American Imperialism and the Brown Symposium

Well, for my Brown Symposium experience, I partook (like Michele) of Dr. Malamud’s presentation as well as in the final Panel presentation – I meant to go to the presentation incorporating Afghanistan and Iraq but found the Skype situation a bit much for my sorry attention span to handle. Of course, since the Panel ended up with a bit of the same, as well as immensely scattered just topically, I can’t say I enjoyed it near so much as I enjoyed Dr. Malamud’s discussion.

Now, under one hand, I found her as a presenter top notch, I appreciated not simply being read to, but on the other hand, I didn’t agree with exactly everything she had to say – yes, of course our architecture has been influenced by that of the Romans, but I don’t necessarily agree that this comes from a deep connection with the Romans, I think ours is more of a rip off of England’s rip off than anything else – Americans in general have always wanted to establish a new and yet old type of history for themselves, a bunch of “radicals” hunting for a history, a precedence to fall back on, and the Romans just happen to have a history that’s been smorgasborded by so many other countries already, why not us? Why can’t we be the best version of the same old same old – and she did touch on that a bit, but I think she could’ve done more with it (though granted, I know that’s what her book is for :p).

I did appreciate her discussion over how our concept of history is accentuated in this Roman connection, how it’s become a totally linear, “progressive” view, though I think the term “line segment view” is better. An event begins and ends, boom, history, versus the more complex, fuller idea of history as a never ending line SPIRALING forward, not a strict cyclical doowap and not an overly simplistic straight beam shooting onward and onward.

I did dig how she came about the notion of thinking on America in this way, via Caesar’s Palace in Vegas, good stuff, as Gaines said: a time traveler and border-crosser. I also really enjoyed the issue of American identity that she glanced over: America as the New Rome versus America as the New Jerusalem. I wish she’d gone further into that as well, but again, that’s why books are for.

Now, when she brought up the conquest of Hawaii, the Philippines, and Cuba as an example of our assuming Rome’s old banner of empire and wanting to be a better Rome than Britain, I had a few qualms. Fortunately, she addressed the big one but I still feel a bit restless about it. What grabbed me was the unfairness of this label because, especially with the Philippines and Chttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifuba, there was this excuse created, the idea of being a protectorate force rather than a conquering one because so many Americans began to take issue with becoming an imperialist nation. A lot of propaganda started pumping out anti-imperialist, one of my favorite political cartoons being,






which depicts ol’ Will McKinley considering imperialistic moves on the Philippines while ignoring the obvious and terrible issues persisting at home.

Her answer to this was something to the effect that America wanted both the Republican Ideals and Imperialist Pleasures of the late, “great” Rome, and that was reflected more in our architectural homage to them rather in our collective agreement that we were/are the New Rome.


As for the Panel discussion, really, it just made me wish I’d made it to something more specific, since it felt like the entire presentation was more made up of bullet points that each speaker either had forgotten about before or wanted to make sure and reiterate, a sort of sum-up for the thinning audience. There was some interesting discussion on the extreme detachment of the very rich from the rest of society and how this shapes the Imperialist Ideal versus the extremely wealthy but philanthropic of the 19th century America versus the “God through Wealth”/divine right mentality that tends to go with our super-wealthy of today. There were also interesting questions raised about where the heck were our revolts against the Republican empires of the Bush, Nixon, Reagan messes, etc. etc. etc.? Basically, as I said, a lot of random intrigues but nothing fantastically gripping. I have to say, compared to the last couple Brown Symposiums, I felt rather let down by this one. That’s probably just because this topic didn’t particularly fascinate me, but the fact that I was still there and still hopeful and still itchily disappointed felt strange and a little sad.

I’d love to be intrigued and crazed by everything, but at least I can recognize the significance, relevance, and importance of it even if I don’t get ultra-jazzed up about it, right? Isn’t that a big Paideia life goal?

Ciao for now, amigos

On Campus with Bob Hall's "Nonviolent Sexuality"

So, spent the evening with my honey listening to a Mr. Bob Hall give his lecture called “Nonviolent Sexuality”, and one that I expected to be about something in some way academic – sexual violence in literature or media and the problems therein or the inherent violence within the act of sex and societal taboos designed to down play or discourage this, etc etc etc. What did it turn out to be, you may ask – well, it turned out to be little more than a simple sexual education seminar insofar as how to say “no” and how to be comfortable with yourself in uncomfortable sexual situations. – Basically, it’s a lecture I would not have gone to hear if I’d known what it actually was because I already consider myself to be well schooled in this area, having gone through many sex education courses and seminars in my time and having thought things through for myself, and, at 21 years of age, having already had to deal with these sorts of uncomfortable situations myself. Now, if the lecture had turned into some call for education reform and how we speak about sex in the media and he’d had some interesting suggestions on what that would all entail, that would be a different story.

Really, he did speak to us as if we had no idea about these situations already – and while I recognize that some people are not as well educated on this subject or as comfortable with themselves about it as I happen to be, why advertise it the way he did if I was not his intended audience?

Granted, there were a few interesting points he hit on, such as the fact that we rarely discuss with any sincerity or frankness the connections between love/intimacy/friendship and the sexual act – which is one of those obvious things that has simply always just been so obvious that I’d never really bothered to dissect it out in my mind beyond application to myself – what this could mean for other people, what this could mean for possible sexual education programs, how we as a culture think about/market/view sex, etc.

Two other things he mentioned (but sadly did not linger on or go into too much detail about) were:
• The way we tend to discuss sex using legal vernacular – people having the right to say no at any point, threatening people against rape and violence not because of morality but because of legal repercussions, etc.
• The reason many people fear or hate pornography:
o To treat things like people is an illusion.
o To treat people like things is violence.
o To treat people like people is justice.
o To treat people as you treat yourself is love.

The pornography part actually really intrigues me – it’s been a subject of interest for me ever since I saw the documentary made over the film “Deep Throat”. Basically, I’m not a fan or buyer of porn myself, but it’s an industry of peculiar power in our culture that I just find fascinating. Marketing sex is just a weird thing, but we find it everywhere in the media, perverting what we think bodies and ages look like, perverting how we think about people, value people, how we react to them in social situations, what expectations we then put upon them – I really wish I could take that Human Sexuality class just to learn more about this. I may not need another sex ed, don’t-be-raped class, but this is certainly a heavy hitting player in the identity discussion, and that is definitely a conversation I’d like to get in on.


ciao for now neighborinos

Off Campus with "August: Osage County"

So, chuggin’ along from apple Dallas to orange Fort Worth with my Evan and his mother, the landscape cobwebby with power lines and church spires, we three found ourselves consumed the entire two hour trip by the nightmare-show we’d just sat witness to at the Winspear Opera House. It’d been Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize winning play, “August: Osage County”, and yes, a nightmare-show indeed, and one of the absolute most impressive things I’ve ever seen. Black humor, thick and hard as chalk, riddled all throughout this thoroughly American tragedy, Letts took on the near-cliché of the depressed, Southern family dynamic and whittled out a story so stunning in its possibility and reality, the very notion of cliché becomes ridiculous.

Just stepping into the Winspear Opera House, a new shiny brooch on Dallas’s sash, is akin to stepping into a wealthy, mink-coated wonderland. With a chandelier overhead, fiber optic as though they’d suckered up and screwed in some alien-giant fireflies into the ceiling, and a whir of well-dressed and well-to-dos, the three story set house hung there on the stage like a bruise on this otherwise opulent body. And it suddenly strikes me, the darker humor to be grinned at an audience of the upper classes tuning in to be cultured by the self-destruction of the decidedly lower.

The play constantly reflects and folds in upon itself and outside realities with a delicacy that makes insights on T.S. Elliott, Native American traditions, and socially complex sexual orientations and taboos seem natural, flowing out as organically as if Antonin Artud’s dream of perfect theatre as spontaneous life (or some such impossibility :p) realized. For myself, the play grabbed my interest most keenly with its applicability to America as a whole, an idea that became particularly crisp the more I meditated upon Jauna, the Cheyenne housekeeper who’s hired on to “live” in the house at the very beginning of the play by the one-scene-only patriarch (though, as always, his ghost lingers onward to haunt us all). But Jauna took ahold of me because she too seemed to haunt the play after the father’s disappearance, her presence as unseen caretaker representing for me a peculiar commentary on how we as Americans may still see Native Americans as foreigners in their own country, our home. Then there’s also the odd connection, as Evan pointed out, that’s created between her and her relationship to this deranged white family and that of the fabled Native American caretaking of the bumbling Pilgrims. – raising all sorts of questions about the generalizations and stereotypes Letts may or may not have been drawing upon when he crafted Jauna’s very specifically Cheyenne Native American character, just in need of the work.

Of course, what’s also impressive about Letts’ is the way in which he managed to incorporate and highlight the multitude of people and their issues without including any other non-white characters – a perspective of diversity beyond simply race that I certainly appreciate due to the disturbingly rising rate at which we employ the words “diversity” and “ethnicity” or “race” as totally synonymous. He adds sexual diversity, personality diversity, parenting style diversity, child rebellion diversity – everything, and all with the peculiar and unique focus upon women in power.

Even now I continue to meditate upon this play; it has so absorbed me. I’d actually really love to write a paper about this play from some angle, but no class is being particularly accommodating at this point and I don’t have the time to tackle another recreational paper at this point – I guess professors prefer our research to pertain to their classes. … Come on, guys. Come on.

another spring with Dr. G's Paideia folk

I’m terrified.

So this semester is going to be a really nifty train tour with hell out one window and heaven out the other because I’m taking 18 hours worth of classes – 4 of them being capstone, and while that part of it is petrifying, I am excited as a paycheck for the classes themselves:
Shakespearean Tragedy for the capstone
American Indians in Media
American Movies
American Cities
U.S. History post-1865
Choir
And fun with you, claro claro claro

Anyway, I already have two presentations coming up and a craze of reading but I figure so long as I remain this jacked up excited to sponge it in, everything’ll work out – it did last semester, I thought I was gonna have to rip my hair out at the roots to make room for all the info but it ended up being my highest GPA yet.

As for how Paideia will fit in, I’m very pleased to finally be thinking of it as a sort of intellectual spa, a place to go and relaxedly speak about what’s important to me and you and how this all relates to the greater cosmos in helping better the world by bettering myself. My biggest goal is simply to be better for you all, really, to be a finer and more respectful participant in our discussions. Hopefully, Paideia for me this semester will be not so much another thing to do as a place to brainstorm and leave feeling refreshed off of your different presentations and ideas that may help prepare me for the capstone discussions to come.

As for study abroad, the Native American reservation fell through to the tune of $12,000 and so now I’m retiring to NYU for about 6 weeks during the summer for some American Studies classes. I’ve already spoken to Sue about it – disappointed her, I think, but c’est la vie.

I figured we’d probably keep on keepin’ on with the whole individual presentations over something that’s grabbing at us particularly that week – and this time actually get the info out on time – and maybe spend some more time discussing what our final presentations are going to be like, just so I can get a good handle on mine.

I’m personally still working on my other capstone paper (for my American Studies capstone) as well, my Ginsberg/Trickster capstone paper, so I’ll most likely be looking for ways to meet out new ideas and angles and opinions on that subject for my own endings, and that’s probably what my final presentation will be over – fingers crossed it makes it to a conference. It’s itching up to 70-80 pages and by March I’m hoping to find some lovin’ Harvard way as they open up a call for papers in a variety of academic areas. I’m writing about everything from censorship to Native American religion to Stephen King’s sense of humor and I really can’t wait till it’s ready to have its debut. – really, it embodies Paideia for me, the mix of everything from all of these different areas and examining how they function as a complex, wonderful whole. Just being in the group with you guys helps me to realize this again and again, and I hope you know how much I appreciate that.

At any rate, I’m really just looking forward to further broadening how I consider the things I’m learning in my very specifically focused classes and on becoming a more productive member of our group, do a better job of pulling my weight.
Ciao for now chicos,
With love,
moi

Myself, so far...

Well, we’ve come a full year and half now together, I suppose, and I feel that I may honestly say it’s improved me in ways. Paideia has helped me reconsider myself in many different ways, pointed out prejudices in myself I didn’t know existed and may now work to fix, pointed out for me ways that I might become better aware of the world around me, instilled in me a want to be a better citizen of the globe and of our campus – it’s made me sadder for not being able to study “abroad” with the Lakota natives in South Dakota as originally planned, as it has taught me to treasure the prospects of being put into intercultural situations.

Sadly, the 3 month stay with the American Indians ended up with a price tag of upwards to $12,000, not something we could really afford to toss around for a summer study on top of another three semesters of SU and possibly graduate school. I do get to study at NYU for a few weeks, which is deep and confetti exciting because, well fuck, it’s *New York* baby! And getting to study there will help me with my research for the article I’m working on for a conference/Paideia presentation/capstone, and will also allow me to scope out NYU and Columbia as potential graduate schools, which is a neat opportunity I didn’t think I’d get this school-shopping time around. However, while NY-ing is intercultural in its own unique ways, I think we all know that it’s significantly less so than it would’ve been to be plopped on a reservation and have to live with a foreign-native family for a full three months, touring that part of the world, community service-ing, and keeping up with university classes. So, it’s a bummer with a very excellent alternative, I think.

But I can certainly appreciate Paideia as a wonderful force insofar as making sure I recognized the fullness of that academic and personal loss.

I also have to say though that I miss our group meetings outside of normal class time – I know I was no help with planning those this semester, but, as aforementioned in my last blog, this semester has been a particularly rude bitch at certain times. Really, the grit of this semester and some of our discussions in Paideia have had me reconsidering my decision to double major in places, but I don’t like getting my feet wet without going for the full swim. I guess, I might be in the shit for the moment – excuse all my French by the way, I’m writing this pretty early into the morning :p what is it? 2:30 am, on the nose – but I’m also at the point of no return. Really these next two weeks are going to be insanely crazy with all the studying I’m not used to having to do (I’m more of an essay kinda gal, myself) and for birthdays and choir concerts and four essays (told you, didn’t I?) to boot – it’s insane, and I really wish I had more time for you all and our outside class get togethers and maybe even another community service project.

I do have to say though that I’m immeasurably indebted to my double major though for the article that it’s inspired me to write. So far it’s called “Ginsberg and the Trickster: Howlers”, about looking at Ginsberg’s poetry through the scope of Native American trickster mythology. I’m pretty sure this is going to turn into my big creative works project, I’ve already got about a kajillion (that’s a scientific term) sources for it and about 25 pages (not very good ones, but they’re there all the same) written on it, and I have to say again, I’m jacked up. I’m jacked up about this project almost to the point of my other classes suffering for it – I know my studying has definitely dwindled for working on it, and other essays that should’ve been started a while ago have been put on the backburner until just now so that I might work on it some more. I’ve made a decision though: no more till Christmas break.

I feel like a horrific nerd, but I love it. I love the way it integrates both of my majors and so many different sources and perspectives, and how like Paideia it seems, to me at least, to be.

I hope all of you have similarly make-you-crazy projects in store, and I hope all of you have better/similar good/crazy luck with your study abroad plans. Rachel, we’ll miss you!

Thank you all for being such wonderful founts to learn from and such good people to get to work with -- I like our group. Good work. :]

ciao for now amigos,
moi

So far...

Looking back over this semester’s Paideia insofar as the shared readings and student-led discussions are concerned, I have to say that I enjoyed doing it this way, just because I felt like we discussed some good and interesting topics – especially in regards to science, way to go, dudes!, and even more especially Steven’s topic. Really, big applause on that reading and that presentation, man, there was something top-notch there and it left me thinking more about the scientific perspective and gave me something teeth-sink-in-able to discuss with people outside of our group of all varying majors.

My only real complaint of how things went down is that the readings for some weeks – and admittedly, even I didn’t give the full week ahead of time buffer – did not give the rest of the group any time to read the material and prepare some sort of decent means of contributing to the discussion. I feel like Paideia is something we all enjoy – otherwise, why stick around, right? – and I know I certainly do, but I also know that it’s my responsibility as your fellow student to come as prepared as possible because the more I know (or think I know :p) then the more I can contribute – and even if you don’t agree with me, at least that way you’ve got something to dispute. Basically, when we’re all able to come prepared and discuss then we’ll all have a better chance of really learning something new and worthwhile from each other. I figured, after all – and may very well be mistaken on this – but I was under the impression that, these presentations weren’t so much a give-us-what-you-know/teach-us moment, this wasn’t story-time, but it was sort of like presenting the group with a hypothesis or faux-thesis statement bolstered by a (scholarly?) source of some kind that the group might all read and then consider/dispute/build upon. – something we can’t well do if we haven’t had ample time to read and consider the work being presented upon.

And really, what’s the fun and point of Paideia if we don’t get something we can really disagree on? – Props to Rachel as well for her topic in that way about vegetarianism. I’m not suggesting that all of our topics should be controversial or radical or argumentative or overly provocative etc etc, because frankly, I don’t think we have a problem with that in our group :p what with the craziness over the Student Forum, sports & DNA, messed up vegans, etc. We do a good job, I think, of embracing weird perspectives.

I have to apologize here if I’ve been less prepared or more on-edge this semester in our group meetings; it’s no excuse, but it’s been a rough semester this time around. I think, for this reason as well, the way we’ve worked it out with these individual readings and presentations has helped me stay on track a bit more with what we’re doing rather than having to hunt through the Newsweek’s as well as read up on some other source as well as, as well as, etc (not that Paideia’s ever been the problem-child class :p) but this arrangement did seem more manageable for me despite my at times crumbly disposition.

I do have a request/suggestion though for maybe next semester. I know we all have to do a big final presentation of some kind for Paideia, and while I appreciate the lower key (though still scholarly and interesting) readings we’ve been doing, I’d also be interested to know more about what you all are thinking about for that project, even if it’s your capstone, I’d like to know more about those too. If anyone here is as big a nerd as I am, I’m jacked up about my capstone and love to chat about it – so I guess what I’m suggesting is that maybe when we have our individual presentations, could the person presenting also take a few minutes to tell us about what they’re thinking about for that presentation or for their capstone? Maybe tell us something they’ve learned lately that’s really intrigued them, something from one of their in-major classes that’s really caught their attention lately, something academic or news-worthy that’s got them jacked up? Really, I’d just be interested to know more about the other little outside specifics of what’s interesting you all.


I hope that made some semblance of sense and that you all really do know how much I appreciate getting to learn with and about all of you.

muchas gracias & ciao for now,
moi

RAIN

Well, I missed the really cool Poe exhibit that went down in Austin, a more academically educational event, I suppose, than this, but I do feel like this was just as educational -- primarily from an intercultural perspective. When I was in high school, I was never well integrated with a diverse culture, mostly WASPs hanging out in a high school full of WASPs, and so SU has been a good move for me, turning me into a wonderfully tolerant person, more open, more understanding, more complex -- all of which I desperately appreciate as I feel it really helps me on my way to becoming a more responsible, more respectable global citizen. Anyway, even though I now have openly gay friends and colleagues and have a bit better of an idea of the struggles they go through from day to day, I must say that spending an evening at RAIN - one of the "gay bars" of our Austin - with a group celebrating a couple of my friends coming out as a gay couple, was something still very much out of my norm. And I think, actually, realizing that that was still out of my norm, still a little bit beyond my complete comfortability, was just as odd as the experience itself.

I've been to clubs before -- none that I'd really desperately enjoyed as I'm more of a close friends small party, gal, myself -- but none like this. They mark you, of course, if you're under 21, scribbling permanent marker all over your hands, confiscating your driver's license for reasons still beyond me, tall skinny men in long skinny jeans and heavily greased faux-hawks looking you up and down to see who's there as a gay, as a straight, as a spectator, as a friend, as a townie, as a vacationing student. You walk in through a dark lobby rimmed with people, waiting for friends, waiting to leave, waiting, and then the lights hit you. Blue light, green, pink, television screens bolted up everywhere while the music -- the normal stuff, froth skimmed right off the pop radio stations -- sped up to adrenaline-shot-chipmunk speed so that they all sounded even more ridiculous, high-pitched and crazy, like the happiness of dancing was fevered and color-blurry in some way. We'd gotten there just a little early so that the only guy dancing was their paid dancer to make other people more comfortable, standing up on the glowing plastic platform stage, lined on side by the bar and on the other side by the DJ and strip pole/cage. Waiters in speedos wandered around with trays filled with neon bright drinks of every color, women or men dressed up to the wilds as men or women filled the place, more kids like us just dressed up began to mill around, the whole event unnerving and exciting all of us, gay and straight alike, so that we all huddled together in the back for a short while looking bewildered and helpless with a vague air of attempting to be cool.

When we finally began dancing -- mine especially ridiculous considering the fact that keeping a beat to me is sort of akin to trying to keep still a small child on speed -- it improved for us all, I think, allowing us to meld into something more comfortable, a sort of strange invisibility on the glowing stage where we'd felt so naked and displayed while huddling in the darkened back. Being there, dancing where men danced together and kissed and held together, where the women held hands and smiled and never looked anymore self-conscious than we did, where everyone simply seemed happy, I realized slowly I felt more comfortable there than in any of the "straight clubs" where everyone seemed to feel such a need to be gritty and cool, to make sure that they were definitely straight-shooting whereas here the competition was downplayed for the idea of being comfortable with yourself and with others.

The biggest part of it, though, I think, is still the fact that it unnerved me at all. I really do consider myself a pretty liberal person, pretty accepting, especially considering how out of this world excited I was to be there for my friends in celebrating their freedom to be together in love --

I suppose it really just revealed to me how segregated our culture continues to be, how hetero-normative everyone continues to be despite all of the media-hype, organizations, and social work put forward lately. Of course the awkwardness faded quickly and gladly, but it made me wonder, given all the lectures I've now been to regarding gender and gender equality and sexuality and sexual orientation equality, given all the classes and studies and political arguments surrounding the issues, why is it that a fairly liberal woman at a fairly liberal school in the most liberal city in Texas (which, I guess, isn't saying much, oh conservative-stuffed Texas) would feel awkward around openly gay people when there for the purpose of celebrating a person's freedom to be openly gay? When will everyone be able to accept love in all forms as love and not as "gay" or "straight" or "inter-racial"? When will this cease to be a culture-shock and begin to be the normalcy it should be?