Thursday, January 26, 2012

Final Evaluations: Graduate Classical Theory

I had 10 students in this course. We read several selections from a range of theorists. The usual three were included: Marx, Weber, Durkheim. I also included Comte, Spencer, Tocqueville, Du Bois, Beatrice Potter Webb, Marianne Weber, Mead, and Blumer. Students took turns facilitating class discussion. Students chose a contemporary topic and wrote a paper applying the work of at least 3 classical theorists to that topic. They wrote the paper in the following stages:

1) Secondary lit review
2) Primary lit review (the actual theorists)
3) Argument
4) First Draft
5) Final Draft

Students also had a funny little final exam that I gave them. It was actually distributed on day 1. It was a list of 40 names and terms that they should know as part of their sociological cultural capital. They had to write an explanation for each, citing their source, and not using the same source for more than 5 items.

To process the evaluations, I made 3 columns on a sheet of paper, labeled: Pros, Cons, Suggestions. I made a list of each thing that was stated, noting also the frequency with which it was stated. I choose to ignore pros and cons that were mentioned only once, but I will happily consider any suggestion, regardless of frequency.

Pros:
Facilitation Assignment (5X)
Paper Stages (4X)
Organized Syllabus (4X)
Du Bois selections (3X)
Du Bois Video (3X) -- WEB Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices
Class Discussion (3X)
Ritzer text (2X)
Organized Blackboard site (2X)
Final Exam (2X)
High Expectations (2X)
Due Dates (2X)
Flexibility of the Professor (2X)
Selection of Theorists (2X)

Cons:
Ritzer text (2X)
Final Exam (2X)
Du Bois Video (2X)

(So the cons effectively knock out 3 of the pros, but in doing so I'm left with no cons.)

Suggestions:
More lecturing by professor (4X)
More time on classical feminist theory (2X)
More time between assignments (2X)
Shorter selections (1X -- eye roll)
Shorter final exam (1X)
More on religion (1X) -- really just a personal preference by 1 student
More symbolic interactionism (1X)
More guidance with facilitation
Submit argument section earlier

Quantitatively, there were 11 questions scaled 1-5. My scores ranged from 4.2 to 4.9. My lowest scores were for "I [the student] came well prepared for class" (4.2), "classroom atmosphere" (4.4), and "taught this course well" (4.5). My top scores were for "explained the educational objectives" (4.9), and "well organized instructor" (4.8).

So, overall, the class went very well. I probably should add in a definite 30 minute lecture from the professor for every class next year, rather than just jumping in less deliberately. I would love to add a second week of feminist theory but am not sure what to sacrifice in order to accomplish that. Perhaps Parsons.

(lightning didn't strike)

I also would like to rearrange the paper stages as follows:

1) Theorist 1: Primary and Secondary
2) Theorist 2: Primary and Secondary
3) Theorist 3: Primary and Secondary
4) Discussion/Argument
5) Final Draft with Introduction, Conclusion and References

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Don't Hide It, Flaunt It

Enjoying this site/blog for perspectives on disability:

The Cast of Celebrity Apprentice, Spring 2012


Donald Trump revealed the new cast for Celebrity Apprentice this morning on the Today show:

WOMEN:
Teresa Giudice (“Real Housewives”)
Debbie Gibson (Singer)
Lisa Lampanelli (Comic)
Victoria Gotti (Mob Princess)
Tia Carrere (Actress)
Aubrey O’Day (Reality Star)
Cheryl Tiegs (Model)
Dayana Mendoza (Miss Universe)
Patricia Velasquez (Model)

MEN:
Clay Aiken (“American Idol”)
Adam Carolla (TV/Radio Host)
Lou Ferrigno (“Hulk”)
Arsenio Hall (TV Host)
George Takei (“Star Trek”)
Dee Snider (Rocker)
Penn Jillette (Magician)
Marco Andretti (Driver)
Paul Teutal (“American Chopper”)

18 cast members, evenly divided by gender and beginning the season (as usual) on gender-based teams. 72% (13) White, 6% (1) Black, 11% (2) Asian, 11% (2, both Venezuelan) Hispanic. 2 of the men are gay. As far as I know, none of the women are lesbian.

At 74, George Takei is the oldest. Ferrigno, Teutal, and Snider, are in their 60s. Hall, Jillette, Tiegs, and Lampanelli are in their 50s. Carolla, Velasquez, Gotti, Gibson, and Carrere are in their 40s. Aiken, and Giudice are in their 30s. Andretti, Mendoza, O'Day, are in their 20s. It's an older cast in general, but the men skew much older than the women. This is typical on television (see Martha Lauzen's work). The female population skews older than men, thanks to longer lives, but you wouldn't know that from TV.

About half of the new contestants appeared on the Today Show with Trump this morning. When Matt Lauer asked how many thought that Trump would make a good president, all of them raised their hands.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Do Yoga and Don't be an Asshole

This is an old teaching philosophy from several years ago. I've used the mantra "don't be an asshole" a few times lately, when I felt particularly annoyed by certain behaviors from my students. I thought I'd dig this back up.

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Writing this statement was inspired by a conversation I had recently with an undergraduate who was preparing for a career in cooking instruction. “What advice do you have for an aspiring teacher?” he asked me. Given our very different fields, it was clearly important to think beyond the strictly sociological (“always teach theory and methods as one”), and even beyond the arts & sciences (“bravely embrace seemingly new traditions”). What could I tell this young person about teaching that would apply as well to him—a chef who teaches others how to cook—as it does to myself as a teacher of sociology?


“Do yoga,” I told him. We were sitting outside of our classroom, before an 8:40am class, having both arrived very early. I had just come from a 6:30am yoga class, and my gym bag was sitting next to my course materials. I took up yoga during my first year as a professor and have found it to be indispensable for classroom preparation. First of all, on days when I have an early class, going to yoga first means that I’m not starting my day by facing 50 undergraduates. Students are a generally amicable group, but each day presents new challenges for them and for me, and I don’t want to face these challenges straight out of bed. I need time to get centered. Yoga also prepares me for the physical demands of teaching. My muscles get stretched, my spine comes into alignment, my neck and shoulders relax and my breathing becomes deep and intentional. As a consequence, I am both calm and authoritative in the classroom. My posture is powerful and I have the energy I need to move about the classroom and engage all of my students. Finally, the closing postures of my yoga class prepare me spiritually for the day. “Experience the effect,” my yoga teacher says. “Visualize yourselves having a wonderful day. Think of one positive thing that will happen today and carry that with you.” I frequently imagine a classroom of engaged learners at that point (though my intentions are also directed at friends, lovers, family members, and world peace), and later I do my part to make this intention a reality.


“Do yoga.” My student seemed both amused and disappointed. “Anything else?” “Yes,” I replied. “Don’t be an asshole.” The philosophical principle of not being an asshole is more complicated than it sounds; which is to say that being an asshole comes scandalously easy. Given the power that teachers wield in their classrooms and in the lives of their students, the opportunities for assholery are ample.


At minimum, “don’t be an asshole” is a mantra. I repeat it in the back of my head during pedagogical moments (teaching, holding office hours, answering emails from students) and roll it to the front of my head at key times. “My paper is finished but the printer in the student lab is busted. Can I email it to you after class?” Well, I have a no late paper policy. And you, the student, are solely responsible for ensuring that you are able to complete and submit your assignments by the deadline. But then, don’t be an asshole. “Okay,” I say. “Make sure you send it by 4:30, so that I can print it before going home.” (I recognize that for some teachers, in some classes, and in some contexts, the above circumstance could have produced very different results without the teacher earning the label of asshole. But for me, for this course, and in this circumstance, not being an asshole meant recognizing that it was easy enough for me to print this short paper later in the day, and that my students have widely variant access to personal printers, and that sometimes the printers in the labs really do go haywire.) The mantra saves me from making justifiable but needlessly mean decisions that only serve to alienate students from the curriculum.


But “don’t be an asshole” is more than mere mantra. It’s also a pedagogical theory that implies a host of policies and practices, several of which I summarize below.


Om 1: Respect the Material

The curriculum is what draws the teacher and students together, whether the course is required or an elective. An instructor who seeks coolness by labeling portions of the material as bogus will only inspire students to treat the course as bogus. But this can be tempting for those of use who teach courses in which part or all of the subject matter is in fields where our expertise is limited. To combat this, we need to embrace the opportunity to gain new expertise.


Conveniently, this puts us in the position of being students alongside of our students—learning a new area together. In my first semester of teaching, I was assigned two sections of a course on ethnicity, a subject I had never actually studied. Though daunting and difficult, I read several books to prepare myself and selected as the primary textbook a history of ethnicity in America. This allowed me to study the important historical components alongside my students, while my lectures provided the sociological elements with which I was more comfortable. The point is that the knowledge produced by a course can transform the lives of students by exposing them to new ideas and giving them new skills—and as such, that knowledge should never be degraded or belittled. When students say the readings are difficult, the concepts complex, the papers time-consuming, and the tests hard, the appropriate response is a hardy “Amen!”


Om 2: Hold High Expectations of the Students

Students may sign up for a course because they think it’s a gut, but proving them right produces neither good course evaluations nor engaged learning. Students are capable of reading at a high level, so long as they are set up to be good readers. (We do this by anticipating challenging vocabulary, making links across readings and lectures, and contextualizing the ideas.) Students are capable of high level discussions. When I pose an open-ended question and a student responds with a reply that misses the mark, I don’t pretend otherwise. I just say “Nope, that’s not what I’m looking for,” and I help him to see why. I also ask him to help me in posing the question better. Students are capable of writing high-level papers, although they will need some preparation for writing within the discipline—preparation that makes clear what standards the teacher is using. I grade papers more on argument than mechanics, but spelling, grammar and syntax are important both in their own right and for their capacity to clarify meaning. So I comment a lot on these word-level and sentence-level issues because I expect students to write excellent papers. These writing standards are explained on my syllabi and reinforced with in-class writing workshops. I consistently find that by using high standards for student writing, the quality of writing consistently improves across the semester (usually from a C average on the first paper to a B average on the last paper). When students are not challenged—when expectations are low—they tend to conclude that the teacher is an asshole. And I tend to agree.


Om 3: Everyone is an Intellectual.

This is a claim I borrow from several sources—Antonio Gramsci, Henry Giroux, bell hooks, and Patricia Hill Collins. The premise is that humans are by nature intellectual creatures (a rare biological universal that I will concede). We all become experts at something, whether it’s academics, family life, sports, popular culture, auto mechanics, electronics, or any of a number of possibilities. As it happens, I am a sociological intellectual. Some of my students share this expertise with me—and I treat them all as amateur sociologists—others are experts at other things. But the classroom is filled to the brim with intellectuals and each member should be engaged as such.


Om 4: Respect Time and Money

Though class participants share huge reserves of intellect, we do not all have the same access to time and money. I try to acknowledge this with careful and responsible course planning. I won’t select a textbook if I don’t anticipate using at least 80% of the text. Textbooks are expensive, for reasons that I think are beyond the control of publishers. But out students should never pay that price needlessly. Required texts should be thoroughly incorporated into the curriculum and alternatives such as web postings should be used whenever possible and appropriate.


Respecting time demands a thoughtful consideration of the curriculum and assignments. I list on my syllabus—under the heading ‘Responsibilities of the Professor’—an expectation that I will provide fruitful information and skills. For my graduate students, this means that they will not write course papers, but instead will submit the first draft of a scholarly article. I then work with them in submitting these papers to conferences and preparing them for publication. As a midterm assignment, I ask them to submit either a publishable annotated bibliography or a lecture outline for use in an undergraduate course.


For my undergraduate students, respecting time means that each of my test questions is held accountable to a larger sense of the big picture. Before finalizing the test, I re-examine each question and ask myself “why does knowing this information matter?” If I cannot answer that question for a given item, it has to go.


Respecting students’ time also means attention to small details like showing up for class on time, never holding students after the scheduled end-time, making sure that I’m prepared, not abusing the opportunity to send emails, and confirming that classroom technology works (still a big struggle for me). But here’s a small detail that has become a big issue for me—I promise to return all papers within one week of receipt. I do this to respect student anxiety about their work and to capitalize on the opportunity for students to learn from returned assignments. Sometimes it is incredibly difficult, and I must admit that I have broken the promise. The first time I broke the promise, I baked a batch of chocolate-chip cookies, as a sort of apology (I also apologized verbally in class). The second time that I broke the promise, I gave my students a lengthier window for paper revisions. (As a policy, I don’t apologize in a way that compromises the material, say by giving an extra credit point or dropping a reading.) These apologetic concessions help to affirm to myself and my students that the basic principle—respecting time and returning assignments promptly—is very important, even as I accept that I am human and cannot live up to every standard.


I also expect students to respect my time. I state on the syllabus it is the students’ responsibility to show up for all classes on time, and to be on time for all scheduled meetings outside of class. Further, I state an expectation that they will be prepared for all classes and that they will ensure their ability to submit all assignments on time. In practice, I am flexible with many student circumstances—unexpected difficulties arise and I don’t want to be an asshole—but I also don’t tolerate asshole treatment from my students.


Om 5: Don’t Obscure the Information

In this age of anxiety about grade inflation (perhaps I should say this age of grade inflation, but I think the jury’s still out on that), it can be tempting to ‘fix’ grades by making the questions obscure—two steps away from what the students found in the readings and heard in lectures or discussions. It seems to me that this is a really sad mistake that misses our basic calling to educate students. I try to present the information in the clearest possible terms, and to make it seem real through the use of life-based examples. I give my students a review sheet for tests that comes darn close to directly stating the test questions. But this is not spoon-feeding. We deal in difficult and complex concepts. The material is sufficiently challenging when presented in a straight-forward manner. I feel far more comfortable with being a demanding grader because I know that I have presented this material as clearly as possible. The difficulty of the material has, thus far, prevented any situation in which I might be deemed a grade inflater, and yet students do not accuse me of being unfair either.


Om 6: Diffuse Unearned Power and Seek Earned Strength

This concept comes from Peggy McIntosh’s investigation of white privilege, in which she suggests that white people, like all people, should feel empowered in their everyday lives. But their empowerment should be derived from earned strength—their skills and training—and not from unearned power, specifically their race. She lists the many ways that whites benefit from their race on a daily basis—ways that they are often oblivious to. The concept applies broadly to a number of areas. In the classroom, I want to be a powerful and authoritative teacher, but I want that authority to come from my knowledge of the material, my skills as a teacher, and my commitment to my students. I don’t want authority to come from a title in front of my name or a particular classroom demeanor. I am proud of my doctorate—I worked hard for it—but I didn’t earn it from my students. So I don’t ask them to call me Dr. Kidd. They call me Dustin, just as everyone else in my life calls me Dustin, and I call them by their first names as well. I also don’t particularly dress up for class. I dress professionally, but still somewhat casually (trousers, yes, but no tie or jacket). I’m not trying to be ‘cool’ or act like I’m one of the students. I am the professor, but I earn that authority through professing the wisdom of my field, not through a title or a tie. And I actively discuss this distinction between unearned power and earned strength in the classroom, so that my students are very aware of why they are calling me Dustin and why I wear no suit.


Om 7: Be Kind to Yourself

By ‘yourself’ I mean myself. I do not abuse myself in my role as a teacher. I work hard, but not too hard. I make sure that I am actively engaged in my relationships, my research, my personal and physical needs, and my spirituality—never sacrificing these areas of my life to the demands of teaching. Frankly, that would just make me a worse teacher. I am sure that I would be an asshole then. I design my syllabi carefully to fit the ebb and flow of my own life. I try to avoid collecting assignments in more than one class on the same week. If I have to break my promise of returning papers within one week of receipt, in order to stay sane, I do so—and I simply explain my difficulties to my students and apologize for letting them down (I find that students are happy to forgive, if given the opportunity). In being kind to myself, of course, I also ask that my students be kind to me. I think this reasonable, and I return the favor by trying to respect the ebb and flow of their lives—avoiding major assignments around holiday periods, respecting the ways that their own religious beliefs conflict with the academic calendar, and so forth.


Om 8: Admit to Mistakes

I am a big believer in the power of apologies and forgiveness. Clearly, I have already alluded to this belief earlier in this statement. I experienced this most powerfully when I was still a graduate student and serving as an adjunct faculty at the University of Virginia. I had a class scheduled to meet early on the morning of September 12th, 2001. I have never been so profoundly aware of my own lack of wisdom as I was that week. In my sadness and confusion after the morning events of September 11th, I decided that I would still hold class the next day. It was a terrible class. I had a lecture that was well-prepared, but I just wasn’t present in it. Attendance was low as well. I didn’t even acknowledge the events of the previous day. I think there could have been lots of good reasons for holding class that day, but I didn’t lay claim to any of them. My reasons—stubbornness and confusion—were wrong. On the last day of class that semester, I finally got up the nerve to apologize. On my final evaluations, in addition to some comments indicating that students were actually glad to be in class that day—were other comments thanking me for the apology and outright forgiving me for the mistake. As teachers, we often feel that our students want us to be perfect, but we only feel that way because we invest so much into making them think we really are flawless. As I said earlier, students have deep wells of forgiveness that we draw on too rarely—not because we don’t make mistakes, but because we don’t admit to mistakes.


Om 9: Make the Changes that Need to be Made

We don’t inherit perfect disciplines or perfect curricula. To me, this is most clear in the ways that our material is dominated by men, economic elites, whites, heterosexuals, and the nondisabled. As a teacher, I can either reproduce these discriminations, or I can transform them. I never studied queer theory, but when I was first assigned to teach social theory I knew that queer theory had to be included. So it was up to me to survey the field and to present it to my students. When I was a student, my classical social theory classes never included works by women. But women have obviously long held innovative ideas about society, so it was up to me to find and teach these theorists and theories to my students. I am a terrible candidate for this kind of transformative work, but as the teacher in my classes, I am the only candidate.


Om 10: Communicate

Assholes don’t communicate. Teachers need to communicate. Communication comes in many forms, from a comprehensive statement of course policies in the syllabus to thorough feedback on assignments. Good communication begins with a clearly stated course purpose and a list of course goals. These should be presented in class and listed on the syllabus. Such transparency allows students to make the best decision about whether the course is appropriate for their own goals and purposes. One of the most important ways that I communicate with my students regards the participation component of my courses. This aspect of the course is very important to me, and it is crucial for student understanding of the material. Students are often intimated by this grade, and I suspect it often seems like something that is just made up at the end of the semester. To avoid this concern, I give my students a midterm participation feedback form. On the form, I list the many expectations that I hold for student participation. The form provides them with an estimation of their grade so far, and it indicates which of the expectations they should focus on in order to improve the grade.


I also use evaluations as a form of communication. I hold an evaluation about a third or halfway into the semester. The evaluation questions are simple—what helps you learn in this class, what hinders your learning, and what suggestions do you have. The feedback from these forms is typed up, and quantified in various ways. Quantifying the results helps me to put it in perspective. I might feel very upset about a particular comment, but the quantification reveals that it was an isolated concern. The results are shared with class, including a strategy for how I will respond to the feedback, and a request for how I want them to respond. In addition, I provide my own evaluation of how the course is going so far.


The issues of cheating and plagiarism raise some important questions about communication. On the one hand, I don’t want my students to cheat by accident because they don’t realize that a particular action constitutes cheating. On the other hand, I don’t want my students to miss a good learning opportunity—such as sharing their papers with each other—because they are afraid that it might be construed as cheating. The best way to avoid these dilemmas that I have found is to state a clear policy of what constitutes cheating on each assignment. This gets beyond the vagaries of the generic code of conduct and clarifies which actions are encouraged and which are forbidden.


Finally, I state clear communication policies on my syllabi, indicating how and when to email me, when to expect a response, when it is okay to call me at home, and how often I expect students to check their email.


Om

These ten Oms should not be confused for being a teaching philosophy. They are rather, a teaching philosophy statement; a lengthy introduction to a short teaching philosophy: do yoga and don’t be an asshole. My philosophy is premised upon these two commands. The second is like the first. Not being an asshole is, in many ways, the root of yogic philosophy. Kind people everywhere are yogis in my eyes—whether they exhibit this kindness by feeding the poor or by conducting thoughtful, careful research into issues that matter. To my readers, my students, and kind people the world over, I close simply...


Namaste.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Book Project


I'm working on a new book project. The research is question is both very long, and pretty simple:

How do race, class, gender, disability status, and sexuality impact the content, production, and audience of film, television, music, print media, and the internet?

The question is answered using a combination of secondary and primary data, but I also highlight the many ways the question remains unanswered and suggest ways that we could improve our sociological study of popular culture. If you have favorite studies that are relevant, send them my way!

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Lessons for improving search on Google

1. Use the ~ symbol in front of a word to let google include similar words in the search. ~cheap will also look for affordable, budget, etc.

2. Use the - to exclude a word from the search. fun music -kei$ha will exclude Kei$ha from the findings.

3. Use an elipsis (...) to indicate a range. $100...$300 will yield a price range for a given item.

4. Use 'site:' to search a particular website. 'Glee site:nytimes.com' will yield all articles on Glee (or glee) from the Times.

5. Use 'filetype:' to find a particular kind of document. I often want to save myself some work for class by using other people's pdfs of book chapters. So I can type in: 'McChesney US Media filetype:pdf' to find someone else's scan.

6. Use 'define' before a term to let Google generate a definition for you, rather than having to click through various dictionary sites.

7. Enter tracking numbers for FedEx, USPS, and UPS and other delivery services directly into Google to track the package. You don't even have to name the service.

8. Use 'weather' to find the local conditions. 'weather montreal' will yield the current conditions in Montreal.

9. Use 'time' to find the current time of any location. 'time paris' will give you the current time in Paris.

10. Type your airline and flight number into Google for the flight status.

11. Text your searches to google. Send the text to 466453 (put this in your phone) with the search terms and you get a reply pretty quickly. A text of 'vetri philadelphia' yielded the address and phone number of the restaurant in a text that came within 30 seconds.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Spiral Q: The Mission


Today begins the Cardboard to Courage Campaign at Spiral Q. Please visit the website and donate $10-$100 to support this fantastic community.

Spiral Q's mission: Spiral Q builds strong and equitable communities characterized by joy, creativity, can-do attitudes, and the courage to act on their convictions.

To be very clear, Spiral Q doesn't make puppets or any other kind of art object. Spiral Q builds communities first and foremost. Art happens along the way, but it never takes the form of a static object. Art is a living breathing process and at Spiral Q building art and building community are the same process. Spiral Q takes for granted the fact that all humans are naturally creative expressive beings and we all long to tell our stories--be they personal memoirs, creative fictions, lived poems, or community documentaries.

I love that joy is at the heart of Spiral Q's mission, right there in the middle of the sentence. Every social movement, every project for change, needs to have a party and celebrate with joy. This can involve dancing, feasting, worshipping, playing--you must have a party and you deserve to have joy.

All of us are CREATIVE and we deserve to have JOY. Our actions make a difference and we CAN DO the work of making the world around us. When we have the COURAGE TO ACT ON OUR CONVICTIONS, our communities become STRONG and EQUITABLE.

Strong and equitable communities are built on conversation, expression, free assembly, and the constant rejection of the lines that so often divide us--lines of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ableism, nationalism, and ultimately lines of power and silence.

Art is not an object, it's a process, and a SOCIAL process at that. Even the lone artist constructing a painting, performance, photograph or sculpture is COMMUNICATING a message to the social world around her. In the best of cases, art is a SOCIAL PROJECT that constantly defines and redefines what it means to be human.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Me and Oprah Winfrey

As the Oprah Winfrey show fades to black, I thought I'd share this poem I wrote about a year after college when I was living in London (1997).
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Me and Oprah Winfrey

Ever since Princess Diana and Mother Theresa passed from hope into glory it's been just me and Oprah Winfrey out here saving the world. Oprah said to me, "Let's fight for the rights of impoverished children." And we did. Oprah said, "Let's encourage the spread of volunteerism." And we did. Oprah said, "Let's celebrate wonderful people the world over." And, of course, we did. When I turned in the sand to see the footprints behind, I noticed that when Jesus wasn't carrying me, Oprah was.

Today, I am grateful for these five:

1) I am grateful for the opportunity to love God.
2) I am grateful for the privilege of loving others.
3) I am grateful for the joy of loving myself.
4) I am grateful for the responsibility of loving the earth.
5) I am grateful for the love that has been given me.

I keep this gratitude journal everyday, just like Oprah said to. And each month I drive to the bookstore to buy the latest release from Oprah's book club. It isn't so much that I worship Oprah, as that I worship with Oprah.

These five lessons, I pass on:

1) If you give generously, you will be blessed generously.
2) If you love yourself, you will be beautiful.
3) If you invest in children, you will bear much fruit.
4) If you sacrifice happiness, you will discover wisdom.
5) If you love your neighbor as yourself, you will experience God.
pass it on, pass it on, pass it on…

I could never be the Princess of Wales and I could never be the Saint of India. I could never be a talk show host. Oprah is the talk show host, I am the audience. The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come! Take the free gift of the water of life." Oprah and I say, "Drink only what you need, and save a little water for the ones who come after."

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Advice for Tenure Track Faculty

As a newly tenured faculty member, I'm reflecting on what helped me the most in crossing this difficult bridge. Here's my top five.

1. Research: Do one big thing at a time. It's easy to feel like you need to achieve a million things: as many articles as possible, a book, book reviews, media interviews, conferences, edited volumes, research networks in your area. That can be a formula for actually accomplishing nothing. So pick one thing at a time to focus on. I struggled a lot with this, but at a key moment I put an article to the side and just focused on my book. So I suggest picking the most important thing to start with and going after that. If you're interest in writing a book, but struggling to get started, then write one article that can become a book chapter, and then write the book. If you're ready to go straight to the book, go for it. If you're really an article writer, write one at a time.

A useful resource for me in the writing process has been Dropbox. I keep all of my documents on Dropbox so that I can access my research documents easily from any location. I don't keep any documents on my office machine or my home machine and I've never regretted that. It also allows me to easily share folders with mentors, research assistants, and co-authors. It also lets me access my documents from my iPhone or from other computers.

2. Teaching: Use simple easy tricks to make teaching fun, interactive, and easy. If you try to script every moment of every class you're going to exhaust yourself and you're not going to achieve a lot of research. Giving your students a lot of voice in the classroom makes for both better learning and easier teaching. Sometimes I come into the classroom, circle the students up, and ask them to offer one comment, question or critique from the week's readings. Students are encouraged to respond to each other and if a discussion develops I let it go. If a comment garners no response, I move to the next student. Sometimes I ask students to work in pairs or small groups to make a visual map of the week's topics, showing the relationship between key ideas. They then share these with the class and a discussion develops.

My favorite teaching resource is Prezi. With Prezi, I can use images, tables, key quotes, and YouTube videos to spark discussion. Assembling a few of these for each class provides plenty of material to foster discussion and allows the class to interpret information together.

3. Service: Focus on service within the discipline early on, and within the university later. Focusing early in your discipline allows you to build contacts and a reputation in your field. This will bring research and publication opportunities and shows that you have a voice in your field. Focusing later on the university level gives you the opportunity to build important networks across disciplines which will demonstrate that you're invested in your school. These folks, or their colleagues, are likely to serve on key committees in your tenure process and can provide helpful letters of support for your tenure case. At both levels, try to make logical connections between the service opportunities you choose and the research that you perform. You will likely have service in your department throughout your tenure-track years. It's important to show up at all meetings and follow through on the work you take on, but it's also important to protect yourself from too much cumbersome service.

I like to use the Google Documents program to develop my service work as a collaboration with my committee members. It allows you to gather expertise together so that you're not consumed by service projects all by yourself. Let people weigh in and move your work forward easily.

4. Organization: Stay light on your feet. Don't have a cluttered office, inbox, or computer. Use the library to get your books; use JSTOR to get pdfs of articles. Avoid having a disorganized bookshelf and a big set of files that just weigh you down and slow you down.

I like to make use of the best features on Gmail to manage my emails and ensure that I'm responding to important communications without getting bogged down by a cluttered inbox. Use the priority inbox lab to push important emails to the top. Create useful labels, or folders, to make it easy to find important emails. Create filters to get unimportant emails out of your inbox. Archive your emails so that your inbox stays clear.

5. Department politics: Keep your head down, but find your voice. You don't have to weigh in on every issue, but you should weigh in on the issues that matter to you. Listen to your colleagues to understand how and why they arrived at their positions on important departmental issues. Respect the time that they have put into the field, department, and university. You don't want to arrive at tenure time without having ever spoken up about anything, Find the issues that matter to you, where you have the most expertise, and take a stand. Colleagues who disagree with you will still respect you for your expertise.

The best resource is here is a mentor, and you don't have to have just one. You can have one person mentor your writing, one person mentor your teaching, and another person mentor you on the tenure-track process. Mentors can come from the department, from other departments, and from other colleges and universities. Mentorship is one of the most powerful ways to succeed in your field.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

An Easter Reflection on One Particular Crucifix


Andres Serrano's famous photograph Piss Christ was destroyed last weekend in Avignon. Here is the Washington Post's coverage of the vandalism of this art work by angered French Catholics. I thought I'd take this occasion to remind us of the history of this photograph and the controversy it faced. This is a selection from my book Legislating Creativity:


Piss Christ on the Senate Floor

The late 1980s was a time of controversy. In film, Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ had incited outrage from many Christians by depicting Jesus in a sexual relationship. A number of scandals plagued the music world, perhaps bolstering sales along the way. Madonna released the video for her song “Like a Prayer” in April of 1989, just as Pepsi released a commercial featuring the song and its singer. But the video, showing Madonna bearing signs of the stigmata, kissing a Black Christ figure, and dancing in lingerie in a church, upset many Christian organizations, including the Vatican. Later in the year, the hip-hop group 2 Live Crew would face legal battles and obscenity charges for their album As Nasty as They Wanna Be, and subsequent performances in Florida.

The Reverend Donald Wildmon used his leverage as founder and head of the American Family Association (AFA) to convince Pepsi to pull the controversial Madonna ad, even though it included none of the contentious material from the video. Madonna walked away with the $5 million that Pepsi had promised, for a commercial that aired only once. Wildmon had threatened that his members would boycott Pepsi if the ad continued to run. Pepsi pulled the Madonna commercial on April 4, 1989. The very next day, Wildmon turned his attention to the art world with a public letter decrying Andres Serrano’s photograph Piss Christ:

"We should have known it would come to this. In a recent art exhibition displayed in several museums throughout the country, one “work of art” was a very large, vivid photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine. The work, by Andres Serrano, was titled “Piss Christ.” When asked, since he had worked with urine, what could be expected next, Mr. Serrano said, “Semen.” And, of course, defecation will follow that. The bias and bigotry against Christians, which has dominated television and movies for the past decade or more, has now moved over to the art museums."

The letter never mentions NEA funding, but that came to light soon after. Nor does the letter outline a specific agenda for addressing the writer’s concerns. It does not ask recipients to contact their politicians or the hosts of the art exhibit. Indeed, the details of the exhibit are not even mentioned. Effectively, the letter laid the groundwork for Wildmon and the AFA to set their sights on the arts. Wildmon’s attention had, until then, been focused on television and other forms of commercial culture—including Madonna’s Pepsi commercial and The Last Temptation of Christ. After several years as a Methodist minister, Wildmon left the clergy in 1977 to start the National Federation for Decency. Later renamed the American Family Association, this organization targets whatever it deems as morally offensive, as well as anti-religious content in the media. The art world was a new target for Wildmon’s criticism, and the letter above announced that shift in focus. But in the coming weeks, Wildmon’s agenda became clear: to sanitize the arts through an attack on the NEA. Wildmon’s letter was addressed to AFA members, but copies were circulated to members of congress and President Bush.

Andres Serrano, born in 1950, is an American photographer of Cuban and Honduran ancestry. His photographs in the early 1980s made heavy use of flesh—carcasses of fish, chickens, cows, and coyotes—as well as fluids such as milk and blood. Piss Christ was made in 1987, as Serrano began adding urine to his palette of blood and milk, and is one of a series that includes Piss Pope and Piss Satan. The series is entitled Immersions. Piss Christ depicts a crucifix submerged in a yellow liquid. The photograph is large (60” X 40”), but apart from the yellow tinge of the liquid, nothing in the image indicates the presence of urine. However, the title helps to affirm the association.

As with most works of art, Piss Christ allows for many interpretations. The availability of multiple interpretations—rather than one established reading—can stem from two sources. First, an artwork can be imbued with a degree of open-endedness, leaving room within the content for multiple interpretations. Second, a work’s placement in time, space, and social structure may give it multiple audiences, each of which will find a distinctive meaning as a result of the unique experiences and values its members bring to the encounter.

Consider the following interpretations of Piss Christ:
  • The photograph is a critique of capitalism which has extended the commodification process into religion by selling cheap tiny crucifixes. Placing the crucifix in urine stands as a commentary on capitalism.
  • The photograph is devotional. Serrano is exploring his faith through the iconography of the church and excretions of his body. Christian scripture declares the body to be a temple to God and also states that the kingdom of God is “within you.” Given that, urine might then be seen as holy water.
  • The photograph is an attack on the church and the artist is literally urinating on Jesus, invoking both religious freedom and freedom of expression.
  • The photograph is an art exercise, a reinterpretation of the common crucifix scene, as depicted in religious art since the Middle Ages. Urine is present not as a commentary, but only for the luminosity it gives the image.
This is just a handful of broad interpretations. Others are possible, and we can find further variations by discussing more specific components of the image. Serrano has been fairly quiet about the image, although he reminds us to be sensitive to the complexity of interpretation:

"You can’t say it is anti-Christian bigotry and ignore the fact that this person was once a Catholic, had a Catholic upbringing, has worked a lot with Christian imagery in the past, and as an artist feels very much aligned to other artists who have worked with Christian imagery consistently, such as Goya or Luis Bunuel and many others."

At any rate, it is problematic to reduce artistic images to language, which frequently happens in the interpretive process. My point is simply to say that, as we proceed, we need to recognize that any one particular meaning of the work is by no means a given. The meanings that become the most potent are formed and selected through complex social processes that, in this case, are legal, political, religious and discursive processes, as well as aesthetic.

Piss Christ was made in 1987. In 1988, Serrano was one of several artists nominated for the Awards in the Visual Arts (AVA) program of the Southeast Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), which is located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. SECCA’s AVA program, an annual awards program that began in 1981, gives 10 awards to artists representing ten regions of the country. The winning artists, chosen by a jury of art experts, receive a fellowship for work which they have completed, have a selection of works tour in an exhibit, and receive assistance in selling their work. After Serrano was selected as a winner, eight of his photographs were chosen for the AVA exhibition, which traveled to Los Angeles, CA; Pittsburgh, PA; and Richmond, VA. As a finalist, Serrano received $15,000 from SECCA. In order to run the program, SECCA received $75,000 from the NEA. It also received funding from the Equitable Life Insurance Company and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The details of how the funding came about are important. In many of the debates and media accounts that appeared after the controversy broke, the simplistic equation sometimes presented was that the NEA gave Serrano $15,000 to create Piss Christ, or that the NEA gave SECCA $15,000 for the express purpose of rewarding Serrano’s work. But the reality is that the NEA awarded SECCA a large grant to partially support its AVA program. As a part of that program’s proceedings in 1988, Serrano was nominated, reviewed by jury, and selected as a finalist—all for his previous accomplishments as an artist, which included Piss Christ. Piss Christ was then selected as one of eight of Serrano’s works to travel with the AVA exhibit, along with works by the other finalists. So there were many steps from the award of an NEA grant to the exhibition of Piss Christ, and the NEA money in question did not pay for the actual production of the photograph.

The last installation of the AVA exhibit closed in Richmond on January 29, 1989. The AFA began its attack in April, and by May, the co-sponsoring Equitable Life Insurance Company announced that it had received over 40,000 letters of complaint. The presence of AFA members on the company’s staff gave them even more reason to speedily distance themselves from the controversy. On May 18, the issue of Serrano’s relationship to NEA funds made its first of many appearances on the floor of the Senate. Prompted by Wildmon’s campaign, Alphonse D’Amato (R-NY) stepped to the podium to condemn Serrano and announce the artist’s link to the NEA:

"This so-called piece of art is a deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity. The artwork in question is a photograph of the crucifix submerged in the artist's urine.

This artist received $15,000 for his work from the National Endowment for the Arts, through the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art.

Well, if this is what contemporary art has sunk to, this level, this outrage, this indignity—some may want to sanction that, and that is fine. But not with the use of taxpayers’ money. This is not a question of free speech. This is a question of abuse of taxpayers’ money. If we allow this group of so-called art experts to get away with this, to defame us and to use our money, well, then we do not deserve to be in office.

That is why, Mr. President, I am proud of the Members, who in literally a matter of minutes—over 20, about 25—joined me in signing a strong letter of protest to the Endowment. Here is a picture, and the title is Piss Christ. Incredible.

To add insult to injury, after this group of so-called art experts picked this artist for this $15,000 prize—of taxpayers’ money; we paid for this, our taxpayers—I do not blame people for being outraged and angered, and they should be angered at us, unless we do something to change this. If this continues and if this goes unrectified, where will it end? They will say, ‘This is free speech.’ Well, if you want free speech, you want to draw dirty pictures, you want to do anything you want, that is your business, but not with taxpayers’ money. This is an outrage, and our people’s tax dollars should not support this trash, and we should not be giving it the dignity. And after this piece of trash and this artist received this award, to make matters worse, the Awards in Visual Arts, this wonderful publication was put together; and who was it financed by, partially? By none other than the National Endowment for the Arts. What a disgrace."

To his credit, D’Amato does acknowledge the role of the review panel, and the placement of SECCA as a mediating institution between the NEA and Serrano. But the arrangement of these acknowledgements has implications. The quotable lines from his speech are ‘This artist received $15,000 for his work from the National Endowment for the Arts’ and ‘This is an outrage, and our people’s tax dollars should not support this trash.’ The sound bytes made it very easy to believe that the NEA gave Serrano $15,000 with the understanding that he would use the money to photograph a crucifix dipped in urine. Note also that D’Amato assumes that an offensive interpretation is a foregone conclusion. He never actually articulates that interpretation. He does not say, “I understand this cross in this urine to mean…” or anything of the sort. He simply states a description of the work—“the crucifix submerged in the artist's urine”—and lets that stand in as justification for his characterization of the work as “a deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity.”

D’Amato’s speech continued a little longer, and then the letter that he references was added to the record. That letter was addressed to Hugh Southern, the acting chair of the NEA. The previous chair, Frank Hodsell, had resigned in February, about nine months before his appointment would have expired, to take a job in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). So it is important to keep in mind that in the first few months of the controversy surrounding the NEA, the agency itself was short-staffed and lacking a leader.

The letter read as follows:

"Dear Mr. Southern,
We recently learned of the Endowment's support for a so-called ‘work of art’ by Andres Serrano entitled ‘Piss Christ.’ We write to express our outrage and to suggest in the strongest terms that the procedures used by the Endowment to award and support artists be reformed.
The piece in question is a large and vivid photograph of Christ on a crucifix submerged in the artist's urine. This work is shocking, abhorrent and completely undeserving of any recognition whatsoever. Millions of taxpayers are rightfully incensed that their hard-earned dollars were used to honor and support Serrano’s work.

There is a clear flaw in the procedures used to select art and artists deserving of taxpayers’ support. That fact is evidenced by the Serrano work itself. Moreover, after the artist was selected and honored for his ‘contributions’ to the field of art, his work was exhibited at government expense and with the imprimatur of the Endowment.

This matter does not involve freedom of artistic expression—it does involve the question of whether American taxpayers should be forced to support such trash.

And finally, simply because the Endowment and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) did not have a direct hand in choosing Serrano's work, does not absolve either of responsibility. The fact that both the Endowment and the SECCA with taxpayer dollars promoted this work as part of the Awards in Visual Arts exhibition, is reason enough to be outraged.

We urge the Endowment to comprehensively review its procedures and determine what steps will be taken to prevent such abuses from recurring in the future.

We await your response.

Sincerely,
Alphonse D’Amato, Bob Kerrey, Warren B. Rudman, Rudy Boschwitz, Dennis DeConcini, Pete Wilson, Bob Dole, Chuck Grassley, James A. McClure, John Heinz, Wendell Ford, Howell Heflin, Harry Reid, Richard Shelby, John W. Warner, Larry Pressler, Conrad Burns, Tom Harkin, Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, John McCain, Arlen Specter, Steve Symms. (Congressional Record, 1989a)."


Looking across these names, it is worth noting that a number of Democrats and moderate Republicans are included. The critique of Piss Christ may have begun on the far right, with D’Amato and Wildmon, but it moved swiftly to the center.

After the letter was added to the record, Senator Jesse Helms stood to add his opinion of Serrano, saying among other things, “He is not an artist. He is a jerk. He is taunting a large segment of the American people, just as others are, about their Christian faith. I resent it, and I do not hesitate to say so.” Helms would quickly become a major figure in the attack on the NEA. This was not Helms’s first venture into contentious waters. A Christian conservative from North Carolina, he left the Democratic party for the Republicans in 1970 in protest of the Democrats’ liberal position on civil rights. He would later oppose the formation of the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday and he took strong positions against funding for AIDS research and treatment.

On May 31, Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA) called for the NEA to deny funds to SECCA for five years, as punishment for giving an award to Serrano. He further suggested that Congress should force the hand of the NEA, if necessary, to make sure that SECCA was punished.


Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Good News from Students

I love hearing good news from former students, and I encourage you to write to a professor whose teaching or mentorship you appreciated and let them know how you're doing. Today, I got this nugget from a former student on his way to graduate school at Princeton:

"I owe you thanks not only for writing me a letter of recommendation, but also for the guidance and structure your class provided. You helped me write a research paper that was far more sophisticated than anything I could have written on my own. I used that paper as my writing sample when applying, and several admissions committees indicated that it was a key reason why I received an offer."

I love it!

Monday, April 18, 2011

Tracking Sociology Students

The ASA Bachelor's and Beyond study and blogposts are a great way to see what's happening to soc grads! Useful for curriculum planning and job placement/counseling.

http://asaresearch.wordpress.com/category/bachelors-and-beyond-survey/

Controlling Images on Parks & Recreation

http://dustinkidd.blogspot.com/

Last week's episode of Parks and Recreation, titled April and Andy's Fancy Party, had a nice illustration of Patricia Hill Collins's concept of controllingimages. Controlling images are media images that function, whether by design or not, to remind marginalized groups of their position in the power structure and to justify that position to a wider audience, especially to those who are privileged by their position within that structure. Although stereotypes usually function as controlling images, many controlling images are not so widespread that they can be called stereotypes, and many actually seem positive at first glance. As a case in point, consider the character of Donna from Parks and Recreation. Donna is played by the Black female comedian Retta Sirleaf. In last week's episode, Donna is at a singles event when she is found by Ann Perkins. Ann is played by the biracial actress Rashida Jones, daughter of Quincey Jones and Peggy Lipton. Although Jones is biracial, her character is presented as White on the show. As the singles event unfolds, Donna helps Ann become better at playing the singles game and even lets Ann go after the guy that she, Donna, was eyeing. It's very clear that this is Ann's story, not Donna's, and that the full-figured Donna is there in service to the slim White Ann. Donna's role is hilarious and very well-played by Retta, but it presents an unsettling hierarchy of the social world that deserves continued scrutiny and critique lest we take this hierarchy for granted.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

The Social Power of Art

http://dustinkidd.blogspot.com/

These are lecture slides for a talk I'm giving at Haverford next week. The visual slides reference material from my book. I post this here as an example of what a Prezi show can look like. However, I notice that it doesn't work quite as seamlessly when it's embedded as it does right from the Prezi website.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Fall Prime Time Schedule

The fall 2010 primetime schedule is available on TV Guide's website:


16 sitcoms
12 Reality Shows
3 Sports Shows
48 Dramas
4 animated comedies
5 news shows

A lot of drama!