoying a place for what it truly is, not some sweet spot that has been made for the tourist by some western agent of travel. One would want to pick a place to visit carefully after reading this book. I certainly would! Kincaid is an amazing writer and I plan to read many more of her works.

***

And here's Paul:

I felt guilty about being a tourist a little bit. I always feel a little out of place not matter where I go in life. Now I will feel further out of place due to Jamaica Kincaid’s novel A Small Place. Ultimately, I feel overprivileged.

I enjoyed reading A Small Place. I liked it because it had this sarcastic wit to it. When I write an essay or a script I write with a sarcastic wit. It’s nice to see something like a sarcastic wit has survived. Having the right smidgen of wit adds to the ease of reading, making a read faster and harsher than before. The subject matter was also interesting.

Tourism is money. Money people tend to enjoy when they use it to buy things. Money can corrupt a people or government. I enjoy money. I don’t have much money because I am a stereotype of a college student. Though I did not make enough last year to pay taxes; I still felt guilty about having what little money I did have. I felt that white guilt that I rarely feel. I ultimately felt overprivileged. America is a little overprivileged. People in third world countries must look at America and think “They have so much food they're fueling their cars with it!”

I’ve ran out of things to say. The book is enjoyable and fast paced. The book is a real nice read. Perfect for any nice sunny summer day beneath a tree or reading location.

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Up last (but not least) is Team Wolverines on Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.