Dustin Kidd

Final Evaluations: Graduate Classical Theory

2012-01-26T10:36:00.003-05:00

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

Don't Hide It, Flaunt It

2012-01-04T09:36:00.000-05:00

Enjoying this site/blog for perspectives on disability:

http://megzucker.com/

The Cast of Celebrity Apprentice, Spring 2012

2012-01-04T08:41:00.003-05:00

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.

Do Yoga and Don't be an Asshole

2011-11-26T16:29:00.007-05:00

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.

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.

Book Project

2011-11-20T22:08:00.003-05:00

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!

Lessons for improving search on Google

2011-06-02T09:53:00.000-04:00

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.

Spiral Q: The Mission

2011-06-01T22:25:00.003-04:00

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.

Me and Oprah Winfrey

2011-05-20T09:30:00.003-04:00

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."

Advice for Tenure Track Faculty

2011-05-17T22:47:00.003-04:00

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.

An Easter Reflection on One Particular Crucifix

2011-04-24T10:54:00.004-04:00

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.

Good News from Students

2011-04-19T10:52:00.003-04:00

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!

Tracking Sociology Students

2011-04-18T11:02:00.001-04:00

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

2011-04-18T09:47:00.005-04:00

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.

The Social Power of Art

2011-03-22T09:22:00.002-04:00

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.

The Social Power of Art: A Virtual Tour on Prezi

Fall Prime Time Schedule

2010-09-06T13:25:00.002-04:00

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

http://www.tvguide.com/special/fall-preview/fall-schedule.aspx

16 sitcoms

12 Reality Shows

3 Sports Shows

48 Dramas

4 animated comedies

5 news shows

A lot of drama!

Census Quick Facts

2010-07-20T21:21:00.002-04:00

Need a quick fact from the census? Try http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html. Helpful data on race, gender, education, and disability, among other things.

TV by the Numbers

2010-07-20T21:09:00.004-04:00

http://tvbythenumbers.com/ is a great resource for anyone studying the television industry. I'm particularly following their daily postings of the Nielsen overnights.

http://tvbythenumbers.com/category/ratings/tv-ratings-nielsen-overnight-tv-show-ratings

Until this site came along, TV ratings could actually be pretty hard to track down consistently.

Attendance Policies

2010-07-20T10:28:00.002-04:00

A few years ago, in one class, I tried not grading for attendance but found the result to be that students skipped class at high levels, paid for it on assignments, and the resulting average was so low that I looked more like a bad teacher than a tough one. I also paid a price in emails and office hours spent re-hashing what I'd covered in class and I was embarrassed that my final evals indicated that very few of the enrolled students filled them out because attendance was low.

So I do grade for attendance and I struggle through how to do it. My current system keeps attendance and participation separate. For attendance, I assign a fraction of a point based on the overall number of class meetings in the semester. This fall for instance, my class meets a total of 28 times, so each class is assigned 1/4th of a point. For every class attended, the student earns .25 points, up to the total of 7 points. Easy enough.

The problem is, some students are going to miss sometimes, and despite the fact that it counts for a fraction of the score, some of these students insist on having a way to earn the points back. Further, the school tends to support the notion of excused absences, without offering a clear definition of what constitutes such an absence, and I am loathe to create a definition myself. Students should make decisions about when to miss class based on their priorities, not mine. So I just refuse to distinguish between different types of absences and I ask my students not to tell me why they missed class. It doesn't matter to me. All that matters is that they missed.

In order to avoid a rebellion then, I allow students to write make-up papers. The papers should be 2 pages and should focus on the readings and the themes of the class that was missed. Within those boundaries, students have to determine the content themselves (I don't want emails about what the make-up paper should be about) and they have to submit the paper within 1 week of returning to class. I attach the papers to the sign in sheet for the day they missed. A student who misses two classes, but writes one make-up paper will receive 6.5/7 for her attendance grade. However, missed classes can still affect participation. In general, I want the make-up paper to be so annoying that it's easier to go to class.

It's not a perfect system but it works fairly well. Students do complain on evals that my attendance standards are too high, because I don't give any 'free passes' (WTF), but that doesn't seem to mar the course too much for them.

I'm open to feedback and suggestions on this.

Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film

2010-07-19T09:31:00.002-04:00

http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/

This is a good resource for studying women in popular culture. The research reports--The Celluloid Ceiling (film) and Boxed In (TV)--are particularly good. They are very basic but provide straight-forward analysis that is often hard to find. What the Center does well is track women's representation on both sides of the camera. It's very helpful to remember that female characters in TV and film are often authored by male writers, directors, and videographers.

Designing a Research Intensive Class

2010-07-15T09:04:00.003-04:00

I'm re-designing my course on popular culture for this fall to make it a research-intensive class. That's not a technical designation at Temple, the way that writing-intensive is, but it is a helpful way for me to think about bringing students into the data collection process. Until now, the course was always writing-intensive, so I guided students through the process of producing a sociology paper, but with a data set that included only 2 cultural objects--television shows, songs, magazines, films, etc.--that provided a useful comparison in terms of a sociological issue such as race, gender, or class.

For the research-intensive version, students will be performing weekly content analyses of prime time television. I'm spending the summer writing the proposal, developing the protocols, and creating the coding sheet and codebook. I'm trying to develop a process for teaching research that--like my process for teaching writing--is transferable from one class to another.

Here's what I've come up with so far:

1. Readings should not only be topically relevant, they should also be methodologically relevant. In popular culture, it is common to have readings by historians, cultural studies scholars, and other folks who study popular culture outside of a social science perspective. But I've stripped these folks out of the course for this fall. Nearly all of the readings are by sociologists and the few that are not are policy reports written by advocacy agencies (such as GLAAD's Network Responsibility Index). Nearly all of the readings involve use of the content analysis method. These readings allow us to think about methodological variations and to evaluate the choices made by different researchers. I've also included a few readings that perform audience studies or production studies to demonstrate that there are other methodological approaches we might consider. Finally, I'm starting the semester with a few readings on methods, particularly Kimberly Neuendorf's Content Analysis Guidebook.

2. Students need collective training as well as individual training. We will perform in-class analysis of a couple of different shows early in the semester to practice using the coding sheet and codebook. In fact, before we have the practice sessions, I'll spend some class time explaining the proposal and the protocols. The in-class training will not be graded, beyond contributing generally to the participation grade. Then, students will begin performing weekly analyses of a particular television show. Each student will have a different show, and I'm requiring that the show be available online so that they can pause and repeat segments while they analyze. They will submit a total of nine of these analyses, receiving feedback from me on each one and using the feedback to improve for the future.

3. Students should summarize the data they've collected, but they should also understand that summarizing data is very different from writing an article. I'm having students summarize data in two ways. First, they will give an in-class powerpoint presentation on the key themes we're analyzing (race, gender, sexuality, disability). Second, they will write a research report, incorporating any feedback I've given them on the presentation. I don't think of each student's work as a data set. Rather, I see this as the development of a collectively-produced data set on a season of prime time TV (well, half-season). But I'm still struggling with how to make the full data set available to all of the students in a timely manner that will then allow them to write about the entire data set, and not just about their portion of it. Since this is the first time I'm doing this, I need to be able to spend some time building the actual data set from their reports, cleaning it up, and thinking about the best way to organize it.

My course on the sociology of culture in the Spring of 2011 will give me a chance to transfer the research-intensive design to the graduate level, and have those students complete the data collection for the 2010-2011 prime time season.

Should Teachers Be Warm and Fuzzy?

2010-06-17T20:39:00.003-04:00

I received my Spring 2010 evaluations yesterday. They were the best I've ever had, which was great. But in the midst of the positive comments, multiple students complained that I was cold and unapproachable, and uninterested in hearing their problems.

This all true. I'm not a warm and fuzzy teacher, and I'm not flexible about the standards for the class. Despite what they think, I do wish the best for my students. But I am very aware of my role is in their lives: I'm their sociology professor. I'm not their father, their counselor, their friend, or their confidant. I think I'm really good at teaching them sociology and I know I'd be pretty cruddy at doing those other things.

My instinct is to ignore the comments and focus on the positive, as well as the critical feedback that strikes me as more constructive. But I'm curious why students feel compelled to critique me for my warmth, and lack thereof.

Tenure Kills Trees

2010-06-16T16:34:00.003-04:00

I recently submitted my tenure paperwork. By the time tenure rolls around, it's too late to worry about publishing. Instead, you have to worry about printing. There is a mountain of documentation that needs to be submitted. If I could go back 5 years and give myself some advice, I'd suggest collecting the following, and reviewing it once a year:

1. Printouts of my listings in the programs for every conference I went to
2. One good email or letter for each service activity I performed (ideally a thank-you letter, otherwise, an exemplary email)
3. A citation report for each of my articles using both JCR and Google Scholar.
4. A journal impact assessment for the journals I've published in, tracking impact factor, number of libraries that hold the journal, whether indexed and whether refereed
5. A short paragraph or two on each of my publications, explaining why I wrote them and what they contributed
6. A printout verifying every internal and external award I received, and every follow-up report that I submitted
7. A list of names and email addresses for students I mentored or supervised
8. A list of names and email addresses for every person who supervised my service
9. A teaching assignment form listing every course name/number, level, semester, year, and number of students
10. An exemplary assignment from every course, every semester, filed with the syllabus and any assignment descriptions, as well as evaluations

Grade Inflation Strikes Louisiana

2010-04-19T15:28:00.004-04:00

According to this post on USA Today, biology professor Dominique Homberger was removed from her courses mid-semester for grading too strictly. Homberger has taught at LSU for 30 years, is a full-professor, and has never received warnings or any other sort of intervention from the administration in the past. University's publish no guidelines on how many students should pass (or fail) a course in a given semester, nor are there established baselines for how much a passing student should learn. We rely on academic freedom and peer review: she has the freedom to set standards and devise methods; her peers are charged with reviewing her performance at various intervals (tenure, promotion, raises, etc.). This intervention by LSU administration undermines academic freedom and also undercuts the value of peer review.

Personally, I am opposed to instructional styles that fail to challenge students and I am also opposed to challenging students through trickery. Our task is to promote learning and to make knowledge available. As far as I can tell, with only the information provided in this article, Homberger was successful at those tasks.

Email as a Crutch

2010-04-18T20:49:00.003-04:00

Increasingly, I find that some students use email as a way to get my approval for all creative decisions they have to make for their assignments. Obviously, we didn't have email when I was in college, so I have taken the emails for granted as a logical technological development. But now I'm paying more attention and putting my foot down at this abuse of emails. Students need to think for themselves, make their own decisions, and be prepared to face consequences. I don't think this warrants any new policy on the syllabus, but rather a deliberateness in my response. Instead of approving particular decisions, I'm going to respond to these questions with one of my own: What decision are leaning towards and why? Also, why are you hesitating? I can then focus on whether or not they are thinking about the subject on the right terms, but still require them to come to their own conclusions.

Common Student Writing Issues

2010-02-25T11:09:00.002-05:00

Produced this feedback for my students and thought other might find it useful. If you have additions, post 'em!

Avoid parenthetical expressions. If it's worth saying, say it in the text of your paper. Most people skip over the parentheses as they read. Save parentheses for citations.
Avoid lists and pairs that add text without adding meaning. Examples: "culture and society," "discussions and debates," "issues, topics, and themes."
Use first and last name on first usage, and last name thereafter.
People who; object that. The tendency is to use 'that' for everything, including people, resulting in statements such "people that like this TV show will...." Instead, phrase it as "people who like this TV show will...."
Double-space everything, including footnotes, box quotes, and references. You should always double-space anything for which you will receive feedback.
Set your word processor defaults to 12pt. Times New Roman with 1-1.5 inch margins.
Insert page numbers.
Use present tense as much as possible (with the obvious exception of when you are comparing a past period to the present--in that case, the past is the past)
Use active voice: "I argue that..." is preferred over "It is argued that...."
Write in first person as an objective sociological observer, but avoid autobiographical commentary.
Avoid hyperbolic statements like "All people everywhere..." and "Since the beginning of time...." The word "everyone" is a good indicator that you are heading towards hyperbole.
Use regular paragraph indents. Papers without paragraph indents are hard to read.
No contractions in formal papers. "Doesn't" becomes "does not," "Isn't" becomes "is not," etc.
Italicize book titles (film titles, album titles, tv show titles). Use quotation marks for article titles, chapter titles, song titles, and episode titles.
Reserve underlining for references to web addresses.
Capitalize proper nouns only. Do not capitalize concepts or 'big ideas'.
Do not use exclamation marks in scholarly papers.
Write in a straight-forward manner. "Formal" does not mean opaque. The meaning of your sentences should be clear, not ambiguous. Avoid adding needless jargon. Never use jargon without at least introducing the terminology to your readers and never use terms that you are not sufficiently familiar with.
Punctuation goes inside of double quotation marks and outside of single quotation marks. "This is the end of a quote." Here is a 'concept'.
Parenthetical citations follow the quotation marks, if they reference a quote, but come before the punctuation. "This is a cited quote" (source year).
One the most important parts of the revision process is to remove excess text. Remove words from sentences that do not add to the meaning. Remove sentences from paragraphs that are vague and do not move the paper forward. Remove paragraphs from sections that offer either too little or too much detail.
Give extra attention to the first lines of the paper, the sections, and the paragraphs. These sentences should be interesting, active, and specific. "Television is an important issue that should be addressed" is too vague and not interesting. "I argue that televisual representations of race produce, rather than merely reflect, the most common misconceptions of racial identities" is more specific and more interesting.
Use 2 hyphens (-) to make a dash (--). Ideally, dashes have no spaces on either side. If there is a space on one side, there must be a space on the other. In Word, if you type two hyphens and then continue with the sentence, the hyphens will transform into a dash when you next hit the space bar.
Parentheses should have spaces on the outside, before and after, but not on the inside. So (this) is correct; but(this) is incorrect; and (this)is incorrect.
"Less" and "amount" are for things that cannot be counted (e.g., air, freedom, garbage). "Fewer" and "number" are for things that are countable (molecules, people, rights). Pay attention to this to avoid using phrases like "less people" or "the amount of students." Instead, you should write "fewer people" or "number of students."
More and less indicate comparisons so it has to be clear what you’re comparing to: More males than females are committing suicide.
Watch out for commonly confused words: affect/effect, perspective/prospective, accept/except, its/it’s, your/you’re, there/their/they’re, to/too/two, then/than, passed/past.
Don’t discuss the paper writing process. Just write the paper. That means don’t use phrases like, “for this assignment,” “In my earlier draft” or “At the beginning of the semester.”
Quotations should always be introduced before and then explained after. Never open a paragraph with a quote.
Block quotes should be used when the quote occupies 5 lines or more. A block quote should be indented on the left hand side only, not on the right. It should be double-spaced.
Use semi-colons sparingly. Often, we make lists of ideas using semi-colons when we really need to be unpacking and explaining those ideas in separate sentences.
Proofread, proofread, proofread. Using spellcheck should never replace proofing your own paper.
Edit, edit, edit. Take out extra unnecessary words. Trim out vague and overly-abstract opening sentences. Remove words from sentences that do not add to the meaning. Remove sentences from paragraphs that are vague and do not move the paper forward. Remove paragraphs from sections that offer either too little or too much detail.
Revise, revise, revise. Often, the first phrasing that we use isn’t the best phrasing. It may be too conversational or it may be too jargony. Look for sentences that are abstract, vague, colloquial, verbose, or just plain hard to read and then revise those sentences to make the meaning clear.

Tips for Teaching Social Theory

2010-02-20T10:10:00.003-05:00

Social theory can often feel too abstract for many students, particularly when it is disconnected from empirical research. These tricks have worked in my classroom to make the theory feel more tangible and more usable.

1. Coding the article. The basic components of a theory reading are often harder to find than those for a research article. Student readers may need extra help in finding those components so I push them to identify the following:

The Question:

The Assumptions:

The Answer to the Question (presumably the argument):

The Argumentation/Evidence (empirical, ideological, logical, practical?)

The Conversation in Which it Operates:

The Hook (what makes this answer to the question better and different?):

The Irritation (What's under the author's craw? What pissed them off so much they had to write this piece?):

Key Words with Definitions/Conceptualizations:

2. Mapping the Theory: I ask students to draw a map of the theoretical frame that is presented, identifying things like concepts, component parts, relationships and other dynamics, rejected elements (asserted by other authors but rejected by this one), hierarchies, etc. This reduces lengthy text to a one-page visual.

3. Mapping the conversation: Same as above, but involves one visual map for multiple authors who are in conversation around a common issue (race, social capital, postmodernism, etc.).

4. Interrogating the Passage: Have students identify a passage that seems to be particularly important and also particularly opaque. Read it word by word, refusing to move forward until each phrase/clause is understood. If you can open up these passages, the rest of the reading will also open up quickly.

5. Research Proposal: Develop a research proposal that incorporates the theory into the student's research area (works best with grad students). This allows students to see how abstract theories apply to practical research.

6. Interpret the Data: for this exercise, I bring in a short summary of data that is relatively straight-forward (income data from the census, suicide rates from the CDC, crime rates from the BJS, etc) and ask students to use the theoretical frame to interpret that data.

7. The Theorist as an Author: My classes are writing intensive and we spend a lot of time talking about the writing process, so it's important to think of social theorists as authors who are also wrestling with that process. I encourage students to name the elements of the readings that work for them as readers so that they can then learn how to incorporate those elements into their own writing style. Similarly, we identify writing styles that do not work and which students should avoid.

Student Evaluations Part 2

2010-02-05T10:34:00.003-05:00

Today I'm examining the evaluations for my undergraduate course from last semester. The course is called Development of Sociological Thought, but it's basically the theory requirement for our sociology majors. The section was capped at 30. I pushed a few students with especially low grades to withdraw early. 25 students completed the course, of which 20 completed the evaluations.

I should note that I ask students to complete evaluations at the beginning of class, rather than at the end. When students complete evaluations at the end of class, the form becomes the only barrier to leaving the classroom, so they tend to complete them fairly quickly. By distributing evaluations at the end of class, the forms become a way of delaying my lecture, so they are happy to take their time and give lots of thoughtful feedback.

Here's the summary of the evaluations. The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of students who made the comment.

What worked well?

Discussions (8)
Feedback on papers (7)
Readings (5)
Explanations of the readings (5)
Organization (4)
Learning a variety of theories (4)
Approachable professor (3)
Knowledgeable professor (3)
Breaking the paper in segments written across the semester and then revised (3)
Powerpoints (2)
Attention to writing style (2)
Did not stray from the syllabus (1)
Connections to real world issues (1)
Having readings/journals end a couple weeks before the end of the semester so students could focus on papers. (1)
Journals (1)
Du Bois selections (1)
Enthusiastic professor (1)

Major success stories:

Upper range scores (U) on all course- and instructor-related questions. (There's one question about how "well prepared" the students were for class. The score on this question was in the middle range although it's a 4.3 out of 5.)
Means of 5 out of 5 on two questions--"instructor clearly explained the objectives" and "instructor was well organized"
Since this is a course I teach repeatedly, I note that these are the highest scores I've received for this class and that there's been a consistent improvement across semesters
I also note that these high scores were received even as the average grade for the course was a B-. That's a higher average grade than I used to have for the course (it used to be a C). But I'm doing a better job of catching the potential failures early now and advising them to withdraw.
Sensitive to diversity (16), ("but please add some ethnic Hawaiian analysis").
"I really enjoyed this course. I took it my last semester but I still felt the course helped me to understand a lot of what was going on in my other classes. Dr. Kidd was very approachable and gave very helpful feedback. This class has really prepared me on so many levels. I especially liked that he went over the many grammar mistakes people make and reviewed a lot of what I feel I had forgotten from high school and grade school."

What didn't work?

Nothing. Everything was fine. (5)
Readings too difficult (3)
Too much reading (2)
Paper too structured (1)
Professor gets impatient with questions asked at the end of class (1)
Too much pressure to participate (1)

Suggestions:

Papers should be due at midnight, not before class (1)
No papers due just before Thanksgiving (1)
Provide extra credit opportunities (1)
Less grammar lessons (1)
Relax the attendance policy (2)
Fewer journal submissions (1)
Instructor should be more relational with students and show he cares (1)
More textual analysis, dissecting the readings (1)
Discussion questions to guide the journals (1)
Add a one-week break from journals in the middle of the semester (1)

Interpretation:

Lot of items were listed as useful components of the course, but I focus on those that are mentioned multiple times. Discussion, the feedback provided on papers, the readings themselves and the professor's explanation of the readings, the organization of the class and professor, and the variety of theoretical perspectives all topped the list. These are the elements that I'm going to preserve if I seek to make changes to the class. In contrast, with only 2 people mentioning the powerpoint slides, I might end up abandoning them as I grow less interested in using powerpoint myself.

The quantitative scores were very high. They demonstrate first that the general consensus about the course was overwhelmingly positive. This is important to note because the structure of the open-ended questions tends to make it seem as if the students are ambivalent about the course. If you ask what contributed to student learning, and what needed improvement, and if students answer both questions, then they will seem to be ambivalent about the course. But the numbers provide a better barometer.

The scores also fit into a longer narrative about my teaching at Temple over the years. I taught this course every semester that I've been here and scores have steadily improved, with these being my highest yet.

The question about diversity asks students to comment on the instructor's sensitivity to the diversity of the students in the class. Many students leave it blank. It is therefore meaningful to me that 16 out of 20 chose to actively write in a statement that I am sensitive to these issues.

I am please by the confirmation that the process that I use to teach writing is working.

The most common answer to what needed improvement was nothing. These are students that actively wrote this in, not students who left the item blank. Additionally, there were a few comments about the level and amount of reading. In my experience, every professor receives a few of those comments.

While I certainly note the various suggestions, there's only one that I'm inclined to implement. That is the request for a week's break from journals in the middle of the semester. The current organization of the course involves 2 weeks of introductory material, 10 weeks of theoretical material (a different paradigm per week), and 2 weeks about the writing process. I might move one of the weeks on writing into the middle of the semester, since students are writing stages of the paper throughout the semester.

I admit to being tickled by the request that I be more relational and show that I care. I've made a deliberate decision not to tangle with the emotional lives of my students. I feel that this is not my job. My job is to teach them sociology and I think the best thing I can do for students is teach them as much sociology as I can, as enthusiastically as possible. Their emotional lives are important, but they are not part of my job. It's the job of their mothers, friends, and counselors to worry about those issues. Although the student intended this as a suggestion, with a hint of criticism, the comment actually confirms to me that the teaching persona I've developed is apparent in the classroom.

Overall, I am very pleased with the evaluations!

Student Evaluations

2010-02-03T09:53:00.004-05:00

Today, Temple released student evaluations from last semester. I taught two courses last semester--an upper-level undergraduate seminar on social theory and a graduate seminar on classical social theory. Reading evaluations can be tricky. The self-critical eye tends to be drawn towards particularly damning comments. The self-praising eye tends to be drawn towards comments that are especially kind. Either can lead to a distorted image of what actually happened in the classroom from the students' perspectives.

The multiple choice items provide a better sense of the mean, but even this quantitative data can be misleading. My school places one of three letters next to the scores, indicating whether the number is in the upper levels (U), middle levels (M), or lower level (L). The assignment is based on the percentages in "strongly agree" (U), "disagree," and "strongly disagree" (L). But a professor who receives "agree" from 100% of his students on any particular question will receive an M, even though that sounds like a better than average situation.

The school also provides comparative averages for the department, the college, the university, and the course level.

Before reading evaluations, you need to know what you want to learn from them. An instructor who has no plans to change his course probably shouldn't read evaluations, but might need to in order to make a case that he deserves tenure or a raise.

In my case, I'm looking for two broad purposes. First, I want the feedback for my own pedagogical reasons. I'd like to know what's working in the classroom and what I can do to improve. The evaluations are just one source of data on this. My own assessment of student work is the primary source of performance information. For instance, if students say they hate the course paper, but I can see that they are writing smart papers that will benefit them down the road, then I limit how much I pay attention to that feedback. That said, I do want to hear from them about what may not be working so that I can tinker with the course and make it better.

Second, I want to use the evaluations to build a narrative about my teaching. That narrative should highlight what I am doing well and it should also document that I work successfully to improve my teaching. Since I teach the same courses from year to year, it's nice to be able to say I learned a lesson in an earlier year than paid off with a new successful teaching method in a later year.

So, I try to highlight the following items:

1. What worked well. I want to keep these aspects of the course since students report that they work. Here, I am looking for the overall pattern, not the one-off comments.

2. Major success stories. This is more than just things that generally worked. These are the quotes that are exceedingly positive, or the good comments that are made repeatedly.

3. What didn't work. These are the aspects I want to consider adjusting for the future. That doesn't mean I need to scrap them altogether, it just means I want to pay attention to them. If a reading is widely criticized, I might replace it, or I might try to give a better introduction to it. As with item 1 above, I'm looking for the overall pattern.

4. Useful suggestions. These might come from just one student, but if it's a good idea, it's worth considering.

You might argue that if I'm looking for major success stories, I should also look for major failure stories (individual students who write mean angry comments). But, to state the obvious, I apply for raises and tenure, not for demotions. If someone wants to make a case against me, it's their job to find the failure stories.

As an example, I'll review one set of evals from last semester. This course only had 7 students in the end (an 8th student had withdrawn). This was my graduate seminar in classical social theory. The number in parentheses indicates how many students made the comment.

1. What worked well?

Applying the readings in group assignments (3)
Lectures on key concepts and backgrounds of the theorists (4)
Journals (4)
Selected Topic Paper (1)
Capitalism Paper (2)
Papers, in general (2)
Emphasis on making arguments (3)
Overall structure (2)
Focus on student research areas (1)
Feedback on writing (1)
Grading style (1)
Tocqueville (1)
Gilman (1)
Du Bois (1)

2. Major success stories:

6 students highlighted my sensitivity to diversity.
"I really thought the course was valuable, but of course time consuming."
Though most of my scores are in the middle range (M), all are 4.1 or higher on a 5 point scale.
Two scores were in the upper range (U): 1) increased by ability to analyze and evaluate, and 2) learned a great deal in this course.

3. What didn't work?

Reading journals due on the same day as papers (reading journals were due every week, papers were additionally due on some of those weeks) (3)
Small group assignments (1)
Tocqueville paper (1)
Applying concepts in group assignments (2)
The readings (1)

4. Suggestions

Skip journals the week a paper is due (3)
Add Du Bois's Souls of Black Folk, in addition to The Philadelphia Negro (1)
Give biographical info the week before the reading (1)
More applications (1)
Option of less detailed journals (1)
Don't remove Gilman reading (1)
One less paper (1)
Remove Tocqueville paper (1)

Interpretation

Lots of classroom components were listed as working well but the ones listed most often include journals, lectures, the emphasis on making arguments, and group discussions/applications. It's worth noting that the small group work was also mentioned twice as something that did not work well. However, in my experience group work is often disliked by some students, even as it proves invaluable to others. I'm inclined, then, to keep using it, even though feelings about it are divided.

Additionally, I note that journals are valuable but there were a few comments about the journals being due the same day as papers. The suggestion is to skip journals that day. But if journals are valuable, why would I drop them on a regular basis? That would mean those readings are read less closely and the students would not have useful summaries for those authors that they could use later. Instead, I'm inclined to shift the due dates of papers to later in the week. Since papers are submitted electronically, I can collect them anytime. This is something I will raise with my current graduate students in class this week.

The other items that didn't work well were only mentioned once. Components of the course that are only mentioned once under worked well or didn't work well I treat as neutral items. They work fine, but I could also replace them easily as I work to improve the class.

I could have ended the quote under 'success stories' before the part about the course being time consuming, but I find that my department and college like indications that my classes are demanding. Students who attempt to complain about the demands of my classes are unwittingly making a good case for me to the administration.

Graduate courses have been a challenge for me since I started at Temple. These are actually pretty good evaluations so I will use them to build a narrative of gradual improvement in my graduate teaching.

I will blog soon about my undergrad evals. Because of the high enrollment, that will take more analysis.

Board Recruitment Resources in Philadelphia and Beyond

2010-01-12T09:28:00.003-05:00

http://dustinkidd.blogspot.com

1. Business on Board: A function of the Arts and Business Council. Provides training to prospective board members and connects them with local arts organizations.

2. Philadelphia's Young Nonprofit Leaders: Provides training and resources for staff and volunteers, including board members, for local nonprofits. "Young" is broadly defined.

3. Blue Avocado: An online magazine about non-profit boards.

4. Board Cafe Archives: The predecessor to Blue Avocado. Has a nice section on recruitment and diversity. Here's a good one.

5. BoardnetUSA: A board recruitment and placement website. Like Monster.com for boards.

6. VolunteerMatch: Similar function to BoardNet.

7. Bridgestar: Connects corporate employees to nonprofit service.

8. Eide Bailley: Non-profit toolbox. Includes a nice short article about board service.

9. BoardSource: Recruitment and Orientation resources. More resources throughout the site.

10. Wharton Nonprofit Board Leadership Program: Connects MBA students to nonprofit service.

Chime in with additional ideas and resources!

Useful Websites for Writers

2010-01-10T11:06:00.003-05:00

1. Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. The link goes straight to the Basic Tools page, which includes a pdf sample chapter from Cameron's book. If you're not ready to buy the book, this is a nice place to start on the Artist's Way. Cameron offers a lot of her work for free, unlike most similar authors.

2. William Strunk's The Elements of Style. Full-text available on this website. Great way to get familiar with grammar and punctuation basics.

3. Guide to Grammar and Writing. Nice menus for refreshing your grammar skills.

4. Citation Machine. Easy way to generate your citations.

Fixing Your Finances for the New Year?

2010-01-07T13:22:00.002-05:00

Some of my favorite personal finance tools:

1. Suze Orman's The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous and Broke: great book that is easy read but full of useful information. Read it with a notepad or journal handy. It also gives you access to a set of tools on Orman's website.

2. The Suze Orman show podcast. Free podcast of Orman's weekly show. A great way to learn more about money and making good financial decisions.

3. Mint.com. A website that can track all of your financial accounts. Other sites claim to do the same thing but I've found that only Mint can actually track all of them (some sites couldn't access by ING savings, others couldn't access my retirement accounts). It has tools for building a budget and tracking your expenses. Use the categories tool on the Transactions page to label and track your spending. Also be sure to download the iPhone app.

4. Get Rich Slowly. A great blog about saving money and making good financial decisions.

5. Wallet Garden. This is new to me, but it's a site where you can enter info about all of the cards in your wallet, in case it's ever stolen.

What's in Your Writer's Backpack

2010-01-05T10:06:00.003-05:00

George Clooney's character in Up in the Air is a motivational speaker who begins his talks by setting a backpack on a table next to his podium, opening it, and then leaning in to the microphone to ask "What's in your backpack?"

The character wants his audience to feel the weight of all that ties them down. I'm going to use the same question in a writing workshop tomorrow for faculty and graduate students. But I'm using the question very differently. I want my participants to take stock of all of the writing resources they already have, many of which they take for granted.

The workshop actually brings together two different writing retreats: one for graduate students writing dissertations and one for faculty working on books or articles. Having been in both camps, I'll start with iconic stories from each experience:

The horror of the blank page: When I was a graduate student, I followed my dissertation proposal defense with a heavy summer teaching load. When the summer ended, I moved into a new office (thanks to a writing fellowship), set up my computer, and then stared in horror at the blank page of a new Word document. What do I do now? Eventually, I turned the computer back off and started reading. I had to read my way into the writing process. I took notes on my readings (initially from secondary sources, later from primary sources) and then used these notes to develop my own thoughts and arguments on the topic. The blank page needs to be quickly replaced by a map. The map will initially be quite simple: no dissertation --> dissertation. But will quickly be filled in by the mountains, valleys, rivers, and speedbumps of the research and writing process.

The invisible chapter: I spent a semester writing the theory chapter of my book. The initial version was 70 pages. That was obviously way too long, so I revised it down to 40 pages. Then I filed it away and moved on to other chapters. Later, I shared it with my mentor, who said it was too dense and inaccessible. I spent another semester revising it down to 25 pages. Then she suggested I remove it altogether, and disperse the theoretical discussions into the various chapters. By that time I had drafts of all chapters, and I was working with an editor, even though I still hadn't signed a contract. The editor concurred with my mentor, so I spent a few more months re-writing the other chapters in a way that allowed me to dispense with a separate theory chapter. My book came out last month and it has no theory chapter. I still have all of those drafts and I can see now that I needed to write them even though the chapter didn't need to be in the book. That invisible chapter guides all of the language and organization of the six visible chapters.

So what's in my backpack?

Human Resources: People--friends and mentors--who can read your work and give you feedback. Courses where you can test-run some of your work as lectures or assigned readings. Conferences, research centers, and lecture opportunities where you can experiment with your writing and find a sample audience. Research assistants, when you have them, all bring their own strengths and weaknesses to the process and these should be carefully assessed. And of course, the campus writing center.

Example: Write for Your Mom. A good way to make sure that your writing is accessible is to write for your mom. I'm assuming your mom is alive and that she is a smart person who is not in your field and who may not even care about your field. If that's not true of your mom, pick someone else: dad, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc. When I was writing my dissertation, one of my readers told me to write it for Joan Snapp, the graduate secretary in my department. "If it doesn't matter to Joan Snapp," she said, "you're wasting your time." Joan Snapp and my mom are both people that I can imagine in my head as I revise my work, unlike editors, reviewers, or 'readers'. I can hear them stop me when I have a sentence that is jargon-ey, or too abstract, or awkwardly constructed. Joan Snapp and my mom would both make me say what I need to say in a way that is clear and straight-forward. Both would get swiftly impatient with rambling or tedious writing.
Language Games and Grammar Tools: We all have our favorite phrases and syntactical constructions. I can use a dash to sneak attack a word or phrase that would otherwise never fit into my sentence. I have a list of active verbs that make abstract discussions more compelling: argue, lament, explain, decry. Stephen King calls this set of resources the Writer's Toolbox. He offers a nice discussion of it in his book On Writing.

Example: I Argue That.... You need to be able to state your argument in one sentence and that sentence needs to be in your head all the time. You should get used to state that one sentence argument in a variety of ways. The off-page version of the one-sentence argument is the elevator speech--stating your argument in one minute.

Intervention: Take one minute right now and tell someone your argument.

(30 seconds): Tik Tok Tik Tok
(60 seconds): Times up, the elevator has reached the top floor, you're out of time.
Material Resources: A good word processor on a trusted laptop. A good notepad in a leather portfolio. A good pen. A set of index cards.

Example: Beerspiration. When I was writing my dissertation, I hit a point where my computer became an impediment to the writing process. I just couldn't be creative in front of a computer screen. So I implemented the following method. Every afternoon, I would read through the key sources (primary and secondary) for whatever section I was working on, and I would take notes on index cards--one idea per card, with a relevant citation if needed. After dinner, I would take a stack of index cards and legal notepad to a bar down the street where I would order the cards into a narrative and then transform them into sentences, with development, on the notepad. And yes, I drank beer while writing. The next morning, after breakfast, I would turn on my computer and type up the text I had hand-written the night before. As I typed, I would also revise to improve the clarity and organization of the writing. You've heard of inspiration and perspiration; I call this method beerspiration.
Inspirational Resources: Find a voice from your field and keep it nearby. I like Du Bois as a model of a voice that is unquestionably authoritative but also widely accessible to all. I also keep handy a variety of writings on writing: Zerubavel's The Clockwork Muse, King's On Writing, Lamott's Bird by Bird, Cameron's The Artist's Way.

Example: Shitty First Draft. Anne Lamott's book Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life encourages writers to begin with a shitty first draft. We have a tendency to not want to write until we can write it beautifully and perfectly. That generally means we don't write at all. Make it your goal to write a terrible and shitty first draft. This will give you to the freedom to write badly, misspell everything, ignore transitions, and even dangle your modifiers. Shitty first drafts are open for feedback and easily revised. A blank page can never receive feedback or be revised. When you write a shitty first draft, you can even forget your mom all you want and write for yourself.
Practical Resources: The appropriate style guide (Chicago, Harvard, MLA, etc.), the rules for the product (from your department for dissertations, from your journal for articles, from your publisher for books), the important literature (books and articles) from the field. Keep a model handy: a dissertation written by a student in your department, preferably with your adviser; a book from your field written in style you wish to emulate; an article with similar goals to yours, that is well-organized and well-written. I also recommend The Elements of Style by William Strunk, A Guide to Writing Sociology Papers by the Sociology Writing Group (or something similar from your field), and the Chicago Guide to Writing About Numbers by Jane Miller.

Example: Write someone else's dissertation/article/book. Find a possible model for your book. Use the chapter and section titles to outline to the work. Now rename those titles to make it an outline of your work. Congratulations, you just made a roadmap for your writing! As the you continue on the path, or perhaps at journey's end, make sure you're not actually stealing from the model. But then, in a footnote or foreword, acknowledge the source as a model and inspiration for your work.
Emotional Resources: Trusted friends to complain to or celebrate with (whine or wine). Note: colleagues, department chairs, and dissertation advisers should be trusted human resources for your project, but NOT emotional resources. Pets are also good emotional resources. Family and close friends keep you grounded and remind you that there is a whole world that will keep going if you happen to mess up a sentence or two (or more)!

Example: Name the worst or hardest thing about writing for you. Remind yourself that this is the hardest thing so when you get to that point you know that the worst is right in front of you and after that it gets better. For me, the hardest thing is opening the document. I'll spend hours doing anything to avoid a few simple clicks in word that open up that document. Once it's open, I'm usually fine.

Intervention: Name the worst or hardest thing for you. Write it down.

This is a brief overview of what's in my writer's backpack. What's in yours?

What to Buy (and not buy) Organic

2010-01-05T09:34:00.002-05:00

Nice posts on Andrew Weil's website with 12 foods to always buy organic and 12 foods that don't need to be organic (because of low pesticide use or low pesticide retention).

12 Foods to Buy Organic

Peaches
Apples
Sweet bell peppers
Celery
Nectarines
Strawberries
Cherries
Lettuce
Grapes (imported)
Pears
Spinach
Potatoes

In Philly, I suggest the Fair Trade Stand at Reading Terminal, or the farmer's markets around town, especially at Rittenhouse. Many of these foods will not be available from those places when out of season. At that point, I turn first to Trader Joe's (best prices) and then Whole Foods (worst prices).

12 Foods you Don't Need to Buy Organic

Broccoli
Eggplant
Cabbage
Banana
Kiwi
Asparagus
Sweet peas (frozen)
Mango
Pineapple
Sweet corn (frozen)
Avocado
Onion

For fresh non-organic food, I go Iovine at Reading Terminal (the big produce place in the SE corner). They also carry some organic food too (but it's usually not local). Otherwise, I go to Whole Foods. Trader Joe's fresh produce is pretty but generally tasteless. Their frozen produce, however, is great and cheap.

2010 Goals

2010-01-03T23:01:00.004-05:00

Career Goals

Publish two articles (goal is to have them at least accepted and forthcoming by year's end)
Draft the proposal for my next book on popular culture
Develop a longterm plan for research on art awards
Get tenure (submit an excellent file; have positive results at the department level by year's end)
Continue current service committees, but no new service (I do too much)
File the first report on the Wolgin International Art Prize
Draft several of my lectures as text that can be used towards publications and for improving the courses

Financial Goals

Have $25K in savings for a condo by year's end
Submit a strong merit raise application at year's end (current application pending)
Move current savings into a CD

Health and Fitness Goals

Yoga 2X/week
Pilates 2X/week
Strength Training 3X/week
Abs 2X/week
Continue cycling to work
Get a physical

Home

New entertainment system
Switch from Comcast to Clear
Switch from home delivery to NYTimes Reader
No new books (use library instead)
Become a real estate expert (2009 was my year to become a personal finance expert and that worked out well)

Personal

Increase the board size at Spiral Q
Invest in nicer dress pants
No new shoes, dress shirts, jeans, coats, sweaters, or hoodies (I have plenty)
Take a vacation (trip to Mexico is booked for March!)

I wasn't planning to make a list, but then I found my list from last year. I achieved most of the goals on that list! So I figure writing these down is a good way to make them happen.

Grading Rubrics

2009-12-23T10:08:00.003-05:00

Life is a combination of emotional problems and math problems. The same is true of grading. But, as much as possible, I like to insist that emotional problems are not my problem. I make grades a very straightforward math equation by using grading rubrics.

A grading rubric is system of accounting for every point that can be earned in the class. At the end of the semester, a final grade is submitted in letter form, but the letter is generally equal to a numerical percentage. So all (or nearly all) classes can be constructed around a 100 point system.

The first step in the rubric is also often the last step for many instructors. That's the step you take on the syllabus of proportioning various assignments into the 100 percentage points. Here's a hypothetical example:

Attendance: 10%
Participation: 10%
Midterm: 25%
Final: 25%
Journals: 15%
Paper: 15%

Usually we use numbers divisible by 5 or 10 to keep it simple.

A grading rubric forces you to then account for each point within those larger percentages. This is easier for some assignments than others. For midterms and finals, for instance, the points are usually accounted for by specific questions. A midterm worth 25% of the final grade might consist of 25 multiple choice questions. Done. All points accounted for.

I should note here that most people grade individual assignments out of 100. I stopped doing that a few years ago. It never felt like a meaningful grade. I had a clear sense of the difference between an 80 and a 90, but I wasn't so clear on the difference between a 20, a 30, a 40 or a 50 as variations of failing. Then once you have a grade out of 100, you twist it around again by multiplying by the percent that it's worth. I give grades that are equivalent to actual points earned in a class. If a midterm is worth 25%, then a perfect score is a 25, not a 100.

Going back to the hypothetical midterm, let's say instead of 25 multiple choice questions, there were 20, plus a 5 point essay question. In that case, a complete rubric would force you to account for all 5 points. So you might say that 1 point is for accurate discussion of the text, 1 point is for a clear argument, 2 points are for thorough evidence (only 1 point given for mediocre evidence) and 1 point given for referencing statistical data. That, combined with allotting 1 point to each multiple choice question, gives you a full rubric for the test. You could go even further and decide how many test questions will be on each of the subjects that are covered by the test. That will help you ensure proportional coverage of the various topics.

Papers are much more difficult to create rubrics for. It forces you to articulate everything you expect to see in the paper. Here's a sample from one of my classes for a paper that is worth 25% of the final grade:

Expectation Weight

· Clearly stated argument that is creative and original 4

· Thorough content analyses 4

· The paper is well-written and the meaning of the sentences is clear 3

· Argument is explicitly linked to an important sociological issue 2

· The literature on the topic is sufficiently reviewed 2

· The paper demonstrates a thorough knowledge of all material that is cited 2

· Paper has been carefully proofed for any errors 2

· Paper conforms to the ASA style guide 2

· Findings demonstrate a good comparison 2

· Paper tells the reader how to respond 2

(25 pts total)

This is the rubric I place in the syllabus. For my own purposes, I also have a more detailed rubric that accounts for each point within the items. I share that with students as they are preparing the final draft of the paper. For most of the items, I allot one point for modest performance and two points for excellent performance.

Using rubrics makes some of my numbers a little messier than the typical class. The paper above is from a course where the overall breakdown looks like this:

Journal: 35% (7 submissions X 5% each)

Attendance: 14% (28 classes X .5% each)

Participation: 11%

Content Analysis: 40% (consisting of the elements listed below)

Content Analysis 1: 3%
Content Analysis 2: 3%
Discussion: 3%
Conclusion and References: 3%
Introduction: 3%
Completed Final Paper: 25%

Participation is easy to adjust in order to accommodate odd numbers on the other assignments. Attendance, when fully quantified, tends to produce a weird number--like the 14 above. 15 would have been prettier on paper, but I wouldn't have been able to explain that last point, so I found a way to incorporate it into participation instead. For each of the items, a detailed rubric is also presented on the syllabus. Examples...

Grading rubric for participation

Expectation Weight (out of 11)

Consistently participates 4

Good participation in group work 2

Clearly familiar with the readings 2

Punctual 2

Not disruptive or dominating 1

(11 pts total)

Grading rubric for journals (5 pts each)

All readings are summarized (half point each) 2 points

Summaries are sufficiently detailed 1 point

An application is presented that is specific and detailed 1 point

Application is creative 1 point

(35 pts total)

Grading rubric for the staged assignments:

3 points for each of the five writing assignments during the semester

o You will earn the full 3 points if it is submitted and shows clear effort (need not be perfect—but should be proofread)

o You will earn 2 points if it shows clear effort but has not been proofread

o You will earn 1 point if it is submitted but shows no clear effort

o You will earn 0 points if it is not submitted

o No late papers accepted and I will not provide feedback on papers that were never submitted

Pros and Cons

Using rubrics removes a lot of professor subjectivity. I think it is common for professors to read a paper and say "this just feels like a B," even if they have trouble explaining why. The rubric system might force a professor to give an A to a paper that feels like a B. But that's an important learning moment for a professor. If it feels like a B, but it's an A according to the rubric, then there's an expectation that hasn't yet been articulated. Once that's realized, you should work on naming the expectation. Words like creativity and originality are helpful here. Creativity and originality often make the difference between an A and a B. So you can include them in the rubric. If an assignment is worth 10 points, award the last point or two for creativity. But that means you should also have a discussion in class about what creativity looks like. That doesn't mean you have to give a formula for being creative--I know of no such formula--but you do need to talk about the process of being creative.

The Curve

I find that grading rubrics flip the usual curve on its head. Because the expectations for the course, and for each assignment, are clearly named, students who are interested in meeting those expectations often do very well, while students who are not interested do very poorly. Last semester, I gave just as many A's as I gave C-'s (several of each). I gave very few C+'s and even fewer B's. Because the math is so straightforward, it was easy to identify folks early on who were headed towards D's and F's. So I pushed those students to withdraw from the course by the withdrawal deadline. For students with low grades, grading rubrics made it very easy to explain why their grades were so low and I never had a student complain about unfair grading. More importantly, the rubrics allowed good students to excel because the expectations were very clear.

Here's a nice example of a detailed rubric online.

5 Favorite Teaching Tools

2009-11-21T11:05:00.003-05:00

1) What questions do you have?

The typical way of gauging whether your students are still with you, and prepared to move forward, is to ask "Any questions?" That's a yes or no question and in many cases students will simply answer 'no' to themselves and otherwise sit there silently. Instead, try "What questions do you have?" It presumes that students do have questions and puts the impetus on the students to identify the questions they actually have.

2) Silence

The goal of the classroom experience is to engage students intellectually. If you're giving students something to think about, they're going to need time to think about it, too. Silence feels very awkward to the person standing up front but it's often barely noticed by the audience, especially if the silence is preceded by something worth thinking about. So after you make a point, take a long pause. If you ask students what questions they have, take a long pause to let them identify their questions. Push yourself to take more and longer pauses. Drink some water, walk across the room, check your notes, whatever it takes to introduce some silence into the room to let students think.

3) "What do you want to comment on, critique, or ask a question about?"

Once each week, I take a seat amongst the students and I ask this question. I then pick a point in the room to begin. I might say, "We're starting with Christy and then moving to her left." Students are allowed to respond to each other's comments, but they are not required to do so. This accomplishes several things. First, it reduces my voice in the classroom and actually takes some pressure off of me to have a detailed lesson plan for that day. Second, it amplifies student voices and reveals to me what it is that they are getting from the readings--as opposed to just confirming whether they are getting the things that I want to focus on. Third, it teaches me new things about the readings and about student experiences because they often pick up on something that I would overlook. In a class of 30 students, I rarely get through more than 10 in 50 minutes. Usually the first few comments go without much reply, but then students relax and a conversation develops. Here's the thing: as the teacher, you have to let go of the belief that you have to respond to every student comment. It's fine to simply say "thank you, next" or to sit silently and see what happens.

4. "Go!"

If you give students something to do in class, it is surprisingly helpful to also tell them to start. For instance, if I ask students to find a partner and discuss some basic questions about the text, they tend to sit there looking confused for a bit. If I say "Go!" with an authoritative voice, they start moving.

5. The Elements of Style

Teaching students how to write is a complex process, but it is worth investing in that process if writing is important to how students learn in your class. When it comes to basic mechanics, the Elements of Style is invaluable. It's a cheap little book, also available on the web, the concisely identifies the major grammar and syntax rules that often trip us up.

The new role models of television

2009-09-29T10:48:00.001-04:00

dustinkidd.blogspot.com (videos will not appear in facebook, so click on the blog for the full post)

Like my reason posts on popular culture, this is focused on Glee. In last week's episode, Kurt came out to his dad, after joining the football team and scoring the winning field goal. It's striking that the usual story of a painful coming out followed by endless abuse and mocking is here replaced with coming out as an inner torment that is greeted with support by surrounding characters. In other words, the focus is less on presenting gay characters who can serve as role models to gay youth, and more on presenting positive straight characters who can offer a welcoming environment to the kid coming out. These characters present new role models for straight people.

In the first clip below (advance to the .55 second mark), Kurt pulls Finn aside to ask a question. Finn, not realizing that Kurt is asking for help with football, intercedes and says: "Thanks, but I already have a date to the prom. But I'm flattered, I know how important dances are to teen gays." Although Finn makes the wrong assumption about Kurt's request, he nevertheless declares his support for Kurt's sexuality. There's no sign of homophobia in the response. Finn then, in the next scene, helps Kurt in joining the football team, despite concerns from his teammates--concerns that seem to derive from perceptions of Kurt's sexuality.

Later in the episode (clip unavailable), Kurt comes out to his dad. His father responds that he's always known his son was gay and that it doesn't make him love Kurt any less. This is a father who embodies working class masculinity and manages to present a gay-positive role model without undermining that masculinity.

A similar image was seen in the premier of Modern Family. When the gay couple on the show introduces their newly adopted daughter to their extended family, the father--who had previously shown discomfort with the gay relationship and with the idea of a gay couple raising a child--declares his full support for the growing family (second clip below).

These images of male heterosexuality are a new and positive development for televised representation.

Full episode of Glee:

Emergency Funds

2009-09-23T13:02:00.002-04:00

dustinkidd.blogspot.com

What is it? Readily available funds that you can use to pay for unexpected needs in life. One of the biggest things to plan for now is the possibility of being unemployed.

When to do it? Right away, if you don't have any emergency funds at all. Once you have $1000 set aside, go back to working on your high interest debts (esp. credit cards). After those are paid off, then built the fund up.

How much do I need? Advice ranges from $1000 to 8 months of expenses. I'd aim for 6 months.

How do I calculate 6 months of expenses? It's not half of your annual salary. Don't calculate your emergency needs based on your salary, calculate them based on your expenses. If you have a budget, you can do this quickly (and if you don't have a budget, you'll be able to make one quickly after planning for your emergency fund). Start with your fixed expenses like rent, cell phone bill, loan payments, etc. Then, estimate your variable expenses like food and entertainment. You want to estimate liberally, even though you will spend conservatively when you actually need these funds. I was especially liberal with the entertainment budget. People who are unemployed have a lot of time on their hands and it becomes very easy to start spending money on movies, drinks, etc., just to stave off the boredom.

Do not include taxes or retirement contributions. It doesn't make any sense to contribute to your retirement when you're not making any money.

So calculate one month of expenses and then multiply times 6. Voila. That's your target emergency fund.

Where do I put it? You don't need to leave it in a zero interest checking account. This is money you're going to sit on indefinitely, it might as well be making some interest. Find a high interest online account like ING. (NB: High interest accounts are not that high right now. I opened my ING account a few years ago at 4.5%, but now it's at 1.3% and that's the highest I can find.)

You can also put some of your emergency fund in your Roth IRA. Why? Because you can always withdraw your contributed funds from a Roth at no penalty whatsoever. You just can't withdraw the earnings. So, if you never use your emergency fund, then it's tucked away as extra retirement money. What you can contribute varies, but generally single people making less than $105K can contribute $5000 per year.

I suggest putting $1000 in a savings account first. Then, every year, the first $5000 you save goes into a Roth and any money thereafter goes into the savings account. I double checked this advice by tweeting Suze Orman and she agreed. Put $5K of emergency funds in the Roth.

(Note that you can also use your Roth to save for a home. When you're ready to make a down payment on your first home, you can withdraw your contributed funds AND $10,000 in earnings, without any penalty or fee.)

How do I save it up? Scrimp and cut as much as you can to get that first $1000 in quickly. Then, once you have your target amount set, create a savings plan to get you there in a reasonable time frame. Unless your income is high, you are unlikely to save 6 months of expenses in less than a couple years. If your target is $20,000 in emergency funds in 2 years, then you need to save $830 per month! If that's not realistic, you need to work on your budget so that you can a) save more and b) live on less (thus lowering your target emergency fund amount).

Glee Roundup

2009-09-22T22:06:00.001-04:00

dustinkidd.blogspot.com

CNN on Glee's pilot strategy: Glee banks on risky strategy

LA Times on last week's episode: Glee: Ah, fellas!

Calgary Herald on best fall bets: Fall Season Survival

Fresh Air interviews the director and producer Ryan Murphy: From Nip/Tuck to High School Glee

NYTimes on last week's episode: Glee, Brought to you by the letter C

TV Guide on Fox's Use of Tweet-peats: Fox to Air Twee-Peats of Glee and Fringe

TV Guide on the director's cut: Glee Director's Cut: What's to Come?

And yes, you guessed it: The Gleeblog

The Sociology of Glee

2009-09-15T10:28:00.002-04:00

dustinkidd.blogspot.com

Glee feels like it was written by a graduate from my course on popular culture. I tell my students to look for the racial and ethnic minorities, look for the women, look for the disabled people, look for the gays and lesbians. On a many shows on television, these characters are not present or they appear very infrequently. A lot of hype surrounds the occasional exceptions, but they really are exceptions.

Glee is one more of those exceptions, but it's striking for its inclusiveness. The initial Glee club--New Directions!--includes one kid in a wheelchair, one kid who is probably gay, one Black woman and one Asian woman (who is probably lesbian), along with the perfect straight White male and female leads. This isn't a show that argues that we're really all part of the mainstream. The key moment in the pilot episode is when Finn, the male lead who has been recruited from the football teams, declares that "we're all losers!" The show isn't about pulling towards the middle, it's about pulling towards the margins. The creator Ryan Murphy said as much in an interview on NPR's Fresh Air. This show is about exploring the loser in all of us. I love that.

The show is not above critique, but I'll save that for another time. Obviously, the leads are attractive non-disabled straight people and there's something problematic about this ensemble. Furthermore, the show is produced and distributed by Fox. But there's definitely something new about Glee that I want to pay attention to, and it's going to make more appearances on this blog.

Debit Cards

2009-09-09T19:36:00.004-04:00

dustinkidd.blogspot.com

The New York Times has a nice front page article today, September 9th, on the dangers of debit cards. The problem? Overdrafts. I got into this problem a few years with Wachovia. A deposit that I made didn't clear for a few days, even though the deposit was recorded. In the meantime, I made 4 small purchases, each for less than $3. But because the bank argued that the money wasn't available, I incurred FOUR overdraft fees of $34 each.

I was mortified. I called to complain and the bank refused to help. On a graduate student budget, it took me a long time to recover.

To prevent that from happening again, I signed up for overdraft protection. Under this service, any overdrafts would come from my Wachovia credit card. What wasn't explained to me was that there was a $30 service charge every time this kicks in. In addition, the bank then collected finance charges as well, unless I paid if off by the end of the month. Since I was carrying a large balance on my card already, it took a long time to clear those charges. Really, I was only able to do it by transferring the balance to another card.

What can you do it about this? You can ask your bank to turn off any overdraft mechanisms they have. BUT, at the moment, they are legally allowed to continue what they call "overdraft convenience." In other words, you might ask to opt out, but they might say no. You're in a stronger position to ask if you call now, when you don't have any overdrafts.

Read this article at the NYTimes, and also look for the accompanying video.

The Functions of Popular Culture

2009-09-07T10:03:00.004-04:00

dustinkidd.blogspot.com

This is a summary of my 2007 article "Harry Potter and the Functions of Popular Culture" from The Journal of Popular Culture. I argue that the basic functions of popular culture today are the same basic functions of crime, as described by Emile Durkheim in The Rules of Sociological Method in 1895.

Briefly, these social functions are to:

produce social norms,
establish social boundaries,
create rituals that generate social solidarity,
generate innovation, and
pave the way for social change.

It's tempting to give specific examples from film, television or music for each, but that would be misleading. Popular culture accomplishes these functions through blunt ubiquitous force, not through acute specificity. We don't turn to one TV show for our norms and another for our innovations. What Not to Wear may in fact tell us what to wear, but we also figure out how to dress ourselves from all of the other media we consume. Most people will never watch that one show, and yet many will still wear the very same clothes. A million cultural exchanges, mediated by a handful of cultural industries allow popular commercial culture to, in effect, hold our society together. To some, it looks like social cohesion and sociality. To others, repression and hegemony.

Mortgages and the Sociological Imagination

2009-09-04T17:37:00.001-04:00

I was teaching CW Mills's "The Sociological Imagination" this week, to kick off my seminar on Sociological Theory. This is a little primer that Mills (pictured) wrote on how to think about the world from the sociological perspective. Most issues can be thought about from multiple perspectives, including the sociological imagination, but for some reason the sociological imagination is much harder to embrace than other perspectives. Comte anticipated this by suggesting that human things would be the last aspects of the world to be taken up by science.

The current housing issue (it takes a lot for me to say crisis about anything) offers a nice example. The main competitor to the sociological imagination on this topic (and many others) is American individualism. American individualism argues that you make your own reality through your work and through your choices. People who do well are presumed to work hard and make good decisions. With regard to homes and mortgages, American individualism argues that you and you alone are responsible for your housing circumstance. You should buy only when you are truly ready to buy, you should research your finance choices carefully, and you should make responsible spending choices.

There are many reasons why some sociologists are tempted to reject this perspective altogether, but its a red herring. An issue like this needs to be thought about from both individual and sociological perspectives. Not just one or the other. No matter how responsible you may or may not have been, if you're confronted with the foreclosure of your home, it is your problem. A million sociologists and policy-makers might try to blame someone else, and they might be right, but they cannot lift the burden of foreclosure from your shoulders. Everyone facing foreclosure has an individual story that explains how they got into such distress.

But the story of the current housing issue is more than just the accumulation of individual stories. It is also story about American society, about changes in institutions like banking and real estate, and about shifts in our cultural understandings of what full participation in society should look like. If the rate of foreclosure goes up, you can't just assume that society got more irresponsible than it used to be. And if society did get more irresponsible, you better ask why!

When I bought a house in 2006, I got one of these loans that most experts say should not have been given. While it was a pretty standard 30-year fixed rate loan--not an interest only or an adjustable rate--I didn't put any money down for the home and I had nothing saved up except for some retirement money that I couldn't have gotten too without paying a steep penalty. I also had over $20K in credit card debt.

But I never acted irresponsibly. All of the advice at the time said to stop throwing away money on rent and buy as soon as possible. I spoke to a mortgage broker who pre-approved me for a $250,000 loan. I didn't buy a house anywhere near that price. I felt very responsible buying a house for $184K and getting the seller to pay my closing costs. I felt even more responsible when I rented out a room to make some extra income.

But I still got into trouble, even though I managed to avoid foreclosure. I could never have dug myself out of credit card debt paying that mortgage while also making the needed repairs on the home. I managed to sell the house after 2 and a half years and use the profit to pay off my credit cards. I count myself very lucky.

I would not have gotten myself into that kind of situation 5 years earlier, even if I'd been acting with the same level of responsibility. The culture had changed to the point where young single people were now expected to be home owners. And the institutional practices had changed to the point where banks were happy to give mortgages out to those with jobs, even if they had no real savings. Identifying the cultural and institutional shifts doesn't mean that it wasn't my problem. It was very much my problem and I'm proud to have found a solution. My foreclosure is my problem, but housing issues and foreclosure rates are social problems that have to be dealt with at the sociological level, engaging the sociological imagination.

Tracking Spending and Budgeting

2009-09-02T15:14:00.001-04:00

In order to keep my finances on the up and up, and to make sure I can save what I need to save, I set a monthly budget and I adhere to it by tracking every penny I spend. To do this, I developed an excel spreadsheet with multiple worksheets. I have 7 tabs in my spreadsheet: Checking, Cash, Savings, Fidelity, TIAA-Cref, Budget, and Income.

At the start of the month, I outline my anticipated spending in the budget, and my anticipated income in the income tab. Whenever possible I get very specific in my budget. For instance, I don't know how much I will spend on groceries, so I estimate, but I do know that I spend $4.95 every Monday at the bakery for my loaf of bread. So Bread has it's own budget line ($4.95 X # of Mondays in the month).

Then, I open this document every day to record every purchase made with my checking account, or with cash. ATM transactions are debits in the "Checking" tab that align with credits in the "Cash" tab. The tally in the cash tab should always be exactly what's in my wallet; the tally in the Checking tab should always be exactly what's in my account.

Savings refers to the emergency fund that I am building up in an ING account. I make monthly deposits, so these show up as debits in my checking account and credits in my savings account (interest being the other credit). TIAA-cref and Fidelity refer to my 403B accounts. The deposits to these happen pre-tax and include employer contributions, so the credits in these accounts do not refer to debits from checking. For these accounts, there is just one monthly update, but having the tabs reminds me to keep track of my short-term and long-term savings.

I created the different sheets using the accounts and budgets ledgers in the excel gallery (trying to create my own from scratch didn't go well). For each item (checking, cash, etc.) just look for a ledger that has the details you want to record. I use fairly simple sheets for savings and retirement, but detailed sheets for checking and cash.

Also, choose your categories in the budget carefully and make sure the categories you use in checking and cash align with the appropriate budget items. Each budget item should have a different category so your spending gets aligned correctly. Bread is 'bread' and groceries are 'groceries', so that my purchases from Metropolitan bakery are categorized as 'bread' and my purchases from Farm Fresh Express are categorized as 'Groceries.' This allows you to then filter your spending by category to see how much you've spent in that particular category (don't forget to examine checking and cash).

You can email me at drdustinkidd@gmail.com if you'd like a blank template version of this workbook. It is a pain in the ass, but it makes a big difference with getting a handle on your spending.

Trans in Popular Culture

2009-08-31T12:10:00.002-04:00

You don't see a lot of trans men and women in popular culture, except as rare one-off characters who are used as comic relief. But that is changing. When Mac, on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, met a trans woman named Carmen, it initially felt like the same old shit. But things got more interesting as Mac started dating Carmen and struggled with the tension between his feelings and the pressures he felt from his friends.

I really like the character Alexis on Ugly Betty, played by Rebecca Romijn. The show only occasionally focused on her identity as a trans woman, and didn't hesitate to make her beautiful and powerful. It did explore her dating life in one episode, as well as her friendships with other women, but it did this is a fairly nuanced and interesting way.

The new trans woman on TV is Leiomy Maldonado, one of the dancers in Vogue Evolution, a group that is competing on MTV's America's Best Dance Crew. It will be interesting to watch how she presents herself and how she is represented by the show's editors. I'm also interested in whether America is paying attention--does the show get good ratings; does Leiomy become the subject of popular discussions? But so far, she seems to be bringing it. Check out the clips below.

One last thought: where are the trans men in popular culture?

Vogue Evolution - Week 2 - Deja Vu - Beyonce Challenge

Vogue Evolution On America's Best Dance Crew Season 4 Epsiode 1

The Problem of the Borderline

2009-08-28T09:57:00.001-04:00

Connecting the dots in today's New York Times, I count at least four stories about national borders and the people who move across them.

A federal judge has dismissed a suit against a new law requiring federal contractors to use a system called E-Verify to confirm immigration status of its workers. The law goes into effect on Sept. 8.

A sheriff in a Texas border-county has been sent to prison for assisting Mexican drug smugglers in exchange for bribes.

Advocates for immigrants rights have petitioned the administration to abandon a program of cooperation with state police on immigration enforcement.

Afghan boys, refugees from their homes, are spreading across European cities.

Palestinians continue a five-year protest against a barrier that has taken half of its land and given it to an Israeli settlement.

It would tempting to say that the problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of the borderline, but with environmental destruction already in play, I think that trumps migration issues. But I do think the problem of the borderline will dominate the 20-teens, as politicians continue to ignore the environment.

The problem of the borderline is not a new problem. Humans have always been migratory. No one group has ever laid claim to one territory for long. No one group has ever stayed settled in place for long. The emphasis on national borders and on citizenship is more recent, only because the idea of the nation is still relatively young. (Citizenship is a much older concept, that has long held implications for rights and status, but historically was a not a barrier to migration). The difference now is that migration is easier and pushes towards migration are greater than ever before, even as the emphasis on closed borders is also greater than ever.

Closing the borders--be they in Texas, Palestine, or Paris--is only putting a finger in the dam. It's time to transform what borders, nationality and citizenship mean to us in anticipation of a world that is uprooting again and becoming yet more mobile. Stopping immigration is not going to work. It's time to plan for it.

A funny take on the issue...

Fashion Favorites

2009-08-27T11:29:00.002-04:00

I'm in a list-making mood. Here's my current fashion favorites.

T-Shirts: Obey. I buy them at South Moon Under . I'm eying this one now. For white T-shirts, I like Calvin Klein and for plain color t-shirts, I like American Apparel.
Jeans: I think Diesels are the best. I also like Joe's Jeans.
Dress Shirts: My best ones are TailorByrd. They have contrasting collars and cuffs.
Shoes: Just bought a pair of Via Spiga ($50 at Daffys). But I prefer Unlisted, by Kenneth Cole.
Sneakers: Really like Timberlands.
Socks: American Apparel makes great socks. The black 3-stripe calf length can function as dress sock or athletic socks, and they don't leave black fuzz on your feet like most dress socks.
Watches: Love my Nixon.
Hoodies: I like both Obey and American Apparel.
Wallets: Gama-GO
Short-sleeve button-downs: I have several of these, but the only one that keeps looking crisp is by Banana Republic.
Underwear: Diesel and 2Xist.
Rainjacket: North Face
Coats: Marc. I also like Kenneth Cole's. Shades of Greige makes nice jackets.

Financial Priorities

2009-08-26T09:43:00.003-04:00

Need a plan for getting out of debt and onto the financial high ground? Follow this plan, in this order, and be patient.

Participate in your company's matching 401K or 403B.
Put $1000 in a savings account and don't touch it unless there is an emergency.
Pay off your credit cards, personal loans and car loans, highest interest to lowest.
Go back to the $1000 and start building it up to an emergency fund that you could live off of for 8 months. I'll blog more about this in the future. Keep this in a savings account where you can get to it easily.
Contribute the maximum amount to a Roth IRA. For most of us, that means $5000/year.
Save for and buy a house, preferably without a mortgage or with 20% down to get the best rate.
Pay off your student loans.
Increase your contributions to your 401K or 403B up to the maximum.
Pay off your mortgage.

Simply ignore the steps that don't apply to you. Obviously, if you have no job or your employer doesn't match funds, then step 1 is not an option. You'd do better to move swiftly towards saving your money in a Roth IRA. You could even put some of the emergency fund in a Roth IRA, since you can withdraw that money (but not the interest accrued) at no penalty. But you should keep some emergency funds ($1000-$3000) someplace more readily available.

My emergency savings in an ING savings account at 1.4% interest. That's about the best you can find right now, but FNBO is currently offering 1.5%.

The Jack Wolgin International Competition

2009-08-25T11:10:00.002-04:00

I recently joined the advisory committee for Temple's new major art prize, the Jack Wolgin International Competition. This prize awards $150,000 to an international artist, chosen from a pool of select nominees. Three finalists are invited to share their work in an exhibition that runs throughout October. Panels and other events dot the calendar across the month. Near the end of the exhibit, all 3 artists come in for a 3 day artists-in-residency. At the end of the residency, a winner is announced. The winner gives a public lecture the following day.

My role on the committee is to direct an impact assessment, examining the prize's effects on Temple University, the Philadelphia art world, and the artists themselves. This is tricky work, and I'll share some of our research design here, in hopes of getting some feedback and fresh ideas.

Measuring Impacts on the University: Our first and easiest measurement here is to track media hits that are generated because of the award. Quantitatively, because this is a new award, our baseline is zero. Temple received plenty of media coverage before, but it wasn't coverage about this award. So we're not measuring new media coverage to old media coverage, we're simply tracking new media coverage generated by the award. We'll not only counting the amount of coverage, but also examining the coverage qualitatively. What is the general tone of the news item? What publication does it appear in? Who is the audience? What section does it appear in?

We'll also be looking at direct impacts on the students, faculty, and staff of the university. We'll keep track of attendance at the exhibit, and at the related events. We'll make observations of all of the events, as well as any other moments where Temple community members are able to engage with the art and artists.

Measuring Impacts on the Philadelphia Art World: This is perhaps the trickiest of our research goals. Philadelphia has a large and vibrant art world that includes scores of arts organizations and countless artists. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is the largest and most visible arts organization, but there are many other art museums, galleries, community arts programs, arts non-profits, and artists organizations. Every member of this art world makes a difference, but finding that difference can be very difficult. Attempts to locate it quantitatively seem futile and expensive to me (though I welcome ideas and opinions on this). Our plan to conduct a series of interviews with art world leaders over the next several years, to see what they say about the role that Temple and of the Jack Wolgin Prize play in this large art world. We'll be looking to see what they say in general, and to see if that changes over the years as the prize continues from year to year.

Measuring Impacts on the Artists: Money follows money. When you win one prize, others follow. The bigger the prize, the greater the long-term benefits. Recognizing that, we'll be tracking the careers of the artists (all 3 finalists, not just the winner, though we will compare finalists and winners) to see what their future holds. We have three measures here. First, we are examining all available reviews and criticism of their work prior to winning the prize. We will compare these to reviews of their work in the exhibit, and then to new reviews of their work in the years to come--giving us a comparison of before, during, and after the prize. We'll examine the general tone and key themes of the reviews, and we'll watch for mentions of the prize in future reviews. Second, we'll be interviewing the artists to hear from them what difference they think it makes to be a finalist or a winner of this prize. Third, we are tracking the prize and award history of the artists, to see how this prize sits within a larger career of art prizes, and whether this prize does indeed lead to future prizes.

What may be missing is an assessment of the impacts of the prize on the larger Philadelphia community and on the international arts community. Both of these seem important, but also very difficult to measure.

Teaching Tools

2009-08-24T14:41:00.004-04:00

I've added two new teaching tools to my regime this semester.

1. Skitch. Skitch is both a desktop application that lets you capture images easily, and a website that allows for easy image sharing. I'll use it this semester to capture images that we can discuss in class, and to take pictures of the blackboard at the end of class (to capture interesting brainstorming sessions). I can upload the pic via email, straight from my phone, and the students will have access right away. I can use the image capture software to circle parts of the reading, charts, graphs, etc. and bring those to the surface for discussion.

2. Slideshare. This program allows you to upload PowerPoint presentations to the Web. I uploaded all of my slides for the semester to one page where they can be accessed from any computer. It allows me to worry less about carrying the slides on a USB drive or having to upload them to the course Blackboard page, which sometimes doesn't open. It also makes for easier transitions from one semester to the next.

| Get your SlideShare Playlist

The Double Matrix of Popular Culture

2009-08-24T10:16:00.005-04:00

The book project that I am working on now examines the relationship between popular culture and social inequality. When I think about social inequality, I think in terms laid out by Patricia Hill Collins, whose book Black Feminist Thought emphasizes the intersections between race, class and gender, as well as many other dimensions of identity. She calls this the 'matrix of domination and oppression' and in my work the key variables are race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and disability.

When I think about popular culture, it seems the key sociological issue right now is the enormous amount of popular culture that we have (so many movies, books, CDs, websites, magazines, TV networks and shows), all produced by a tiny handful of massive corporations. We tend to assume that these corporations are competing, but a close analysis shows that they have far too many contractual relationships to truly be invested in competition (for instance, network studios frequently sell their shows out to other networks, which is how Scrubs ended up first on NBC, even though it was always produced by ABC studios, and how it eventually was reclaimed by ABC). I call this the matrix of cultural production.

I am interested in the connections between these two matrices: the matrix of domination and the matrix of cultural production. I call this the double matrix of popular culture.

We address social inequality in many ways--through educational reforms, legal changes, economic policies and political movements. I argue that we need to also address social inequality by bringing some attention to our popular culture. The first issue is representation, because popular culture in its ubiquity is often our primary source of information about these issues and about various identity groups. Our beliefs about other people are formed through thousands of tiny interactions and in many cases these interactions happen virtually through the consumption of popular culture. If we're trying to change the kinds of representations that we see in popular culture--fewer stereotypes, more robust ideas about sexuality, less insulting representations of class identity, richer portrayals of the lives of the disabaled--we have to think about organization of the cultural industries. The same old companies are not going to hasten to produce new cultural representations. That doesn't mean they won't do it all; indeed, they already have. But they have actually lagged behind reforms in other areas.

How do we address the problems created by cultural oligopoly? Through our cultural policies. We have important political policies that shape the character, size and content of the cultural industries. The most important of these policies right now lay with the Federal Communications Commission. My Monday posts are going to try to explore these issues in greater depth over the next year or so.

Suggested Reading:

Adorno and Horkheimer's "The Culture Industry"
Chomsky and Herman's Manufacturing Consent
McChesney's Rich Media, Poor Democracy

Watch this documentary online! Douglas Rushkof's Merchants of Cool (Frontline Special)

Take Gender out of Sports

2009-08-21T10:21:00.003-04:00

After winning the world title for the 800 meters, South African Caster Semenya will have to submit to gender testing before she can safely keep her gold medal. Her detractors think she is either a man or an intersexed person. If she can't prove she is a biological woman, she loses her medal. The case assumes rigid gender boundaries that nature doesn't actually provide, and it highlights for me why we shouldn't have gender-based sports at all. I'll be brief.

You probably think that we know that the average is woman is slower than the average man, which in turn would justify the fairness of separating men and women for at least some sports competitions. We don't actually know that. Any claim about average men and women would have to be based on a random sampling of men and women from all over the world. Most of our tests of these sorts of things come from studies that examine only men and women from the US or from European countries. To be sure, researchers in South American, African and Asian countries have conducted similar tests with their own populations, but without a large worldwide study, we cannot make claims about average men and average women.

Undoubtedly, any such claims would then have to grapple with the enormous variation amongst men and amongst women (including trans men and trans women), as well as the variation of intersexed persons.

Furthermore, and this is key, any legitimate claims about male and female averages has to come from a study where conditions are such that all other things are equal so that gender is the only true variable. That isn't possible. Before any research subjects show up for such a study, they have lived in cultural conditions of tremendous inequality that include unequal educations, differing cultural expectations, women's over-representation amongst the poor, rampant physical and sexual violence against women, and highly segregated jobs. The degree and type of gender disparity is also different in every society around the world.

So, since we can't prove that men and women are incapable of having the same achievements, I argue that we can't justify segregating sports. That would be one small step towards equalizing the conditions of women and men.

Read: Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender or start with this selection.

Clutter

2009-08-20T09:57:00.004-04:00

I hate clutter. Let's get rid of it.

Pick a spot in your house or office or even computer that you want to de-clutter. Let's say we're de-cluttering a drawer in a home-office.

Take out everything and put it all in one pile. Pick up each thing one at time and ask yourself why you have this thing. If you're going to keep it, you have to know why you have it. You should be able to name the purpose the object has and know when it will meet that purpose. The purpose of a yellow highlighter is obvious, but if you never highlight things, then it will never meet that purpose. It's clutter. This stapler and its little box of staples work like new. I've had them for years, I never use them. They have to go. Do you want them?

Start a new pile of the things that have no clear purpose. If you are rigorous in surveying your stuff, this pile should get big quickly. Everything in this pile is going to go; we just have to figure out where it goes. Now, you're going to sort it into the following smaller piles:

Stuff you can give away because you know someone who can use it (I take my extraneous office supplies to my departmental office where 20+ people can share them)
Stuff you can sell on ebay or craigslist (I prefer CL because I don't want to deal with all the shipping issues)
Stuff you can donate to thrift stores and charities
Stuff you recycle
Stuff that can only be trash

Keep that last pile as small as possible. Repeat this for all the different places that get cluttered. You'll make money on the things you sell and you'll save money as you learn what kind of stuff to stop buying since you obviously don't use it.

One final note: One of the biggest forms of clutter is books. Sorry bibliophiles, but it's true. If you're not reading and re-reading them, they are clutter. Pick out the ones you love and give the rest away. Then go join your local library.

Visit Katlamdo for more resources and tips.

Talking About Money

2009-08-19T09:07:00.004-04:00

We didn't really talk about money in my family when I was growing up and the lesson I learned is that money is a private thing that should not be discussed. It seemed a great social faux pas to discuss things like salary, savings, etc.

Being silent on money is completely wrong. We need to learn from Lilly Ledbetter, who spent years unwittingly getting paid less than her male counterparts at Goodyear Tire & Rubber, and then lost her discrimination suit because she didn't sue within 180 days of the pay decision. Of course, she didn't know about the discrimination during those 180 days. She assumed she made the same as everyone else. It was years later before she discovered the discrepancy. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act helps to fix the problem by resetting the 180 day statute of limitations with every unfair paycheck. But even that won't matter if we don't talk about pay. How can you know that you're making less than your colleagues if no one will talk about money?

We need to get over the awkwardness our culture feels about money. We need to talk about money. Explicitly and openly and casually.

So, here goes.

My current salary: $67,500.
Benefits: Good healthcare ($10 co-pays, no referrals), Decent dental, very good retirement savings plan (I contribute 4.5% of my salary and Temple contributes 8%).
Checking: about $2000
Savings: $1100, 1.4% interest rate
Retirement: $40,000
FICO scores: 765, 765, 784
Credit Card Debt: $0 (but I had $24,000 a few weeks ago, before selling my house--credit cards are a struggle for me, but I hope to be done with them), 9% interest rate
Rent: $1550
Student Loan Debt: $32,000 at 4.5% interest rate
Am I missing anything?

For the record, I already feel really awkward and exposed about telling my readers (if they exist) about these things. But I insist that we need to get over that if we're going to have any kind of financial fairness. I suspect that we all think our silence protects us, but it really doesn't. It protects the people and services that want to treat us all differently based on home much money they can make on us. Pay fairness is one reason to talk about it, but financial intelligence is another reason. How can you know your interest rate is good on your credit card or loan unless we all talk about our rates?

Talk about money!

Subscribe to Suze Orman's video podcast from her CNBC show. It's free!

Ask a colleague what they make and have a conversation about it. I dare you.

Wipeout

2009-08-16T22:17:00.006-04:00

Tom over at I Hate Paper turned me on to this ABC show Wipeout. I don't wanna like it, but it's really fun to watch. I'm watching it on Hulu, which ABC wasn't really partnering with very much, but they seem to have stepped it up. Since I'm interested in both the business and content sides of popular culture, I thought I'd use my new love of Wipeout to do some exploring.

Wipeout is a collaboration of Endemol Entertainment and Pulse Creative. Endemol was founded in Amsterdam in 1994 but its website says it is now owned by a "consortium consisting of Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Mediaset Group and Cyrte Group." Its credits include Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Deal or No Deal, Big Brother After Dark (?), and Gay, Straight or Taken. Pulse calls itself a boutique agency and it has only 4 other shows to its credit. It is really a branding agency and it merged with Insite Media Group in 2007.

Wipeout is distributed primarily by ABC, which is owned by Disney. Wipeout is filmed on a Disney property in Santa Clarita, CA. Disney also owns Touchstone Pictures, Miramax Films, Hollywood Records, and Pixar, among many other holdings. Of course, Disney owns all of the ABC channels and the Disney channel, as well as SOAPnet and ESPN.

Wipeout lists 21 producers, at various levels like comedy producer, segment producer, etc.

Now let's look at the content of the show.

24 contestants start the show, fighting through the first obstacle course. We meet a few of these contestants, in brief interviews, but most are just seen in short clips that tend to show their worst wipeout moments. The top 12 finishing times then compete in another round where they are whittled down to just 6. Another round takes 6 to 4. The final round produces a single winner who gets $50,000.

The hilarious moments from the first round generally come from heavily overweight people who have especially awful falls. One memorable moment was of a woman who fell while jumping from one enormous rubber ball to another, hit her chest on the side of the ball while her legs flew up to her shoulders (impressive flexibility), and then she dropped into the water. Round 1 is basically about making fun of the things fat people can't do.

Once the fat people are eliminated, the remaining contestants tend to be gender diverse, and they tend to be a good mix of athletic and non-athletic people. At some point in rounds 2 and 3, thick people are eliminated. These are either big breasted women or muscular men. The obstacles definitely reward the skinny. The final round is a competition between athletic and non-athletic skinny people, and usually the athletic skinny person takes home the money.

The show has three hosts. John Henson and John Anderson appear to be in a booth up above the events, but most likely are filmed after the fact, in a completely different location. They don't interact with contestants at all. Their role is to provide funny running commentary, and they are sincerely funny. Their jokes are crude, and they make a lot of sexual references, including jokes about 'blue balls', referring coyly to the big blue balls used in some of the obstacles. John Anderson's previous work was on SportsCenter. John Henson is most recognizable from his years on Talk Soup, and more recently Entertainment Tonight. It's an interesting combination that seems to work.

Jill Wagner is down on the field with the contestants and she offers interviews before and after the competitions as well as amusing responses to brutal wipeouts. Her previous work includes Punk'd, as a field agent, and some small parts in movies and TV shows.

The sociologist in me has to point out the power position of two White men who are isolated in the safety of a commentators booth high above the events, made even safer by the fact that it is taped after the actual competitions. Meanwhile, the White woman is down on the field, which makes her available for the jokes of the other two hosts. Non-white people appear only as contestants, and they don't even comprise a big portion of the contestants. The social class of the contestants isn't visible, although job titles are sometimes mentioned (and then used as source material for jokes). Class is really present through the design of the show itself. The show is basically a variation of Fear Factor, but that show is really a middle class (or mass class) version of the redneck games. If you're not familiar, redneck games are competitions held at various county fairs and family reunions in the south, and include bug eating, mud wrestling, and wheel barrow races. Wipeout is a cleaned up version of redneck games. What wipeout takes from redneck games is a celebration of spirit over skill. Athleticism may help you win, but it is not prerequisite to play. Wipeout also borrows an interesting version of dignity from the redneck games. The competititons in both may look completely undignified to an outsider, but there is a strong insider feeling that dignity comes from being there and participating. If the participants are caught in some embarrassing situations, we are meant to feel that we would do even worse if we tried. This version of dignity is rooted in class divisions, the celebration of some class cultures over others, and the rebellion of lower class groups against a hegemonic constuction of dignity. (Wow, that either sounded smart, ridiculous, or both.)

Wipeout is a mix of new and old. It is more interesting to watch and also funnier than most shows of its class. But it's not radical TV. No real inversions of racial, gender, or class hierarchies here. It's not exactly the same old shit, but it's not too far past it either.

Still, it's pleasurable to watch, and that counts for a lot when we're talking about popular culture.

Memorization

2009-08-15T16:31:00.000-04:00

Memorization was once a key tool for the learning process. In college, I was involved in a host of Christian organizations and was constantly encouraged to memorize Bible verses. Anyone who passed through that scene would recognize the letters 'TMS' as a reference to the Topical Memory System, a product that helps Bible verse memorization with flash cards and path from the easiest and most used verses to the more difficult or obscure. I'm sure John 3:16 was high on the list. I also remember Isaiah 53:6--"We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all."

You know why I remember that verse? Because I like sheep. They're my favorite animal. I met camp counselor once who told me that everyone should have a power animal. I decided my power animal is sheep.

You probably like sheep, too. You like sheep; I like sheep. We all like sheep have gone astray...

Memorization is also very effective for poetry. Any aspiring poet--indeed, any aspiring wordsmith of any sort--should memorize poetry. It has a way of placing language--not just words, but language--into your head and letting it shape the way you think, speak and write.

My poetry classes in college asked me to memorize a host of poems. I've probably changed some of the words to these poems over time, but I've got them mostly down. One of my favorites is Lucille Clifton's "Cruelty." I'm going to write down the poem as a I remember it, and then I'll search online for the accurate text.

Cruelty

Don't speak to me about cruelty
Or what I am capable of.

When I wanted the roaches dead, I wanted them dead,
And I killed them.

I took a broom to their country and sliced and I slaughtered,
Without warning without stopping,
And I smiled all the time I was doing it.

It was a holocaust of roaches.
Bodies, parts of bodies, red all over the ground.

I didn't ask their names.
They had no names, worth knowing.

Now I stop myself whenever I enter a room.
I never know what I might do.

Okay, the actual poem can be found in this blog post. I did pretty well. I changed 'speak' to 'talk' and 'smashed and sliced' to 'sliced and slaughtered'. I must have made the switch to 'speak' or early on, because for years now I have said "don't speak to me about..." when confronted with a topic on which I felt I was already an expert. Even the opening word 'cruelty' has lingered with me. Speak the word out loud. Cruelty. It is a beautiful word. Your mouth wraps around it. I find myself mouthing the word whenever confronted with symbolic violence of my own or another's design. Cruelty.

This meditation is only possible because I once memorized the poem.

Read: Lucille Clifton's books of poetry, especially Next (which contains Cruelty) and The Book of Light.

Check out the Favorite Poem Project to watch videos of Americans reading their favorites.

Memorize a poem.

Farm Fresh Express

2009-08-14T00:00:00.000-04:00

I love buying fresh, local food, but I've always been a bit lazy about hitting the farmer's market. Reading through Grid, I saw an ad for a grocery delivery service called Farm Fresh Express. They have a store in Lansdowne that buys from local farmers and merchants. They post their inventory online. I get an email every Saturday telling me the inventory has been updated. I read through their offerings online and choose what I want. On Wednesday, it gets delivered to my house (you actually have from Saturday to Tuesday to place your order). They deliver in a cooler and I've even given the delivery person a key to my apartment. I come to a cooler of fresh food!

Of course, they have tons of produce. But they also sell local meats and fish, fruit butters, honey, dairy products, breads, cheeses.... You can almost get everything from them and have it delivered to your house. It's not cheap, but local fresh food is worth the investment. You also pay a $20 cooler deposit on your first order and there's a $10 delivery fee. My orders average between $80 and $100 per week, including the delivery fee.

So here's an example of a tasty local meal. I just made this last night.

Sausages from a local pig.
Bread from Metropolitan Bakery topped with Mozarella from Claudio's, fresh local basil, and fresh local tomatoes (drizzled with non-local olive oil and balsalmic vinegar).
Corn on the cob from a farm in Lancaster.
Sliced potatoes from a local farm, sprayed with olive oil and baked, topped with organic ketchup.

Delicious.

Read: Marion Nestle's Food Politics. Also check out her food blog.

Visit: Farm Fresh Express and view their sample inventory

Credit Reports and FICO Scores

2009-08-12T16:49:00.000-04:00

I'm in the process of tidying up my finances. Suze Orman's The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous and Broke has been a fantastic resource because it gives clear, straightforward advice in language I can understand.

Orman's first rule, and she is very insistent on this, is that you have to know your FICO score, also known as your credit rating. You probably know that this score is used to determine your eligibility for mortgages and car loans. According to the New York Times it is also often used by employers to decide if you are a good job candidate. So even if you're not shopping for a loan, it is a good idea to know your score.

BUT, before you check your score, you should check the information your score is based on--your credit reports. You actually need to look at 3 credit reports, one from each of the major agencies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). But you only need to go to one website to get started. AnnualCreditReport.com allows you to obtain one free credit report from each of the agencies every year. Not sure if you've already gotten a report this year? Go to the Website and find out. It simply won't give you the option of getting a free report if you've already obtained one.

Get all 3 reports because they may differ. Then review the information on the reports. If anything is incorrect, you need to follow up and get it fixed. But don't panic if you see accounts from your teens that are still open. Those accounts are still providing you with a credit history, so you don't need to close them down. You mostly want to look for damaging information such as late payments. If the information is damaging but wrong, you need to get it corrected. If it's damaging but accurate, it's time to work on improving your credit.

If there are inaccuracies in your report, hold off on obtaining your FICO scores until the report has been corrected. You have to pay for the score, so you might as well wait until it is likely to be accurate.

When your credit reports are accurately telling the tale of your credit history, it's time to find out your FICO score. Go to MyFico.com to get your scores. These are not free. You can get your Equifax score for free as part of a 30-day free trial of a credit watch service. You get the score immediately and then regular updates on your credit report. Just make sure you cancel within the 30 days. You'll pay $15.95 apiece for the Experian and TransUnion reports. So for the price $32.90, and a little inconvenience, you can know all three of your FICO scores.

Your goal is to be at 760 or higher. If you're not there yet, here are the steps you can take to improve your score:

1. Increase your debt to credit ration by paying down your debt AND asking your credit cards to increase your limit.

2. Build good credit history by never missing a payment.

3. Hang on to your oldest credit accounts as long as possible, because they establish the longest history.

4. Avoid opening new lines of credit, but make sure you have one good low interest credit card you can rely on, and one retail card (Macy's for instance) to give you a good mix of credit. Space your applications out by a couple years. New applications hurt your score, but they are still worth it if you need to find the right credit situation.

What can you do now?

Read: Suze Orman's The Money Book for the Young Fabulous and Broke. Also check out her website and click on YF&B.

Get your credit reports and review them.

Get your FICO scores. If they're good, you'll feel great. If they're poor, you can start fixing them.