Boost for journalism school

I'm two years late on unearthing this, but for my purposes, it's okay:

The leaders of five of the nation's most prominent journalism programs are joining in a three-year, $6 million effort to try to elevate the standing of journalism in academia and find ways to prepare journalists better.

The unusual collaboration, which has been developing for three years, involves Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University; Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley; Loren Ghiglione, dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University; Geoffrey Cowan, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California; and Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.

Journalism school may be more useful than in the past, according to Berekley's dean:

While journalists have long debated the value of journalism schools, Mr. Schell, who did not attend journalism school, said he now thought such institutions were more vital than they might have been in the past.

"Things have changed substantially since we came up the journalistic food chain," he said. "As news cycles have gotten faster and more bottom-line driven, there has been less inclination and capacity in media outlets to train, mentor and guide upcoming generations."

I'll keep posting about my own investigation into journalism school. My first j-school visit is planned for the weekend of July 27th to Medill at Northwestern, my alma mater.

Breaking down what we broadly refer to as feminism

One of the greatest triumphs for a historian is to convincingly argue that a conventionally accepted account of a time period or event is incorrect or at the very least, simplistic. To realize that a common conception of the past is flawed or shallow is jolting and transformational. It revises how we analyze current problems and what we identify as their root causes.

Over the course of the last several years, I came to understand that my view of the 1960s and 1970s was formed by an overbroad paradigm: that during that short period of time, society and culture as a whole progressed. While I think certain events during the time period represented progress--women gaining admittance to college and pre-professional programs at greater rates, the end of state-enforced segregation--I realize that, as in so many eras, these are specific achievements that do not necessarily endorse other accomplishments of the time even if they lie within the same realm of "women's issues," achievements like the so-called sexual revolution. Nonetheless, people often conflate every achievement in the realm of women's issues into one great big movement towards Progress and Enlightenment. Others wholly vilify the entire era as the end of institutions' moral authority. I think that this recent era, like so many others, brought changes that should be examined free of these two opposing dialectics that so often hijack our conversation about them.

Take the women's movement and its legacies today. There is good and bad. The bad, in my opinion, is embodied by the "hook-up culture." I recently got into a pretty intense argument with some co-workers about whether such a culture exists and whether it is problematic. I think there have been some recent developments, the confluence of which make a hook-up culture more practicable than it would have been in the past. Here are a few: (relatively) easy and legal availability of birth control, a view that dating and going steady are the chaste activities of a bygone era, the equating of men's needs and women's needs, the trend of disassociating sex from emotion (and the idea that emotions are burdensome), to name a few. I'm not saying I find all of these developments problematic, but I think they are valid explanations for today's hook-up culture, a term which, when searched in google, yields a plethora of interesting articles and conversation; world like "perils" and "misery" immediately catch one's attention.

Of course, the bad always comes with the good, which means the sexual revolution should not be treated as a bogeyman, but it should not be treated as a natural outgrowth of feminism either. On the contrary, it can be vigorously debated without jeopardizing the achievements of women in other areas.

Mental Health in the Virginia Tech Shooting

Much of what's been written about the Virginia Tech shooting has concerned the mental health of the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui and how the university might have done a better job detecting his illness and diffusing the massacre. What's lost when we upbraid the mental health treatment infrastructure is simply how hard it is to determine the inner thoughts of people. Sure, Cho should have received more treatment for his illness, but it would be unfortunate and counter-productive if the Virginia Tech massacre leads to increased suspicion by college campus authorities of anyone with a mental illness. As a recent Slate article put it:

[W]hat's more important is that thousands of students attend college who struggle with depression and other mental illnesses, and almost all of them hurt no one and deserve to stay there. Identifying the Cho-type exceptions before they explode is a matter of good campus police work and counseling, not harsh, interventionist crackdowns.

This is an argument for increased empahsis on gun control efforts, in my view. Controlling the supply of guns is much more straight-forward than trying to predict whether bio-chemical imbalances will lead one to commit violent acts. Even in this day and age, none of us can read another person's mind. It would be a shame if school authorities overreacted--thereby creating an even greater stigma around mental illness--while trying.

When ambition is overrated

There's a nice article written by Michael Winerip in the New York Times of a couple days ago about his personal experience as an alumni interviewer for Harvard, whose admissions process he has witnessed over the years as it has become impossibly selective. According to Winerip, "[the] kids who don’t get into Harvard spend summers on schooners in Chesapeake Bay studying marine biology, building homes for the poor in Central America, touring Europe with all-star orchestras." Who does get into Harvard, one wonders. It certainly seems to help if one has a distinctive biography in an environment when even a title like editor of the school newspaper or valedictorian are run-of-the-mill. Of course, the students who have such unique opportunities available tend to be of well-off families who have a sophisticated understanding of the modern college application process.

It all makes me long for the days where everything after elementary school wasn't just one big effort to get into a selective college, where one didn't have to be so prepared, and where high school summers were a time for lazing and working a lowly job. Winerip says that during his summers, he "dug trenches for my local sewer department during the day, and sold hot dogs at Fenway Park at night." Though it is hardly at the level of researching for a NASA project, as one of his interviewees did, there is some merit to spending those hot summer days doing unglamorous grunt work. It sure makes one value their educational opportunities when one has to file papers all day or dig ditches, knowing that some people spend a lot longer than a summer in such jobs, and it punctures any sense of entitlement--that loathsome syndrome with which some Baby Boomers have imbued their children--that those who are less familiar with "a hard day's work" often feel.

As Winerip says of his own realization that seeing his children attain a Harvard degree (which they didn't) was not the end-all be-all achievement for him as a parent: "I came to understand that my own focus on Harvard was a matter of not sophistication but narrowness. I grew up in an unworldly blue-collar environment. Getting perfect grades and attending an elite college was one of the few ways up I could see." There is life beyond Harvard.

Giving the North Shore a Bad Name

Blasts from the past are fun, especially when they remind you why you don't really miss the past all that much. I just came across the Facebook groups for my old high school and for the area in which it resided, the North Shore. First, I just have to thank my lucky stars that Facebook was not around in high school. Not only would it have eaten up more of my time, but it would have probably disenchanted me greatly. Case in point: the group dedicated to the North Shore. The description of the group embodies everything that people critcize about the area. It exhibits a vaguely ironic self-awareness--vaguely. The student(s) who wrote the description are clearly aware of the uglier perceptions about the North Shore but only seek to perpetuate them, which is unfortunate, especially as they come off sounding disgustingly entitled.

The first part of the description is fine, if not a little too boastful. Having movies filmed in the area is cool, but it's hard to get that excited about Risky Business being one of the most noted. The only North Shore-located movie I can be proud of among the otherwise forgettable string of John Hughes flicks set there is Robert Redford's Ordinary People. I digress. Most objectionable in the North Shore Facebook group is the way the area's perceived affluence and exclusivity is trumpeted: "As one of the most affluent areas in the nation, we have just about everything you could ever want -- and probably more." Even worse, the location is listed as "(The Good Parts of) Evanston to Lake Forest, IL." Personally, I'd rather be associated with some of the "bad" parts of Evanston than some of the toniest parts of Lake Forest.

(It's also somewhat mendacious for these girls to say that the North Shore is 20 minutes away from Chicago. The southernmost point in Wilmette is 20 minutes from the northernmost point of Chicago if you're driving late at night or early in the morning. Winnetka, Glencoe, Highland Park, and Lake Forest are all at least 45-minutes away).

The ironic thing is that these folks champion their New Trier educations but appear to have absored nothing from them. People who effectively take credit for living in an appealing locale or attending an outstanding school are incredibly dense, unless they built the Greenbay bike trail or teach at New Trier, or maintain the beaches on Lake Michigan, or something. Usually, people who harbor these inflated views of their lot tend to have difficulty transitioning into jobs and sometimes even college, because they are so used to the entitlement of their first 18-years. Too bad this government increasingly rewards unearned wealth.

Soporific Sex Magazines

I've been meaning to write about an article that appeared in the New York Times Magazine which looks at the appearance of sex magazines at elite universities. I had a hard time believing that the subject was timely--such magazines have been notedby the media many times before. Moreover, the author, Alexandra Jacobs, seems to attribute a false ingenuity to the young sex magazine publishers. On the contrary, the magazines emanating from students at top universities like Harvard ("H-Bomb"), Vassar ("Squirm"), Columbia ("Outlet"), and University of Chicago ("Vita Excolatur") are emblematic of the larger cultural cult around being frank about sex. Straightforwardness about sex can be useful in a high school sex education class but becomes a bore when it masks as a source for entertainment or enlightenment, as it does in these pretentious periodicals.

Such magazines follow a larger trend, and in this sense, the college students putting them out are among the last to have boarded the bandwagon. This is why what they're doing is neither revaltory nor original but rather symptomatic of their inculcation from the entertainment media. My generation matriculated in an age where such inane mantras as "sex sells" became media gospel, begetting an ubiquity of sexual images and articles. Surely then, sex magazines at college are not original, as the coverage given to them would suggest, nor often are they very interesting.

In fact, sex columns and magazines are not necessarily interesting at all. While there are some subjects whose surface blandness belies their depth, sex to me seems the exact opposite: it is a subject that is initially salacious but quickly loses steam, probably because, when you get right down to it, there isn't really that much to write about. Think of all of the giggling high school students who greet sex ed with mocking anticipation at the beginning of the semester, only to yawn through human anatomy quizzes and contraception lectures a few weeks later. Some of the most popular subjects taken up by sex writers--sexual positions, sex toys, and porn--are those most lacking in actual breadth and depth. It's no wonder that so many sex columns devolve into cliches, with the predictably spicy writing styles of their authors overtaking the substance of the column, such as this explication of aphrodisiacs in the Northwestern student-published NU Comment.

Why then is the media breathlessly heralding the arrival of these magazines? According to the Boston Globe piece:

The public fascination with H Bomb clearly stems from the sense that there's not much of a place for sex at Harvard.

According to the NY Times Mag piece:

Considering that a smorgasbord of Internet porn is but a mouse click away for most college students, there’s something valiant, even quaint, about the attempt to organize and consider sex in a printed magazine.

That's a stretch. Such obsequious coverage of these magazines is evidence to me that Ivy Leagues truly do function as brand names. If a shoddy sex magazine has the word "Harvard" or "Columbia" on it, it suddenly becomes an inquisitive forum for reflection, even if its articles on the likes of the value of condom use at best serve the function of a sex education class.

I actually found myself agreeing with the National Review about the worthiness of such student endeavors:

Now, it’s one thing to engage in a bit of naughty publishing (on the university dime, at least) but quite another to do so and pretend that it’s something high-brow. You’ve read Ulysses? Maurice? Tropic of Cancer? Well, clearly now it’s time for something with saucy pictures! Pornographic modeling, once thought to be the exclusive realm of would-be actresses, sexual abuse victims, drug addicts, and other exploitable populations has clearly found a new pasture for flesh, with Ivies offering extracurricular careers (and funding!) to anyone interested in getting a head start in the sexual entertainment industry.

Teaching in America

Jacques Barzun's 1944 book Teacher in America, which I am currently reading, is as relevant now as it when it was written. Today, most of the talk about school curriculum starts and ends with how to get students to pass some standardized tests. Teacher in America, if heeded, would inject the much needed "why" into the discussion of how to get students to learn. Barzun contends that students learn best when they understand where the subject being taught sprang from and why it is important. Why do we use variables in mathematics? Why do we study evolution? Why do we apply methods of physical science to the social world? It is important to understand the history of the disciplines to which we are familiarized in school. Barzun worries that without this perspective, school curricula merely perpetuate the idea that scientific disciplines are truth rather than human creation:

If [college boys and girls] leave college thinking, as they usually do, that science offers a full, accurate, and literal description of man and Nature; if they think scientific research by itself yields final answers to social problems; if they think scientists are the only honest, patient, and careful workers in the world; if they think that Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, and Farady were unimaginative plodders like their own instructors; if they think theories spring from facts and that scientific authority at any time is infallible...and if they think that science steadily and automatically makes for a better world--then they have wasted their time in the science lecture room...they are a menace whether they believe all this by virtue of being engaged in scientific work themselves or of being disqualified from it by felt or fancied incapacity (Liberty Fund edition, 129-130).

Barzun goes on to suggest that students should be taught not just about the theories put forth by scientists like Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, but about how and why these men labored at what they did, in order to understand that science is not immaterial truth but rather a recent construct of humans. This is not to say that scientists' theories don't represent valuable approximations of how nature works but rather just to remind us all that scientific principles are not immutable truth.

Barzun worries at the same time that the discipline of history is marginalized when it should be broadened. He has a beautiful passage about the importance, the necessity of history in the face of accumulating new inter disciplines that seek to supplant its study:

One can safely generalize and say that under the name of social science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and economics, many American students today are really offered one single and quite unnecessary subject, namely: Tautology.

History--by which I mean history properly taught--aims at the diametrically opposite results. It is never tautological, it is not confined to one experience or one set of experiences, it does not ape the tricks of physical science; it does not offer brisk formulas for human behavior or pat answers to social problems. But it makes its students think maturely about all the valuable fragments of experience which may have found their way into these latter and shoddier substitutes (152).

Barzun adds "I am not criticizing serious teaching in psychology nor responsible work in sociology under true masters. I have no quarrel with other independent disciplines, but only with the Ersatz that is put forward as fit to supplant history" (152).

Students should be introduced to science and history as somewhat opposite frames with which to view the world--the former finding it quantifiable and predictable, the latter finding it a host for a series of unique events that are nonetheless edifying for its student. Both frames of mind are important for understanding the world, at least as best as one possibly could. What is so valuable about the historical frame of mind is that it lessens one's idealism and cynicism both. As Barzun says:

When broadly based on a good knowledge of western European history (including that of the United States), the historical sense is a comforter and a guide. The possessor understands his neighbors, his government, and the limitations of mankind much better. He knows more clearly not what is desirable but what is possible. He becomes 'practical' in the lasting sense of being taken in neither by panicky fears nor by second-rate Utopias. It is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially among the young, for whom the only alternative is cynicism. The historical sense is a preventive against both extremes. It is a moderator which insists on knowing conditions before passing judgements. The historical sense is above all political-minded. It suggests that in the struggles of men with one another, no virtue implies the possession of any other; that motives are mixed, and that no evil is absolutely perverse. For these reasons, the study of history tends to make men more tolerant, without on that account weakening their determination to follow the right: they know to well the odds against it [emphasis mine] (155).

Top Ten Cool Things of the Year (in the U.S.)

This wasn't such a great year. The situation in Iraq deteriorated even more, and yet OJ Simpson's absurd book seemed to generate more outrage among some--namely the over employed entertainment media. So, what was great about 2006? Not a whole lot. Doing my best to remember what on earth happened this year, I'll try to extract the few cool things that did happen, in no particular order:

1. Stephen Colbert at the Annual White House Correspondents Dinner: In May, Colbert helped draw attention to an event that usually serves as a bad inside joke for a few hundred people by humorously critcizing the president's famous ego. He mocked Bush's supposed steely resolve--"Events can change; this man's beliefs never will"--cutting it down to the publicity stunt it is:

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers, and rubble, and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message: that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound—with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

Not only was Colbert's bit itself hilarious, but it became a watershed media event. YouTube, 2006's ubiquitous website, proved especially useful in the days after the event, allowing people to access what really went down at the dinner rather than taking the mainstream media's word for it. Their word was often non-existent, because many outlets initially determined the event not newsworthy--including The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune--despite the ramifications of the event: one of the country's most clever comedians had pointedly skewered one of the most insulated of modern presidents, who was sitting just a few feet away. It should be no surprise then that the second target of Colbert's routine was the lackadaisical media--many in attendance at the dinner--who have so often failed to vigorously question George W. Bush about his agenda:

Over the last five years, you people were so good—over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. ... And then you write, 'Oh, they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.' First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg!

The event was remarkable for fusing politics and entertainment for constructive good, for being accessibile to a mass audience, and for serving as a jumping off point for debate about the usefulness of the media. The Colbert performance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner is perhaps the emblematic event of a year of consumer participation in newsmaking.

2. The Democratic Victory in the 2006 Congressional Elections: One can easily imagine the media narrative that would have persisted had the Republicans maintained control of Congress after the November 2006 elections: that Americans were satisfied with the direction of the War in Iraq despite visible reservations, that the economy wasn't bad enough to require a renewed focus on growing inequity--like the recent cuts in student aid and the failure to increase the minimum wage--and that, in general, Americans were satisfied with the Republican social agenda. A wisdom that had prevailed for years changed on November 7.

Up against a gerrymandered Congress, the Democrats still won big in the House. They also managed to eke out victory in the Senate, knocking out some formidable incumbents like George Allen of Virginia and Conrad Burns of Montana. Furthermore, they won with great help from the so-called "liberal bloggers," whose fundraising, organizing, and message generating did justice to the term netroots. The Democrats in 2006 were not the Democrats of 1996, who relied upon the contributions of moneyed coffers and directed most of their energies to retaining the presidency rather than making inroads in Congress.

The new Congress is focusing on a different course in Iraq--though it is still up to the intransigent President to assume one--and on economic issues that were ignored under one-party rule. Plus, the 2006 election was also a victory against apathy, with the number of voters up in the usually less participatory midterm elections. Especially encouraging: 24 percent of Americans 18-30 voted, the largest percentage in 20 years.

3. Harvard, then Princeton and UVA, End Early Decision: In September, Harvard and then Princeton and the University of Virginia moved to end the early admission option, deciding that it favored savvier applicants from more advantaged backgrounds. Although other top schools do not yet see the need to eliminate early decision, Harvard at least brought to attention the need for universities to be attentive to the disparate sophistication of prospective students with the college application process. Although some schools, like my Alma mater Northwestern, have made some reasonable points on why early decision still suits them, it is good for universities to publicly discuss institutional inequities. Hopefully, Harvard and its peers will figure out how better to assist both low income and middle class students with the costs of their education.

4. TV Programming Continues to Improve: Although there is still drek on television--there always will be--some TV programming continues to delight. While I think some of the critics favorite shows, particularly "Weeds" and "Scrubs" are overrated, "The Office," "The Colbert Report," "The Daily Show," and HBO programming continue to shine. "The Office" was rightfully awarded an Emmy for its fantastic ability to find humor in the mundane and for the genuine performances put forth by its cast. After a reportedly bumpy first year, "The Office" figured out how to adeptly adapt the British version to reflect the nature of the American workplace in year two. (Now, there is a French and German version of "The Office," showing that the workplace is a universal source of humor, though not necessarily the same humor). Office romances, career dissatisfaction, narrow-mindedness, and the American work ethic are depicted realistically and hilariously. To think, 10 years ago, the only good things going on network TV were "Frasier," "Friends" (meh) and "Seinfeld," and the sitcom (shudder) reigned supreme. Hopefully, the cool event of 2007 will be that cable companies lose their regional monopolies and prices decrease (I wish).

5. Some Bad People Went to Prison: This year, Jack Abramoff and Jeffrey Skilling, two men who enjoyed far too much power in the 1990s, were convicted to formidable prison terms. Abramoff was convicted of conspiracy to bribe a public official, defrauding a client, and tax evasion, and was sentenced to the minimum of 10-years, in anticipation that he will cooperate with investigations of other corruption cases. He and his lobbying firm contributed to the excess of Republican-controlled Washington. Abramoff was intimately involved with disgraced former majority leader Tom DeLay, who his lobbying firm treated to trips to the North Mariana Islands, and Abramoff himself secretly funded the trips of other Republican Representatives. Abramoff's corruption is too extensive to document here, but concurrent to his demise went the careers of a lot of disgraceful people, including DeLay, Randall "Duke" Cunningham, and Robert Ney.

Jeff Skilling, former CEO of the defunct Enron Corporation might be the person most single-handedly responsible for the California electricity crisis of 2000-2001, in which the state's recently deregulated electricty grid allowed for Enron employees to manipulate the energy markets in there, causing prices to spike and supply to be unevenly distributed. Too bad Skilling can't provide redress for all of the pension plans that were decimated by the Enron collapse as well as for the electricty bills and costs incurred by the state of California during the energy crisis.

6. Immigrant Rallies Across the Nation: Often defined by their demagogic opposition, tens of thousands of immigrants and those in favor of immigrant interests rallied across the nation in April, drawing attention to their contributions and advertising their presence to Congress, which was then considering immigration reform. For a group that fills mostly the least desirable jobs in the country, immigrants get a lot of flack, despite that the United States is a nation of immigrants. A typical complaint against illegal immigrants is that they use up public services, but wouldn't pushing for legalization and thereby getting them to pay into the system be a good way to prevent this? Of course, this would have to be accompanied by pay approximating a living wage...

7. FDA Approves HPV Vaccine and Plan B OTC: The current administration has not wholly succeeded in stymieing progress of its agencies. The FDA approved the Human papillomavirus vaccine and over the counter (OTC) Plan B contraception. Though religious zealots will probably tell you otherwise, there is never anything wrong with vaccinating against a sexually transmitted disease. The idea that it encourages unprotected sex or sex in general is like saying that a flu vaccine encourages not washing one's hands. The approval of Plan B also generated controversy, but it will make an unpleasant process easier to handle for many people.

8. An Inconvenient Truth Brings More Attention to Global Warming: In a year of erratic temperatures and a hostile climate, Al Gore used his influence and celebrity for good, bringing attention to the force behind climate fluctuations. It is amazing that the existence of global warming needs such a forceful defense, even though it is not in scientific dispute, but that is why Gore's contribution was so constructive. Though of course not as watchable as a movie like Casino Royale, Gore does an admirable job of meticulously deconstructing the arguments against global warming and detailing those for it. If parts of our country are submerged under water in the not too distant future, Al Gore can (somberly) say I told you so.

9. Google Buys YouTube: In an acquisition that didn't reek of evil, the search engine giant bought out the user-generated content giant. Not only does YouTube's searchable video content model seem commensurate with Google's model, but Google appears to be an encouraging parent corporation, managing to maintain the integrity and while innovating its other acquisitions, like this here software I'm using. (Meanwhile, the telecom market is consolidated by another dispiriting merger, as AT&T's absorption of Bell South Corp. is approved by the FCC).

10. Bob Woodward's State of Denial Released: The tipping point of popular opinion against George W. Bush must surely have been reached when Bob Woodward--establishment journalist and former Bush administration cheerleader--released State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III. Woodward's book seemed to cement the view that the War in Iraq was a mistake, and that its execution was poorly managed at best, providing an indictment of all of the key actors in the administration who consistently lied and misled over the years to save face.

This was a pretty difficult list to come up with, because this was a pretty difficult year, but I know I'm forgetting things. Please comment with any additional suggestions or any recommended subtractions.

Tribune's silly obsession with the Obama-Rezko connection could be turned into something more useful

I'm convinced that at least half of the reason that Chicago has the reputation for politics more scandalous than other parts of the country is because scandal is drummed up by the local media. Rags like the Tribune and the Sun-Times use the language of "appearances" of corruption and guilt by association to imply that which is most sinister.

Witness the Tribune's current efforts to hang the sign of a man named Antoin Rezko on Senator Barack Obama. Rezko was involved in some state government scandals, and the Tribune has since decided to impute Obama based on association. Their most recent implication is that Obama's office gave a college student an internship as a favor to Rezko, who appears to be a family friend of this intern. Obama's office is of course cornered into denying that Obama has ever done any favors for Rezko. Honestly, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the intern got her job through Rezko, not because Obama is uniquely bereft of an ethical compass but because that's how internships generally work on the Hill.

Perhaps the Tribune could use its considerable but dwindling resources for reportage to cover the more interesting angle of how internships are ferreted out in Washington. The current thought is that these relatively inconsequential jobs would serve as good reward for loyal (and big) donors to the Congressman. I don't think there is anything wrong with hiring someone loyal to a candidate-- a campaign worker, for instance, is a natural choice to fill a post-election job--but the kin of a big donor is someone who has gotten a job entirely because of blood association to wealth.

This leads to what I see as a larger problem of entitlement by some of the wealthy and well-connected in our society. It is revolting when people get jobs or admissions to college because of their family connections. My revulsion is directed not just at the party who is doing the admitting but also at the donor expecting a quid pro quo. If you donate to a university or candidate, it should be out of belief in the institution or the cause, not to tip the scales in favor of your child. From what I have heard from people who have worked in admissions at colleges, it is general policy to give a big donor's black sheep kin the benefit of the doubt. Such practices reconcile us all to playing the game, "networking," valuing superficial connections over merit and repeating the mantra that this is just how things work. Wouldn't it be nice though if some of these privelged people could lead from the top and not expect special treatment for their children?

When Academics is Absurd

The academic fields in the humanities and sometimes the social sciences (especially sociology and anthropology) are too often a wasteland of gratuitous jargon and dogmatic promulgation of strange critical theories. Words like "space," "discourse," "post-colonial," "post-structuralist," "post-[fill in the blank]" and "queer theory," are all too common, acting as crutches, the substitution of faddish critical theories for independent thought. Furthermore, some subjects of academic study are absolutely untenable, like "Sex and the City," hip hop (at least, most of what appears to be out there), and chick lit. It is only when you read the undergraduate and masters theses titles that you understand just how absurd are some of the things that get passed off as academic and why searching for ridiculous thesis titles online is an entertaining pasttime. I bring you the fruits of my labor, broken down by taxonomies of drek:

Here's a pretty standard one:
Narrating My Body, Narrating Myself. Body Narratives of Romanian Teenage Girls

Grabbing two unrelated ideas and finding causality between the two. Bonus points if postcolonial discourse is involved:

Genocide 'n' Juice: Reading the Postcolonial Discourses in Hip-Hop Culture.

Lesbians, space, and more lesbians:

Experiences of Lesbians at the Belgrade Pride 2001 and Zagreb Pride 2002

Re-imagining 'Romanianness': The LGBT Movement Challenging the Heteropatriarchal Order of the Nation

Sexually Active Connection In Long Term Queer Female Relationships

Drowning in Loneliness and Writing the Blues: Creating Lesbian Space in the Novels of Radclyffe Hall and Leslie Feinberg

Sapphic Sisters in the City of Brotherly Love: The Interactions of Space, Community and Lesbian Sexuality

Gender bending:

Children Doing and Undoing Gender. The Case of a Polish Kindergarten Group

Sickos, Psychos, and Sluts: Images of Transgendered Women in Media Culture

"That's an Extra One:" Adolescent Transgender Identity and Self-Acceptance

How Television Viewing During Adolescence May Influence Exotic Dancers' Perceptions of Female Gender Roles: An Exploratory Study

Conflict in Congo: Locating the Gendered Body

General weirdness:

Environmentalism Without Guarantees: The Spectral and Scatological Politics of Displacement in Miyazaki Hayao's Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away)

Images of Japanese Women Who Seek Emancipation Through the Experience of Death

Gratuitous use of vagina:

Vagina Dialogues: The Developmental Underpinnings of Older Women's Fear of Losing Youth and Beauty

Pleasing Pussy: Exploring Women-Centered Pornograph

Let's not give short shrift to the other half of queer theory:

The Racial Stereotype as Sexual Fetish: Latino Racial Fetishism in the U.S. Gay Male Cultural Imagination

Utter bullshit (which was probably written the weekend before it was due):

Self-Mutilation or Body Beautification: The Meaning of Tattooing and Piercing And Implications for Social Work Practice

(Re)producing Masculinities in Sports: Football as 'the Boys' Game'

Exploring the Relationship Between Resident Assistant Leadership Styles and Student Satisfaction in the Residence Halls

Fabulousness as Fetish: Queer Politics in Sex and the City

Comforting Touch Between Nurses and Patients: An Exploratory Study with Implications for Medical Social Work Practice

Translating Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop: the Musical Vernacular of Black Girls Play

Deconstructing the Vagina Monologues: A Taxonomic Approach to Social Change

Race, Class, Conflict and Empowerment: On Ice Cube's 'Black Korea'

Post-Graduation Career and Education Plans for Student-Athletes Who Participate in CoCurricular Activities

What??:

Systematics, Osteology, Sexual Dimorphism, Age Classes, and Population Dynamics of Teleoceras Fossiger from Jack Swayze Quarry, Clark County, Kansas, and Minium Quarry, Graham County, Kansas

and my personal favorites:

Erotic Sadomasochism: Women Finding Meaning and Opportunities for Personal Growth through Radical Sexual Practices

Brown Meets Green: The Political Fecology of Poop Report.Com

The Last Unpaid Job

In the summer, Washington, D.C. becomes a town of interns, those lucky college students who come looking for the connections and perhaps a little experience to build a resume in anticipation of the post-college job search. However, for those returning post-college to look for a job the old meritocratic way--sending in some cover letters and resumes in response to job postings--lacking "hill experience" can be a disadvantage, lacking explicit connections, even moreso. HillZoo.com, the de facto website of Congressional job openings, is not necessarily a haven for paid work, as it mostly seems to post internships. Many people even feel compelled take such positions after college, having nonetheless earned a bachelors degree and often thousands of dollars in loans along the way.

Internships seem to be popping up everywhere nowadays to the point that the intern is the new glorified secretary. Why? Because employers love cheap labor and because they have realized that they can expect more than a solid undergraduate record and summer jobs at the local coffee shop. They can expect experience. This sets up a vicious cycle where the job applicant cannot get hired without experience but cannot get exprience without getting a job. Thus, the unpaid, often menial internship. This system undeniably favors the well-off, and these are the students who tend to fill internship spots. The numbers bear this out, according to an article by Yael Julie Fischer in Campus Progress, from earlier this year:

Most students live on a tight budget; we need cash for fun, for essentials, or for tuition. Asking us to fill our resumes by emptying our wallet seems like an awful lot to ask. A USA Today survey of unpaid interns revealed that over 60% had parents earning more than $100,000 a year. Only about 20% of all families of college students earn that much. For most students, working for free is just too expensive

In that vein, Fischer makes a worthy proposal:

Students gain a lot through internships, but they also have a lot to offer. Their skills and talents deserve recognition and there is no reason they should be exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Most employers recognize the questionable legality of unpaid internships, which is why no official statistics exist on the number of such positions. Students deserve to earn minimum wage for their work despite the glamour of the job, both because students’ skills warrant compensation and because the educational opportunity of an internship should be available to all, not just to those whose parents can bankroll them or who have the time and wherewithal to hold down other paid jobs on the side.

Universities could also ramp up their funding for the apprenticeship endeavors of their students, not that such pursuits should cut into a liberal arts education any more than they already do. Finally, I still maintain that the best education for the workforce is the liberal arts education if the student emerges with a good grasp of what s/he was taught. Of course, there are many things one learns in the workforce that cannot possibly be imparted at a university, but the ability to analyze and think critically are woefully underrated in favor of a prestigious-looking internship which may have merely involved filing and inputing data to Excel.

The endless D.C. argument

Commenting of mass proportions broke out on the blog DCist yesterday over a Portland, Oregon-based band's negative review of their experience at music venue DC9 in the Shaw-U Street-Howard neighborhood. (Oh, for your own edification, if you even care, every D.C. neighborhood has at least three names kind of going on. For instance, my office is located in Federal Triangle and just south of Gallery Place-Chinatown-Penn Quarter. Oh, and not too far from Capitol Hill. Yeah. Nutty!). Anyway, here's the start of the blog entry:

A recent tip from Dave at Indiefolkforever lead us to a rather unflattering portrait of our fair city. Norfolk & Western, a Portland band that visited D.C. last month, apparently didn't have a very nice time playing DC9 or visiting the U street/Shaw neighborhood in Northwest D.C. As part of a tour journal posted on Local Cut, the
band wrote:

Washington DC proved to be a less pleasant experience for all of us. DC is not the safest city in the world to begin with, and according to my sources, the club we played at was located in a particularly bad area.

I have mixed, convoluted feelings about this band's experience, the discussion that ensued on DCist, and the larger implications of this type of discussion, all of which I will try to explain.

So anyhow, this band appears to have had a bad time in our fair city, and many commenters are taking personal offense. Really, though, who's fair city is it? Not mine. I still consider myself a Chicagoan (or Chicago suburbanite), and I'm guessing most of those commenting have only been in D.C. for a couple years at most, so let's just establish that few of us are authorities on authentic D.C. (which also happens to be an oxymoron).

Anyway, the perennial argument in D.C. ever since hipsters settled the Northwest (NW D.C., this time, not the Pacific Northwest) and continued to move East, centers around how transplants/upper and middle income/white people feel discomfort towards the "real" D.C. People who come to D.C. are viewed with a skeptical eye, with everyone from suburbanites to bands from the Pacific Northwest at risk for getting slammed for not accepting D.C. as it is. Here's one comment on that blog entry that expresses such a sentiment:

[The band's] comment [on their experience at DC9] is unfortunately typical of quite a few other people I have met from the Pacific NW, and also from other crunchy "liberal" places like Vermont and Minneapolis (where I'm from). They think they're all tolerant and progressive, but aren't comfortable with actual diversity. I'm sure they thought U Street is a particularly bad neighborhood, because like 1/2 the people on the street are black.

It is true that a lot of people habor a mental map of the District that redlines most of Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and even some of Northwest (east of 16th Street). DuPont and Georgetown are great, Adams-Morgan is fine if you stay on the main strip, and U Street is "sketchy." Seriously, someone said that last thing to me this weekend. People like that don't make it too far out of Georgetown, which is a shame, because Georgetown nightlife sucks.

Lately though, I've been thinking that it's silly to deride such people for their insulairty. For one, we're all insular to some degree, preferring to stay in places where we're comfortable. Furthermore,do hipsters really want frequenters of Georgetown bars invading U Street? U Street establishments are busy enough as it is. Still, much of the dismissive remarks made about D.C. neighborhoods are ridiculous. I've always hated the word "sketchy," part of the lexicon of the self-sheltered urban dweller because what people often mean when they apply that word is that a neighborhood is different to them, lacking in sports bars, Banana Republics, and yuppy condos.

Still, I can understand the worry about being mugged and think the derision of those who are worried about walking alone on a dark street is unfounded. Some commenters acted like the band was lucky not to get mugged:

As far as their "gang experience", sounds like the guys were just pushing their buttons. I agree it would be intimidating, but come on. They didn't get robbed or anything while they were here.

I've never gotten mugged (*big knock on wood*), but the D.C. residents who try to prove their street cred by deriding anyone who's not comfortable with the idea of winding up in a situation where they are handing their wallet to a scary man whose gun is pointed at them have either never gotten mugged either or are bloviating. No one wants to get mugged, and it should not be acceptable to get mugged. I don't care if you're in the poorest neighborhood in the city; I don't think any decent person --no matter their socio-economic situation--should be accustomed to being mugged. Too often the assumption around here is that in poor or non-white neighborhoods, crime is part of the landscape. Even if those conditions predict higher crime rates, no neighborhood prides itself on high crime, and no neighborhood wants high crime. There is this idea, not just in D.C. but all over, that urban authenticity is predicated on one's exposure to crime. It's unfortunate that crime gets elevated to a character-building experience.

Finally, and this is slightly separate from this particular incident, I get a little fed up when hipsters act as if their conception of D.C. is more authentic than anyone else's. Nothing about the modern conception of the city is authentic. For a long time, city streets were home to cesspools of waste because of inadequate sanitation systems, urban residents lived on top of each other in ramshackle dwellings, and the young and old alike labored long hours in the industrial sector with little time for leisure activities like hanging out at the local music joint. The notion that a city is a place for enlightenment and creativity is relatively recent. I always find it especially condescending when people look down on suburbanites for not living in the city and supposing it is because they are afraid of diversity and creativity. These people forget that for a long time, the American dream was to get out of the city. Only recently is the dream to move back, and it is an increasingly hard dream to attain if one's target is a city like Boston, San Francisco, New York, or even D.C. (That's why Chicago is where it's at, but anyway...).

Generalism in a specialized world

Society becomes more complex when individuals become more specialized, and individuals become more specialized when society becomes more complex. This is a truth I despair of every time I confront it, yet it is a truth. As I have said before, I have a visceral aversion to jargon, as its use deters the layperson from understanding the subject matter at hand. At the same time I understand that it is helpful for specialists to have a language with which to communicate with one another. Still, the idea of following a specialized career track, in which one learns the language of the field while moving further away from all other fields, turns me into a commitment-phobe.

And yet, there are fields that are generalist. Law and journalism are the two that come to mind. Both still require the practitioner to learn a language, though journalism's is a language of universalism. As a person who enjoys writing, I fear any stifling parameters to language, which appear in the law, such as legal jargon (too much Latin! and so forth) and a fairly strict writing format. These demands--flexibility in form of communication, generalism--do not comply with the needs of a complex society. So what is a person who wants to be both useful to society, gainfully employed, and interested in her work do?

Be cognizant of this "predicament," I say (to myself). I am in truth living among a luxury of choices. Maybe the new anomie springs from such constant consumerism, where choices are plentiful and perspective takes too much time to summon. I once asked someone several generations older than myself why he had chosen to be a doctor. "Because back then, if you wanted to go to professional school, you either went into law or medicine," he said. It was that easy. Of course, I know it was not easy: medical school is no cakewalk, but the point is, when one has few other choices, one has less room for doubt. As one of my teachers once told me (paraphrased), "the more I have learned, the less I realize that I know." Sometimes the source of paralysis is knowing too much.

District 39: Girls' Fault that Boys Are Lagging Behind in School

If I was ten to fifteen years younger, I would be starting another year of elementary school at Central Elementary, a school that--to me--always seemed typically suburban. At that time, of course, I was unaware that involved parents and dedicated teachers are a luxury in this country rather than the norm. Therefore, I was surprised to learn that, were I at that same elementary school today, I would be faced with newfound ideas about gender differences between how males and females learn, ideas that would affect who my teacher was and how my class was taught. As a result of a study by Wilmette Public Schools District 39, we are hearing more of the same popular folk wisdom that the modern classroom is an atmosphere where females excel, but at the expense of oppressed males.

The Chicago Tribune does some surprisingly generous reporting on Central Elementary School's concern about supposed latent gender biases in the classroom. Some key points:

• A male student, now a sophomore in high school, recalls that his elementary school teacher would yell at his group of friends who sat in the back of class more than she yelled at the girls. Admittedly, he "often talked and didn't pay attention in class."
• In response to a study that shows males "lag behind" females academically, District 39 plans to "hire more male teachers, keep a long-term database of grades and test scores, build awareness among parents and teachers, and review classroom arrangements and teaching techniques."
• "Among other things, the research told them that boys are more attuned to spatial-mechanical functioning, and girls use more of their brain for verbal and emotive functioning." (Particularly appalling is this remark: "The more words a teacher uses, the more likely boys are to `zone out,' or go into rest state," according to the Wilmette report. "The male brain is better suited for symbols, abstractions, diagrams, pictures and objects moving through space than the monotony of words."--so words, words are no longer suitable for a learning environment?!?)
• "Researchers suggest that teachers let boys move around more in the classroom, from walking around their desks every so often to sprawling out on the floor." (That's called indoor recess, guys).
• The report states that the percentage of male applicants who are hired as teachers is low, and that analysis suggests "the evaluation criteria used for selecting teachers may reinforce these gender disparities."

Superintendant Glen "Max" McGee assures us that "you really can teach to the way [boys] learn." Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought we've been teaching to the way boys learn since the beginning of time.

Excuses like those being made on behalf of males are rarely made on behalf of females. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote of masterfully in The Second Sex, women are the "other," meaning their behavior is compared against the standard of male behavior. Males are the independent variable, females the dependent. If males are lagging behind in school, our teaching is problematic, but if females are lagging behind in school, they just weren't cut out for academics.

I also attribute District 39's current education quandry to the larger societal trend of giving children more credit than they are due. Children are special because they are innocent, their minds are blank slates and thus much more tolerant than most adults, they are inquiring; but all of this hardly means they have their own best interests in mind. Yet, parents today increasingly defer to their children's or adolescents' judgements, from letting them run around in grocery stores yelling when they are young to facilitating their parties in the family basement, sometimes to the point of supplying them the alcohol.

In keeping with this belief that one's child can do no wrong, when s/he is called out on something by a teacher or other authority figure, the parent gets defensive. Thus, it is not the fault of a group of boys who cannot seem to listen in class because they are sitting in the back playing around (ever heard of seating charts?--first rule is never to let kids choose their seats in elementary school) but rather the fault of the teacher who cannot keep their attention. Furthermore, if the teacher is to take some disciplinary action, s/he puts himself/herself on the proverbial chopping block of the sharp wrath of the child's deluded parent.

I hopefully am not saying this without basis, because I admittedly have not been a child for many years, nor even a teen, but when on a weekly basis, I see children on the Metro treating the train as their own personal jungle gym free of parental discipline or parents letting their children cry or scream free of their scolding or complaining when asked to keep their children quiet in public, I can't help but think these small events part of a larger societal picture. If I am right, this represents a sea change in the American attitude towards children and how they should be taught, one that should make us wary, for in endlessly empowering children's less mature instincts, we are disempowering their sense of personal responsibility that they must, at a young age, learn to cultivate.

A New Gender Gap in Education

The New York Times features a pretty fascinating article today about a growing achievement gap between male and female students at institutions of higher learning, be they two-year or four year colleges. This isn't a futile Lawrence Summers-style parlor game of who's better at certain subjects but rather an account of statistics, from number of honors students to a university's ratio of males to females that evidences greater committment to learning, better grades, and more productivity in studying among college women than their male counterparts. Why this disparity?

Men were significantly more likely than women to say they spent at least 11 hours a week relaxing or socializing, while women were more likely to say they spent at least that much time preparing for class. More men also said they frequently came to class unprepared.

Using data from U.C.L.A.'s Higher Education Research Institute annual studies, [Associate Professor of education Linda Sax] found that men were more likely than women to skip classes, not complete their homework and not turn it in on time.

One woman from American University who was interviewed called such tendencies "a male entitlement thing," saying that "they think they can sit back and relax and when they graduate, they'll still get a good job. They seem to think that if they have a firm handshake and speak properly, they'll be fine." As my Dad pointed out, in our country today, such an attitude makes one Presidential material.

Furthermore, effort in scholastic achievement is often looked down upon, chided, even in a university setting. As the article points out, men tend to scoff at the amount of effort some female students put forth to achieve good grades (and learn). The practice of bragging about how little time it required for one to do well or at least decently on an exam or paper has probably been witnessed by almost every college student alive and is an outgrowth of the devaluing of effort.

For instance, I remember hearing stories about people who started writing their thesis the weekend before it was due. In such an atmosphere, mentioning that you started the quarter before it was due is actually less impressive. What people who brag about putting forth little effort for decent performance don't realize is that (1) work and especially in academic work truly shines as a result of consistency in effort and longterm planning (2) one is much more likely to absorb a subject through an incremental approach to studying than to cramming, which so often turns into dull memorization exercises.

This article is a useful read, with recognizable behaviors and some interesting analysis. What I hope doesn't happen out of it is anxiety about males being somehow deprived of their essential manliness at college, an almost reflexive reaction among some conservatives over the last 30-years, who view such things as Ritalin as a sign that a masculine instinct is being squelched by the education system. As the article says,

But some scholars say the new emphasis on young men's problems — recent magazine covers and talk shows describing a "boy crisis" — is misguided in a world where men still dominate the math-science axis, earn more money and wield more power than women.

Hard work is something that both genders are capable of, as long as there are incentives behind it. If men come by jobs more easily than women, however, men will under-perform. This is why there should be increasing efforts to equalize women's ability to attain and advance in a professional environment as well as aid to people seeking unpaid internships and better financial aid for students who otherwise have to work longer hours to fund their college education (a predicament of both men and women in an environment of decreased prioritizing by the Republican Congress of education funding).

Why History is a major Major

On graduation day a few weeks ago, some of my fellow history majors and I mused a bit about the way our convocation ceremony was organized, with each department lumped in their own section. Right then I felt a history major's pride swelling up, a pride that is pretty much recognized only by a fellow history major, because the non-major who inquires about our area of study is (amazingly) far from moved to regard us in awe. Instead, upon learning of our major, he will form a quizzical expression, pause for a couple seconds, and then finally reconcile himself to our real intentions: "oh, you must want to teach," we are knowingly told.

Even (and perhaps especially) for those who do want to teach, the history major who loves his studies does so because history accounts for every other area of study that is offered at the university. Physics, for instance is not an immortal field (not that it's not important, useful, and incredibly interesting); rather, its existence can be accounted for by human experience, by the advancing interest that humans had in the last five hundred years in the ability to explain and quantify physical phenomena.

Lining up for convocation, one of my history friends even half-joked that political science isn't a real major, an ironic statement given that history and poli sci people are often lumped together, because both majors study similar events and they both produce graduates who tend to go to law school. However, in certain ways, the two are fundamentally opposed: where the study of poli sci--like economics--suggests that there is a science to human behavior that repeats itself, the study of history acknowledges that this is not the case, that in each period of time, an event that may have seemed similar to past events yielded from different actors, motivations, circumstances, and so forth. We might believe that Iraq is not another Vietnam, though we can understand how it is a failed mission just as Vietnam was. We might believe that George W. Bush is not another Richard Nixon, even though they are both guilty of similar indiscretions.

So that, in sum, is why a history major may think s/he is special: there is no immortal explanation for events--not that there aren't lessons to be learned from the past--but rather just human experiences that have preceded us and will follow us. So, though it may annoy you to read this smug proclamation that our major represents an all-encompassing area of study, if it makes you feel better, the other majors usually get the higher paying jobs. ;-)

Millenials? Validity of Generational Generalization

An article in the recent issue of the Northwestern Magazine describes the current demographic of young people (bounded by the years 1982-2000) as comprising a generation called the Millenials (unfortunately, this article is not currently online). Just as Generation X before us and the Baby Boomers before them, we supposedly share in certain traits, behaviors, and lifestyle that define us as a generation. Accordingly, there is something about us that makes us millenial: we are driven, multi-tasking, rules-oriented, self-motivated individuals. At the same time, our parents "coddle" us non-stop, from writing our college application essays to driving us to and from many activities to doing our laundry and cleaning our rooms. When we go to college, we talk with them multiple times a day and rely on them to buy us the latest high-tech item. Current six-to-twenty-four year-olds, does this sound like you?

To be honest, I am suspicious of generational labeling. Sure, there are certain things that unite many of us, and I think people whose demographics are quite similar (i.e. age, race, class, education) have experienced a general similarity in lifestyle. Of course, all of the aged 6-24 year olds in the United States have not experienced the same lifestyle; in fact, the growing gap between rich and poor has, as John Edwards has pointed out, created two Americas. The Millenial generation that the NU magazine describes is mostly comprised of the rich half of America (though, of course, a lot less than half of Americans are rich).

The other thing that I personally resent about being lumped in this generation is that I couldn't really identify with those described in the article. I don't get a mere 4-5 hours of sleep per night, I don't think one needs to over-committ themselves during college to get a job (and most people who are over-committed usually do a bad job at their various positions because they don't have enough time), I don't play video games while watching TV while reading while writing a paper while talking on my cell phone. I didn't need constant parental reminders to do my homework (which can be seen as nerdiness, but I like to think of it as just being independent), and I was pretty familiar with some of the most unthankful of chores while growing up (not that I didn't complain while completing them). Nevertheless, many people in this Millenial demographic (I think it's more a demographic than it is a generation) didn't have to do many chores as children (they had maids and parents), did get help with college essays, did do well on standardized tests like the SATs (after taking classes to prepare for them), do take up multiple activities, and are law-abiding, rules-oriented individuals who tend to get jobs in lucrative but unexciting industries like banking and consulting after college.

Still, I don't think it very useful to publish articles that write of a generation as if it were some sort of a phenomenon that came from a star one night down to earth and spread across an age group. Rather, I think whatever circumstances and behaviors a certain demographic--or generation--has in common is the result of many variables coming together--values, societal norms, income distribution, politics--that influence the way in which we think, act, and live our lives.

Lessons in Jargon: Examining What Obscures Effective Communication

I, like many others, have a visceral aversion to jargon. Jargon is most commonly associated with written and spoken communication in highly specialized areas that require advanced degrees, such as medicine, law, and especially doctorates in many subjects. What bothers me about jargon and those who employ it is that it seems to obscure the relevancy of what is being studied. To some degree, one's specialty must be easily-communicated for it to be relevant beyond the immediate audience of one's colleagues. As far as I can tell, most people who make the effort to get an advanced degree believe that their area of study is relevant, so why is it that some feel the need to actively make their specialty seem less relevant by employing jargon and impossibly confusing sentence structure?

As an effort to expose jargon and as a proposal to simplify communication by obliterating its usage, I present you with my first piece of evidence of this pretentious practice: "the gaze." How often have you read an article, particularly one about literature, film, or another cultural work, and seen this concept employed. One commonly sees terms like "the feminine gaze" in this context. Not surprisingly, the idea of "the gaze" came about in the 1960s advanced by such postmodern theorists as Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan. Since the goal of the postmodernist movement seems to be to write as indecipherably as possible, jargon is at home among these thinkers. I remember first encountering the term in a pretty well-known article about Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window that I read for my film studies class in high school by Laura Mulvey. It was by no means a bad or uninteresting article, but the constant use of the term "gaze" made it more difficult to comprehend.

What is "the gaze?" According to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, it is a concept that "deals with how an audience views other people presented." Just by looking at someone, it is proposed that a power structure is established, usually one in which the dominant party is directing the gaze and the submissive party is receiving it. To use Rear Window as an example, L.B. Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) is purported to direct a gaze at his girlfriend Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelley) that projects a sort of fantasy unto her. Fremont is perpetually the one being gazed at and never the gazer (is that a word?), which therefore proves that the Hollywood film has a male-centric concern. The gaze is therefore a way of looking at women.

I'm not necessarily proposing that Mulvey is wrong about this but rather that she is unhelpful in her analysis. Why need one use the term "gaze" to describe a complex relationship between these two characters? In my opinion, it would be much more helpful if a scholar like Mulvey were to rely more on textual evidence and less on outside theory--i.e. scenes where Jeffries tries to mold Fremont and the accompanying camera, mis-en-scene, etc. techniques-- that help convey this relationship. This in fact would avoid the substitution of a scholar's own thoughts or agenda and allow as much as possible for the integrity of the text to come out. Using the term "gaze" allows the scholar to characterize an unproven intent of a principal character (i.e. speculating on what this character is thinking when s/he looks at another person). It makes it easier to not rely upon textual evidence, and moreover, it is a word that becomes a bit confusing for the reader who is familiar with its common meaning but not with its academic meaning.

Therefore, I submit "the gaze" as an abused and overused word-concept of academia, as a jargon violation of the highest order!

The Politics of a Commencement Speaker

Today most Northwestern students that I know in the Class of 2006 (by no means a representative sampling) were pleasantly suprised to learn that U.S. Senator Barack Obama will be our commencement speaker. People from the class of 2005 with whom I spoke were also jealous. John McCain, the speaker from last year, I learned, had done a bad job. He was "too political." People hoped that Obama wouldn't be as political. "I hope he'll say something inspirational," was one sentiment. What, though, does it mean to be inspirational? I hope it doesn't mean to be contrived or maudlin or too praiseworthy, and I hope that students from a university as good as this one want more than just cheap inspiration, want more than an oral version of those trite posters with captions that say "Teamwork" or "Challenge." If that's all we can stomach, then maybe Obama isn't our guy. After all, he told this to the Class of 2005 at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois as their commencement speaker last year:

Instead of doing nothing or simply defending 20th century solutions, let’s imagine together what we could do to give every American a fighting chance in the 21st century.

What if we prepared every child in America with the education and skills they need to compete in the new economy? If we made sure that college was affordable for everyone who wanted to go? If we walked up to those Maytag workers and we said “Your old job is not coming back, but a new job will be there because we’re going to seriously retrain you and there’s life-long education that’s waiting for you—the sorts of opportunities that Knox has created with the Strong Futures scholarship program.

What if no matter where you worked or how many times you switched jobs, you had health care and a pension that stayed with you always, so you all had the flexibility to move to a better job or start a new business? What if instead of cutting budgets for research and development and science, we fueled the genius and the innovation that will lead to the new jobs and new industries of the future?

I'm presuming that when people say they don't want to hear about the political in a commencement address, they in part are speaking of not wanting to hear about the outside world and all of its problems. We students have been insulated enough from that world for the past four years that it shouldn't hurt us to be challenged for 30 minutes.

And yes, Obama was political in his Knox College address, at least insofar as he expressed a point-of-view that may be disagreable to some:

Like so much of the American story, once again, we face a choice. Once again, there are those who believe that there isn’t much we can do about this as a nation. That the best idea is to give everyone one big refund on their government—divvy it up by individual portions, in the form of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on.

In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it—Social Darwinism—every man or woman for him or herself.

John McCain was also political in his commencement address at Northwestern last year. What made McCain's commencement address less palatable than Obama's was not so much that it was "political" but that it did not represent a call to the new graduates to act, as Obama's did. Instead, it represented a defense of the Bush Administration foreign policy. Yes, McCain did tell students that "the world is about to become your responsibility," but he did not mount a challenge to them as Obama did. He spoke of the immorality of genocide, but who disagrees with that? What I want to know is what I can do about it, and not just from McCain's call to "support action," especially if all military action is lumped under spreading freedom of which the administration which McCain so strong supports is guilty. Obama went much further, putting this challenge to the Knox students:

Now, no one can force you to meet these challenges. If you want, it will be pretty easy for you to leave here today and not give another thought to towns like Galesburg and the challenges they face. There is no community service requirement in the real world; no one is forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and go chasing after the big house, and the nice suits, and all the other things that our money culture says that you should want, that you should aspire to, that you can buy.

But I hope you don’t walk away from the challenge. Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. You need to take up the challenges that we face as a nation and make them your own. Not because you have a debt to those who helped you get here, although you do have that debt. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate than you, although I do think you do have that obligation. It’s primarily because you have an obligation to yourself. Because individual salvation has always depended on collective salvation. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Yes, I don't want to hear a McCain-style foreign policy explication on graduation day, but I also don't want to hear an effusively trite speech. That's why I'm glad Obama is our speaker.

Thesis Abstract

I just thought I would post my thesis abstract up here because, well I made one, and it's due in three weeks I think, and I don't feel like writing something new. So here it is in all of its glory (not really):

Une Nouvelle Littérature Américaine:

French Readings of American Literature in the Interwar Years

Between the early 1920s and the mid-1930s, articles appeared in French journals heralding the arrival of a new American literature. Written by prominent French intellectuals, these commentaries almost uniformly concluded that certain works of the American realist school of literature by authors including Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, and Sinclair Lewis, provided a window into the soul of American life. They simultaneously insisted that American culture was on a decline because of its captivity to mass preferences. As a result, these French intellectuals concluded that many of the best American authors expatriated to Europe where they could take advantage of an atmosphere of individualism of which they were deprived living in the United States. Such analysis evoked—whether inadvertently or not—dissatisfaction among French intellectuals over their political relations with America and worry about its seemingly unmitigated postwar industrial expansion and financial hegemony. At the same time, a number of books on the subject of Franco-American relations which expressed the same concerns over American prosperity and greed, Puritanism, philistinism, and conformity, were published. The French intellectual commentary on American literature fit right into this larger dialogue. In identifying American literature’s pessimism about the country’s future, interpreting the novels as a true representation of American life, and linking the creation of American literature to the setting of France and French literary traditions, French engagement with American literature reflected an effort to assert France’s cultural dominance at a time of growing anxiety over American political and economic dominance.

The thing is, I don't think I've figured out anything new, except maybe incorporating the French American literature into the larger Franco-American relationship of the interwar years. Oh well, it's been a good experience.