Doctor/Kake or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Post- modernity

By Karen (Kake) Huck, Speech

If you know me, you may have witnessed or taken part in one of the following greeting rituals.

The writer/artist’s introduction:
“Hi, I’m Kake Huck.”
“Hello, Kate.”
“No.  Kake.”
“Right.  Kate.”
“No, Kake.  With two Ks.”
“Like pineapple upside-down cake?”
“Yeah, yeah, but with two Ks.  And no need to quote Marie Antoinette, thanks.”

 

The collegial introduction:
“Hello. I’m Karen Huck.  Also called Kake.  Or Huck.”
“Which do you prefer?”
“Oh, you pick.  Whatever you’re comfortable with.” 

The classroom introduction:
“Here are your choices when you want to get my attention.  You can call me Karen.  You can call me Huck, just plain Huck, like, ‘Hey, Huck!’ or, if you really need to put something in front of my last name, you have two choices:  doctor or professor.  I’m also quite comfortable with ‘M’am’ if you’re ex-military or from the South.”

This multiplicity of monikers sometimes gives people pause, especially if they’re introducing me to someone else or talking about me in front of students (who aren’t allowed to call me Kake). 

Well, you may be  happy to know that I have theoretical grounding for all this ego-absorbed label-mania:  I am a self-aware creature of post-modernity.  Unlike the solid, community-bound self of classical thought or the authenticity-seeking individual of modernity, the postmodern self is diffuse, diverse, and dramaturgical — a co-construction created by embodied beings performing in relationship with others.  Postmodern identity is contingent, open, and uncertain.  According to my Utah mentor, Jim Anderson, the last century’s discoveries in psychology and sociology have thoroughly destabilized the unitary vision of the self and shown us that “much of who we are — is the product of social action, not internal character.”[1]  

Others have argued that the postmodern self is a bricolage[2] of potentialities lifted from mediated representations of being.  It is criticized for replacing class consciousness with classy accoutrements.  In a world of multiple opportunities for impression-management, we grasp at selves sold to us by organizations moving product.  Hence all those Facebook apps in which we identify ourselves through some commercial narrative:  “Which House character are you?”

This, of course, is in direct contradiction of my mother’s advice to “Be yourself.”  Or Shakespeare’s “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”  Or that rallying cry of the boomer generation:   “Just do your own thing, man.”  People I respect, however, still hold this belief.  My colleague Michelle Franco celebrates authenticity in her classroom and business, Eloquence Communication.  She inspires her students and her clients by asking that they speak from a true self.  But I’ve challenged her worldview because though it once was mine it is no longer.

For many years I struggled to “be myself,” to become, in Jungian terms, individuated or whole.[3]  But it occurred to me that the famous Shakespearean quote was uttered by Polonius, the pompous old dude in Hamlet who gets stabbed behind the arras.  Not the best source of philosophical mentoring.  And there are at least three other problems with the modernist ideal of the authentic self.

First, as I note above, it doesn’t fit the data produced over the past hundred years by psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and artists.  People are born with certain physical characteristics, certainly.  But what our biology means is a matter of our interaction with members of our culture/family/organization/tribe.  Who we are is who we’re with and what they say about us. 

Second, it isn’t just the social sciences that prove our interior diversity.  Neuroscience reveals the impact of chemicals on both behavior and cognition. [4] When I first began taking anti-depressants in the early 80s,  I changed.  I don’t just mean I was finally able to hold a job or talk to strangers.  I mean that my mind, personality and interior vision of the universe changed.  I not only became happier but many of the things that I considered the core of my being dissolved. This experience, while annoying to those friends who loved my bitter, self-hating wit, was also an intriguing revelation about the indeterminate quality of a thing – my Self – I’d once considered immutable.

And finally, there are pragmatic reasons for enjoying multiple selves.  Sometimes who you really, really are simply isn’t effective for what you really, really want to achieve.  Just ask Dr. David Bruce Banner.

So I sometimes explain to people that I operate (or am operated by) at least two distinct selves:  the artist and the teacher.  Both have experienced the same family and social history but each understands it and re-creates its memories in very different ways.[5]

A newspaper article that never appeared.  Photo by Kake Huck. (click on the icon to read)

The poet and artist Kake Huck, is driven to tell her psychic “truths” of loss, betrayal, destruction and despair.  She looks into the twisted heart of humanity and finds it wretched and perverse.  Child in a family punctuated by madness caught in a world prone to genocide and hate, she is cynical, weary, occasionally enraged and offers little hope that human beings are capable of treating each other decently over the long run. 

Oh, don’t let that poet into a classroom!  She’s sooo scary! 

Of course note here that according to studies done by Nancy Andreason, a lit PhD become neuroscientist, poets are more than 2 1/2 times more likely to be depressives or bi-polar than members of the population at large…[6]

The character who teaches communication, on the other hand, Dr. Karen Huck, is positive, upbeat and relentlessly optimistic about personal change and self-empowerment.  Sure, she’s had the same history as the poet.  But she knows that re-creation is possible.  She’s learned how to live with PTSD and depression.  When appropriate, she mentions them as manageable mountains.  She appears to have conquered her stage fright.  She believes that anyone can give a good public speech or alter their relationships for the better.   And that if life gives you lemons you should request a gol-dang martini glass with a sugared rim!  

I was happy at the convocation on May 8 when VPI Kathy Walsh recognized the positive aspects of socially constructed performance when she noted that I have worked “to analyze the role of ‘excellent teacher,’ to determine what behaviors most assist student learning, and to adopt herself to that role.”

So I’ve learned to be multiple selves.  Is this good or bad?  It’s wonderful, according to America’s great gray poet Walt Whitman who wrote, “I contain multitudes . . .”[7]   Not so hot, according to the Apostle Mark’s story about the pig-infusing demon who screams, “My name is Legion.”[8]  

But postmodernity, at its best, is an ethical incoherence. 

What counts between people must be dependable, even if we change our costumes.   In this way, identity is like architecture.  Postmodern architecture is wild in its multiplicity of influences and fantastic shapes but must be solid and dependable in its plumbing.  The same is true of postmodern identity.  It can be diverse and confusing but there in the moment of our interaction with each other, in relationship, in our here and now, postmodern identity can and must offer compassion, hope, and faith in the protean experience of a chaotic, loving grace.

Architect Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.  Photo by Kake Huck

---

[1] James A. Anderson and Elaine E. Englehardt, The Organizational Self and Ethical Conduct:  Sunlit Virtue and Shadowed Resistance (Fort Worth, TX:  Harcourt College Publishers, 2001) p. 83.  For more on postmodern identity, see also Kenneth J. Gergen, The Saturated Self, (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1991).

[2] For critique of this kind of identification, see Michele DeSilva’s previous entry in this blog.

[3] Psychological types; or, The psychology of individuation, by C. G. Jung…Translated by H. Godwin Baynes.  (New York, Pantheon Books,1962)

[4] What, you’ve never had an alcoholic drink, a cup of coffee or a donut?  You really need proof here?

[5] For more about the physical aspect of memory and its variability, please see the work of Joe LeDoux (Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are, Penguin, 2003) and Jonah Lehrer (Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Mariner Books, 2008) or check out this episode of WNYC’s Radiolab

[6] Nancy Andreason , The Creating Brain:  The Neuroscience of Genius, New York:  Dana Press, 2005.

[7] Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself:” “Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then I contradict myself,/ (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

[8] Mark 5:9, the story of the demons cast into the herd of pigs.

Hidden in Plain Sight: Of Barns and Social Networks

by Michele DeSilva, Library

I reluctantly signed up for a Facebook account in 2008 at the urging of some college friends.  I thought I’d hate it; I actually love it.  While I’ve been “friended” by the usual barrage of people from the past with whom I have only a tenuous connection, at best, I’ve also managed to keep in closer touch with family and friends who are scattered across the country and the globe (South Carolina, Japan, Africa, Iowa).  Even though I have come to love it, I still have an acute sense of the shortcomings of this particular medium as a means of communication and as a social construction.    

One of my favorite books is White Noise, by Don DeLillo.  Though originally published in 1985, it remains a perceptive view of the modern information society – the modern information society being one in which we are constantly “connected” to one another via various forms of technology.  One of the most humorous passages in the book concerns a trip that the protagonist, Jack Gladney, and his friend, Murray, both college professors, take to the “most photographed barn in America.”  Rather than viewing the barn and photographing it themselves, Jack and Murray disconnect from the scene at hand and display an almost exclusive interest in the other people there who are photographing the barn and, who, because they are so busy taking pictures, never really see the barn, either.  After a philosophical exchange about the phenomenon they are observing, Murray concludes, “We are not here to capture an image, we’re here to maintain one…We’ve agreed to be part of a collective perception.”

 I think we could say the same thing of the numerous social networks to which many of us belong – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace – we’re not there to communicate so much as to maintain the semblance of communicating, of “connectivity,” as William Deresiewicz writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education – and we’ve all agreed to be a part of the collective chatter, tweets (a Twitter update), and wall postings.  As someone with a deep interest in information and communication and how the two affect society, I often find myself wondering:  what is the overall effect of all of these social networks on our relationship with the real world?  Or, to phrase it in White Noise terms, what about the barn that is the focal point of all those images?

One major effect of the use of social networks is the strain they add to our already information-laden lives.  Why do we subject ourselves to having to keep track of everyone’s mundane thoughts and daily routines via their Facebook statuses or “tweets”?  Clive Thompson, in the New York Times Magazine answers this question by explaining the phenomenon of “ambient awareness,” a process by which we gradually piece together these random bits and pieces of information about the people we know (or don’t know, as the case may be) to create a sense of that person’s identity.  But, the status updates and tweets that many people post in social networks are highly stylized versions of their mundane lives; we do not know the person (especially those people we don’t see everyday) so much as the person’s self-created version of him or herself, as best transmitted 140 characters or so at a time. 

 
The relationships developed via social networks, thus, are not always grounded in reality.  Researchers have discovered that the relationships developed via social networks are “parasocial,” similar to the relationships people form with characters in their favorite television shows or celebrities; that is, people feel like they know the person being portrayed, even though all they really know is the public character.  Real relationships are perhaps somewhat obscured by these illusory relationships, just as the most photographed barn in America is obscured by the people photographing it. 

Alternatively, Erika Gordon, in the online journal First Monday, explores the nature of social “performance” in online networks and suggests that the relationships in social networks may serve as laboratories for real world relationships.  Because the demands on our time and attention are so great, we use social networks to “’try out’ emotional engagement and intimacy before dedicating massive social and personal resources to strong ties.”  

The great irony of needing to “try out” relationships with social media is that our lack of time and attention is partially due to all of the various media that require our attention.  We simply seem to have no time to think anymore.  Because we “have” to keep up with so much stuff, our attention span has shrunk.  This also has its effects on society.  For example, a group of scientists at USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute  recently discovered that people need more time to process and respond to news stories that require the activation of such emotions as empathy and compassion.  People getting the bulk of their news from online feeds and social networking spent less time processing the stories and thinking about the ethical ramifications of current events.  One of the study’s authors points out the potential impact of these findings on our roles as citizens:  “We need to understand how social experience shapes interactions between the body and mind, to produce citizens with a strong moral compass.” 

While social networks certainly have their benefits, it’s clear that we need to think more thoroughly about how we use them and how they contribute to our participation in and creation of real society  and the “collective perception” of “connectivity” rather than the real thing.  So, please add your comments about social networking to the blog post.  I’d love to know what you think about online social networks and society (and, no, the irony of writing about this as a blog topic, meant to be spread across an online social network has not been lost on me).  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go update my Facebook status.

Of chemistry, soap, and hope

by Carol Higginbotham, Sciences/Chemistry

Long before chemists had any knowledge of atoms or molecules, people were improving their lives by performing chemical reactions on the materials in their environment.  Our ancestors did this when they cooked and preserved their food, and when they fermented foods and beverages.  They also did this when they learned to convert fats into soap.

We still use soaps that are produced basically the same way as they always have been, just on an industrial scale.

The recipe is basically this:  fat + base = soap. The base can either be commercially prepared lye, or the naturally occurring base that exists in the ashes of campfires.  Historically the fats came from animal tallow, although plant oils work just fine.

Producing a basic soap involves little more than boiling the ingredients and then removing excess base and water.  Producing fine soap, however, is a craft that requires skill and experience.  These high quality products are valuable and marketable.

This market for soap is what recently connected me to, of all places, Afghanistan.

Sarah Chayes was working for National Public Radio (NPR) as a foreign correspondent in Afghanistan after 9/11.  But she was drawn away from war reporting.  Sarah witnessed the difficulties faced by ordinary Afghans frustrated by government corruption, an economy dependent on the drug trade, an unreliable infrastructure, and the Taliban.  In response she and a group of locals organized a cooperative to make soaps by hand, utilizing area agricultural products such as pomegranates.  The effort would provide cooperative members with a way to make a living independent of the drug trade.  As a Westerner, Sarah could connect the group to markets in the U.S. and Canada.  They set up shop near Kandahar and named the cooperative Arghand after the region.  

 Arghand had been operating for a while when I heard about them.  My curiosity led me to the web, where I read dispatches from Sarah and discovered the types of support they needed.  I was a bit surprised to see they were asking for consultation with a chemist.  I knew I didn’t know all that much about soap, but I wrote an email to inquire.  Sarah herself wrote me back. 

The cooperative was having difficulty with the natural dyes that color their product.  The soaps were colored with pomegranate, a gorgeous red that unfortunately was fading with time.  I guessed that the problems were likely due to oxidation or exposure to ultraviolet light.   We found some natural products reported to contain antioxidants, and they added them into their recipe.  It seemed to work.

This connection, though transitory, has stayed with me.  When I read news stories or see video from Afghanistan I am invariably thinking of the cooperative, and of the regular people there who are struggling to make a living in that harsh situation.  I am grateful I had the opportunity to make a contribution, however small.  And I am grateful there are people like Sarah who are able to both see what needs to happen and to take up the charge and do it.

Curious about making soap?  Here you can find some suggested links to sites detailing the chemistry of soap and the processes involved in soap-making.

Want to find Arghand body care products?  The Arghand web site lists retailers around the U.S., including Garuda International who distributes them from Oregon.

In a not so black and white world

by Tina Hovekamp, Library

For the last two years, Martha Groom, Associate Professor at the University of Washington has been using Wikipedia for her classes requiring her students to submit articles to the popular, user-generated internet encyclopedia as part of their assignment. An article discussing Groom’s  original teaching approach, cites one of her students commenting, “This assignment felt so Real! I had not thought that anything I wrote was worth others reading before, but now I think what I contributed was useful, and I’m glad other people can gain from my research.”

And then there is the battle of Colbert vs. Wikipedia:

So, is Wikipedia  a valuable resource to promote in our classes?  Last year I asked my LIB127 students to try a search on a topic of their interest in order to compare results in Britannica versus Wikipedia. It was the first time I included such a question in their assignment, not knowing exactly what their responses could be. Well, I have to admit, their answers were an eye opener, a good number of them quite well-thought making it difficult for me to dismiss as inaccurate or irrelevant. Here is one of them, an example of what students may often experience searching and comparing such two tools, an “academic” one and another from the “fee” web world:

“I choose to look up schizoaffective disorder which is a psychiatric diagnosis describing a condition where both the symptoms of a mood disorder and schizophrenia are present.  When I searched for schizoaffective on wikipedia [a pertinent result] came up; however, when I put the same thing in on Britannica Online it showed no results.  I had to look up both mental disorder and schizophrenia which was somewhat frustrating.  I also found the wikipedia information to be much more in depth and helpful than the Britannica Online information…  If I had to choose an article to go with for this research topic it would definitely be the one at Wikipedia.”

I have to admit, even being a librarian doesn’t sometimes stop me from agreeing with my students that “traditional” encyclopedic sources such as Britannica or Oxford Reference Online, both of them databases our library subscribes to, may often fail to be as comprehensive or extensive as Wikipedia. Even the display of results and layout of Wikipedia are often much more user-friendly with features such as the inclusion of links to other terms or to other entries which I found useful in so many occasions, especially when doing quick searches.

While helping patrons at the reference desk or in the classroom, I often hear instructors and students summarily dismiss the use of Wikipedia. I myself also tell my students that although Wikipedia could be a decent tool for getting general information on a topic, I wouldn’t use it as one of my cited sources in a research paper; but then, again, I wouldn’t use Britannica either as one of my cited sources for a college level research project. I guess the main difference most people agree on in using Wikipedia versus other more traditional sources is that since the authorship of the Wikipedia articles is unclear, students needing to use the information for a research paper have to take the extra step of finding other more “official” verification of the accuracy of the information. But is this a reason to completely discourage its use? A few years ago a study published in Nature already found that rates and problems of accuracy between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica can actually be quite comparable. Interestingly, Wikipedia itself offers a caveat for its use in research projects:

“As with any source, especially one of unknown authorship, you should be wary and independently verify the accuracy of Wikipedia information if possible. For many purposes, but particularly in academia, Wikipedia may not be an acceptable source;[1] indeed, some professors and teachers may reject Wikipedia-sourced material completely. This is especially true when it is used uncorroborated.

We advise special caution when using Wikipedia as a source for research projects. Normal academic usage of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias is for getting the general facts of a problem and to gather keywords, references and bibliographical pointers, but not as a source in itself. Remember that Wikipedia is a wiki, which means that anyone in the world can edit an article, deleting accurate information or adding false information, which the reader may not recognize.”

Wikipedia seems to have given this issue some thought. But despite its own disclaimer, in a world already dominated by Google and wikis, perhaps the best approach to take may be something similar to Groom’s course assignment that actually embraces the power and benefits of tools such as Wikipedia. Regardless of where information is coming from, being a critical consumer, always looking for ways to validate the quality of what’s been passed on to us is perhaps much more important rather than prescribing the exact rules of what specific tools to use or avoid.

David Parry, assistant professor of Emerging Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, last year had an interesting article on this topic, “Wikipedia and the New Curriculum: Digital Literacy Is Knowing How We Store What We Know” (February 2008).  Here’s a quote:

“It is irresponsible for educational institutions not to teach new knowledge technologies such as Wikipedia… digital literacy is so crucial for educational institutions: we do a fundamental disservice to our students if we continue to propagate old methods of knowledge creation and archivization without also teaching them how these structures are changing, and, more importantly, how they will relate to knowledge creation and dissemination in a fundamentally different way.”

What do you think?  Should we rethink Wikipedia’s role in our classes?

Thoughts on the “Entitlement Generation”

by Andria Woodell, Social Sciences

 There has been a lot of buzz in the academic world about entitlement. Recently, there was an article by Professor Marshall Grossman published in the NY Times titled “Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes.” In his article, Grossman discusses some of his experiences with entitled students and explanations behind this “new” trend. Like many other professors, I can identify with Grossman’s discussion. Some of us have encountered these situations more often than we would care to count. While I believe it is not new for students to focus on grades, it is surreal when a student is arguing they deserve an A despite scoring 70-80s on their assignments. It is also frustrating when they refuse to listen to why they have received those scores or suggestions to improve their grades. This becomes even more unsettling when a student turns hostile towards a professor because the professor stands firm. In the end, it is a no-win situation for both the student and professor. The student feels as if they were unfairly treated and the professor walks away a little more pessimistic about their students.

What is interesting is that when I hear people discussing entitlement today, it is directed toward the younger generation. Jean Twenge’s book , Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before, supports the assumption that people from their teens to their 20s are plagued with entitlement . However, if you read the article “The New Me Generation,” the entitlement generation consists of everyone born in 1970 and beyond. Doing the math here, this includes people who are 39 years or younger. The average age of retirement in the US is currently 63, so the majority of students and workers (including myself) are now part of this entitlement generation! Therefore, the description of entitlement as a generational shift is not entirely accurate. Instead, it appears to be more of a societal shift. The looming question is whether entitlement is always bad. In the “The Me New Generation,”  the author describes the entitlement generation as “smart, brash, even arrogant, and endowed with a commanding sense of entitlement.” They are the “co-workers who drive you nuts.” On the flip-side, he goes on to state these individuals are also free-thinkers who are willing to break the status quo and pursue their dreams. Their confidence is what allows them to accomplish great things and can keep companies progressing. So where is the problem?

From an academic standpoint, I see entitlement hurting work ethic. Others might disagree with me here, but there seems to be a pocket of individuals who equate effort with mastery. When we hear, “there is no A for effort”, this is true. I have yet to see a grading rubric with effort as one of the graded requirements. Bottom line, if you do not complete the main components of an assignment, you will lose points, no matter how much effort you put in. As one professor has described it, “If your doctor works very hard at removing your appendix and it turns out you only needed your tonsils out, you are not likely to say “Hey! It’s ok! You worked very hard!”.  The other problem is that individuals who have never been told no or have yet to overcome significant academic challenges seem to experience a high level of anxiety at even the thought of not being perfect. I have seen students work themselves into a frenzy over this, even when they were passing with strong B’s. This is problematic because according to the frustration-aggression hypothesis in social psychology—the more frustrated a person becomes the more likely they may become aggressive. It of course does not explain ALL aggression, but it can explain why a student may resort to rudeness, harassment, slander, or even indirect or direct violence towards an instructor because they were blocked from a goal and they are not sure how to resolve the issue constructively. 

So what is the solution? Apparently, that is the hot research question right now. Grossman mentions that at his school they are retraining students on the purpose of education. COCC sponsored a speaker to educate faculty on the qualities of the new incoming students and how to resolve problems. There are also new policies in place that protect both students and faculty from harassment. Others (myself included) have resorted to detailed syllabi explaining class policy and how to behave. However, I find it unfortunate that my syllabi grew from 3 pages to 8 over the years because I have to explain how not to be disruptive and why a person should not text message in class. I have no answers at the moment. I personally hope we end up in the middle, with professors who can teach freely without having to invest so much energy defending themselves from unreasonable demands and with students who can be free thinkers, push the envelope and earn their grades rather than simply expect them. I am an optimist, but we will have to wait and see how it all unfolds.

Walking With My Feet 10 Feet Off the Beale

by Tom Barry, Social Sciences

In his 1991recording Walking In Memphis, Marc Cohn reflects on the history of the blues.  The references to the general history of this music form are straightforward but arranged in such a way to draw upon the ghosts of the past.  Cohn’s blue suede shoes pays respect to the Carl Perkins 1955 song titled the same that marks, for many, the transition to rockabilly and rock and roll.  The Delta Blues is the home of the blues.  The delta blues is the epicenter of the blues.  The Chicago blues, St. Louis blues,  and the songs coming out of other cities following the Great Migration out of the South call back to the delta.  And then there is W.C. Handy.  With his 1914 St. Louis Blues, W.C. Handy would start a lengthy career that would eventually earn him such titles as the Father of the blues and “the  Beethoven of Beale Street.”

I recently read an article titled  “Make My Getaway”:  The Blues Lives of Black Minstrels in W.C. Handy’s Father of the Blues” (Gussow, 2001).  Much of the article is devoted to understanding the ways in which Handy navigated a culture of racial oppression.  Whether on the stage performing minstrels or singing the blues in clubs, Handy neither shied from giving voice to the struggles of black men and women nor did he make this art a platform for being an activist for civil rights.  His approach is contrasted with other artists, such as the literary giants Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright who wrote more to inform and promote a move to justice.  It is for this reason that 100,000 copies of Handy’s autobiography Father of the Blues were sent to overseas military personnel and Wright’s Native Son remained on the shelves or libraries and people’s homes back in the States.  While Handy’s approach was more palatable to the racial majority, and the power structure of the segregated military that supported troops reading his autobiography, Gussow argues, and I agree, that it would be shortsighted to identify Handy as either complacent or submissive. In his work and his life, he voiced opposition to racial divisions.  He stood for racial justice.  And based on his personal experiences such as nearly being lynched, he realized when and how to be speak of the struggle and when to accommodate in order to survive another day.   

Excerpt from Marc Cohn’s Walking in Memphis

Put on my blue suede shoes
And I boarded the plane
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain
W.C. Handy — won’t you look down over me
Yeah I got a first class ticket
But I’m as blue as a boy can be 

Then I’m walking in Memphis
Walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale
Walking in Memphis
But do I really feel the way  I feel

 

To watch Marc Cohn play his song , see the YouTube clip below:

 

Books That Cook! My First Food Fiction Course

by Stacey Donohue, Humanities Department

One of the many food blogs I read posts recipes, and one of the best is the recipe for delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.   Another blogger I follow (an academic who shall remain anonymous, but let’s call her Sybil) noted in her recent re-posting of the pumpkin cookie recipe that she should just start a food blog, and the cheers of support in the comments section poured in.   That idea (a food blog, for those who cook, for those who eat, or for those who like to read about food) got me reflecting on the food fiction course I taught in fall 2008 for the first time.

Last spring I read an article in College English (70.4) titled “Books That Cook: Teaching Food and Food Literature in the English Classroom” by Jennifer Cognard-Black and Melissa A. Goldthwaite (the entire March 2008 issue is on food).   Since I was teaching a generically titled Eng 260: Introduction to Women Writers course, I decided to try out some of their ideas by focusing on “food fiction” by women writers.  I ended up (after much anguish—I struggle with this choice whenever I teach a literature course) with the following reading list:

Laura Esquivel’s Like Water For Chocolate 

Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant   

Diana Abu Jaber’s Crescent

&

Isak Dinesen’s Babette’s Feast

Other books I considered but couldn’t fit into our quarter system included the following (note that for all of these texts below, the books are significantly better than the film versions):

Joanne Harris’ Chocolat 
Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes At the Whistle Stop Café
Chitra Divakaruni’s Mistress of Spices

As it turns out, the novels worked well together, sharing many of the same themes (including elements of magical realism; fairy tale allusions; and, naturally, all used food as a central metaphor).   And because we focused on contemporary women’s fiction–fiction that is not “canonical”–there were engaging discussions of some issues I’ve explored when analyzing Oprah’s Book Club (high vs. “middlebrow” literature and reader response criticism, for example).

I decided to focus on fiction, but I know there are many, many food memoirs out there, too.  And, of course, I limited the selection to women writers, but someday I can see a separate food memoir course where I could include my favorites such as Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone and Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast.  

Please share any other titles you have for fiction, non-fiction or memoir:  my Food Fiction course was a joy to prepare and teach, and I’m looking forward to teaching it again next year. 

This spring, Amy Harper is offering Anthropology 299: Food and Culture, an elective course that has over 30 students enrolled.  As COCC looks forward to an expanded Culinary program, I imagine other faculty members will respond with food-related courses within their discipline, and who knows: is there a Food Studies program next?

A new mission for our ConXn blog!

 We are super excited to announce a change in direction for our current ConXn blog!  Although ConXn was initiated as a means for the library to connect with the rest of the campus, it is now aspiring to become something bigger than that,  a campus community space where all COCC staff, faculty, and students have an opportunity to share their interests and expertise for the benefit, enjoyment, and enlightenment of the rest of us! 

So, read our new mission statement and guidelines and get back to us soon with your questions and/or blog submissions!

Mission Statement:

This blog is a place to showcase the talent and interests of COCC faculty, staff, and students. It is an interactive space where the COCC community will share its collective wisdom, expertise, research, or personal interests and accomplishments to connect and intellectually stimulate us all.

Postings will include a discussion of ideas, thoughts and solutions that arise from our own musings, teaching experiences, subject matter, or from responses to questions posed by others. Whether you are interested in hearing insider perspectives on the latest scientific discoveries, book readings, technology trends, provocative issues in psychology, sociology, criminal justice and in health care fields—or perhaps looking for career, educational, or other advice from our expert COCC staff: this college Blog, ConXn, is your blogging community.

Postings in this blog will remain educational in nature and will reflect the respect our community shares for well- informed as well as diverse sets of view points.

This COCC blog is an initiative launched by the following COCC people: Tom Barry; Michele DeSilva;Stacey Donohue; Lynne Hart; Tina Hovekamp; Andria Woodell; and Zelda Ziegler. If you are one of our COCC faculty, staff, or students and you are interested in becoming a contributing blogger, let us know. We need you! You can contribute one blog post or one hundred, whatever you want! Also, you may let us know what you love to do or what you would love to learn about, and we can make that the subject of one of our next posts! Either way, just email Stacey Donohue or any other of the people who manage this blog (see names above) to get more information or talk about an idea for a posting.

Guidelines for submission

The COCC blog is a formal, public presentation of information with an educational content representing the richness of our campus community knowledge and experience. Postings follow the guidelines below:

1. are one to two single spaced pages. Submissions can be short and concise.
2. may involve descriptions of faculty research projects
3. may involve a “theme” to which different faculty or staff contribute based on their knowledge and expertise
4. are descriptions or reflections on classroom successes
5. are discussions based on staff expertise with a purpose to educate
6. provide an overview of collaborative projects both within and between departments
7. are thoughtful, educational, objective reflections connected to COCC’s educational mission.
8. and most importantly, are fun and interesting to engage a wide spectrum of audiences!

Because of the public nature of this blog, postings such as political advocacy commentaries, opinion pieces, general or other internal-related announcements will be directed to the COCC Staff Commlines or Water Cooler folder. Please feel free to submit your ideas for a post to sdonohue@cocc.edu.

Real and Imagined Art Reception April 1st at 5:00 pm

 Please come and support Art in the Library this Wednesday evening with local artists Marlene Alexander and David Kinker.

Marlene is a juried member and past vice president of the Watercolor Society of Oregon, Marlene has won many awards including the Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum Merit awards in the Society.  She has painted watercolors on paper and acrylic paintings on canvas on location in the desert near Bend.  David Kinker’s true passion is working as a freelance artist on commissioned murals and illustrations.  David’s work can be found in the Tower Theater, McMenamins, and The Deschutes Brewery.

Marlene Moore Alexander and David Kinker invite you to this special exhibit and reception on April 1, 2009 from 5:00 to 6:30 pm.   Light refreshments will be served. The exhibit will be in the Rotunda Gallery from March 30th through May 12th.  

Cheers to your health!

Just when I thought that the free web can’t get any better with consumer health information, here comes a new venture, launched only a month ago, Medpedia! According to a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Medpedia is not your generic kind of user-generated wiki, but  rather a major collaborative online project based on content from experts with an M.D. or a Ph.D. in a biomedical field. Adding to its reputation, the web site has already received the backing of leading medical schools such as Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health, and the University of Michigan Medical School, as well as the National Institutes of Health, the American College of Physicians, and several other organizations.

And with this piece of news, I would like to wish you all a relaxing, healthy Spring break! We’ll be back in the beginning of April with more exciting news, this time about the future direction of our ConXn blog. So, please stay tuned!