Tierney
Get Real: Representing Reality
This article is concerned with the validity of qualitative research, mostly in regard to having an objective authority, and that there are many forms of representation that should be considered, but they are difficult to define. This has led to issues with procedure and method, which is defined as ‘crisis’.
It seems to me that what’s considered the flaw of qualitative research is what actually makes it so enticing. The whole point of qualitative research is that there are many ways of knowing, and that a human, not scientific interpretation, is a more whole way to understand cultural experience.
Edmund Cusick
Working with Myth
I’m reading about myth while driving out of LA on a road-trip, and the reality of this place squashed the myths built in my mind about it all my life. It’s really not as seductive or beautiful as I had ever imagined—meh. But I am interested in myth and how it informs our understanding. I’m even more concerned with its affect on perception. The article exclaims, “To tell stories is as natural to us as breathing.” To a large extent, our personal histories are formed by the stories our parents tell us about ourselves growing up and even their lives, but what’s odd in my case, is that my parents rarely fit this description. They didn’t tell stories or even read stories, but I do know that we all tell stories in our mind daily, and it’s these stories, the stories I tell myself, that I’m most interested in. What are the myths I have built in my own life?
Ed Check
My Working-Class Roots in an Academic War Zone: Creating Space to Grieve and Honor
Having working-class roots myself, I was instantly interested in reading this article. The author made arguments about how issues of working-class, gay identity, and grievance and loss, are left of our curriculums. He also shared his experiences as an academic, and personal stories about his life. I found it to be interesting, in that some of it I could relate to—the constant derogatory African-American jokes, for example. What it lacks, is some tools for application in the classroom. What I like about the myth article, in comparison, is the exercises included, which can be incorporated into art lessons. I do, however, like the idea of honoring working-class people. Many of these people work very long hours and have very difficult jobs, and though they may not have the best grammar, they are the backbone of this country. What educators do, on the country, is teach kids to aspire to something more, in a sense devaluing their current working-class experience.
Wendy Ewald
I Wanna Take Me a Picture
What’s shocking is that I’ve known about Wendy Ewald and her work with children for quite a long time, but I have not ever investigated what she does. I’m a little disappointed to have waited so long to learn about her. Her work with children is great. Kids are generally uncomfortable with sharing personal stories with classmates out of fear of ridicule, let alone an entire school or community, but I think her approach makes them feel comfortable. I plan to read much more about her work with children and have now shared her with other photography teachers in my district.
Showing posts with label Responses to Readings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Responses to Readings. Show all posts
Monday, August 30, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Liz's Reading Responses
(1) Mark Freeman: Autobiographical Understanding and Narrative Inquiry
Freeman’s chapter investigates the possibilities of narrative inquiry as a “way toward a more integrated, adequate, and humane vision for studying the human realm”. Current understanding of autobiography and narrative is relative to today’s society and culture, thus Freeman gives consideration to the development of autobiography and personal narrative.
The mythic tradition of universal stories about timeless characters and roles reflected a communal society where the individual understands their life as part of a community rather than an isolated existence. Freeman shows how this way of thinking shifted over time as seen in St. Augustine’s Confessions, an example of “autobiographical reflection”. Yet, the role of God as a … in a person’s life, as … St. Augustine, would change again and autobiography expanded with the belief that an individual was the “director” of their own lives, thus a more isolated understanding of humans compared to the community of antiquity, allowed for the possibility to account individual experience and interpretation of the personal past.
This history was interesting as it reveals the evolution of autobiographical thinking. It seems that as a larger society we are continuing on a trajectory moving from communal understanding toward greater isolation. I think about the online communities being formed and wonder how they exist in this framework. While it is a site of communal life and activity, the individuals, as they exist in the world, are often in total isolation as they engage with this removed community.
Freeman also demonstrates how autobiography and narratives invite questions about truth and reality. He asserts that creativity and skill in writing should be valued but not above “truth.” Yet, this is problematized as lived experience is inevitably altered when expressed in words. While objectivity and total ‘accuracy’ is impossible, creativity should be employed in an honest and responsible manner.
This portion of Freeman’s chapter has resonated with me. I thought about it during the class and continue to reflect on narrative, truth, creativity, and invention now that the course has ended. If five different people were asked to write a narrative of a shared experience, their accounts would most likely differ, perhaps significantly. Yet while none would necessarily be fiction, neither would any completely represent the reality of the lived experience. Some might remember things differently or have inaccurate recollections. Does this make their writing fictive or a lie? I believe not. I agree that it when writing personal narratives one must be as honest as possible while writing in the most interesting and creative way possible. However, I find qualities like exaggeration and embellishment sticky points. In writing I feel these techniques have a similar function to when one draws out the light and shadow in a painting. Ultimately, I think it is essential to employ these with responsibility and integrity.
(2) Ed Check: My Working-Class Roots in an Academic War Zone: Creating Space to Grieve…
Check’s article demonstrates how autobiography can give insight into one’s position, choices, reactions, motivations, art work, and pedagogy. He uses personal narrative as a method of research but discusses how this methodology is often met with criticism and skepticisms. Nevertheless, his narrative accounts of his experiences with class, gender, sexuality, and religion reveal a multitude of struggles. Through autobiographical writing he is thus able to not only articulate these struggles but how he responded to them and how they have and continue to inform his present life.
Check’s writing models how personal narrative can be used to grapple with past pain and conflict as well as construct an understanding of identity, motivation, action, and reaction. By reflecting on the failings and gaps in his own education and the negative effect it had, readers see how and why Check utilizes particular pedagogical practices and his positions on certain issues. He also succeeds in giving voice to a working-class, religious, homosexual experience and thus contributes to a community obscured by the a “main stream” middle-class heterosexual experience.
I often question the use of personal narrative when teaching and wonder how much (if any) it can or should be shared with students. Check demonstrates the way narrative can be used in a productive manner in the classroom. It might provide a different position, challenge the views held by the students, provide comfort for those feeling isolated, or model the benefits and possibilities of introspective behavior. I use my personal and family history for understanding my self and the world thus it feels natural for me to bring this into the classroom. Check’s writing has motivated me to not only continue to use personal experience (now with confidence) as I teach but perhaps incorporate more assignments that call for student personal reflection and narrative.
(3) Rosemarie Garland-Thompson: Shape structures Story
Garland-Thompson considers how shape (her term for the visible body) creates a particular story. She notes that our culture has a narrow conception of the body and difference or deviations are considered a disability. This term in turn has been used to tell a very specific and limiting story. Garland-Thompson thus describes four stories which “recast traditional disability plots” specifically in terms of positive narratives rather than negative with the often absent themes of sexuality and community.
The documentary Murderball reveals a community of male athletes experiencing success and growth because “rather than in spite of a disability.” Their sexuality and masculinity is not diminished but rather shown to flourish through the film. Garland-Thompson uses Cheryl Marie Wade’s poem, I AM NOT ONE OF THE as an example an artist weaving together stereotypic images and stories associated with disability with ones of power and strength creating a new narrative. My Body Politic, a memoir by S. Linton is praised for the way disability is shown to give the individual a new sense of self and community. Finally, Garland-Thompson shares her own experience at the annual Society for Disability Studies dance and reveals an energetic, wild, sexy group of scholars- not only challenging ideas regarding the “limiting” nature of a disability but also the reserved temperament of a scholar.
Like Clark and Eisenhaur’s articles, Garland-Thompson demonstrates how narrative can be used to build community, dispel normative myths regarding the body, and be empowering for the writer as well as readers.
I found the last portion of this essay the most engaging. It certainly was a personal narrative and Garland-Thompson was used it to reveal the same themes and challenge the traditional to the disability story as in her pervious examples. It was more interesting to read than her summaries and I felt she really succeed in showing as opposed to telling, making the story more personal as well as entertaining. I wished the rest of the article had been written in the same manner, however, as it stands it is an interesting combination of writing styles.
(4) William Tierney: Get real: Representing Reality
Tierney addresses the “crisis in representation”, an issue frequently discussed among qualitative researchers. He traces the usage of the phrase and shows that it ultimately calls for researchers to reconsider the way data and research is written and presented. Although the definitions of the crisis, as well as its solutions, differ among researchers and scholars, the general remedy has been to adopt narrative forms of writing and place an emphasis on the author/ researcher as a way of being reflexive and clarifying one’s position. Yet Tierney feels this is too simplistic and placing the researcher at the center of the writing is not necessarily the best solution.
Tierney criticizes the ‘one-size’ fits all approach and recommends researchers not only educate themselves and learn new forms of writing (rather than just assuming they are qualified or skillful enough to write a narrative or play) but to let what is going to be written, who it is written about, and who will be reading it, inform stylistic decisions.
Tierney lists the ways researchers have attempted to address this crisis: memoir, narrative, plays, autobiographical narrative. Yet he is critical of the assumption that a researcher, trained as a qualitative writer, can adopt new genres and styles of writing and successfully employ them without training or skill. He asserts that among those contributing to this problem are universities who continue to train graduate students in traditional ways of writing research and require assistant professors to publish in traditional refereed journals in order to secure tenure. Neither practice invites or encourages the exploration of new forms or writing let alone training. He also faults publication committees who only use traditional qualitative researchers to judge the quality of work and determine if it is publishable rather than those trained or skilled in creative writing or varying genres.
I wish Tierney had employed some of his own suggestions in this piece; or if he accompanied this chapter with the same information in another format. His suggestions and recommendations resonated with me. I love to read novels and creative writing and so many of the articles I have encountered in graduate school have been dry and often boring. The pedagogical suggestions at the close of the chapter are ideas I would like to employ in my classroom.
(5) Rachel Remen: Kitchen Table Wisdom
When I first began to read this article/ preface I could not understand why it was included in our reading list. It is preface to Kitchen Table Wisdom and describes the birth of the book. After being encouraged by a friend to submit a short story to a publisher, Remen found herself in a meeting with an editor. Unable to make an outline, come up with a theme, or identify a method of working, the editor sent her away with the task of writing four hundred pages about whatever mattered to her. She had an equally unsuccessful meeting with a writing coach who left her with the advice to remember that Remen was not a writer and to just write what she knew.
In the end Remen’s four hundred pages were a series of short stories. She was insecure about these little stories and felt there was much still to be done, especially since it lacked citations and references. However, her editor assured her it was complete in its current form and the book was met with praise and acceptance by a larger public.
I found Remen’s story motivating and feel it is an example, model, and rationale for narrative inquiry. The discussion of a writer versus author harkens back to Tierney’s article where he calls for researchers not to assume they can pick up and employ any genre of writing. Remen wrote in a narrative manner because she had a collection of stories to tell and that was what she knew, she did not try to put herself into a tradition that she did not belong in.
The writing itself, as a preface, is engaging and enlightening. It is both the story of a book as well as a story of Remen’s discovery of herself as an author (I contest her opinion that she is not a writer). It challenges ideas of who can be an author and how one must go about writing. Most importantly, it reveals the significance and importance of writing what we know, and that this can be a source of credibility. Her tale reveals the importance of telling stories and the importance of practicing truthfulness and honesty in our writing. Remen’s account demonstrates that narrative can indeed be a vehicle for understanding the world and ourselves, building community, and dealing with hardship. And although one must be responsible and reflexive about entering into the position of an author, it can be done successfully by those untrained.
(6) Jenny Newman: Short Story Writing
Jenny Newman’s essay, “Short Story Writing” provides practical advice written in a reader/ writer friendly manner. She addresses some basic elements of writing such as how to begin writing, the characters, point of view, dialogue, plot and ending your story. The chapter is broken into these six sections, each beginning with a description followed by tips and advice for the success, common mishaps and errors, and sprinkled with examples from successful authors. Her chapter also includes writing exercises to help writers develop their skills.
I found this chapter, as well as the other essays taken from The Writers Workbook, incredibly useful. I referred to it frequently during class and have continued to do so as I wrote my short stories. The following are points that I found particularly helpful and have made small comments about the ways I tried to employ them.
“Select those images and details which will resonate in the mind of her reader or listener, and make him feel he knows all he needs to know about characters and setting. The short story writer depends on what Raymond Carver (1986) calls ‘a unique and exact way of looking at things, and [on] finding the right context for expressing that way of looking.’” (53)
“Enter the first scene as late as you can without being baffling, and plant a ‘hook’ or attention grabber…Help your reader picture the setting…but do not load her with information, or insert long flashbacks which distract her from the narrative present.” (54) [I love this and definitely tried to start in the middle of a scene. However, I really struggled with extraneous and distracting insertions as I tend to take lots of tangents and incorporate flash backs in my writing]
“Keep an eye open for those who live at odds with the so-called mainstream” (54) [not really applicable to my current writing but something for the future!]
“Introduce your story people economically and memorably. It is more entertaining to reveal a character through the way he or she drives, smokes, or reads the paper than by resorting to tired descriptions of eye color.” (55) [Really hard to do!]
“Learn to be precise.” (55) [see previous comment!]
“Be sparing with adverbs. If you must mention volume, it is better to use a verb like bellow…dispense with speech tags where is it possible without sacrificing clarity.” (59) [I definitely tried this when writing dialogue, both in A Loose Tooth and Misunderstandings part 1)]
“Raymond Carver also identifies tension as a key element, but for him it comes from, ‘ a sense that something is imminent, that certain things are in relentless motion.’” (60)
“For Aristotle successful plots have a beginning, which introduces conflict, a middle section which develops it, and an ending which resolves it.” (61)
“It is better to focus on small disagreements, and let them be keenly felt, than to snatch at a huge issue and fail to develop it.” (61) [Both of these quotes from page 61 were very hard for me when writing Misunderstandings. I had a lot of small things I wanted to say and felt that focusing on just one would stretch it into flimsyness, thus I decided to tell a series of shorts. However, I still waver over if they are over or underdeveloped.]
“…you need not end with a spelt out statement, as long as you signal ‘a tangible change of some sort; a distinct shift in consciousness, a deepening of insight.’…either way, make sure a change or realization takes place, because without it there can be no story.” (62) [I constantly strive for this- I know I read a quotations in one of the readings, perhaps it was How to Write a Novel, that quoted an author as saying ‘figure out what you want to say then do your best not to say it’ (I paraphrase). This has been a sort of mantra over the past few weeks.]
Freeman’s chapter investigates the possibilities of narrative inquiry as a “way toward a more integrated, adequate, and humane vision for studying the human realm”. Current understanding of autobiography and narrative is relative to today’s society and culture, thus Freeman gives consideration to the development of autobiography and personal narrative.
The mythic tradition of universal stories about timeless characters and roles reflected a communal society where the individual understands their life as part of a community rather than an isolated existence. Freeman shows how this way of thinking shifted over time as seen in St. Augustine’s Confessions, an example of “autobiographical reflection”. Yet, the role of God as a … in a person’s life, as … St. Augustine, would change again and autobiography expanded with the belief that an individual was the “director” of their own lives, thus a more isolated understanding of humans compared to the community of antiquity, allowed for the possibility to account individual experience and interpretation of the personal past.
This history was interesting as it reveals the evolution of autobiographical thinking. It seems that as a larger society we are continuing on a trajectory moving from communal understanding toward greater isolation. I think about the online communities being formed and wonder how they exist in this framework. While it is a site of communal life and activity, the individuals, as they exist in the world, are often in total isolation as they engage with this removed community.
Freeman also demonstrates how autobiography and narratives invite questions about truth and reality. He asserts that creativity and skill in writing should be valued but not above “truth.” Yet, this is problematized as lived experience is inevitably altered when expressed in words. While objectivity and total ‘accuracy’ is impossible, creativity should be employed in an honest and responsible manner.
This portion of Freeman’s chapter has resonated with me. I thought about it during the class and continue to reflect on narrative, truth, creativity, and invention now that the course has ended. If five different people were asked to write a narrative of a shared experience, their accounts would most likely differ, perhaps significantly. Yet while none would necessarily be fiction, neither would any completely represent the reality of the lived experience. Some might remember things differently or have inaccurate recollections. Does this make their writing fictive or a lie? I believe not. I agree that it when writing personal narratives one must be as honest as possible while writing in the most interesting and creative way possible. However, I find qualities like exaggeration and embellishment sticky points. In writing I feel these techniques have a similar function to when one draws out the light and shadow in a painting. Ultimately, I think it is essential to employ these with responsibility and integrity.
(2) Ed Check: My Working-Class Roots in an Academic War Zone: Creating Space to Grieve…
Check’s article demonstrates how autobiography can give insight into one’s position, choices, reactions, motivations, art work, and pedagogy. He uses personal narrative as a method of research but discusses how this methodology is often met with criticism and skepticisms. Nevertheless, his narrative accounts of his experiences with class, gender, sexuality, and religion reveal a multitude of struggles. Through autobiographical writing he is thus able to not only articulate these struggles but how he responded to them and how they have and continue to inform his present life.
Check’s writing models how personal narrative can be used to grapple with past pain and conflict as well as construct an understanding of identity, motivation, action, and reaction. By reflecting on the failings and gaps in his own education and the negative effect it had, readers see how and why Check utilizes particular pedagogical practices and his positions on certain issues. He also succeeds in giving voice to a working-class, religious, homosexual experience and thus contributes to a community obscured by the a “main stream” middle-class heterosexual experience.
I often question the use of personal narrative when teaching and wonder how much (if any) it can or should be shared with students. Check demonstrates the way narrative can be used in a productive manner in the classroom. It might provide a different position, challenge the views held by the students, provide comfort for those feeling isolated, or model the benefits and possibilities of introspective behavior. I use my personal and family history for understanding my self and the world thus it feels natural for me to bring this into the classroom. Check’s writing has motivated me to not only continue to use personal experience (now with confidence) as I teach but perhaps incorporate more assignments that call for student personal reflection and narrative.
(3) Rosemarie Garland-Thompson: Shape structures Story
Garland-Thompson considers how shape (her term for the visible body) creates a particular story. She notes that our culture has a narrow conception of the body and difference or deviations are considered a disability. This term in turn has been used to tell a very specific and limiting story. Garland-Thompson thus describes four stories which “recast traditional disability plots” specifically in terms of positive narratives rather than negative with the often absent themes of sexuality and community.
The documentary Murderball reveals a community of male athletes experiencing success and growth because “rather than in spite of a disability.” Their sexuality and masculinity is not diminished but rather shown to flourish through the film. Garland-Thompson uses Cheryl Marie Wade’s poem, I AM NOT ONE OF THE as an example an artist weaving together stereotypic images and stories associated with disability with ones of power and strength creating a new narrative. My Body Politic, a memoir by S. Linton is praised for the way disability is shown to give the individual a new sense of self and community. Finally, Garland-Thompson shares her own experience at the annual Society for Disability Studies dance and reveals an energetic, wild, sexy group of scholars- not only challenging ideas regarding the “limiting” nature of a disability but also the reserved temperament of a scholar.
Like Clark and Eisenhaur’s articles, Garland-Thompson demonstrates how narrative can be used to build community, dispel normative myths regarding the body, and be empowering for the writer as well as readers.
I found the last portion of this essay the most engaging. It certainly was a personal narrative and Garland-Thompson was used it to reveal the same themes and challenge the traditional to the disability story as in her pervious examples. It was more interesting to read than her summaries and I felt she really succeed in showing as opposed to telling, making the story more personal as well as entertaining. I wished the rest of the article had been written in the same manner, however, as it stands it is an interesting combination of writing styles.
(4) William Tierney: Get real: Representing Reality
Tierney addresses the “crisis in representation”, an issue frequently discussed among qualitative researchers. He traces the usage of the phrase and shows that it ultimately calls for researchers to reconsider the way data and research is written and presented. Although the definitions of the crisis, as well as its solutions, differ among researchers and scholars, the general remedy has been to adopt narrative forms of writing and place an emphasis on the author/ researcher as a way of being reflexive and clarifying one’s position. Yet Tierney feels this is too simplistic and placing the researcher at the center of the writing is not necessarily the best solution.
Tierney criticizes the ‘one-size’ fits all approach and recommends researchers not only educate themselves and learn new forms of writing (rather than just assuming they are qualified or skillful enough to write a narrative or play) but to let what is going to be written, who it is written about, and who will be reading it, inform stylistic decisions.
Tierney lists the ways researchers have attempted to address this crisis: memoir, narrative, plays, autobiographical narrative. Yet he is critical of the assumption that a researcher, trained as a qualitative writer, can adopt new genres and styles of writing and successfully employ them without training or skill. He asserts that among those contributing to this problem are universities who continue to train graduate students in traditional ways of writing research and require assistant professors to publish in traditional refereed journals in order to secure tenure. Neither practice invites or encourages the exploration of new forms or writing let alone training. He also faults publication committees who only use traditional qualitative researchers to judge the quality of work and determine if it is publishable rather than those trained or skilled in creative writing or varying genres.
I wish Tierney had employed some of his own suggestions in this piece; or if he accompanied this chapter with the same information in another format. His suggestions and recommendations resonated with me. I love to read novels and creative writing and so many of the articles I have encountered in graduate school have been dry and often boring. The pedagogical suggestions at the close of the chapter are ideas I would like to employ in my classroom.
(5) Rachel Remen: Kitchen Table Wisdom
When I first began to read this article/ preface I could not understand why it was included in our reading list. It is preface to Kitchen Table Wisdom and describes the birth of the book. After being encouraged by a friend to submit a short story to a publisher, Remen found herself in a meeting with an editor. Unable to make an outline, come up with a theme, or identify a method of working, the editor sent her away with the task of writing four hundred pages about whatever mattered to her. She had an equally unsuccessful meeting with a writing coach who left her with the advice to remember that Remen was not a writer and to just write what she knew.
In the end Remen’s four hundred pages were a series of short stories. She was insecure about these little stories and felt there was much still to be done, especially since it lacked citations and references. However, her editor assured her it was complete in its current form and the book was met with praise and acceptance by a larger public.
I found Remen’s story motivating and feel it is an example, model, and rationale for narrative inquiry. The discussion of a writer versus author harkens back to Tierney’s article where he calls for researchers not to assume they can pick up and employ any genre of writing. Remen wrote in a narrative manner because she had a collection of stories to tell and that was what she knew, she did not try to put herself into a tradition that she did not belong in.
The writing itself, as a preface, is engaging and enlightening. It is both the story of a book as well as a story of Remen’s discovery of herself as an author (I contest her opinion that she is not a writer). It challenges ideas of who can be an author and how one must go about writing. Most importantly, it reveals the significance and importance of writing what we know, and that this can be a source of credibility. Her tale reveals the importance of telling stories and the importance of practicing truthfulness and honesty in our writing. Remen’s account demonstrates that narrative can indeed be a vehicle for understanding the world and ourselves, building community, and dealing with hardship. And although one must be responsible and reflexive about entering into the position of an author, it can be done successfully by those untrained.
(6) Jenny Newman: Short Story Writing
Jenny Newman’s essay, “Short Story Writing” provides practical advice written in a reader/ writer friendly manner. She addresses some basic elements of writing such as how to begin writing, the characters, point of view, dialogue, plot and ending your story. The chapter is broken into these six sections, each beginning with a description followed by tips and advice for the success, common mishaps and errors, and sprinkled with examples from successful authors. Her chapter also includes writing exercises to help writers develop their skills.
I found this chapter, as well as the other essays taken from The Writers Workbook, incredibly useful. I referred to it frequently during class and have continued to do so as I wrote my short stories. The following are points that I found particularly helpful and have made small comments about the ways I tried to employ them.
“Select those images and details which will resonate in the mind of her reader or listener, and make him feel he knows all he needs to know about characters and setting. The short story writer depends on what Raymond Carver (1986) calls ‘a unique and exact way of looking at things, and [on] finding the right context for expressing that way of looking.’” (53)
“Enter the first scene as late as you can without being baffling, and plant a ‘hook’ or attention grabber…Help your reader picture the setting…but do not load her with information, or insert long flashbacks which distract her from the narrative present.” (54) [I love this and definitely tried to start in the middle of a scene. However, I really struggled with extraneous and distracting insertions as I tend to take lots of tangents and incorporate flash backs in my writing]
“Keep an eye open for those who live at odds with the so-called mainstream” (54) [not really applicable to my current writing but something for the future!]
“Introduce your story people economically and memorably. It is more entertaining to reveal a character through the way he or she drives, smokes, or reads the paper than by resorting to tired descriptions of eye color.” (55) [Really hard to do!]
“Learn to be precise.” (55) [see previous comment!]
“Be sparing with adverbs. If you must mention volume, it is better to use a verb like bellow…dispense with speech tags where is it possible without sacrificing clarity.” (59) [I definitely tried this when writing dialogue, both in A Loose Tooth and Misunderstandings part 1)]
“Raymond Carver also identifies tension as a key element, but for him it comes from, ‘ a sense that something is imminent, that certain things are in relentless motion.’” (60)
“For Aristotle successful plots have a beginning, which introduces conflict, a middle section which develops it, and an ending which resolves it.” (61)
“It is better to focus on small disagreements, and let them be keenly felt, than to snatch at a huge issue and fail to develop it.” (61) [Both of these quotes from page 61 were very hard for me when writing Misunderstandings. I had a lot of small things I wanted to say and felt that focusing on just one would stretch it into flimsyness, thus I decided to tell a series of shorts. However, I still waver over if they are over or underdeveloped.]
“…you need not end with a spelt out statement, as long as you signal ‘a tangible change of some sort; a distinct shift in consciousness, a deepening of insight.’…either way, make sure a change or realization takes place, because without it there can be no story.” (62) [I constantly strive for this- I know I read a quotations in one of the readings, perhaps it was How to Write a Novel, that quoted an author as saying ‘figure out what you want to say then do your best not to say it’ (I paraphrase). This has been a sort of mantra over the past few weeks.]
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Mair's Reading Responses
1. Freeman, Mark. Chapter 5: Autobiographical Understanding and Narrative Inquiry.
Freeman sets out to deliver an historical understanding of the origination and development of autobiographical narratives and then consider how the work of narrative inquiry may ultimately provide a more comprehensive and integrated understanding of the “human realm”. He deploys autobiographical narrative as a way to decrease the dichotomy of science and art, a methodology that may perhaps illuminate what is missing in the separation. Situating his subjectivity and lens as trained toward the Western, more individualistic, male-dominated understanding of “self”, he works from Gusdorf’s essay “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography”. The representation of self through memory and personal viewpoint not only provides insight on an individual level but allows for a perspective on the culture of society.
“Precisely because there cannot be a full disentangling of ‘I’ and ‘me’ of subject and object, the resultant story is bound to be permeated by one’s own irrevocably personal view” (128)
Quote by Weintraub: “The essential subject matter of all autobiographic writing is concretely experienced reality…”
~I am interested in the overlaps of dance choreography as a story of self and the tools utilized in autobiographical narrative
“there is a search for ‘unity’, the resultant product being an expression of the innermost dimensions of self. The idea and ideal of authenticity loom large”
“For men, personal agency is emphasized. For women, on the other hand, there emerges a tradition of writing that ‘conceals agency, concentrating on inner life, but leaving them largely ‘disembodied’ (Conway) (131)
-Focus on interiorization of life
From modern to post-modern..Gusdorf’s idea that the “second reading of the experience” is “truer than the first because it adds to experience itself consciousness of it
Narrative confers a meaning on the event: “postulating of a meaning dictates the choice of the facts to be retained and of the details to bring out” (133) Gusdorf
~by understanding how we make meaning, what we choose to remember or what point of view we take, it is then possible to make transparent our subjectivity in all that we do. This is of particular interest to me coming full circle trying to understand the world from a creative place, to engineering and the scientific-quantitative-objective realm to qualitative and ‘experimental methods’.
“Perhaps the aim of the autobiographer or memorist is simply to write, as interestingly and artfully as possible. This would not only spare the (illusory) burden of somehow discovering and disclosing the (real, authentic) self; it would allow for the possibility of creating, through writing, a new self all together.” (134)
2. Check, Ed. “My Working-Class Roots in an Academic War Zone: Creating Space to Grieve and Honor”. Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, Vol 24, 2006, 23-35
Check uses autobiographical inquiry through the lens of standpoint theory in order to situate his cultural experiences and his personal artwork in academe. Given the marginalization of his working class status and queerness, he is interested in interrogating the marginalization of his academic and activist work by demonstrating his way of knowing the world and specifically how this informs his art, research and teaching.
I appreciate this article as it resonates with the nature of research and art activism I am engaging in. In addition to the critical engagement with issues in academe, he also touches on issues related to the dichotomized relationship of practice and theory, something I bump up against regularly. By integrating them in his work with a layered approached, he brings to the forefront the entangled and inseparable relationship and subsequent knowledge production that comes from the engagement.
“I demonstrate how first-person narrative, truth-telling is essential for respectful learning and social justice” (33)
“She demonstrates how we as teachers can facilitate complex and changing identities of students in relation to genders, sexualities, and social class positions” (32)
“My pedagogy in art is simple: Take care of students’ physical and emotional needs and the intellectual needs will take care of themselves” (31-2)
3. Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Shape Structures Story: Fresh and Feisty Stories about Disability” Narrative, Vol.15, No1 2007
“How can we maintain a continuous sense of self as our bodies change over time?” (113)
Between time and human materiality...
I will begin discussing this article from the perspective of my work. This article was pivotal in providing me with a way to frame identity and the body and the changes that contribute to one’s different understanding of self. Identity is now understood to be shifting and multiplicitous but the relationship to the embodiment and changes in embodiment is a key element to my research but I had been unable to articulate it in such a clear way as did Garland-Thomson.
“The configuration and function of our human body determines our narrative identity, the sense of who we are to ourselves and others” (113)
Bynum “Shape or body is crucial, not incidental, to story. It carries a story; it makes a story visible; in a sense it is story. Shape (or visible body) is in space what is in time....Identity is finally shape carrying story.”
What is particularly of interest to my research is the idea of transition, as the body changes our understanding of the world and interactions with people change. This can be sudden or it can be over time. Garland-Thomson goes on to suggest that a “cultural fantasy” we carry is the predictability and stability of the body (114). One of the aspects of training and working as a body educator is my understanding of constantly shifting awareness that occurs in actively listening to the body, an awareness that confirms the constant shifts and changes. Taking her discussion on the normative approach of story structuring shape, we can see the ways in which the standardized body has led to much difficulty and health problems. Based on media and current beliefs about the body, we can see how the concept deviation creates discord, particularly among women. Deviation then, is seen to be an anomaly when it is actually the norm. “Thus, we use the cultural story that we call normalcy to structure our shapes.”
4. Tierney, William G. “Get Real: Representing Reality”
Tierney presents an argument for narrative methodologies that “explicitly locates the author in the text”. By employing these strategies, social scientists may open up the way we portray the live of participants in research (385). However, Tierney warns that researchers and grad stents are not adequately prepared to engage in creative writing with any skill since we are primarily trained to write abstracts and scientific methods: “how to write dissertations and research articles” (390). As an educator, he teaches his students how to critically approach and understands various methodologies in texts..how the author positions herself reflexively.
This article resonates with my experience trying to author an autoethnography as a social scientist and the lack of preparation I had received. My creative training as an artist gave me quite a bit of skill and understanding. At this point in my writing career, Tierney’s article provides great insight into the integration of art and academics in research methods.
“concerns with three central elements of these methods: the nature of writing, the readers of a text, and the purpose of the research act” (389)
Here Tierney sums up critical issues in my creative choreographic process as well as my research process.
“Just as I was once concerned with the unreflexive absence of the author from the narrative, I am equally concerned with the unreflexive insertion of the author into the narrative” (391)
The concern of “a movement away from trying to understand the world of the ‘other’ and toward a more cathartic psychological agency of the self” (392).......this is well stated as one of the major critiques in the interpretive methods.
“If we are to embrace experimental writing then the narrative voice needs to break the stranglehold that linear temporality currently has on our way of constructing reality” (396)….here, a good example of art education and creative training rationale.
“A focus on the author’s voice enables individuals to see how they think of their connections to the Other” (396)
5. Ely, Margot. “In-Forming Re-Presentations”, Chapter 22
Ely examines forms and styles of writing and discusses “their functions in final narrative research reports” (568). After discussing the layered meaning of the word “representation”, she provides examples leading to the understanding of “persona” in texts. Presentation becomes not only a signature but gives meaning to the work. Here, as in dance, I understand my work to be all that is there…the frame and form provide meaning in often subtle, subversive ways. Our presence as people on stage is not overridden by “performance” and must be considered. With some training in visual design, I have always considered the information architecture and visual communication within my decision making as an artist. This article is especially helpful (and I will likely cite it in my future work) as foundation for understanding the architecture of writing and articles.
6. Eisenhauer, Jennifer. “Writing Dora: Creating Community through Autobiographical Zines about Mental Illness”
Eisenhauer examines Zine writing as a form of community for mental illness and also uses the space of the academic research article to convey her personal narrative experience with mental illness. By focusing on the political implications of community building through writing, Eisenhauer highlights the silencing experienced with mental illness through the “construction of discursive space through which to challenge dominant cultural narratives” (3) .
This becomes “a critical practice at the intersection of consumption and production of popular culture” (2).
“They are told through a wounded body.”
Arthur Frank: “The body sets in motion the need for new stories when its disease disrupts the old stories. The body, whether still diseased of recovered, is simultaneously cause, topic, and instrument of what the new stories are.”
“Cultural re-marking of the body and a form of healing as cultural critique” (8)
“Reproduce popular media and through that repetition interrogate the mechanisms of stigma from within dominant popular discourses” (8)
“Words become something that can unsettle objectification rather than reinforce it” (9)
**”When understood through theoretical frames and feminist third spaces, the blurring of consumer/producer boundaries become central to our understanding of zines as a practice and culture” (12)
Amazing article….interrogating dominant narratives and drawing on her position of power as a professor and researcher in order to effect change.
7. Newman, Jenny. “Redrafting and Editing”
Newman offers that “real writing is rewriting” which absolutely rings true. As a graduate student operating with many papers due at the end of a quarter, I find that I don’t allow for the time necessary to rewrite. I have found recently (and have been encouraged by professors supporting the phd path) that starting with a draft and then rewriting it for the course provides the time and energy necessary to make a strong paper.
Revising for Meaning
Most involved
Revising for character
“So many writers depend on stereotypes” (158)
Revising for pace
“Fiction writers now many methods—such as description, or the use of retrospect—of slowing the pace. …vary rhythm, by focusing for example on atmosphere or character development.” (159)
Revising for Style
Telling vs. showing (160)
Revising for Accuracy
Importance of punctuation (not unlike Ely’s form and presentation article), check facts
8. Newman, Jenny. Short Story Writing
What I appreciated most about this chapter was the overlapping techniques and forms for the choreographic work I do. I see dance pieces I make as short stories, vignettes that are expressed in the form of movement. Upon making this clear connection in this reading, I began to look at the tools Newman suggests in her chapter as possible tools for my methodology in dance making. Of course, dance can be something beyond “story” and one has to be mindful of the trite conventions in narrative dance.
V.S. Pritchett says “The novel tends to tell us everything, whereas the short story tells us only one thing, and that intensely” (53)
The short story writer has “a unique and exact way of looking at things, and on finding the right context for expressing that way of looking” (53)
Character: “those who live at odds with the so-called mainstream” (54)
Point of View: “lens through which your reader looks at the world you create”…this could be particularly interesting to consider in the context of dance…
Dialogue: relationships
Plot: obstacles…traditionally 3 in number (61) shows the antagonists power, build tension, form the story’s climax
Ending: Oates-“signal a tangible change of some sort; a distinct shift in consciousness, a deepening of insight” (62)
9.
Friel, James. “Writing a Novel”
This chapter began to sketch out for me a possible approach to my dissertation in considering narrative inquiry. While I may not use it directly, it was certainly helpful in outlining a large scale project. Additionally, I am curating-creating a program of art installation and dance at the Urban Arts Space and given the enormity of the project, I am thinking this way of approaching a project with a through line may be of great help.
The Outline
Foreshadowing
Plotting
Point of View
Beginnings (and Endings too)
Characterisation
Dialogue
Progressing
Drafting
Animating Prose
Expressing your theme: “writing a secret agenda give a prose a pulse—a hidden but very real sense of animation” (117)
“to show how people are imprisoned in relationships” (118)
The Habit of Work
Revising!!!
Freeman sets out to deliver an historical understanding of the origination and development of autobiographical narratives and then consider how the work of narrative inquiry may ultimately provide a more comprehensive and integrated understanding of the “human realm”. He deploys autobiographical narrative as a way to decrease the dichotomy of science and art, a methodology that may perhaps illuminate what is missing in the separation. Situating his subjectivity and lens as trained toward the Western, more individualistic, male-dominated understanding of “self”, he works from Gusdorf’s essay “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography”. The representation of self through memory and personal viewpoint not only provides insight on an individual level but allows for a perspective on the culture of society.
“Precisely because there cannot be a full disentangling of ‘I’ and ‘me’ of subject and object, the resultant story is bound to be permeated by one’s own irrevocably personal view” (128)
Quote by Weintraub: “The essential subject matter of all autobiographic writing is concretely experienced reality…”
~I am interested in the overlaps of dance choreography as a story of self and the tools utilized in autobiographical narrative
“there is a search for ‘unity’, the resultant product being an expression of the innermost dimensions of self. The idea and ideal of authenticity loom large”
“For men, personal agency is emphasized. For women, on the other hand, there emerges a tradition of writing that ‘conceals agency, concentrating on inner life, but leaving them largely ‘disembodied’ (Conway) (131)
-Focus on interiorization of life
From modern to post-modern..Gusdorf’s idea that the “second reading of the experience” is “truer than the first because it adds to experience itself consciousness of it
Narrative confers a meaning on the event: “postulating of a meaning dictates the choice of the facts to be retained and of the details to bring out” (133) Gusdorf
~by understanding how we make meaning, what we choose to remember or what point of view we take, it is then possible to make transparent our subjectivity in all that we do. This is of particular interest to me coming full circle trying to understand the world from a creative place, to engineering and the scientific-quantitative-objective realm to qualitative and ‘experimental methods’.
“Perhaps the aim of the autobiographer or memorist is simply to write, as interestingly and artfully as possible. This would not only spare the (illusory) burden of somehow discovering and disclosing the (real, authentic) self; it would allow for the possibility of creating, through writing, a new self all together.” (134)
2. Check, Ed. “My Working-Class Roots in an Academic War Zone: Creating Space to Grieve and Honor”. Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, Vol 24, 2006, 23-35
Check uses autobiographical inquiry through the lens of standpoint theory in order to situate his cultural experiences and his personal artwork in academe. Given the marginalization of his working class status and queerness, he is interested in interrogating the marginalization of his academic and activist work by demonstrating his way of knowing the world and specifically how this informs his art, research and teaching.
I appreciate this article as it resonates with the nature of research and art activism I am engaging in. In addition to the critical engagement with issues in academe, he also touches on issues related to the dichotomized relationship of practice and theory, something I bump up against regularly. By integrating them in his work with a layered approached, he brings to the forefront the entangled and inseparable relationship and subsequent knowledge production that comes from the engagement.
“I demonstrate how first-person narrative, truth-telling is essential for respectful learning and social justice” (33)
“She demonstrates how we as teachers can facilitate complex and changing identities of students in relation to genders, sexualities, and social class positions” (32)
“My pedagogy in art is simple: Take care of students’ physical and emotional needs and the intellectual needs will take care of themselves” (31-2)
3. Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Shape Structures Story: Fresh and Feisty Stories about Disability” Narrative, Vol.15, No1 2007
“How can we maintain a continuous sense of self as our bodies change over time?” (113)
Between time and human materiality...
I will begin discussing this article from the perspective of my work. This article was pivotal in providing me with a way to frame identity and the body and the changes that contribute to one’s different understanding of self. Identity is now understood to be shifting and multiplicitous but the relationship to the embodiment and changes in embodiment is a key element to my research but I had been unable to articulate it in such a clear way as did Garland-Thomson.
“The configuration and function of our human body determines our narrative identity, the sense of who we are to ourselves and others” (113)
Bynum “Shape or body is crucial, not incidental, to story. It carries a story; it makes a story visible; in a sense it is story. Shape (or visible body) is in space what is in time....Identity is finally shape carrying story.”
What is particularly of interest to my research is the idea of transition, as the body changes our understanding of the world and interactions with people change. This can be sudden or it can be over time. Garland-Thomson goes on to suggest that a “cultural fantasy” we carry is the predictability and stability of the body (114). One of the aspects of training and working as a body educator is my understanding of constantly shifting awareness that occurs in actively listening to the body, an awareness that confirms the constant shifts and changes. Taking her discussion on the normative approach of story structuring shape, we can see the ways in which the standardized body has led to much difficulty and health problems. Based on media and current beliefs about the body, we can see how the concept deviation creates discord, particularly among women. Deviation then, is seen to be an anomaly when it is actually the norm. “Thus, we use the cultural story that we call normalcy to structure our shapes.”
4. Tierney, William G. “Get Real: Representing Reality”
Tierney presents an argument for narrative methodologies that “explicitly locates the author in the text”. By employing these strategies, social scientists may open up the way we portray the live of participants in research (385). However, Tierney warns that researchers and grad stents are not adequately prepared to engage in creative writing with any skill since we are primarily trained to write abstracts and scientific methods: “how to write dissertations and research articles” (390). As an educator, he teaches his students how to critically approach and understands various methodologies in texts..how the author positions herself reflexively.
This article resonates with my experience trying to author an autoethnography as a social scientist and the lack of preparation I had received. My creative training as an artist gave me quite a bit of skill and understanding. At this point in my writing career, Tierney’s article provides great insight into the integration of art and academics in research methods.
“concerns with three central elements of these methods: the nature of writing, the readers of a text, and the purpose of the research act” (389)
Here Tierney sums up critical issues in my creative choreographic process as well as my research process.
“Just as I was once concerned with the unreflexive absence of the author from the narrative, I am equally concerned with the unreflexive insertion of the author into the narrative” (391)
The concern of “a movement away from trying to understand the world of the ‘other’ and toward a more cathartic psychological agency of the self” (392).......this is well stated as one of the major critiques in the interpretive methods.
“If we are to embrace experimental writing then the narrative voice needs to break the stranglehold that linear temporality currently has on our way of constructing reality” (396)….here, a good example of art education and creative training rationale.
“A focus on the author’s voice enables individuals to see how they think of their connections to the Other” (396)
5. Ely, Margot. “In-Forming Re-Presentations”, Chapter 22
Ely examines forms and styles of writing and discusses “their functions in final narrative research reports” (568). After discussing the layered meaning of the word “representation”, she provides examples leading to the understanding of “persona” in texts. Presentation becomes not only a signature but gives meaning to the work. Here, as in dance, I understand my work to be all that is there…the frame and form provide meaning in often subtle, subversive ways. Our presence as people on stage is not overridden by “performance” and must be considered. With some training in visual design, I have always considered the information architecture and visual communication within my decision making as an artist. This article is especially helpful (and I will likely cite it in my future work) as foundation for understanding the architecture of writing and articles.
6. Eisenhauer, Jennifer. “Writing Dora: Creating Community through Autobiographical Zines about Mental Illness”
Eisenhauer examines Zine writing as a form of community for mental illness and also uses the space of the academic research article to convey her personal narrative experience with mental illness. By focusing on the political implications of community building through writing, Eisenhauer highlights the silencing experienced with mental illness through the “construction of discursive space through which to challenge dominant cultural narratives” (3) .
This becomes “a critical practice at the intersection of consumption and production of popular culture” (2).
“They are told through a wounded body.”
Arthur Frank: “The body sets in motion the need for new stories when its disease disrupts the old stories. The body, whether still diseased of recovered, is simultaneously cause, topic, and instrument of what the new stories are.”
“Cultural re-marking of the body and a form of healing as cultural critique” (8)
“Reproduce popular media and through that repetition interrogate the mechanisms of stigma from within dominant popular discourses” (8)
“Words become something that can unsettle objectification rather than reinforce it” (9)
**”When understood through theoretical frames and feminist third spaces, the blurring of consumer/producer boundaries become central to our understanding of zines as a practice and culture” (12)
Amazing article….interrogating dominant narratives and drawing on her position of power as a professor and researcher in order to effect change.
7. Newman, Jenny. “Redrafting and Editing”
Newman offers that “real writing is rewriting” which absolutely rings true. As a graduate student operating with many papers due at the end of a quarter, I find that I don’t allow for the time necessary to rewrite. I have found recently (and have been encouraged by professors supporting the phd path) that starting with a draft and then rewriting it for the course provides the time and energy necessary to make a strong paper.
Revising for Meaning
Most involved
Revising for character
“So many writers depend on stereotypes” (158)
Revising for pace
“Fiction writers now many methods—such as description, or the use of retrospect—of slowing the pace. …vary rhythm, by focusing for example on atmosphere or character development.” (159)
Revising for Style
Telling vs. showing (160)
Revising for Accuracy
Importance of punctuation (not unlike Ely’s form and presentation article), check facts
8. Newman, Jenny. Short Story Writing
What I appreciated most about this chapter was the overlapping techniques and forms for the choreographic work I do. I see dance pieces I make as short stories, vignettes that are expressed in the form of movement. Upon making this clear connection in this reading, I began to look at the tools Newman suggests in her chapter as possible tools for my methodology in dance making. Of course, dance can be something beyond “story” and one has to be mindful of the trite conventions in narrative dance.
V.S. Pritchett says “The novel tends to tell us everything, whereas the short story tells us only one thing, and that intensely” (53)
The short story writer has “a unique and exact way of looking at things, and on finding the right context for expressing that way of looking” (53)
Character: “those who live at odds with the so-called mainstream” (54)
Point of View: “lens through which your reader looks at the world you create”…this could be particularly interesting to consider in the context of dance…
Dialogue: relationships
Plot: obstacles…traditionally 3 in number (61) shows the antagonists power, build tension, form the story’s climax
Ending: Oates-“signal a tangible change of some sort; a distinct shift in consciousness, a deepening of insight” (62)
9.
Friel, James. “Writing a Novel”
This chapter began to sketch out for me a possible approach to my dissertation in considering narrative inquiry. While I may not use it directly, it was certainly helpful in outlining a large scale project. Additionally, I am curating-creating a program of art installation and dance at the Urban Arts Space and given the enormity of the project, I am thinking this way of approaching a project with a through line may be of great help.
The Outline
Foreshadowing
Plotting
Point of View
Beginnings (and Endings too)
Characterisation
Dialogue
Progressing
Drafting
Animating Prose
Expressing your theme: “writing a secret agenda give a prose a pulse—a hidden but very real sense of animation” (117)
“to show how people are imprisoned in relationships” (118)
The Habit of Work
Revising!!!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Drew's Responses to Readings
Margot Ely- In-forming Re-presentation
Ely discusses rhetorical forms and their functions. Her objective is to encourage research writers to write in a way that more readers will enjoy. She describes how research reports should incorporate any and all forms of writing to make the strongest statement. Researchers are encouraged to go beyond data collection. Her suggestions include first-person narratives, poetry, layered stories, anecdotes and vignettes, pastiche, and asserting our (the writers) persona.
Ely opened up numerous possibilities for research and academic writing that I had not imagined, as did the entire class this summer. Not understanding narrative inquiry, I never dreamt that stories and poetry would qualify as research. Ely provided strong examples of each of the forms she described. I was particularly attracted to the Atkinson quote on page 571. Atkinson states that more readable texts are the result of what I would consider feminist theories, though Atkinson never mentions feminism. The rejection of absolutes and the impossibility of objectiveness that Atkinson discusses fit solidly with my understanding of feminist theory, especially when considered in an art education context.
I wish that I had been aware of these possibilities when I wrote my Master’s thesis titled: Implications of Feminist Theory for Art Education, A Philosophical Analysis. By Ely’s standards, it was certainly dry and a less than enjoyable read. It would have been more interesting to write and probably more true to feminism, had I made the writing more personal and less of a compilation of others’ work.
R. Crumb- The Book of Genesis
Crumb used the text of the bible and drew illustrations in his familiar style. Crumb divided the text into units that could be represented in the carton panels. The narration appears at the top or side of panels, the spoken words were put into speech bubbles. The drawings are black ink on a white page. Crosshatching is used to add shadows and depth to the images.
I was surprised that some of the class members were offended or disappointed with Crumb’s version of the bible. Clare expressed that Crumb was preaching or promoting the bible with his work. I disagree. I felt that Crumb was exposing the implausibility of the bible by depicting the scenes so literally. When I hear the story of Genesis, I imagine some vague notion of what the words describe. However, when I see Crumb’s illustrations they look ridiculous. The scene of God taking Adam’s rib to create Eve makes it hard to take any of the story seriously. The idea that woman is made from a small portion of man is offensive, even if it is considered symbolically. But, to see the bone being plucked from his chest makes it humorous. Crumb’s Book of Genesis would tend to make me more skeptical than convert me to Christianity.
Craig stated his disappointment that Crumb had lost the edginess of his earlier work. As an artist, I can sympathize with Crumb in several ways. First, I find Crumb’s version of the Book of Genesis as a more post-modern version of his work. I find nothing wrong with appropriating content from any source to create art. As an aging artist, I think Crumb has the freedom to take on less controversial subjects (although nothing causes more controversy and disagreement than religion) and he should be allowed to take his art into more mainstream directions.
Ed Check- My Working-Class Roots in an Academic War Zone
Check describes his life and career. He identifies three factors that shaped his beliefs and attitudes; social-economic status, homosexuality and religion. He divided his life story into short expositions about himself within certain topics. Check describes his writing as autobiographical. His description of his hometown stresses the working-class economic status in which he was raised. He describes his religious upbringing in terms of ritual. His hometown appeared friendly and ideal, but was actually racist, homophobic and intolerant of some religions. An HIV scare left Check questioning his religion and stirred him into activism and activist art. Finally, Check makes a case for more activism is education, especially directed to students from working-class families.
Check was very inspiring. It makes me feel unproductive and somewhat insignificant as a teacher to read about someone who not only teaches, but regularly produces art and is active in several social causes. I wish I had had Check’s drive, motivation and energy. Although, his story was very different from my own, I could relate to his pedagogical philosophy about putting emotional and physical care at the forefront. I feel it is important to establish a caring relationship with my students, before and above teaching them about art.
Check’s story brings up the idea of how our prior history has shaped us as teachers and as people. I wonder if Check has thought about bias he may inadvertently have against economically privileged students? My school is very racially homogeneous and predominantly upper middle-class. Many of the students live in homes much nicer than mine, have been to places around the world I might never see and many go on the colleges I could never have afforded to attend. ( o been able to get into) I always try to analyze my own actions in terms of jealousy and stereotypes when interacting with these privileged students.
Freeman- Autobiographical Understanding and Narrative Inquiry
Freeman discusses autobiographical writing and narrative inquiry, proposing that these forms of writing lessen the separation of scientific writing and artistic writing. Again, as other authors in this course have offered, this would make research writing more enjoyable to read. Freeman gives a historical perspective of autobiography from myth to post-modern examples. Freeman states that autobiographical recollections provide more and more useful information than typical biographical account because the voice of the storyteller gives valuable insight. Freeman closes by proposing the goal of narrative inquiry and specifically autobiographical writing is to go beyond stating information and do more to increase sympathy and compassion in the readers.
Freeman’s article was very helpful for me. The concept of narrative inquiry as a research method is still quite foreign, and I don’t feel that I fully understand its use. I can relate to the ideas of closing the gap between scientific and artistic writing. As I mentioned in another summary, this freedom to write more creatively would have been a welcome option when I wrote my thesis. I can also see examples of feminist theory in Freeman’s article. The idea that an autobiographical account is not dispassionate and that any writing reflect the needs and interests of the author, are very much aligned with feminist theory. I also agree that the author’s account of an event has as much validity as whatever “truly” occurred. Which again supports the feminist notion that rejects the idea of a universal truth.
Hickey-Revision Number Nine, Idiot
Hickey writes as an art critic who is disenchanted and feels the art world takes itself too seriously. He recounts curating a biennial show and attempts and dreams of other curating opportunities. Hickey’s cynical attitude addresses both the art and art criticism of today. He goes as far as to state that very little contemporary art is good and that any large exhibition would include some art that’s only purpose would be to take up space.
I enjoyed Hickey’s writing style. He alternated between art world references that would only make sense to someone in his field, and pop-culture references such as NCAA basketball and Harry Potter. His sarcastic tone and biting criticisms were humorous. Hickey’s overall impression that the art world takes itself too seriously and has little impact outside the sphere of its relatively small community has more impact coming from inside the art community. We are accustomed to lay persons telling us that art is superfluous, but not from someone within the art world.
Cusick- Working with Myth
Cusick’s chapter about myth in the The Writer’s Workbook was informative and the exercises were helpful. Cusick explains that myths were the first stories in every culture. He feels that understanding and developing our own personal myths would aid us in writing fiction. Cusick states that myth helps us take universal conditions and make have some personal meaning. This supports Freeman’s assertion that repetition of myth helps us feel that we are a part of a larger community. Cusick lists examples of myth in a variety of media. His writing exercises are designed to help us develop and incorporate myth into our writing.
If I were to begin any comprehensive writing project, I would consult this text. Cusick makes a strong point about how a contrived use of myth or symbol can lead to an obvious and forced product. I have considered symbols, not myth, in my painting and have avoided it for that reason. It has tended to look too obvious. I am fascinated by Cusick’s recommendation to absorb a body of myths and use it build a larger, stronger knowledge base. Then, with this knowledge write (or paint) more meaningful and interesting work.
Ely discusses rhetorical forms and their functions. Her objective is to encourage research writers to write in a way that more readers will enjoy. She describes how research reports should incorporate any and all forms of writing to make the strongest statement. Researchers are encouraged to go beyond data collection. Her suggestions include first-person narratives, poetry, layered stories, anecdotes and vignettes, pastiche, and asserting our (the writers) persona.
Ely opened up numerous possibilities for research and academic writing that I had not imagined, as did the entire class this summer. Not understanding narrative inquiry, I never dreamt that stories and poetry would qualify as research. Ely provided strong examples of each of the forms she described. I was particularly attracted to the Atkinson quote on page 571. Atkinson states that more readable texts are the result of what I would consider feminist theories, though Atkinson never mentions feminism. The rejection of absolutes and the impossibility of objectiveness that Atkinson discusses fit solidly with my understanding of feminist theory, especially when considered in an art education context.
I wish that I had been aware of these possibilities when I wrote my Master’s thesis titled: Implications of Feminist Theory for Art Education, A Philosophical Analysis. By Ely’s standards, it was certainly dry and a less than enjoyable read. It would have been more interesting to write and probably more true to feminism, had I made the writing more personal and less of a compilation of others’ work.
R. Crumb- The Book of Genesis
Crumb used the text of the bible and drew illustrations in his familiar style. Crumb divided the text into units that could be represented in the carton panels. The narration appears at the top or side of panels, the spoken words were put into speech bubbles. The drawings are black ink on a white page. Crosshatching is used to add shadows and depth to the images.
I was surprised that some of the class members were offended or disappointed with Crumb’s version of the bible. Clare expressed that Crumb was preaching or promoting the bible with his work. I disagree. I felt that Crumb was exposing the implausibility of the bible by depicting the scenes so literally. When I hear the story of Genesis, I imagine some vague notion of what the words describe. However, when I see Crumb’s illustrations they look ridiculous. The scene of God taking Adam’s rib to create Eve makes it hard to take any of the story seriously. The idea that woman is made from a small portion of man is offensive, even if it is considered symbolically. But, to see the bone being plucked from his chest makes it humorous. Crumb’s Book of Genesis would tend to make me more skeptical than convert me to Christianity.
Craig stated his disappointment that Crumb had lost the edginess of his earlier work. As an artist, I can sympathize with Crumb in several ways. First, I find Crumb’s version of the Book of Genesis as a more post-modern version of his work. I find nothing wrong with appropriating content from any source to create art. As an aging artist, I think Crumb has the freedom to take on less controversial subjects (although nothing causes more controversy and disagreement than religion) and he should be allowed to take his art into more mainstream directions.
Ed Check- My Working-Class Roots in an Academic War Zone
Check describes his life and career. He identifies three factors that shaped his beliefs and attitudes; social-economic status, homosexuality and religion. He divided his life story into short expositions about himself within certain topics. Check describes his writing as autobiographical. His description of his hometown stresses the working-class economic status in which he was raised. He describes his religious upbringing in terms of ritual. His hometown appeared friendly and ideal, but was actually racist, homophobic and intolerant of some religions. An HIV scare left Check questioning his religion and stirred him into activism and activist art. Finally, Check makes a case for more activism is education, especially directed to students from working-class families.
Check was very inspiring. It makes me feel unproductive and somewhat insignificant as a teacher to read about someone who not only teaches, but regularly produces art and is active in several social causes. I wish I had had Check’s drive, motivation and energy. Although, his story was very different from my own, I could relate to his pedagogical philosophy about putting emotional and physical care at the forefront. I feel it is important to establish a caring relationship with my students, before and above teaching them about art.
Check’s story brings up the idea of how our prior history has shaped us as teachers and as people. I wonder if Check has thought about bias he may inadvertently have against economically privileged students? My school is very racially homogeneous and predominantly upper middle-class. Many of the students live in homes much nicer than mine, have been to places around the world I might never see and many go on the colleges I could never have afforded to attend. ( o been able to get into) I always try to analyze my own actions in terms of jealousy and stereotypes when interacting with these privileged students.
Freeman- Autobiographical Understanding and Narrative Inquiry
Freeman discusses autobiographical writing and narrative inquiry, proposing that these forms of writing lessen the separation of scientific writing and artistic writing. Again, as other authors in this course have offered, this would make research writing more enjoyable to read. Freeman gives a historical perspective of autobiography from myth to post-modern examples. Freeman states that autobiographical recollections provide more and more useful information than typical biographical account because the voice of the storyteller gives valuable insight. Freeman closes by proposing the goal of narrative inquiry and specifically autobiographical writing is to go beyond stating information and do more to increase sympathy and compassion in the readers.
Freeman’s article was very helpful for me. The concept of narrative inquiry as a research method is still quite foreign, and I don’t feel that I fully understand its use. I can relate to the ideas of closing the gap between scientific and artistic writing. As I mentioned in another summary, this freedom to write more creatively would have been a welcome option when I wrote my thesis. I can also see examples of feminist theory in Freeman’s article. The idea that an autobiographical account is not dispassionate and that any writing reflect the needs and interests of the author, are very much aligned with feminist theory. I also agree that the author’s account of an event has as much validity as whatever “truly” occurred. Which again supports the feminist notion that rejects the idea of a universal truth.
Hickey-Revision Number Nine, Idiot
Hickey writes as an art critic who is disenchanted and feels the art world takes itself too seriously. He recounts curating a biennial show and attempts and dreams of other curating opportunities. Hickey’s cynical attitude addresses both the art and art criticism of today. He goes as far as to state that very little contemporary art is good and that any large exhibition would include some art that’s only purpose would be to take up space.
I enjoyed Hickey’s writing style. He alternated between art world references that would only make sense to someone in his field, and pop-culture references such as NCAA basketball and Harry Potter. His sarcastic tone and biting criticisms were humorous. Hickey’s overall impression that the art world takes itself too seriously and has little impact outside the sphere of its relatively small community has more impact coming from inside the art community. We are accustomed to lay persons telling us that art is superfluous, but not from someone within the art world.
Cusick- Working with Myth
Cusick’s chapter about myth in the The Writer’s Workbook was informative and the exercises were helpful. Cusick explains that myths were the first stories in every culture. He feels that understanding and developing our own personal myths would aid us in writing fiction. Cusick states that myth helps us take universal conditions and make have some personal meaning. This supports Freeman’s assertion that repetition of myth helps us feel that we are a part of a larger community. Cusick lists examples of myth in a variety of media. His writing exercises are designed to help us develop and incorporate myth into our writing.
If I were to begin any comprehensive writing project, I would consult this text. Cusick makes a strong point about how a contrived use of myth or symbol can lead to an obvious and forced product. I have considered symbols, not myth, in my painting and have avoided it for that reason. It has tended to look too obvious. I am fascinated by Cusick’s recommendation to absorb a body of myths and use it build a larger, stronger knowledge base. Then, with this knowledge write (or paint) more meaningful and interesting work.
Meg's Responses to Readings
Check, Ed. (2006). My working-class roots in an academic war zone: creating space to grieve and honor. Journal of cultural research in art education, 24, 23-25.
“this healing is one way to honor my roots and activisms. I enable my sanity. I utilize thinking and feeling loss through grieving as a survival tool for existence.” p. 24
“I realized that growing up working-class was a disadvantage.” p. 26
“My art doubled as a form of protest and grieving of my past.” p. 27
“I recycled and grieved.” p. 28
“I grieved and honored women who raised me. The piece celebrates my learned working-class ethics and commitment to community and social justice.” p. 30
“I told them organized religion had run its course in my life.” p. 31
“So little is written about working-class people, grief, loss and healing, and queers in art and education.” p. 32
“How so we as teachers recognize and integrate different social class realities or our students and of the culture at large? How do we recognize and incorporate loss, grief, and healing into our curricula? How can we go about queering a traditional discipline, such as art education (Check, 1996).” p. 32
“Reclaiming working-class as a positive and worthwhile identity and learning histories of working-class people and artists is essential for everyone.” p. 32
“Incorporating loss and grief into classrooms is absolutely essential. - we as teachers can facilitate complex and changing identities of students in relation to genders, sexualities, and social class positions.” p. 32
“I demonstrate how first-person narrative, truth-telling is essential for respectful learning and social justice (Ayers, 2003; Check, 2002b). I explain how grieving is an integral part of my living and share my art and writing with my students. - This is my way of creating social change, my way of staying sane, and my way of honoring my working-class ancestors.” p. 33
Ely, M. (2007). In-forming re-presentations. Handbook of narrative inquiry: mapping a methodology. edited by Jean Clandinin, 567-598. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
“Titles are gatekeepers. They signify the author’s intent, stance and style. At their best they hint at what’s to come.” p. 567
“titles are narrative representations.” p. 567
“representation has at least a double-edged meaning: (1) the rhetorical forms we use in our efforts (2) to re-present, evoke, and discuss what we have lived and learned in doing narrative research.” p.568
“people must want to read what we wrote, must want to stay. - our reports must glow with life” p. 569
“narrative researchers are obligated to present the stories of those people in ways that cleave as closely as possible to the essence of what and how they shared.” p. 569
“Research writing - minds readability, beauty, and wider communication. The difference between data collection writing and research writing (Clandinin & Connelly, 1994) is often most poignantly experienced at the point when less experienced narrative researchers have come to what they consider to be the end of their data collection. The thought that even more, and even more important, writing is to come is often overwhelming, a surprise; the responsibility seems awesome. This is where research writing - In-forming Re-Presentation -comes in.” p. 569
“We write to know. We write to learn. We write to discover: [I consider writing a method of inquiry, a way of finding out about yourself and your topic...a method of discovery and analysis. By writing in different ways, we discover new aspects of our topic and our relationship to it. From and content are inseparable. (Richardson, 1994, p.516)]” p. 570
“A personal diary! - the need for play, the productive loneliness.” p. 570
“What I am advocating is for more attention to the power of first-person stories both for giving voice - to our participants as well as to ourselves -” p. 575
“The poet’s business is to create the appearance of ‘experience,” the semblance of events lived and felt - a piece of virtual life.” “Poetry allows for maximum input in and between the lines. Poems streamline, encapsulate, and define, usually with brevity but always with the intent to plumb the heart of the matter; to bring the reader to live the emotions, the tone, the physicality, the voiced and not-voiced moments.” p. 575
“Poetry is a special and particular device. - It is a call for thoughtful, meaningful creation of poems and their sensitive placement so that they serve in particular ways.” p. 580
“[anecdotes] - nudge our awareness until we pay attention, or they may scream for it. - they carry a nugget of meaning - often crucial to insight.” p. 584
“An anecdote is an encapsulated crucial event - often unforgettable - that provides a variety of possibilities for research direction. A vignette is a brief portrayal that captures an important slice of what has been learned.” p. 585
“Vignettes are economical devices.” p.586
“Drama deals essentially with commitments and consequences.” p. 590
“Drama presents a unique opportunity to create a close, sometimes seamless fit between what we have experienced and learned in one narrative inquiry and what we find essential to share. In its three-dimensionality-on-paper, drama can broaden understandings of themes, metathemes, contexts, social/political/cultural/
“Each makes a personal, identifiable statement; each does so with integrity. For narrative research writers, it is necessary but not sufficient to put a personal stamp on one’s work. That work must also clearly stand for something. It must contribute.” p. 596
“Purposeful reflection on attention to constructing the whole must power researchers to shape authorial persona. Thus, we come closer to being the writers we long to be.” p. 596
Freeman, M. (2007). Autobiographical understanding and narrative inquiry. Handbook of narrative inquiry: mapping a methodology. edited by Jean Clandinin, 120-145. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007.
“narrative inquiry might lessen the distance between science and art and thereby open the way toward a more integrated, adequate, and humane vision for studying the human realm. “ p. 120
“the human condition across tie and place - is, arguably, intimately tied to narrative.” p. 121
“No one is rightful possessor of his life or death; lives are so thoroughly entangled that each of them has its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere.” p. 123
“Community life unfolds like a great drama, with its climactic moments originally fixed by the gods being repeated from age to age. Each man thus appears as the possessor of a role, already performed by the ancestors and to be performed again by descendants.” p. 123
“The Greek sense of self was thus deeply embedded in a cultural whole; only later would there exist the possibility of this self “standing out” from its broader social context of being.” p. 124
“Each man matters to the world, each life and each death; the witnessing of each about himself enriches the common cultural heritage. (pp.30-31) p. 124
“The story being told, inward though its gaze may be, remains the story not of the self, but the soul; it is bound up from the idea of the transcendent, the idea that the movement of a life is inseparable from God’s watchful gaze and takes place against the backdrop of eternal realities.” p. 127
“there is not object, no “text,” outside the self” p. 129
“the truest rendition of experience comes not from the immediate reality of the moment, flesh-and-bone solid though it may be, but from reflection, memory, narrative.” p. 132
“Realizations, narrative connections, are made after the fact, when the dust has settled.” p. 132
“The narrative is conscious, and since the narrator’s consciousness directs the narrative, it seems to him incontestable that it has also directed his life.” p. 132
“many memoirs make use of fictional elements. - man works of fiction make use of autobiographical elements. -Perhaps the aim of the autobiographer or memoirist is simply to write, as interesting and as artfully as possible.” p. 133-134
“- do so as imaginatively and artfully as possible through creating work that not only purveys knowledge of this of that area but that uses writing, that uses form, in a way that truly serves the content, and the people, in question. This is a challenge--a poetic challenge- for autobiography and narrative inquiry alike, and it is well worth pursuing.” p. 142
Garland-Thomson, R. (2007). Shape structures story: fresh and feisty stories about disability. Narrative, 15(1), 113-123.
“How can I be the same person I was a moment ago? - how we can maintain a continuous sense of self as our bodies change over time.” p. 113
“Narrative is a way of constructing continuity over time; it is a coherent knitting of one moment to the next.” p. 113
“- configuration and function of our human body determines our narrative identity, the sense of who we are to ourselves and others.” p. 113
“We are obliged to act, feel, look and be normal - at any cost. And normal does cost.” p. 114
“The shared experience which underpins the masculine community partakes of the dominant sport of cooperation among peers in coalition against a common competitor.” p. 116
For ethnicity to emerge as colorful and sharp, of course, it must somehow be distinguished from the ordinary, safe, and dull way of being that we academics call ‘the dominant order.’” p. 119-120
“They are other disabled academics and activist who work together toward the goal of making the world a more receptive and equitable place for people with disabilities. This work is at once gratifying and isolating because there are so few other academics who are willing to identify as disabled. Often I feel the burden of being the only one, the one who always has to explain, the one who is different.” p. 120
“Narratives do cultural work.” They frame our understandings of raw, unorganized experience, giving it coherent meaning and making it accessible to us through story.” p.122
Tierney, W. (2002). Get real: representing reality. Qualitative studies in education, 4(15), 385-398.
“The use of passive voice, the avoidance of employing the first person, and an emphasis on a disengaged narrative are hallmarks of positivist texts. The break with positivism by qualitative researchers had been a corresponding movement toward texts that use the active voice, utilize the first person, and aim for a more dramatic retelling of events. - One tenet of qualitative research that has not changed over the last generation is that we ought not to generalize from our work.” p. 385
“one - not assume that one kind of writing is acceptable.” p. 385
“the representative practice is to insert not merely the use of the first person - “I” - into the text, but also to utilize the experiences of the author as a way to make meaning.” p. 389
“Few qualitative articles or books capture the vividness of a scene of the qualities of an individual.” p. 390
“- insert themselves in their texts and to write stories, plays, and poems rather that traditional articles.” p. 390
“Writing is a craft. - but the vast majority of dissertations are more like traditional dissertations rather that experimental ones.” p. 390
“Writing fiction takes effort.” p. 391
“- concern I have with the move toward reflexivity is that it appears to be a movement away from trying to understand the world of the “other” and toward a more cathartic psychological agency of the self.” p. 392
“- widen the narrative choices that we make as qualitative researchers. Poems, plays, performance pieces, and a multitude of other genres certainly should be included in the options that authors choose.” p. 394
“we need to move outside of ourselves and concentrate on working in communions with others.” p. 397
“Our work should inform and engage readers so that they feel compelled to become involved in social change. Such an attempt cannot occur if our presentations themselves are not engaging, which returns us to the challenge of focusing on writing and the narrative voice.” p. 397
Noddings, N. The ethics of care and education. http://www.infed.org/thinkers/
I plan to use this on the first day of my Service-Learning, that I teach at OSU. I feel it will set the stage for the type of learning community I hope to create, just as it did with our class. I feel it could help my undergrad students understand the dynamics of what is the heart of service-learning, and hopefully produce a more sincere communication style with our community partner.
Modeling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation
Modeling -
“Educators have to show in their behavior what it means to care.”
Dialogue -
“engage people in dialogue about caring”
“we could not model caring with out engaging in it”
“talking directly about, and explore, our caring”
“evaluate our attempts to care: as we try to care we are helped in our efforts by the feedback we get from the recipients of our care’
Practice-
“experiences in which we immerse ourselves”
“If we want to produce people who will care for another, then it makes sense to give students practice in caring and reflection on that practice”
Confirmation-
“confirmation as an act of affirming and encouraging the best in others”
“When we confirm someone, we identify a better self and encourage its development.”
“we recognize something admirable, or at least acceptable, struggling to emerge in each person we encounter. The goal or attribute must be seen as worthy both by the person trying to achieve it and by us.”
“confirmation involves trust and continuity.”
Ewald, W. (2001). I wanna take me a picture. Teaching photography and writing to children. Boston, Beacon Press.
“Were living in a visual culture.” p. 7
“After children grow beyond. infancy, we don’t pay much attention to creating exciting visual environments for them - we stop engaging them in visual play.” p. 7
“Even vey young children, when encouraged, have the ability to express their complex emotional lives visually.” p. 7
“Not only the act of drawing but also the picture itself can provide a supportive framework for young writers.”
“- once students do begin to write, very little attention is paid to their visual skills.” p. 7
“- what I saw as the need to attend to our neglected physical and visual surroundings, and the need we all feel to articulate and communicate something relevant about our personal and communal lives.” p. 8
“The children’s pictures were more complicated and disturbing than mine - and, I began to realize, much closer to what it felt like to be there.” p. 9
“Its unlikely that they young people would ever have written what they did without pictures to prompt them, and the pictures would have been difficult to decipher without the stories to accompany them.” p.12
“ - photographs provided a much-needed opportunity for the students to bring their home lives into school.” p. 12
“These days, teachers rarely come from the same community as their students. Photographs can give them a glimpse into their students’ lives.” p. 13
“Photography is perhaps the most democratic visual art of our time.” p. 14
“- photography offers a language that can draw on the imagination in a way we may never have thought possible before.” p. 14
Remen, R. N. (1996). Kitchen table wisdom; Stories that heal. New York, Riverhead Books.
“I just follow the natural process of things - Just write about what-ever matters to you.” p.xviii
“I quickly discovered that I am an author not a writer. Writers are people who are probably born to write. An author, on the other hand, seems to be born to do something else and then writes a book about it. This is a very different thing entirely.” p. xviii
“remember you are not a writer. So only write about the things you know. - so I told my computer a story.” p. xix
“Authors do not expect to be authors.” p. xxi
“I have seen a story heal shame and free people from fear, ease suffering and restore a lost sense of worth.” p. xxii
“Stories have not lost their power to heal over generations. Stories need no footnotes.” p. xxii
Newman, J., Cusick, E., & La Tourette, A. (2004). The writers notebook. 2nd ed. London, Arnold. (Chapter 15 Redrafting and Editing )
“As a writer you need time for inspiration, for getting in touch with your unconscious. - But the creative process needs more than inspiration.” p. 155
“The longer you can bring yourself to leave your first draft to one side without looking at it the better, but a week - or even a day or two - is far preferable to no time at all.” p. 155
“When struggling to ‘get the words right’ do not overlook your potential readers.” p. 156
“Contrary to popular belief, the meaning of what you write is not necessarily something you start with; nor does it always pop fully formed into your first draft.” p. 156
“When you think you have finished, ask yourself the question, What is my poem, story or script about? And then ask yourself , what is it really about.” p. 157
“ - listen to your misgivings.”p. 157
“Many writers secretly feel that their characters are their slaves. Nevertheless, to the reader the characters must look as though they are driving the action.” p. 158
“ - check that the dialogue is taut and well constructed, and that it serves a purpose besides conveying information.” p. 158
“ There is no one way to pace a piece of writing.” p. 158
“- every reader or viewer needs the occasional breather.” p. 159
“The poet and the scriptwriter are opposites. - Both kinds of writer must learn how to ‘murder their darlings’. p. 159
“Surplus words and phrases are not just an extra your reader can choose to discard. They distract from your whole style, and leech the life even from those words that are well chosen.” p. 160
“Always check your facts.” p. 161
“Be methodical about keeping your drafts. - It is possible to revise too much, and knowing when to stop takes practice. Sometimes first thoughts are best thoughts, and later drafts can lose conviction and freshness.” p. 161
“this healing is one way to honor my roots and activisms. I enable my sanity. I utilize thinking and feeling loss through grieving as a survival tool for existence.” p. 24
“I realized that growing up working-class was a disadvantage.” p. 26
“My art doubled as a form of protest and grieving of my past.” p. 27
“I recycled and grieved.” p. 28
“I grieved and honored women who raised me. The piece celebrates my learned working-class ethics and commitment to community and social justice.” p. 30
“I told them organized religion had run its course in my life.” p. 31
“So little is written about working-class people, grief, loss and healing, and queers in art and education.” p. 32
“How so we as teachers recognize and integrate different social class realities or our students and of the culture at large? How do we recognize and incorporate loss, grief, and healing into our curricula? How can we go about queering a traditional discipline, such as art education (Check, 1996).” p. 32
“Reclaiming working-class as a positive and worthwhile identity and learning histories of working-class people and artists is essential for everyone.” p. 32
“Incorporating loss and grief into classrooms is absolutely essential. - we as teachers can facilitate complex and changing identities of students in relation to genders, sexualities, and social class positions.” p. 32
“I demonstrate how first-person narrative, truth-telling is essential for respectful learning and social justice (Ayers, 2003; Check, 2002b). I explain how grieving is an integral part of my living and share my art and writing with my students. - This is my way of creating social change, my way of staying sane, and my way of honoring my working-class ancestors.” p. 33
Ely, M. (2007). In-forming re-presentations. Handbook of narrative inquiry: mapping a methodology. edited by Jean Clandinin, 567-598. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
“Titles are gatekeepers. They signify the author’s intent, stance and style. At their best they hint at what’s to come.” p. 567
“titles are narrative representations.” p. 567
“representation has at least a double-edged meaning: (1) the rhetorical forms we use in our efforts (2) to re-present, evoke, and discuss what we have lived and learned in doing narrative research.” p.568
“people must want to read what we wrote, must want to stay. - our reports must glow with life” p. 569
“narrative researchers are obligated to present the stories of those people in ways that cleave as closely as possible to the essence of what and how they shared.” p. 569
“Research writing - minds readability, beauty, and wider communication. The difference between data collection writing and research writing (Clandinin & Connelly, 1994) is often most poignantly experienced at the point when less experienced narrative researchers have come to what they consider to be the end of their data collection. The thought that even more, and even more important, writing is to come is often overwhelming, a surprise; the responsibility seems awesome. This is where research writing - In-forming Re-Presentation -comes in.” p. 569
“We write to know. We write to learn. We write to discover: [I consider writing a method of inquiry, a way of finding out about yourself and your topic...a method of discovery and analysis. By writing in different ways, we discover new aspects of our topic and our relationship to it. From and content are inseparable. (Richardson, 1994, p.516)]” p. 570
“A personal diary! - the need for play, the productive loneliness.” p. 570
“What I am advocating is for more attention to the power of first-person stories both for giving voice - to our participants as well as to ourselves -” p. 575
“The poet’s business is to create the appearance of ‘experience,” the semblance of events lived and felt - a piece of virtual life.” “Poetry allows for maximum input in and between the lines. Poems streamline, encapsulate, and define, usually with brevity but always with the intent to plumb the heart of the matter; to bring the reader to live the emotions, the tone, the physicality, the voiced and not-voiced moments.” p. 575
“Poetry is a special and particular device. - It is a call for thoughtful, meaningful creation of poems and their sensitive placement so that they serve in particular ways.” p. 580
“[anecdotes] - nudge our awareness until we pay attention, or they may scream for it. - they carry a nugget of meaning - often crucial to insight.” p. 584
“An anecdote is an encapsulated crucial event - often unforgettable - that provides a variety of possibilities for research direction. A vignette is a brief portrayal that captures an important slice of what has been learned.” p. 585
“Vignettes are economical devices.” p.586
“Drama deals essentially with commitments and consequences.” p. 590
“Drama presents a unique opportunity to create a close, sometimes seamless fit between what we have experienced and learned in one narrative inquiry and what we find essential to share. In its three-dimensionality-on-paper, drama can broaden understandings of themes, metathemes, contexts, social/political/cultural/
“Each makes a personal, identifiable statement; each does so with integrity. For narrative research writers, it is necessary but not sufficient to put a personal stamp on one’s work. That work must also clearly stand for something. It must contribute.” p. 596
“Purposeful reflection on attention to constructing the whole must power researchers to shape authorial persona. Thus, we come closer to being the writers we long to be.” p. 596
Freeman, M. (2007). Autobiographical understanding and narrative inquiry. Handbook of narrative inquiry: mapping a methodology. edited by Jean Clandinin, 120-145. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007.
“narrative inquiry might lessen the distance between science and art and thereby open the way toward a more integrated, adequate, and humane vision for studying the human realm. “ p. 120
“the human condition across tie and place - is, arguably, intimately tied to narrative.” p. 121
“No one is rightful possessor of his life or death; lives are so thoroughly entangled that each of them has its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere.” p. 123
“Community life unfolds like a great drama, with its climactic moments originally fixed by the gods being repeated from age to age. Each man thus appears as the possessor of a role, already performed by the ancestors and to be performed again by descendants.” p. 123
“The Greek sense of self was thus deeply embedded in a cultural whole; only later would there exist the possibility of this self “standing out” from its broader social context of being.” p. 124
“Each man matters to the world, each life and each death; the witnessing of each about himself enriches the common cultural heritage. (pp.30-31) p. 124
“The story being told, inward though its gaze may be, remains the story not of the self, but the soul; it is bound up from the idea of the transcendent, the idea that the movement of a life is inseparable from God’s watchful gaze and takes place against the backdrop of eternal realities.” p. 127
“there is not object, no “text,” outside the self” p. 129
“the truest rendition of experience comes not from the immediate reality of the moment, flesh-and-bone solid though it may be, but from reflection, memory, narrative.” p. 132
“Realizations, narrative connections, are made after the fact, when the dust has settled.” p. 132
“The narrative is conscious, and since the narrator’s consciousness directs the narrative, it seems to him incontestable that it has also directed his life.” p. 132
“many memoirs make use of fictional elements. - man works of fiction make use of autobiographical elements. -Perhaps the aim of the autobiographer or memoirist is simply to write, as interesting and as artfully as possible.” p. 133-134
“- do so as imaginatively and artfully as possible through creating work that not only purveys knowledge of this of that area but that uses writing, that uses form, in a way that truly serves the content, and the people, in question. This is a challenge--a poetic challenge- for autobiography and narrative inquiry alike, and it is well worth pursuing.” p. 142
Garland-Thomson, R. (2007). Shape structures story: fresh and feisty stories about disability. Narrative, 15(1), 113-123.
“How can I be the same person I was a moment ago? - how we can maintain a continuous sense of self as our bodies change over time.” p. 113
“Narrative is a way of constructing continuity over time; it is a coherent knitting of one moment to the next.” p. 113
“- configuration and function of our human body determines our narrative identity, the sense of who we are to ourselves and others.” p. 113
“We are obliged to act, feel, look and be normal - at any cost. And normal does cost.” p. 114
“The shared experience which underpins the masculine community partakes of the dominant sport of cooperation among peers in coalition against a common competitor.” p. 116
For ethnicity to emerge as colorful and sharp, of course, it must somehow be distinguished from the ordinary, safe, and dull way of being that we academics call ‘the dominant order.’” p. 119-120
“They are other disabled academics and activist who work together toward the goal of making the world a more receptive and equitable place for people with disabilities. This work is at once gratifying and isolating because there are so few other academics who are willing to identify as disabled. Often I feel the burden of being the only one, the one who always has to explain, the one who is different.” p. 120
“Narratives do cultural work.” They frame our understandings of raw, unorganized experience, giving it coherent meaning and making it accessible to us through story.” p.122
Tierney, W. (2002). Get real: representing reality. Qualitative studies in education, 4(15), 385-398.
“The use of passive voice, the avoidance of employing the first person, and an emphasis on a disengaged narrative are hallmarks of positivist texts. The break with positivism by qualitative researchers had been a corresponding movement toward texts that use the active voice, utilize the first person, and aim for a more dramatic retelling of events. - One tenet of qualitative research that has not changed over the last generation is that we ought not to generalize from our work.” p. 385
“one - not assume that one kind of writing is acceptable.” p. 385
“the representative practice is to insert not merely the use of the first person - “I” - into the text, but also to utilize the experiences of the author as a way to make meaning.” p. 389
“Few qualitative articles or books capture the vividness of a scene of the qualities of an individual.” p. 390
“- insert themselves in their texts and to write stories, plays, and poems rather that traditional articles.” p. 390
“Writing is a craft. - but the vast majority of dissertations are more like traditional dissertations rather that experimental ones.” p. 390
“Writing fiction takes effort.” p. 391
“- concern I have with the move toward reflexivity is that it appears to be a movement away from trying to understand the world of the “other” and toward a more cathartic psychological agency of the self.” p. 392
“- widen the narrative choices that we make as qualitative researchers. Poems, plays, performance pieces, and a multitude of other genres certainly should be included in the options that authors choose.” p. 394
“we need to move outside of ourselves and concentrate on working in communions with others.” p. 397
“Our work should inform and engage readers so that they feel compelled to become involved in social change. Such an attempt cannot occur if our presentations themselves are not engaging, which returns us to the challenge of focusing on writing and the narrative voice.” p. 397
Noddings, N. The ethics of care and education. http://www.infed.org/thinkers/
I plan to use this on the first day of my Service-Learning, that I teach at OSU. I feel it will set the stage for the type of learning community I hope to create, just as it did with our class. I feel it could help my undergrad students understand the dynamics of what is the heart of service-learning, and hopefully produce a more sincere communication style with our community partner.
Modeling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation
Modeling -
“Educators have to show in their behavior what it means to care.”
Dialogue -
“engage people in dialogue about caring”
“we could not model caring with out engaging in it”
“talking directly about, and explore, our caring”
“evaluate our attempts to care: as we try to care we are helped in our efforts by the feedback we get from the recipients of our care’
Practice-
“experiences in which we immerse ourselves”
“If we want to produce people who will care for another, then it makes sense to give students practice in caring and reflection on that practice”
Confirmation-
“confirmation as an act of affirming and encouraging the best in others”
“When we confirm someone, we identify a better self and encourage its development.”
“we recognize something admirable, or at least acceptable, struggling to emerge in each person we encounter. The goal or attribute must be seen as worthy both by the person trying to achieve it and by us.”
“confirmation involves trust and continuity.”
Ewald, W. (2001). I wanna take me a picture. Teaching photography and writing to children. Boston, Beacon Press.
“Were living in a visual culture.” p. 7
“After children grow beyond. infancy, we don’t pay much attention to creating exciting visual environments for them - we stop engaging them in visual play.” p. 7
“Even vey young children, when encouraged, have the ability to express their complex emotional lives visually.” p. 7
“Not only the act of drawing but also the picture itself can provide a supportive framework for young writers.”
“- once students do begin to write, very little attention is paid to their visual skills.” p. 7
“- what I saw as the need to attend to our neglected physical and visual surroundings, and the need we all feel to articulate and communicate something relevant about our personal and communal lives.” p. 8
“The children’s pictures were more complicated and disturbing than mine - and, I began to realize, much closer to what it felt like to be there.” p. 9
“Its unlikely that they young people would ever have written what they did without pictures to prompt them, and the pictures would have been difficult to decipher without the stories to accompany them.” p.12
“ - photographs provided a much-needed opportunity for the students to bring their home lives into school.” p. 12
“These days, teachers rarely come from the same community as their students. Photographs can give them a glimpse into their students’ lives.” p. 13
“Photography is perhaps the most democratic visual art of our time.” p. 14
“- photography offers a language that can draw on the imagination in a way we may never have thought possible before.” p. 14
Remen, R. N. (1996). Kitchen table wisdom; Stories that heal. New York, Riverhead Books.
“I just follow the natural process of things - Just write about what-ever matters to you.” p.xviii
“I quickly discovered that I am an author not a writer. Writers are people who are probably born to write. An author, on the other hand, seems to be born to do something else and then writes a book about it. This is a very different thing entirely.” p. xviii
“remember you are not a writer. So only write about the things you know. - so I told my computer a story.” p. xix
“Authors do not expect to be authors.” p. xxi
“I have seen a story heal shame and free people from fear, ease suffering and restore a lost sense of worth.” p. xxii
“Stories have not lost their power to heal over generations. Stories need no footnotes.” p. xxii
Newman, J., Cusick, E., & La Tourette, A. (2004). The writers notebook. 2nd ed. London, Arnold. (Chapter 15 Redrafting and Editing )
“As a writer you need time for inspiration, for getting in touch with your unconscious. - But the creative process needs more than inspiration.” p. 155
“The longer you can bring yourself to leave your first draft to one side without looking at it the better, but a week - or even a day or two - is far preferable to no time at all.” p. 155
“When struggling to ‘get the words right’ do not overlook your potential readers.” p. 156
“Contrary to popular belief, the meaning of what you write is not necessarily something you start with; nor does it always pop fully formed into your first draft.” p. 156
“When you think you have finished, ask yourself the question, What is my poem, story or script about? And then ask yourself , what is it really about.” p. 157
“ - listen to your misgivings.”p. 157
“Many writers secretly feel that their characters are their slaves. Nevertheless, to the reader the characters must look as though they are driving the action.” p. 158
“ - check that the dialogue is taut and well constructed, and that it serves a purpose besides conveying information.” p. 158
“ There is no one way to pace a piece of writing.” p. 158
“- every reader or viewer needs the occasional breather.” p. 159
“The poet and the scriptwriter are opposites. - Both kinds of writer must learn how to ‘murder their darlings’. p. 159
“Surplus words and phrases are not just an extra your reader can choose to discard. They distract from your whole style, and leech the life even from those words that are well chosen.” p. 160
“Always check your facts.” p. 161
“Be methodical about keeping your drafts. - It is possible to revise too much, and knowing when to stop takes practice. Sometimes first thoughts are best thoughts, and later drafts can lose conviction and freshness.” p. 161
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Penny's Responses to Readings
Kitchen Table Wisdom
Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.
This preface is a unlike many that serve as a disclaimer for what will shortly follow. Instead, the author Rachel Remen bares all of her concerns, apprehensions and fears about taking on the task of writing her book Kitchen Table Wisdom. This is a refreshing approach to a preface that I often skip over due to the writers need to justify what will be contained in the remaining pages. Remen lays out her journey through and struggle to write the text discovering that in the end you do not have to be a writer in order to be called author. She fills the pages with a multitude of stories told to her and by her that reside in her memory, finding in the end how powerful her way of thinking can change her life and that of another.
As a budding writer myself I found the preface to Kitchen Table Wisdom to alter my thinking entirely. Coming into this course on the verge of taking my life and what I have spent five years of life working for in another direction, I feared ultimate failure. Reading the words “less afraid, less apologetic,” I began to realize in the end I may come back as neither writer nor author, but having taken this turn will be the most beneficial experience to date.
My Working –Class Roots in an Academic War Zone:
Creating Space to Grieve and Honor
Ed Check
Having grown up in working-class Wisconsin, author Ed Check recounts how his upbringing as a Polish-American male was impacted by the Catholic religion and his emerging homosexuality. In his youth Check recounts the steadiness of daily life in the rural working class town of Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Here the aluminum blast kept many locals in steady jobs thanks to the growing market. The Polish Catholic background of his family established value and ethics early on leading to a career interest as a priest. However, upon entering the academic world Check found himself at odds with faith, value, ethics, and the blatant disregard his colleagues had for the working-class.
As a way of guiding himself through these difficult times, Check began to invest his time in his artwork that evolved into activist art depicting images of his former self and those of himself today as a profeminist and homosexual. While his lifestyle and beliefs have changed his love for family and the community that shaped him has not. In this way he has combined all of the elements of his life and experiences into educating others and giving back to community.
Reading this I could not stop myself from comparing his words to my own life. While I came from a middle-class family, I spent years watching my father, a man filled with experience struggle with his job because he lacked the degree to get ahead. I am one of the first in my family to go to college and graduate let alone go on for a second degree. Catholicism was the basis for my values and beliefs and I too served as an alter server every Saturday and Sunday for nearly six years. It was a huge part of my life and Check is correct in describing the anxiety that comes when you begin to question everything you’ve known.
Even greater is my struggle to find place in the academic role I have as a grad student here at Ohio State. If there is one thing I missed in my undergraduate education it was everything I should already know, critical theory, pedagogy and history. A creative mind, I find it difficult to connect with the material and colleagues, I write what I know and communicate my ideas only to be met with confusion and hostility in some cases. There is little support for the autobiographical and first person methods I use in my writing. My research takes form in the ramblings of a “journey” as I call it, which end up being too close to the subject matter and myself. This is something I have struggled with since day one of this program and still have no solid reason why I am unable to get close to my research.
“Redrafting and Editing”
Jenny Newman
This article can be summarized in one statement, reread and write your piece to perfection, very good advice for someone like myself who often holds off until the last minute to begin writing a paper. It is not that I am lazy in my writing only that I wait for the burst of creative thought to jump-start the writing process. This often takes place during the revision of my research and towards the due date. In remedying these personal issues I found Newman’s brief chapter enlightening and the list of misgivings very helpful.
Early on she points out that editing and questioning your work yourself id very much like parenting. In this way you are present in the work from beginning to end, taking all the necessary steps to see it succeed. In the case of my writing I have found it to be wordy and overpopulated with meaning. After reading Newman’s chapter on redrafting your work I find that her book will no doubt be a welcome addition to my collection of writing resources.
Stranger Than Fiction:
(True Stories)
Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk has always been a writer to capture, confuse and stun me as a reader. From Fight Club to Invisible Monsters, each filled with twists and turns so bizarre; the stories would feel empty without them. However, in his work Stranger Than fiction I find myself stepping outside of the bizarre plots in favor of the more profound journey in Escort. The title and beginning sentences certainly took me down my usual walkway into Palahniuk’s works but as I moved through the story the journey of the escort was certainly not what I had imagined. Instead he took me on a journey through the eyes of a man who happened upon a job that would turn out to be an eye opening experience. As he began working with the man with one leg and the transition into the lives of others in the hospice care center his role became not that of caregiver but provider. He was able to provide each person with a last wish for which he was rewarded with countless afghans the work of loved ones. Each one of these carefully packed away but kept in memory of each person now dead and perhaps as a reminder that each one could be anyone.
The Book of Genesis
R. Crumb
In this comic strip artist R. Crumb depicts what is one of the most controversial chapters in the Bible. Debated over for centuries between the creationists and scientists about the origin of man, Crumb takes the literal translation and places it into a comical context that would make anyone smirk. The graphic nature of the text is cleverly acknowledged with a disclaimer citing that “Nothing” is left out. Aesthetically it is wonderfully done in black and white with strong line. The imagery brings the story to life and highlights how confusing the tale can be with the presence of Adam and Even before the creation of Adam is even mentioned.
As a child growing up my family was very involved in the Catholic religion so I am no stranger to the story. There is a need to tell the story, to see and visualize it in the Catholic faith. There is also a strong need to believe in it and in faith because we are left with little else if we do not. Having passed this point in my life, upon listening to my classmates remarks of the work I see how much my own opinions of the story have changed. I believe now that the story of the creation is just that a story and while many have illustrated it before, Crumb has perhaps mastered the art of reality. While it is comical the images of God as he is seen in our reality is spot on and Eve (finally) is depicted as a woman with full frame unlike the modest desexualized images of the church.
Revision Number Nine:
Idiot
Dave Hickey
As an art critic Dave Hickey steps outside of his box and comfort zone to curate the biennial exhibition for SITE Santa Fe in 2001. After struggling with financial business and a near death by stress incident, his exhibition goes accordingly. Afterwards, avoiding the complex politically charged nature of the new art world; Hickey misses out on the opportunity to curate the larger Venice biennial. Consecutive years pass and he is able to view the 2007 Venice biennial curated by a friend Robert Storr. Upon reading reviews for the show he is shocked to see his friend caught up in the new art world politics that have solely consumed some reviewers, those no of an art critic background.
Sprinkled with modern references, I feel that Dave Hickey’s article is easy to follow though I am positive that I have not fully grasped his intentions. I do however feel that the conferences, politics, boards and agendas that now fully consume the art world have placed a stigma on what the biennials and any exhibition should really be about, the art.
Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.
This preface is a unlike many that serve as a disclaimer for what will shortly follow. Instead, the author Rachel Remen bares all of her concerns, apprehensions and fears about taking on the task of writing her book Kitchen Table Wisdom. This is a refreshing approach to a preface that I often skip over due to the writers need to justify what will be contained in the remaining pages. Remen lays out her journey through and struggle to write the text discovering that in the end you do not have to be a writer in order to be called author. She fills the pages with a multitude of stories told to her and by her that reside in her memory, finding in the end how powerful her way of thinking can change her life and that of another.
As a budding writer myself I found the preface to Kitchen Table Wisdom to alter my thinking entirely. Coming into this course on the verge of taking my life and what I have spent five years of life working for in another direction, I feared ultimate failure. Reading the words “less afraid, less apologetic,” I began to realize in the end I may come back as neither writer nor author, but having taken this turn will be the most beneficial experience to date.
My Working –Class Roots in an Academic War Zone:
Creating Space to Grieve and Honor
Ed Check
Having grown up in working-class Wisconsin, author Ed Check recounts how his upbringing as a Polish-American male was impacted by the Catholic religion and his emerging homosexuality. In his youth Check recounts the steadiness of daily life in the rural working class town of Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Here the aluminum blast kept many locals in steady jobs thanks to the growing market. The Polish Catholic background of his family established value and ethics early on leading to a career interest as a priest. However, upon entering the academic world Check found himself at odds with faith, value, ethics, and the blatant disregard his colleagues had for the working-class.
As a way of guiding himself through these difficult times, Check began to invest his time in his artwork that evolved into activist art depicting images of his former self and those of himself today as a profeminist and homosexual. While his lifestyle and beliefs have changed his love for family and the community that shaped him has not. In this way he has combined all of the elements of his life and experiences into educating others and giving back to community.
Reading this I could not stop myself from comparing his words to my own life. While I came from a middle-class family, I spent years watching my father, a man filled with experience struggle with his job because he lacked the degree to get ahead. I am one of the first in my family to go to college and graduate let alone go on for a second degree. Catholicism was the basis for my values and beliefs and I too served as an alter server every Saturday and Sunday for nearly six years. It was a huge part of my life and Check is correct in describing the anxiety that comes when you begin to question everything you’ve known.
Even greater is my struggle to find place in the academic role I have as a grad student here at Ohio State. If there is one thing I missed in my undergraduate education it was everything I should already know, critical theory, pedagogy and history. A creative mind, I find it difficult to connect with the material and colleagues, I write what I know and communicate my ideas only to be met with confusion and hostility in some cases. There is little support for the autobiographical and first person methods I use in my writing. My research takes form in the ramblings of a “journey” as I call it, which end up being too close to the subject matter and myself. This is something I have struggled with since day one of this program and still have no solid reason why I am unable to get close to my research.
“Redrafting and Editing”
Jenny Newman
This article can be summarized in one statement, reread and write your piece to perfection, very good advice for someone like myself who often holds off until the last minute to begin writing a paper. It is not that I am lazy in my writing only that I wait for the burst of creative thought to jump-start the writing process. This often takes place during the revision of my research and towards the due date. In remedying these personal issues I found Newman’s brief chapter enlightening and the list of misgivings very helpful.
Early on she points out that editing and questioning your work yourself id very much like parenting. In this way you are present in the work from beginning to end, taking all the necessary steps to see it succeed. In the case of my writing I have found it to be wordy and overpopulated with meaning. After reading Newman’s chapter on redrafting your work I find that her book will no doubt be a welcome addition to my collection of writing resources.
Stranger Than Fiction:
(True Stories)
Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk has always been a writer to capture, confuse and stun me as a reader. From Fight Club to Invisible Monsters, each filled with twists and turns so bizarre; the stories would feel empty without them. However, in his work Stranger Than fiction I find myself stepping outside of the bizarre plots in favor of the more profound journey in Escort. The title and beginning sentences certainly took me down my usual walkway into Palahniuk’s works but as I moved through the story the journey of the escort was certainly not what I had imagined. Instead he took me on a journey through the eyes of a man who happened upon a job that would turn out to be an eye opening experience. As he began working with the man with one leg and the transition into the lives of others in the hospice care center his role became not that of caregiver but provider. He was able to provide each person with a last wish for which he was rewarded with countless afghans the work of loved ones. Each one of these carefully packed away but kept in memory of each person now dead and perhaps as a reminder that each one could be anyone.
The Book of Genesis
R. Crumb
In this comic strip artist R. Crumb depicts what is one of the most controversial chapters in the Bible. Debated over for centuries between the creationists and scientists about the origin of man, Crumb takes the literal translation and places it into a comical context that would make anyone smirk. The graphic nature of the text is cleverly acknowledged with a disclaimer citing that “Nothing” is left out. Aesthetically it is wonderfully done in black and white with strong line. The imagery brings the story to life and highlights how confusing the tale can be with the presence of Adam and Even before the creation of Adam is even mentioned.
As a child growing up my family was very involved in the Catholic religion so I am no stranger to the story. There is a need to tell the story, to see and visualize it in the Catholic faith. There is also a strong need to believe in it and in faith because we are left with little else if we do not. Having passed this point in my life, upon listening to my classmates remarks of the work I see how much my own opinions of the story have changed. I believe now that the story of the creation is just that a story and while many have illustrated it before, Crumb has perhaps mastered the art of reality. While it is comical the images of God as he is seen in our reality is spot on and Eve (finally) is depicted as a woman with full frame unlike the modest desexualized images of the church.
Revision Number Nine:
Idiot
Dave Hickey
As an art critic Dave Hickey steps outside of his box and comfort zone to curate the biennial exhibition for SITE Santa Fe in 2001. After struggling with financial business and a near death by stress incident, his exhibition goes accordingly. Afterwards, avoiding the complex politically charged nature of the new art world; Hickey misses out on the opportunity to curate the larger Venice biennial. Consecutive years pass and he is able to view the 2007 Venice biennial curated by a friend Robert Storr. Upon reading reviews for the show he is shocked to see his friend caught up in the new art world politics that have solely consumed some reviewers, those no of an art critic background.
Sprinkled with modern references, I feel that Dave Hickey’s article is easy to follow though I am positive that I have not fully grasped his intentions. I do however feel that the conferences, politics, boards and agendas that now fully consume the art world have placed a stigma on what the biennials and any exhibition should really be about, the art.
Alison's Response to Readings
Escort
Stranger Than Fiction
Chuck Palahniuk
Several of the assigned readings are narratives that address the challenges of illness or disability. The most unusual of the illness related narratives was Chuck Palahniuk’s Escort. The cult author of bestselling novels such as Fight Club and Choke, this story is from a collection of creative non-fiction penned by Palahniuk called Stranger Than Fiction. Just by reading this short story it’s obvious that Palahniuk has lived a life as quirky as the characters and subplots of his novels.
He describes working the assembly line of a car manufacturer full of recent college graduates unable to land jobs doing much of anything else. As I read this I thought of Ed Check’s remarks related to academics and the working class. It seems that many recent college graduates are faced with minimum wage, unskilled jobs. Palahniuk notes that he was jealous of those, possibly working class, skilled workers who were able to weld and make an extra two dollars an hour. This job also allowed him access to all sorts of different experiences, one of which he outlines in this story.
Palahniuk describes volunteering at a local hospice. One of the AIDS patients Palahniuk forms an interesting bond with makes an unusual request for Palahniuk to clear his apartment of sex toys and pornography before he passes away, sparing his mother from the experience. After cleaning the apartment, Palahniuk is struck at how it could belong to anyone, including himself. After spending a week studying narrative and creating my own stories, I loved the way that Palahniuk wove the story. I was especially struck by the metaphor of family woven afghans reminder of the passed patients hidden away in Palahniuk’s attic. He is unable to throw them away but unwilling to sleep with them. They directly represent the patients he worked with and by writing down his experiences he is able to air his dirty afgans.
My Working- Class Roots in an Academic Ware Zone:
Creating Space to Grieve and Honor
Ed Check
The author of this article describes his experiences being a working class, Polish-Catholic, gay academic. His major methods of academic exploration are art making, interview and personal narrative. He feels that his working class upbringing, his methodologies and belief system make him an outsider in academia. In his introduction, Check builds a strong academic platform for himself by outlining theoretical framework that he subscribes to, name checking feminism, social activism through art and standpoint theory. A standpoint is a place from which a person views the world. Each person carries their own experiences and belief systems and by collecting such viewpoints from oppressed individuals we can construct a more clear account of history.
From this framework, Check describes his own experiences with a focus on ritual, loss and grief. Check describes growing up in a small Wisconsin town, charting his growth through academic achievement and the discovery of his sexual identity. Experiencing the challenge of AIDS, with friends dying and being tested himself, made him angry at how different institutions hadn’t prepared him for being gay. He describes artworks he created at each point of his life, using religious imagery and gay pornography to process his experiences in the gay community, the loss of his mother, his religious and the loss of a church in his hometown community.
Check concludes with his philosophy of art education- if the emotional and physical needs of the student are met the intellectual will take care of itself. He argues for a social justice based curriculum in the classroom, offering children’s books such as Tar Beach as a great starting point.
This article was an enjoyable read and I agree with much of what Check has to say, but I feel that the author may actually set himself up for academic criticism. The article focuses on much of his own experiences and worldview, but I’d like to see how the experiences of his family, community, students and colleagues fit into the larger picture. How do his experiences play into the larger picture? At the article’s conclusion he hints at his teaching methods and his efforts to create a worker’s museum in his hometown. I’d love to hear more about the worker’s museum and how those narratives he collects compare to his own and affect his own worldview.
Revision Number Nine
Idiot
David Hickey
David Hickey’s “Idiot” is fun and scathing account of curating a biennial exhibition. Hickey describes his own experience curating a small biennial exhibition in Santa Fe. He recounts paying out of pocket to tip unpaid staff, while paid staff barely worked. Foreign diplomats offered him glamorous experiences traveling the world to see government-approved art, which he turned down. Hickey is hospitalized and brought back from the dead to put his biennial on.
Hickey is definitely cocky in his narrative, even stating,” Of all the biennials I have ever walked through, I liked walking through mine the best.” His cockiness translates to the self-confidence that maybe he could and should curate the Venice Biennale. After creating a grand daydream, Hickey’s friend Robert Storr is chosen to curate.
Hickey’s article is well worth reading for his creative descriptions. He calls Storr’s exhibition “astringent and refreshing.” He states that “...the pervasive ambience of clean melancholia was a welcome relief from the thrift-shop fecklessness of most recent biennials.” He also describes Storr’s accompanying essay as “winsome and nonconfrontational as a baby kitten.” Other critics don’t have the same reaction as Hickey and create a flurry of negative press related to the show, which volleys back and forth between Storr and the critics.
Hickey’s narrative depicts the good, the bad and the ugly of the art world. In Hickey’s opinion, the self-important, disconnected from reality, pretentious side of the art world is well worth it for a few sacred moments in the bamboo, referencing one of Hickey’s favorite video works from the exhibition. I got the feeling that although Hickey was criticizing certain aspects of the art world, he really loved those moments in the bamboo as well as the bickering curators. Reading this narrative I realized that I’ll have quite a story to tell when I close the books on my career in the museum world.
The Book of Genesis
The discussion related to R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis illustrations in class made me want to revisit it and probe further. There were many issues that I felt were ignored in the discussion.
The New Yorker refers to Crumb’s process as “a straight illustration job”, which I honestly think is impossible for anyone who translates words into pictures, especially Crumb. Crumb is the creator of counter-culture comics such as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat and Keep on Truckin’. As mentioned in class, his choice of illustrating the Bible seems unusual and out of character and there was even discussion that maybe Crumb has gone soft.
This is not Crumb’s first straight illustration job. Clevelanders are extremely familiar with Crumb’s recently deceased collaborator Harvey Pekar. Pekar, a writer and file clerk at the local VA hospital, took comic books beyond the superficial super hero level when he decided to write up his life in comic book form, which came to be known as American Splendor. Crumb was one of the first to translate Pekar’s writing to illustration form. While not as heavily loaded as the Bible, Harvey’s stories were interpreted in different ways over the years with artists taking artistic liberty in depicting Harvey. Many critics felt that Crumb’s depiction of Harvey was the least flattering of them all.
Now it may be strange to compare illustrating American Splendor to the Book of Genesis, but I think it’s not too far of a stretch for a contemporary illustrator. Looking back to art history textbooks, illuminated manuscript illustrators and copyist often took accidental liberty in their visual and word based translation in a sort of visual version of early auditory telephone game. It’s safe to argue that there’s always some injection of personality in those manuscript illumination illustrations. The illustrator makes personal choices about what to emphasize and what to omit, and in Crumb’s case the most telling decision is how to depict the female figure.
Crumb’s always been fascinated, even obsessed with the female figure, creating huge, curvy, buxom women in an apparent attempt to fulfill his own sexual fantasies. The portion of the Book of Genesis illustrated in this article is the creation and fall of Adam and Eve. I think Crumb’s female character takes on new meaning in these illustrations. In a New York Times review of a gallery exhibition of this work, the critic notes that literary critic Harold Bloom has referred to Crumb’s muscular, full-bodied women as ugly. These are the types of women we rarely see depicted in fashion magazines, on television or the big screen today, therefore we aren’t all culturally encoded to desire them in the manner Crumb does.
Although I’m not very familiar with the Bible, I am extremely familiar with the way artists have depicted this particular scene from the Bible throughout time. There’s always a change in the way Adam and Eve carry themselves post-fruit nosh. In the earlier scenes they are nude, strutting their stuff with confidence from frame to frame. In one scene Crumb depicts Adam and Eve wrestling. In another, Eve stands hands on hips as she confronts the very phallic, lanky serpent character. Although Crumb has been criticized for the way he objectifies his female characters, there’s a sense of pride in this Eve. She’s comfortable with her body in a way that many contemporary full figured women aren’t. After sampling the fruit, Crumb depicts Adam and Eve wide eyed as they realize they are naked. Eve’s body language changes as she takes in her newly loin cloth covered body in shame. Maybe I’m reading to far into it, but I think there’s a commentary hiding there on Crumb’s part.
I Wanna Take Me a Picture
Wendy Ewald
Wendy Ewald’s book I Wanna Take Me a Picture is the only assigned reading that I was familiar with before this course. I don’t remember spending very much time with the introduction of the book when I first acquired it, but I came to it with a new excitement after a week of studying narrative.
What really excites me is that she jumps right in to discussing visual literacy and our culture’s lack of emphasis on teaching visual literacy skills in a society in which we are regularly inundated by visual images. She begins by describing a frustrating experience evaluating the way in which text and images were used in her son’s kindergarten classroom. Ewald notes that before children can write, they communicate their stories visually in the form of drawings.
Ewald introduces the subject of instructing photography by recounting her experiences teaching on an Indian reservation at the age of eighteen. She notes that she has taught photography all over the world, but one statement holds true with every group of children. They all make a statement along the lines of “I wanna take me a picture”, declaring their need for visual expression. This is the social justice driven form of art education that Ed Check’s article only hints at. Ewald uses the images as prompts, leading the children to face their problems and fears in a constructive way.
Spending more time in traditional school settings Ewald encouraged students to create advanced organizers and write about their subjects before they went out to shoot photographs. She also asked them to document their homes and neighborhoods, giving the culturally diverse students a peek into each other’s lives and even more importantly giving teachers a glimpse into their student’s daily existences. Ewald notes that at times the exhibitions highlighting the student’s works have “an unsettling energy” especially when compared to the cheerful cookie cutter art covering school bulletin boards.
Ewald’s use of personal narrative, incorporating the photographs of her students and their writing, makes for an eloquent introduction to the book. Without the use of narrative, Ewald would be unable to shows the immense impact of her photography program.
Shape Structures Story: Fresh Feisty Stories about Disability
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s article, “Shape Structures Story: Fresh Feisty Stories about Disability” examines the way in which disability influences narrative structure. We generally assume that disability stories are sad and we should feel sorry for their subjects. The author notes that shape impacts narrative. The author provides three examples of positive, or fresh and feisty, disability stories as well as one personal tale.
Garland-Thomas begins the article by referencing medievalist Caroline Walker Bynum. Bynum has published quite a bit about the medieval body and although this article references her personal experience caring for a family member, I think her research related to reliquaries is also relevant. Medieval reliquaries often take on the shape of the bones and body parts that represent. It’s not unusual to find an arm or foot shaped reliquary in the medieval wing of an art museum. Bynum’s research further confirms Garland-Thomson’s thesis- “shape carries story”.
The author clarifies that the phrase “shape carries story” means that the body’s mobility impacts the way a narrative unfolds. We often assume, due to these stereotypical Lifetime movie portrayals of the disabled, that lack of movement means lack of sex, but this is not the case. Two new key themes are pinpointed in the fresh and feisty narratives that Garland-Thomas examines- sexuality and community. The best example of these themes is found in the film Murderball, a documentary about quadriplegic rugby players. The teammates seem to compensate for their disability by adopting a hyper masculine heterosexual identity and homosocial community. A major subtext of the film relates to the team members’ ability to have sex.
The themes of sexuality and community are also apparent in the poetry of Cheryl Marie Wade. “I Am Not One of The...” cleverly uses first person narrative, but is able to represent the disabled community as a whole. The descriptions are amazing, pairing extremely powerful and confrontational actions and terms with words and phrases commonly associated with disability. The result creates something that is contradictory, yet at the same time makes perfect sense, such as “I'm a sock in the eye with gnarled fist” and “I'm pink lace panties teasing a stub of milk white thigh”.
The most effective example of a new type of disability narrative came from the author of the article herself. She explores disability as a celebration, in the form of ethnic celebrations and traditions. Searching for an ethnic style celebration in her own life, she discovers the Society for Disability Studies Conference. The entire conference creates a sense of community in which participants are no longer seen as the “other”. The SDS dance in particular allows participants to flaunt their true selves. The approach to using narrative in a scholarly journal worked extremely well in this article. The author had great descriptions that allowed the reader to really get a feel for the experience from the tongue wagging to the wheelchair lap dancing.
The author makes a great case for disability narrative beyond the sad Lifetime television drama sob story, creating a powerful sense of community and identity. The disabled aren’t simply portrayed as the “other”. Through her fresh and feisty personal narrative, the author also made a case for the use of personal narrative in a scholarly forum.
Stranger Than Fiction
Chuck Palahniuk
Several of the assigned readings are narratives that address the challenges of illness or disability. The most unusual of the illness related narratives was Chuck Palahniuk’s Escort. The cult author of bestselling novels such as Fight Club and Choke, this story is from a collection of creative non-fiction penned by Palahniuk called Stranger Than Fiction. Just by reading this short story it’s obvious that Palahniuk has lived a life as quirky as the characters and subplots of his novels.
He describes working the assembly line of a car manufacturer full of recent college graduates unable to land jobs doing much of anything else. As I read this I thought of Ed Check’s remarks related to academics and the working class. It seems that many recent college graduates are faced with minimum wage, unskilled jobs. Palahniuk notes that he was jealous of those, possibly working class, skilled workers who were able to weld and make an extra two dollars an hour. This job also allowed him access to all sorts of different experiences, one of which he outlines in this story.
Palahniuk describes volunteering at a local hospice. One of the AIDS patients Palahniuk forms an interesting bond with makes an unusual request for Palahniuk to clear his apartment of sex toys and pornography before he passes away, sparing his mother from the experience. After cleaning the apartment, Palahniuk is struck at how it could belong to anyone, including himself. After spending a week studying narrative and creating my own stories, I loved the way that Palahniuk wove the story. I was especially struck by the metaphor of family woven afghans reminder of the passed patients hidden away in Palahniuk’s attic. He is unable to throw them away but unwilling to sleep with them. They directly represent the patients he worked with and by writing down his experiences he is able to air his dirty afgans.
My Working- Class Roots in an Academic Ware Zone:
Creating Space to Grieve and Honor
Ed Check
The author of this article describes his experiences being a working class, Polish-Catholic, gay academic. His major methods of academic exploration are art making, interview and personal narrative. He feels that his working class upbringing, his methodologies and belief system make him an outsider in academia. In his introduction, Check builds a strong academic platform for himself by outlining theoretical framework that he subscribes to, name checking feminism, social activism through art and standpoint theory. A standpoint is a place from which a person views the world. Each person carries their own experiences and belief systems and by collecting such viewpoints from oppressed individuals we can construct a more clear account of history.
From this framework, Check describes his own experiences with a focus on ritual, loss and grief. Check describes growing up in a small Wisconsin town, charting his growth through academic achievement and the discovery of his sexual identity. Experiencing the challenge of AIDS, with friends dying and being tested himself, made him angry at how different institutions hadn’t prepared him for being gay. He describes artworks he created at each point of his life, using religious imagery and gay pornography to process his experiences in the gay community, the loss of his mother, his religious and the loss of a church in his hometown community.
Check concludes with his philosophy of art education- if the emotional and physical needs of the student are met the intellectual will take care of itself. He argues for a social justice based curriculum in the classroom, offering children’s books such as Tar Beach as a great starting point.
This article was an enjoyable read and I agree with much of what Check has to say, but I feel that the author may actually set himself up for academic criticism. The article focuses on much of his own experiences and worldview, but I’d like to see how the experiences of his family, community, students and colleagues fit into the larger picture. How do his experiences play into the larger picture? At the article’s conclusion he hints at his teaching methods and his efforts to create a worker’s museum in his hometown. I’d love to hear more about the worker’s museum and how those narratives he collects compare to his own and affect his own worldview.
Revision Number Nine
Idiot
David Hickey
David Hickey’s “Idiot” is fun and scathing account of curating a biennial exhibition. Hickey describes his own experience curating a small biennial exhibition in Santa Fe. He recounts paying out of pocket to tip unpaid staff, while paid staff barely worked. Foreign diplomats offered him glamorous experiences traveling the world to see government-approved art, which he turned down. Hickey is hospitalized and brought back from the dead to put his biennial on.
Hickey is definitely cocky in his narrative, even stating,” Of all the biennials I have ever walked through, I liked walking through mine the best.” His cockiness translates to the self-confidence that maybe he could and should curate the Venice Biennale. After creating a grand daydream, Hickey’s friend Robert Storr is chosen to curate.
Hickey’s article is well worth reading for his creative descriptions. He calls Storr’s exhibition “astringent and refreshing.” He states that “...the pervasive ambience of clean melancholia was a welcome relief from the thrift-shop fecklessness of most recent biennials.” He also describes Storr’s accompanying essay as “winsome and nonconfrontational as a baby kitten.” Other critics don’t have the same reaction as Hickey and create a flurry of negative press related to the show, which volleys back and forth between Storr and the critics.
Hickey’s narrative depicts the good, the bad and the ugly of the art world. In Hickey’s opinion, the self-important, disconnected from reality, pretentious side of the art world is well worth it for a few sacred moments in the bamboo, referencing one of Hickey’s favorite video works from the exhibition. I got the feeling that although Hickey was criticizing certain aspects of the art world, he really loved those moments in the bamboo as well as the bickering curators. Reading this narrative I realized that I’ll have quite a story to tell when I close the books on my career in the museum world.
The Book of Genesis
The discussion related to R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis illustrations in class made me want to revisit it and probe further. There were many issues that I felt were ignored in the discussion.
The New Yorker refers to Crumb’s process as “a straight illustration job”, which I honestly think is impossible for anyone who translates words into pictures, especially Crumb. Crumb is the creator of counter-culture comics such as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat and Keep on Truckin’. As mentioned in class, his choice of illustrating the Bible seems unusual and out of character and there was even discussion that maybe Crumb has gone soft.
This is not Crumb’s first straight illustration job. Clevelanders are extremely familiar with Crumb’s recently deceased collaborator Harvey Pekar. Pekar, a writer and file clerk at the local VA hospital, took comic books beyond the superficial super hero level when he decided to write up his life in comic book form, which came to be known as American Splendor. Crumb was one of the first to translate Pekar’s writing to illustration form. While not as heavily loaded as the Bible, Harvey’s stories were interpreted in different ways over the years with artists taking artistic liberty in depicting Harvey. Many critics felt that Crumb’s depiction of Harvey was the least flattering of them all.
Now it may be strange to compare illustrating American Splendor to the Book of Genesis, but I think it’s not too far of a stretch for a contemporary illustrator. Looking back to art history textbooks, illuminated manuscript illustrators and copyist often took accidental liberty in their visual and word based translation in a sort of visual version of early auditory telephone game. It’s safe to argue that there’s always some injection of personality in those manuscript illumination illustrations. The illustrator makes personal choices about what to emphasize and what to omit, and in Crumb’s case the most telling decision is how to depict the female figure.
Crumb’s always been fascinated, even obsessed with the female figure, creating huge, curvy, buxom women in an apparent attempt to fulfill his own sexual fantasies. The portion of the Book of Genesis illustrated in this article is the creation and fall of Adam and Eve. I think Crumb’s female character takes on new meaning in these illustrations. In a New York Times review of a gallery exhibition of this work, the critic notes that literary critic Harold Bloom has referred to Crumb’s muscular, full-bodied women as ugly. These are the types of women we rarely see depicted in fashion magazines, on television or the big screen today, therefore we aren’t all culturally encoded to desire them in the manner Crumb does.
Although I’m not very familiar with the Bible, I am extremely familiar with the way artists have depicted this particular scene from the Bible throughout time. There’s always a change in the way Adam and Eve carry themselves post-fruit nosh. In the earlier scenes they are nude, strutting their stuff with confidence from frame to frame. In one scene Crumb depicts Adam and Eve wrestling. In another, Eve stands hands on hips as she confronts the very phallic, lanky serpent character. Although Crumb has been criticized for the way he objectifies his female characters, there’s a sense of pride in this Eve. She’s comfortable with her body in a way that many contemporary full figured women aren’t. After sampling the fruit, Crumb depicts Adam and Eve wide eyed as they realize they are naked. Eve’s body language changes as she takes in her newly loin cloth covered body in shame. Maybe I’m reading to far into it, but I think there’s a commentary hiding there on Crumb’s part.
I Wanna Take Me a Picture
Wendy Ewald
Wendy Ewald’s book I Wanna Take Me a Picture is the only assigned reading that I was familiar with before this course. I don’t remember spending very much time with the introduction of the book when I first acquired it, but I came to it with a new excitement after a week of studying narrative.
What really excites me is that she jumps right in to discussing visual literacy and our culture’s lack of emphasis on teaching visual literacy skills in a society in which we are regularly inundated by visual images. She begins by describing a frustrating experience evaluating the way in which text and images were used in her son’s kindergarten classroom. Ewald notes that before children can write, they communicate their stories visually in the form of drawings.
Ewald introduces the subject of instructing photography by recounting her experiences teaching on an Indian reservation at the age of eighteen. She notes that she has taught photography all over the world, but one statement holds true with every group of children. They all make a statement along the lines of “I wanna take me a picture”, declaring their need for visual expression. This is the social justice driven form of art education that Ed Check’s article only hints at. Ewald uses the images as prompts, leading the children to face their problems and fears in a constructive way.
Spending more time in traditional school settings Ewald encouraged students to create advanced organizers and write about their subjects before they went out to shoot photographs. She also asked them to document their homes and neighborhoods, giving the culturally diverse students a peek into each other’s lives and even more importantly giving teachers a glimpse into their student’s daily existences. Ewald notes that at times the exhibitions highlighting the student’s works have “an unsettling energy” especially when compared to the cheerful cookie cutter art covering school bulletin boards.
Ewald’s use of personal narrative, incorporating the photographs of her students and their writing, makes for an eloquent introduction to the book. Without the use of narrative, Ewald would be unable to shows the immense impact of her photography program.
Shape Structures Story: Fresh Feisty Stories about Disability
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s article, “Shape Structures Story: Fresh Feisty Stories about Disability” examines the way in which disability influences narrative structure. We generally assume that disability stories are sad and we should feel sorry for their subjects. The author notes that shape impacts narrative. The author provides three examples of positive, or fresh and feisty, disability stories as well as one personal tale.
Garland-Thomas begins the article by referencing medievalist Caroline Walker Bynum. Bynum has published quite a bit about the medieval body and although this article references her personal experience caring for a family member, I think her research related to reliquaries is also relevant. Medieval reliquaries often take on the shape of the bones and body parts that represent. It’s not unusual to find an arm or foot shaped reliquary in the medieval wing of an art museum. Bynum’s research further confirms Garland-Thomson’s thesis- “shape carries story”.
The author clarifies that the phrase “shape carries story” means that the body’s mobility impacts the way a narrative unfolds. We often assume, due to these stereotypical Lifetime movie portrayals of the disabled, that lack of movement means lack of sex, but this is not the case. Two new key themes are pinpointed in the fresh and feisty narratives that Garland-Thomas examines- sexuality and community. The best example of these themes is found in the film Murderball, a documentary about quadriplegic rugby players. The teammates seem to compensate for their disability by adopting a hyper masculine heterosexual identity and homosocial community. A major subtext of the film relates to the team members’ ability to have sex.
The themes of sexuality and community are also apparent in the poetry of Cheryl Marie Wade. “I Am Not One of The...” cleverly uses first person narrative, but is able to represent the disabled community as a whole. The descriptions are amazing, pairing extremely powerful and confrontational actions and terms with words and phrases commonly associated with disability. The result creates something that is contradictory, yet at the same time makes perfect sense, such as “I'm a sock in the eye with gnarled fist” and “I'm pink lace panties teasing a stub of milk white thigh”.
The most effective example of a new type of disability narrative came from the author of the article herself. She explores disability as a celebration, in the form of ethnic celebrations and traditions. Searching for an ethnic style celebration in her own life, she discovers the Society for Disability Studies Conference. The entire conference creates a sense of community in which participants are no longer seen as the “other”. The SDS dance in particular allows participants to flaunt their true selves. The approach to using narrative in a scholarly journal worked extremely well in this article. The author had great descriptions that allowed the reader to really get a feel for the experience from the tongue wagging to the wheelchair lap dancing.
The author makes a great case for disability narrative beyond the sad Lifetime television drama sob story, creating a powerful sense of community and identity. The disabled aren’t simply portrayed as the “other”. Through her fresh and feisty personal narrative, the author also made a case for the use of personal narrative in a scholarly forum.
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