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360-wide Assignment: Activism!
Everyone also has a SECOND POSTING DUE for the whole 360 early next week. Please review the postings everyone did, on returning from fall break, describing the sort of activism that interests you--and then BY TUESDAY @ 5 PLEASE POST AS A COMMENT HERE a description of your current thinking about our final projects for this class.
How have your own thoughts about your project evolved? Do you see your project as standing alone, or as allied w/ others? What independent actions, and what clusters of activism, can you now see emerging among our proposals?
We will meet for pizza from 6-7:30 on Wed, Nov. 7th, in the English House Lecture Hall, to discuss and organize further. Before coming to supper, please also read the second round of comments posted here, and arrive ready to share your thoughts towards next steps.
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Comments
East Asian American Identity
Erin and I are still interested in creating podcasts that explore east Asian identity on campus. The preceding link can give you a little idea about why we feel compelled towards this project (really, I think Erin's response is really insightful), and the conversation I had with Anne underneath the comments of my first podcast can also give insight into why we're interested in this particular format.
Add-on
Again, Irene and I are still interested in such a project. As we talked a little more about we want to do, we decided to start from interviewing each other on this topic. Even though we both share the Asian identity, we have differnet backgrounds and growing and education experiences. We would like to start the broadcast project from our interviews and really figured out what kinds of questions would be inspiring and appropriate to ask when we reach out to other people who share Asian identies on cmapus.
Perry House
As I reread the posts from a couple of weeks ago, I was really excited by the posts regarding Perry House and how we as a class (or a faction of our class) can work to make it an institutional priority through celebrations of Perry's history, Perry Freedom Trail, showcasing trailblazing Bryn Mawr women of color, spreading awareness, etc. Especially in light of the rather vague email that was sent out by the administration RE: Perry last week ("we know it comes down to more than just dollars and cents"), I would love to do a conciousness raising type of activism on campus to help protect the legacy, history, and future of Perry. I think it would be great to harness some of the energy and enthusiasm that came out of the strongly favorable response to the Plenary resolution, and I think that could help us get more students outside of the 360 engaged.
I also think that it could help with the ideas that were posted about raising levels of awareness among all students on campus of their privilege, even in such a space as Bryn Mawr, where we maybe feel as though we're all on a level playing field. I know that thinking a lot about Perry House this semester has led me to be more aware and sensitive to the privilege that I enjoy here on campus, and so I would love to expand that type of consciousness to the larger student body.
What do others who want to focus on Perry House thinking? I'm excited to work with all of you!
I really like the perry house ideas:
Raising awareness about Perry House is definitely something I would like to be a part of; when I was writing a paper for another class about the racial history of Bryn Mawr, I learned that apparently the library that used to be in Perry House before it was closed down is in the Pensby Center but has yet to be archieved and therefore isn't available to the public... I have to fact check about this but if this is true I was thinking maybe part of raising conciousness about history could be helping to make that library available to the public?
I also love the idea of
I also love the idea of creating a Perry House Freedom Trail. But what would this look like? I know for Out Week there were little pieces of paper posted around campus with personal anecdotes, which was really pretty, but I know I didn't have the time to stop and read them because the pieces of paper were too small and I was in a rush. So along with my question of what this Freedom Trail will look like, I want to add that this needs to be big and eye-catching. If we showcase Bryn Mawr women of color, we need big posters with information that people can easily look at! Also, this seems like a silly thing to bring up, but I think chalk should be used. I'm noticing more and more how chalking is being used on this campus to advertise for certain school events. It's visually appealing and it's hard to ignore. It's one of our few chances to raise awareness about Perry House and I say if we choose to do it, we've gotta do it big!
I am all in for BIG!
I agree Chandrea! I think that having a freedom trail is an excellent idea and that in order for it to work we need to do something that is eye-catching and expressive. I was thinking a way we could maybe do this is by also creating art to paint a picture of what Perry House means in general and what it means to students of color here on campus. Kind of similar to what we did with colors in our prison class, we can use art to represent our feelings and emotions towards the Perry House issue. In my previous post I talked about maybe getting campus wide involvement in the creation of a mural to discuss privelege. In rethining of my post in connection to Perry House, I think that maybe using art to get people to think of Perry House in a different light can be beneficial. I think discussion group and workshops can only go so far, and seeing as how the end of the semester people are tired and more unwilling to set aside their time for a workshop, I think that maybe a better way to show others what the freedom trail represents is to create a video with all of us discussing the project. The video can also be sent via Bryn Mawr and Haverford's listserve, so that every individual person can recieve a copy of the video, or we can have a viewing.
It might be cool to do a play
It might be cool to do a play on an Underground Railroad Quilt and have a bunch of people, alums included, draw/collage/write on a paper square what Perry means to them and then put these pieced of paper together like a quilt and display it.
So cool!
This is really cool! I would soo want to do this!
I also want to focus on
I also want to focus on Perry. However when i envisioned a trail that would symbolize Perry, my idea was to make it a permanent part of this campus. Although I want to be, and will do my best to stay, optimistic, I also realize that there is a chance that Perry won't be back. For those who attended the meeting with Dean Rasmussen, I really loved her idea of bringing the legacy of Perry to light by having a cultural center space, perhaps an exhibit or some sort of documentary that had interviews from Perry alums. I feel like I am all over the place....so let me jot down some ideas:
1. A perry house documentary about its history and its presence now (?)
2. Doing some kind of freedom trail, that is permanent. I envision quotes from alum about Perry, about being a woman of color, etc engraved on pathstones that lead from center campus to Perry (?)
3. I am down for doing a forum/open campus-wide discussion that not only raises awareness but leads to an action....which is....idk right now
sorry for not posting sooner!
The reason I didn't post is because I didn't feel I had any different ideas to add. I, too, am interested in working on the Perry issue, and I see it as especially relevant as we move into focusing more on Bryn Mawr as a walled community in Jody's class. I wanted to echo couldn'tthinkofa...'s point about not only raising awareness but building up to an action of some sort. This doesn't mean it has to be incredibly intense or agressive, it could really just be another way (similar to chalk) to visually draw attention to this issue on a large scale.
Perry
Michaela,
I also want to work with Perry Awareness. I love the idea of a "freedom trail" to bring about the importance of the building to campus. I think that we can relate this to the zero-sum idea that we've talked about in class so much, about putting people against each other, as that email clearly did. Perhaps we can have a Perry Day that talks about the historical significance of Perry (Sara G) actually found some pretty interesting facts about this, why Perry house is important now, and how it's related to privilege on campus. The freedom trail could lead o wherever we'd be holding it and have it be a showcase of trailblazing BMC women of color quotes about Perry/how it contributes to who they are now. As you can see, this is a lot of ideas, but I'm with you on the whole raising awareness thing.
Perry House
I also want to continue to focus on Perry House for my activism project. I'd like to hear more about people's conception of the "freedom trail"; it sounds cool, but I'm not sure I quite understand it. At my CDA meeting this morning we also talked about how we could have teas or some sort of event where people can open ask questions about Perry House- although I was happy with how Plenary went, I know it wasn't a representation of all feelings. I am trying to imagine if we could set up a conversation that involves both sides, but I don't know how to make that happen. Though I generally feel okay about facilitating discussions, I feel I've clearly placed myself on one side of this and would be too easily triggered to try to be a facilitator if these discussions took place. I know these conversations are happening behind closed doors, so how can we bring them out in public?
Video?
I've been feeling very drawn to the original idea Anne, Jody, and Barb threw out to us in regards to creating a final "performance" and one thing I've been feeling really inspired by was the number of videos and play scripts done by people in this 360 for our third Silence assignment. Dan and I spoke a little bit about our mutual interest in video production in our van ride on Friday and I thought video might be a really good medium to share our ideas on privilege and what we've learned in this 360.
This could potentially be done in the form of a documentary (maybe focusing on the walled community of Bryn Mawr as we move into discussing that more in Jody's class?) or it could be more experimental and look into the feelings involved with silence, voice, and vision. I'd still really like to look into issues of privilege more deeply, and I think video could be a great place to do that. It's also something that I think could be fairly easy to share with the Bryn Mawr community and beyond since we each have a great amount of access to social media.
(also, I know this might complicate things more as it wasn't one of the original ideas thrown out to the class – I'm sorry!! – but I think it might have a way of combining some of our interests in visual and sound media...?)
Agreed...
I think that a video addressing our perspectives on privelege is a great idea! Since a lot of us seem to be interested in the Perry House Issue, I think it would also be better if we focused the video in how it is that privelege is very much related to the Perry House issue. Just an idea, but you might want to focus it on something else.
Agreed...
Sorry, posted twice and don't know how to remove it.
Me too!
I've ALWAYS wanted to be a part of making a really legit video, so I'd definitely be down to help. We've done such good work here, I think it would be a shame not to share it. (Or, as Anne might say, staying silent is selfish!). Now I'm torn because people have such great ideas that I would like to be a part of. But I'm still really attached to my original plan to donate books to institutions in Philly. Even if I couldn't bring that idea into conversation with the entire campus, I would still really like us to consider donating the books we used for this course. Also, to answer to the push back I received on my first activism post on being aware of the fact that before we provide books, it's important to remember the differing levels of literacy within the institution. From what I've seen or rather, heard, thus far, it seems like the women at the Cannery are VERY willing and for the most part able to read. With this in mind, maybe they would be a good group to receive our books?
I wanna do this! But I'm also
I wanna do this! But I'm also going to work on the Zine. Maybe we could think about collaborating on both projects? Like, create a storyboard and then see how it manifests itself as a zine and then a film? Maybe that's too ambitious.