part-time academic event planner

By jennifer Posted in Event Planning, Symposia Tagged , , ,

When I’m not working on my dissertation, I’m usually planning some sort of event.  A panel on student health care.  A launch party for Kaya Press.  A graduate student government senate meeting.  Luckily, I actually get paid to put on these events, so it’s actually a good gig to have while in grad school.  But very rarely do I actually get to organize an event that’s relevant to my research — a much more rewarding experience.  I’m still enjoying the endorphin high that comes from building a temporary community of like-minded people around a topic of shared interest.  Ana, Neta, and I have been planning this two-day Dornsife Commons symposium “(Re)collections: Trauma, Collective Memory, and the Archive” for over a year and a half.

Friday was a tour of the Shoah Foundation Institute headquarters followed by a demonstration of how to access the digital archive, and Saturday was a panel featuring USC superstars Josh Kun and Viet Nguyen, along with special guests Oren Meyers and Dan Leshem.  After a delicious lunch, we reconvened for a workshop led by performance artists Denise Uyehara and Erin O’Brien.  I think every academic symposium should begin with a performance workshop, not only because it’s a different way of encountering the object of study (i.e., embodied action) but also because it breaks down barriers between undergrads, grad students, professors, and community members.  Interacting through performance is a great equalizer, establishing a horizontal platform for exchange and discussion.

Here’s a breakdown of the most valuable lessons from yesterday:

  1. your research project is an act of love (Denise Uyehara)
  2. all wars are fought twice – the first on the battlefield, the second in memory (Viet Nguyen)
  3. testimony is an act of translation (Dan Leshem)
  4. “History sounds different when you know where to start listening” (Josh Kun)

This symposium helped me think through the creation of my own archive that I’m making through my own research project, as well as what objects would exist in an archive of the Mesoamerican genocide.  I also tried tweeting during the symposium as practice for the big CAA conference coming up.  I love the idea of real-time sharing, as well as creating a virtual archive of my thoughts during talks.

geography lesson from reality tv

By jennifer Posted in Mexico Tagged , ,

I am a bit of a reality tv junky.  When I work from home, I allow myself a one-hour lunch break in which I usually watch one downloaded tv episode on iTunes from my season pass.  While watching one of the assorted Kardashian shows, I came across this map seemingly depicting the k-girls flying from Hollywood to some exotic destination and I had to screen capture it.  I love the idea that Los Angeles is in Mexico across from Baja California.  How the producers, editors, anyone didn’t catch this, is beyond me.  But it brought me so much joy and I’ve been dying to post this ever since I saw it.

the big c

By jennifer Posted in Academia, Art History Tagged , ,

I really love this picture of me when I was little.  Al says that it’s amazing how I still make the same expression.  Yes, the expression is recognizable, but I think the underlying attitude might be different.  In some circles, with close friends and family, you might see that same smirk that reveals an underlying self-assuradness.  Even in undergrad, in some art history or film classes, a close observer might notice that I honestly felt that I knew what I was talking about.  While I still retain some semblance of confidence in my work for student government or Kaya Press, what may only show during seminars, conferences, and other interactions with art historians is a glimmer of uncertainty, a tinge of self-doubt, a lack of confidence.

Yes, confidence.  The big “C” in my life right now.  It takes a lot of confidence to write a book review for publication, to defend a dissertation prospectus, to presents a paper at a conference.  Heck, it takes a lot of confidence to even approach speakers after a talk or even make an appointment with an artist.  I used to be more confident and felt like I knew everything about art history.  But then something happened.  There was a major shift after an event I’d rather not disclose.  Since that moment, it’s been an uphill battle to recover my confidence.  I’m definitely getting better.  I can now open my email without the rush of heart palpitations, can attend an art history event without worry.

And though these last few years since the unnamed event have been rough, in retrospect, I think that every scholar gets shaken up in some way or another.  Either your beloved manuscript gets rejected, or maybe you have to settle for a NTT position for a while.  Maybe you just fail completely at being an academic and switch to another career that’s actually more enjoyable and rewarding.  If that’s the worst that can happen, then it’s really not that terrible.  I still believe that failure is an integral part of success, and that the biggest mistake you can make is not trying at all.

So, with that, I return to reading a very complicated book by Walter Mignolo, not sure whether I totally understand his theories of modernity/coloniality, but willing to try at the very least.

The future of academic publishing

By jennifer Posted in Academic Publishing, eBooks, Participatory Press Tagged , ,

Today on the Chronicle website there are so many articles about the future of academic publishing that it’s almost hard to keep track of them!  Ideas range from crowd sourcing strategies of getting books published on demand to having professors write their own textbooks in a multimedia, interactive platform.  All of these ideas sound fantastic and while these suggestions are usually made from the perspective of the established scholar, I think what’s missing are the opportunities for grad students to insert themselves in these new publishing paradigms and detach themselves from the pressure and exclusiveness of university presses that have dominated traditional academic publishing.

At the core, our mission is to create and disseminate new knowledge.  This new knowledge generates discussion, debate, and hopefully more new knowledge.  But, how can we even get the ball rolling if no one can read our work?  The thought- and decision-making process are often blocked off, disassociated from the finished product.  Outlines, drafts, editorial comments — all neatly erased from the final book.  Rather than being driven by the end product, what would academia look like if we were more process-oriented, and, just maybe, let other people in.  What if you could publish a draft of an essay, get comments that you could immediately incorporate, and let your argument evolve from there?

Nina Simon experimented with this platform in her blog Museum 2.0, where she actively elicited and incorporated suggestions that readers made on her blog.  This process-oriented approach initiates different types of research data — suddenly, suggestions & recommendations from (anonymous) online readers becomes integrated into the fabric of the book, rather than after-the-fact in a book review.  Once the reviews come out, there’s not much that a author can do to effectively and publicly engage or refute them.

Furthermore, as an ABD student, I often feel isolated from my colleagues and professors.  Could we create an online community of people who are genuinely interested in a specific research topic?  Who can generate ideas for conference panels and future collaborations? I guess the issue boils down to this: will academic publishing, especially in the humanities, be a stubborn victim to eBooks, or can we reassert our relevance by being on the cutting-edge of the digital revolution?