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Alan Liu week continues at New Savanna. Now I want to look at an interview he gave to Scott Pound at Amodern: Reengaging the Humanities. While the interview is worthwhile in its entirety I’ll select passages where Liu’s thinking (usefully) intersects with my own.

First, though, I want to cite a biographical passage which speaks to attitude and intuition. While talking about Bruno Latour’s interrogation of critique in the name of compositionalism Liu informs us that he’s “the son of a structural engineer and descended from a whole clan who were allowed to immigrate to the U.S. because they were engineers and builders.”

Yes.

And I’m the son of a chemical engineer who spent his professional career in the coal business. Engineering is about designing things and building them.* I used “Speculative Engineering” as the title for the preface to my book on music (Beethoven’s Anvil) because I wanted to emphasize the constructive nature of my enterprise. I talked about the building blocks I played with as a child and posed the question: “How does the nervous system design and construct music?” (xiii). I think about literary texts and systems of texts in the same way: How are they built?

Returning to Liu, he has quite a bit to say about critique and compositionism. Note his use of engineering language in the following passage:
Critique and compositionism are best understood as arcs in a common cycle of thought, whether at the level of individual projects or of longer generational agendas. Think of it this way: in any project there are tactically important moments when critique is constructive, e.g., at the beginning when assessing what is wrong with precedents or in the middle after the first prototype. Equally, there are tactically shrewd moments when composited methods and viewpoints are constructive, e.g., when the architect pitches a project to a client and has to incorporate the client’s views, when the architect then has to adjust plans in response to the structural engineer, and when the engineer subsequently has to adjust plans in response to the contractors, not to mention the tactically decisive construction workers who actually wield the hammers). It’s just that neither critique nor compositionism has a right to rule as the “last word” in the process–the terminal stage, the end result, the payoff, the final record. In the humanities, I feel, we have fallen into the rut of thinking that interpretive discourse (e.g., a critical essay) should be the final statement of a project, and, further, that critique should be the final payoff of interpretation. [Emphasis mine, WLB] But what if we were to position interpretive discourse and critique elsewhere in the cycle of thought that goes into a project? Compositionism would then not be antithetical to critique; it would include the arc of critique, and vice versa, as part of the rolling launch of thought.
Perhaps we should remind ourselves that the primacy of interpretation is a relatively recent development in our disciplinary history, mostly post World War II, and that literary culture managed to function for centuries without a guild of professional interpreters.

Liu is quite clear that reengaging the humanities is a long-term effort that involves far more than refitting old defenses of the humanities:
Engaging, or reengaging, the public to make a persuasive case for the value of the humanities will need to be a long campaign over many generations – a far longer time horizon than the longest typical time line for activism in the contemporary humanities (going back to May 1968).

Second, I say “reengaging” in the sentence above because the issue of how the humanities should present themselves to society is part of a broader theme today: the great change in how institutional expertise of many kinds (e.g., in higher education, cultural or heritage institutions, journalism, government) engage with the new public networked knowledge (exemplified by Wikipedia or the blogosphere). There is no longer a one way flow in which experts send their knowledge to the public (mediated by journalism and other agencies) while the public sends back only mute feedback in the form of tax dollars, tuition, subscriptions, membership fees, and so on. The flow is increasingly bidirectional or multidirectional. Presenting the humanities afresh to the public today will mean helping to create the new institutional structures, practices, incentives, discourses, and technologies needed for reinventing the role of expertise in the world.
That is to say, we need to rethink our institutions and, in particular, we need to invite the public in. I note that fan culture is all over the place on the Internet, from such general sites as the Wikipedia and TV Tropes to sites devoted to specific titles and in sites for fan fiction. These are obvious points of entry and application for literary scholars.

(See my various posts on citizen science, my post, Ethical Criticism and Descriptive Criticism Online, and my very brief remarks, Crowd-Sourcing Descriptive Work, in Some examples of description.)

Concerning graduate training, Liu remarks:
I know so many humanities graduate students who are not only passionate about public issues but build that passion into their research topics. After all, that is where much of cultural criticism; race, ethnic, and gender studies; postcolonial studies; and now anti-neoliberalist studies, as well as other vibrant movements, come from, not to mention all our “theoretical” allegories (e.g., “rhizomatics”) mirroring our drive (at least as expressed in its modern Western form, with allowance for alternative understandings of the pursuit of happiness elsewhere) for human emancipation and equality. The self-interest of the humanities, I thought, would be served by creating a training path – not just courses or informal colloquia, but perhaps also extramural internship and other opportunities – for our best, brightest, and most passionate students to act on their activism in a way that blends formal education and public engagement.
I don’t know quite what Liu has in mind here – and perhaps he doesn’t either – but I’ve blogged a number of posts under the rubric “JC Rising” (where “JC” stands for Jersey City) suggesting local points of application around gardening and public murals. There’s a lot of very interesting grass roots activity in Jersey City that, I suspect, would play well with the kind of training that Liu is suggesting. In particular, I note that Jersey City is minority white and culturally diverse, with a relatively large Spanish-speaking population and many immigrants from East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East.

Finally, Liu has some interesting remarks on what he calls “network archaeology.” Here I’m a bit puzzled, in part because I’m quite familiar with certain kinds of network structures – conceptual networks, neural networks – and I’ve got intuitions from that work that do not quite know how engage with Liu’s formulations. Let me offer one statement by Liu and a few comments:
First, treat individual works of media as proto- or micro-networks. This means that we shouldn’t treat documents (or, for that matter, people) as en bloc entities engaging each other in networks but should instead adopt a radically networked worldview in which it’s networks all the way down. En bloc entities – individual documents or people constituted internally as relationships of parts, levels, and stages linking and unlinking in time – are themselves network structures.
Networks everywhere. Sure. But I worry about reification. One can draw network diagrams and use those diagrams to represent lots of different kinds of things. But there may be other ways of representing those things as well. Don’t confuse the (descriptive) notation with the thing itself.

Finally, to ride another intellectual hobbyhorse, I suspect that a lot of what Liu is talking about under the rubric of networks could be conceptualized as evolutionary and population processes, but in the cultural domain rather than the biological. Still, think of the biological domain as a source of concepts for thinking about worlds within worlds where you have a large number of entities interacting in many and diverse ways over a wide variety of scales in time and space.

Liu begins his final paragraph by noting “I don’t think there can be a place for the humanities in a networked world without any sense of history; and the world would be the worse for it.” Yes. And, biology is a deeply historical discipline, being very much about how the living world not only changes in time but whose very being is deeply entwined with and constituted through time.

* Addendum: On engineering

I've written some posts about engineering as a mindset:

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UC's Napolitano throws cold water on the online education craze - latimes.com:

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It’s increasingly recognized that while large parts of the of populations of the US (and other Western countries) are aware of climate change and accept that human action contributes to it only little behavioural change can be observed. People continue with their lives as usual although knowing their actions contribute to climate change. “Although a …

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There is growing concern that despite planning pregnancy women delay taking pre-pregnancy supplements like folic acid as advised by experts who argue that these supplements substantially decrease the risk of birth defects that can impact the brain. These concerns have been raised in newspapers lie The Guardian and the Nursing Times. A study concerned with the uncertainty towards …

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“Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in.” — Medium:



What he said....

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This week we explored ‘world making’ – where art both constructs worlds and creates a narrative or commentary about the world. We saw different ways of tackling the 2D aspects of flat planes to imply 3D space – with geometry, lines and grids in the Renaissance and with oil paints creating light to solidify subjects bursting out of 2D space, in the Baroque. We considered Mondrian’s refusal to accept this melody and illusion; stripping away shape and shading and texture in favour of flat paint in primary collars. Reality squared. Pollack’s definitely 2D dripped paint canvas, however, draws the viewer into the implied 3D, immersing in a something, an ‘other’, to experience. And thus we see how the artists create specific conversations with their ‘public’ – engaging – challenging – puzzling – distancing - immersing…The conversation created as much a revelation of the world view as the paint and light and canvas.
This week – Drum Roll - First Compulsory Assignments

The courses offers a Track A option – to produce an artwork; or B – writing; or both. In each case the whole assignment requires the preparation and submission of the piece PLUS peer review of three other pieces. If you do both A and B, you will have to peer review six other pieces in total. I chose to do both assignments. Both options were taken from Draw it with your eyes closed: the art of assignment (New York; PaperMonument, 2012). MUST GET THAT BOOK!!

Track B: Thick Description - required us to spend an hour with a work of art – being with it – recording thoughts and perceptions not just of the artwork but of its surroundings… After an hour we were required to organise our thoughts and write a 300-400 word essay, list or narrative.

Mostly it’s brown paper: spending an hour with a primitive portrait of my mother

I live half the week in the country not able to get to a real gallery till Monday, when I hope to see Hannah Hoch’s collages in the Whitechapel Gallery in East London, UK. I wanted to do this exercise with a real picture and not an image on the screen. I wanted to be with a real picture – and to see and feel that experience: to learn to really see a picture by being with it. So I chose a primitive portrait of my mother that I have hanging in the front room – and that was drawn by a friend of the family who is a self-taught artist. I thought that the sitting with the picture would be a meditation experience and that I would learn a lot from it… but again – only if it were a real thing. So even though this picture might not be classified as art by many – it is art to me – and it is real – so this is what I did.


The thick description:

The picture is about 12 X 6 inches on heavy cheap brown paper. It is pasted onto white paper and set within pale yellow card within a light wood simple frame. It is a head and shoulders portrait of Jeanne Marie Victorine Dierrieckx Sinfield – my mother. This picture seems to have captured her at about the age of 69 (1995) – but it is unsigned and un-dated – although I know the artist was Anita Melloche. 

The outline is sketched in with heavy soft black pencil which thickens as the hair is sketched in: unruly as if just back from working in the garden. The pencil outline is filled in with only three colours; water colour crayons of red, brown and white – they sketch in the hair, face, eyes and a red and white striped top. 

My mother would have hated the picture as un-flattering and not life-like; but whilst it is not exactly what she ever looked like – it really is ‘her’. It has captured her eyebrows – those slightly fine, thin eyebrows of old age. The eyes below are a bit doe-like, a bit cartoonish – not ‘real’ at all – but they have her direct gaze – and are somehow brave, strong – full of character. 

The character is also there in the closed mouth, the calm. The face is slightly at an angle looking to the right of the frame, her left. The left side of the portrait feels more three dimensional than any other bit of the picture – due to the white highlights that bring shape and substance – and push out that side of the face from the two dimensional plane. 

Mostly the whole picture is created by the brown paper; the very few bits of black, red, white and brown crayon create the illusion of the head, hair, face, shoulders and top by laying very few lines on the brown paper: carving the face from the paper. 

The background is simply brown paper; no contextual setting. The most in-filled sections are the hair and the top – but even there – brown paper peeks through adding another colour and another dimension to the portrait. The most amazing thing for me was seeing for the first time how much brown paper makes up the face – and I thought: it is mostly brown paper – and it is my mother. 

Ways of seeing

To spend this hour with a painting was both moving and illuminating. I definitely saw it differently by spending this quiet focused hour with it. At first I just sat and looked and looked – describing things to myself. After 30-minutes I started to sketch the picture and annotate. After that, I painted the sketch – using that painting as another way of analysing the painting itself. Then I free wrote a response – briefly looking at my notes. I could not get in all the information that I had noted down. When it was as edited as possible, I pasted it into the Module Box – and found that it was still 200 words too long. I managed in the end to get it down to 399 words! Dead chuffed with this – and I hope I take these eyes to the Whitechapel Gallery on Monday.

Track A: World in a Box: Using any means, materials or style– we were asked to put together a collection of objects and a means of displaying them. We could operate in 2D as well as 3D – we could make the objects or find them – we could create a narrative or not – it could just be what it is. We had to think about how to display them – and then how to frame them in the photograph.

I like to create spaces around the cottage that are curations or artworks designed to tease or please the eye – to create a look or feel or experience… So I thought that I would photograph and present one of these small spaces. Unfortunately I could not cut the photographs that I initially wanted to up-load (technologically challenged) – and so was only getting a third of whatever world I wanted to share. In the end I worked with this limitation, uploading a picture that would be de facto cut in the Module Box – to create the frame I was after:

Schwitter’s Bedroom: The Buddhist Temple


Schwitter treated his studio as a collaged art spaced – bit like my approach to my home – so a cool title was born. The submitted piece is just the left side of the above picture - just over a third and just under a half of the total width. This cut emphasised the contrast between the Buddhism trail up the bookcase - and the bloody detective fiction that frames it.

End: The Assignments this week were really engaging and thought-provoking. I learned a lot about looking, seeing – and really seeing. Activities that I want to bring into my real world teaching… (Oh and I got 14/15 for the quiz – and I DO KNOW what Baroque is – but obviously did not describe it well enough on the day L )



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While my 9 months old cutie is asleep and her sis is out to school,. again I am writing to express my views and understandings on online learning and teaching , although I do not have a strong experience online teaching, but being active and curious in...

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Composition in Scientific Inquiry: SeuratSpots, DiscoBalls, and the Making of Meaning in Science. Here’s a link to the slides from our presentation in Indianapolis, IN at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC):

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foliocoud.comDear friends like you notice I don't updated my blog because I don't have so much free time because I was very busy with my school activities/ projects, but dear teachers kindly I invite you to join my Erasmus+ Course developed in partener...

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The best MOOC professor at Coursera. He does not promote his school nor himself…. he just teaches. 

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“How Are You Positively Affecting the Data” Sign at Carver Vocational-Technical High School at Presstman & Bentalou | What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today:



How are you positively affecting the data?  Really?  How about, what are you doing today to help students?Or, what are you doing today to help make this a better place?  Or, how about, how are you today?




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Character.
Portrait, photomontage, studio, daguerreotype, self-portrait, caricature, comic book.
Heroes.
Who?
Creates the image
Selects the context
Shapes the meaning
Gazes
Is subjected to the gaze.
By the gaze.
Essential science:
Darwin.
Innate characteristics.
Created by genes
Revealed in physiognomy.
Some are.
Some get to be.
We are text/context. 
Ask the slave.
Daguerreotyped.
Subjected
Typecast
Narrated
Someone else’s story
Essential
Lowly
Difference.
Subjugated.
(And so it goes.)
Studioed.
Bourgeois
Enacting.
Difference.
Improvised.
Multipleselves.
Some *are*.
Some have the power to *become*.
The camera lies
Photomontaged
The ParisCommune
Women
A-flame
Legs sprawling
Animal.
Petrolleur.
Depression.
The.
Showing – commenting – narrating…
Art
That slippery slope of meaning-making …
Carrie Mae Weems
Re-claimed (those slaves)
With blood and fire.

Homework: two weeks - to follow!
This week's:
 Optional Sketchbook Assignment 2 Follow Up
Regardless if you did last week’s sketchbook assignment or not, or you are just joining us, I encourage you to try this out. For our second critique we are building on the prompt given in the first:

Visit the Sketchbook Assignment 2: Mental Map forum and choose an assignment. Try to spread your attention between assignments that have already received a lot of feedback and ones that haven’t. Prioritize finding an undiscovered gem or two.

Look at the student’s submission. Don’t respond immediately. Give yourself at least a few minutes to really look or study what the student has submitted. 

In your reply, describe, in words, exactly what you are seeing or reading in the student’s assignment.

Then, select two of the following and add it to your comment: What is one thing about the submission that immediately caught your attention? What is one thing about the submission that took you a little longer to discover? What are three questions you would ask this student about their submission? How does the medium/format that the student has chosen (drawing, descriptive text, photography, collage, etc. etc.) affect how you understand the meaning of the submission?

Repeat for another assignment. Try to comment on at least three assignments this round.


Optional Sketchbook Assignment 3: Characters Drawn from Life (and Death)

For this week’s sketchbook assignment we are offering two options: one for Track A learners (more visual-based), and one for Track B learners (a written response). Do one or the other, or both! Please note there is a separate forum for each track. 

Track A 

Look in a local newspaper or online source for death or marriage notices. Find one that is interesting to you but don’t choose one that includes a photograph.

Make a portrait of a person described in the notice (deceased man or woman, bride or groom). Use any means and style that you like--drawing, painting, photography, collage. Think about how much of the person you want to show, how s/he is posed or framed, how much context is given through background, accessories, etc. Whatever you choose to include in the portrait should say something about the character you have chosen to depict.

Important: In respect of others' privacy, do not include any names from notices, or link to them, or use images without permission.

In this forum ("Characters Drawn from Life (and Death) TRACK A"), start a new thread and post a scan of your image. Give your post a title, and submit!

Track B 

Find a public place. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. You might be here for a while.

Watch the people.

Choose one person and invent a life for them. Think about who might be in terms of occupation, relationships with family and friends, pets or lack of them, personal possessions or lack of them, personality quirk



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Joe Hoyle: Teaching - Getting the Most from Your Students: Is This Really Part of an Accounting Education -- Well, I Certainly Think So:

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Finally I made my first blog,after day dreaming for days and days.. I came to a point no longer day dreaming but lets get into action... interesting though ..
Today I some came with this article by Stanford news.. 

"How Technology Impacts the Pedagogy and Economics of Residential Higher Education."

 http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/march/online-stanford-cal-031114.html 

This exactly what I want to emphasize in online learning. I as a person who is keen to learn, found my self taking the 2nd offering of Stanford HCI course offered in Coursera in 2012. Since then I have been actively engaged in different platforms of MOOCs(Massive Open Online Courses). 

While taking these courses I began to think,why our universities do not follow this method. In other words the pedagogical culture implemented by MOOCs seems hitting the thresholds of effectiveness in online learning. 

I will quote some of the interesting points in the ONLINE LEARNING SUMMIT held March 7-8 sponsored by  MIT, Harvard, Stanford. at University of Bekerly

1.----Higher education is in a "period of great experimentation" in the field of online learning, successes and failures will lead to new approaches to teaching that will benefit student.

2.----Colleges and universities will be taking a more scientific approach to online learning than in the past, relying on their schools of education to measure student learning and to provide feedback

3.----Come out with pedagogical approaches that are truly a step forward in terms of helping our students be better learners 

4.---- Technology makes it possible to expose students to a wide variety of learning opportunities.

5.----We can flip classrooms, because we can also then have those follow-up seminars. We can give that 'high touch' in person, as well as true customized forms of technological supplementation."

6.----With a little bit of technology, a community of learners self-assembles around a course and forms a group. They do peer grading. They interchange. They exchange conversations and they learn the material together. I think we'll see this happening. It would be a wonderful thing and great for the world."

7.----Great Point----- the challenges faced by instructors whose MOOCs attract students with a dynamic range of abilities – some without the background necessary to succeed, some who would like to move more quickly through the material and others who need to move more slowly. Sometimes instructors don't know there's a problem until exam time.

8.----Now, take an exam to a school where perhaps the students are not quite as capable and give them that exam and you're going to crush them,. "So we've got to figure out how to tailor and customize these courses much more appropriately for the level of the student, the rate at which the material is going to go, the rate at which the students are going to move.

9.---- Over time, this will happen. We've just got to continue to push it there, and make the adaptation to individual ability and to the classroom setting in that particular institution.

10.----one thing that MOOCs do very well is "educate the educators" in other parts of the world, allowing them to use the material to prepare courses for their students.

11.----Flipped" the classroom – delivering lectures online and meeting in the classroom for one-on-one interaction and hands-on projects. While those early indicators are positive, he said, controlled experiments would be the key to understanding how well students are mastering the material in those settings.

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Syllabus – Topics and Readings   Week 1 (13 January 2014) – Introduction to the Course The first lecture introduces the course content, rationale and requirements of the course. Relevant Book Kotler, P. & G. Armstrong (2013). Principles of Marketing. Harlow: Pearsons. Core Readings Humphreys, L. (2005). “Cellphones in Public: Social Interactions in a Wireless …

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