Silence

As you know, Christine Sun Kim will be joining our class on Thursday, and we're attending the opening of the exhibit, What Can a Body Do? @ HC's Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery on Friday evening. I'm writing to tell you about a screening event that's part of WCaBD?  Filmmaker Alison O'Daniel will visit on November 7th and 8th.  Her film Night Sky will screen Wednesday night in Chase Auditorium at 8pm.  The next day, Thursday, she will visit John Muse's Visual Studies class, which meets at 10am in Stokes 102.  Both of these events, the screening and John's class are open to the public. As students of "silence," you are all most welcome @ both.

Here's a blurb from http://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/alison-o-daniel-night-sky/2644

Throughout high school and college, I've used writing as a form of personal expression. Personal essays have been my way of coming to moments of self discovery and reflection. I don't often think of my creative writing pieces, at least, as for some purpose other than the personal. On the other hand, when reading the work of others I find myself consciously and subconsciously making connections back to the text. I expect the texts to help me improve or learn in some way and I often expect that growth or understanding to come immediately. 

It's hypocritical of me to expect to have to do something after I read these trauma novels, or Wideman's memoir about his brother. Perhaps, in regards to my own writing, I'm simply being selfish because I don't expect others to need to understand my work in some significant way – the writing process has always been about just that: the process. However, it's also selfish of me to assume that other writing is for my benefit – and not the work of someone who thinks in much the same way I do about the process. I've been struggling with the idea that perhaps what we need to do after reading these heavy works is to step back and let them sit with us when what I want to do is take some kind of action. 

Today, I sat in on an interview in Admissions and I think I may just have solidified a prospective transfer student's choice of Bryn Mawr by gushing about our 360 and how awesome it is. She told me after that our 360 sounded exactly like what she was looking for. Just thought I'd share. Wheee!

Hi everyone,

I think it was mentioned that a bunch of us would try to get together to view the video we need to watch for Anne's class for Tuesday.  Do people want to meet around 6:30pm tomorrow (Monday)? I know it's a VHS, does every common room have VHS players...?  If you're interested please suggest a place (and time if 6:30 doesn't work).

I struggled a lot in answering the activism question, which is why I ended up commenting more on other people’s ideas rather then putting any new ideas out. I think they are some really creative ideas here that I would definitely like to be a part of. My struggle to think about activism is also why this is a separate post… I do not feel like I answered the question and that some of the things I ended up writing were less relevant to question but still felt very relevant to the class in general and I wanted to share.

Changing Skyline: A mural for PSFS....?

If you all haven't seen this story yet, definitely take a look. I can't even comprehend the amout of bravery it takes to break the silence like she did. 

Here's a link to the reprint of the story since Amherst's site seems to be down. 

the quote I mangled in class today. Paul Lauter's Reconstructing American Literature Project takes on the modernist catechism of literature as "discourse with no design on the world," as representing and creating without trying to change." He claims that to focus on the original use of language (as a complex, detached, aesthetic form) trains us to disassociate the "ways it is put together from what it is about, how it affects us, and how we might USE it....We attend to the shape, sinew, texture of a hand, not whether it offers us peace or a sword."

As many of you know, I missed class this past Thursday and Friday to go to the annual Peace and Justice Studies Association meeting, which was being held at Tufts.  The whole conference was really great and picked up on so many themes that we’ve been discussing in all three classes.  In particular, a session called “Living Our Way Into the Answers: A Workshop on Transformative Pedagogy” really tied in to what we’ve been doing in class.  The workshop was really interesting because out of the 30 or so participants, it ended up being split relatively evenly between students and professors.  So, while much of the conversation about what transformative pedagogy means for students echoes the things we’ve been talking about amongst ourselves, hearing the teacher-perspective was really fascinating.  Beyond the obvious conversation about how to introduce radical pedagogy in a system obsessed with learning objectives and outcomes was the emotional drainage many professors felt – like they just didn’t have the energy to be “transformative” anymore.  This is something I haven’t really thought of in terms of my own professors or my friends who aspire to be transformative teachers one day.  I also talked about our 360, and got a lot of questions from interested professors about what it’s been like.

As I'm reading pages 26-27 in Brothers and Keepers, I could not help it but to pause and write. The part where he begins by writing, "The problem was that in order to be the person I thought I wanted to be, I believed I had to seal myself off from you, construct a wall between us" (26). This line really struck me. Although I am still trying to tie this theme/topic to silence, I'd like to reflect a bit on what he continues to say as he writes.