It's been obvious all quarter that we came into the classroom with different expectations from the seminar format, and with different levels of dis/comfort with the way that we each enacted those expectations. Here, I'm going to borrow from Ashley to discuss how that difference appeared to me.
Ashely writes:
How I see the seminar discussion:What I'm arguing is that we should [be forced to] engage with the material we read. Class discussion doesn't really cut it because this is what discussion is actually like:Someone: blahblahblah what I thinkSomeone: *cuts them off* blahblah this is what I study and it's greatSomeone: well I do this with my students and it's always been greatSomeone: FOUCAULTSomeone: blahblah unrelated 12-minute rantingSomeone: name droppers be droppin'Someone: I disagree *cries*Dr. Rouzie: let's talk about the article? thanks for coming.
Someone: I read Article X or Theorist Y as saying Z" and that makes me wonder about Z+something else.
Someone: *jumps in* Hey, what if we look at it through the lens of this other theorist/y?
Someone: offers an example from his own classroom experience, helping to ground the theory and deepen our understanding of it
Someone: FOUCAULT
Someone: synthesizes the class discussion with his own work and discusses possible intersections that would otherwise not be available to the members of the seminar, thus increasing everyone's breadth of understanding about the larger academic discussion.
Someone: engages theory/ist Y and theorists/ies A, B, and C and identifies useful tensions/agreements/confusions between and among them.
Someone: disagrees, which is often the most useful part of the discussion because it lets the other someones know when they've gone off the rails about X, Y, or Z... and isn't the point of seminar to float ideas that we might later develop into conference papers/journal articles/dissertation chapters/etc.?
The tension between those of us who are the someones who experience seminar discussion the way that Ashley has experienced it, and those of us who experience it as useful, generative discourse, was really palpable in this seminar, and it's a tension that I don't think I've felt so keenly since I was an undergraduate. I was deeply aware of the ways in which my own participation exacerbated the frustration that others were feeling, and spent a lot of time this quarter reflecting on how to mitigate that without losing what is the most valuable part of the academic process for me, exactly that intense engagement with peers that is how I experience seminar discussion.
I was also keenly aware of failing to do a good job mitigating my role in frustrating others, of being someone who Ashley has described as a "name-dropper'" and whose contributions she heard as rants or as blahblahblah. So I had many stern conversations with myself about whether or not I should just shut the fuck up. They went something like this:
Self: Just shut the fuck up in class tomorrow, Self, okay? Really. Give it a rest.
Self: But the only way I understand this material is by engaging in the conversation, and I really need to understand this stuff if I'm going to do anything in the field.
Self: Seriously. Just shut the fuck up.
Self: It's seminar. That's like saying "just don't turn in the final paper" or "don't prepare for your presentation." Self, you're essentially telling me not to do the work of the class.
Self: No, I'm not. I'm telling you to shut the fuck up.
Self: How about if I just say less?
Self: Good luck with that.
I made an effort to say less, and to identify when was I was saying was boring/angering/frustrating someone(s) else. I moved to the back of the classroom. I bought an iPad and took more notes on what other people had to say as a way to synthesize the material.
It never felt like it made very much of a difference, largely because I don't understand why the conversation is frustrating to other people and so it's hard to know how to modify my behavior to meet needs that I don't understand and which were never made clear to me.
All of which gets, finally, to self-reflecting on my participation on the blog. I used it as a space to practice shutting the fuck up most of the time. So my responses were limited. I understood that I was making it difficult for some people to speak in the classroom, and didn't want to replicate that experience on the blog. I didn't want to extend the discomfort of the classroom to this medium.
So, before I close, I want to say that in quoting Ashley, I am not trying to "call her out" or criticize her; only to respond to her post. I'm thankful to her for addressing this tension so openly, because it gave me a place of entry into the conversation for my ow self-reflection. Which, again, I am really uncomfortable with now having done.
Sarah
Hi Sarah,
ReplyDeleteYour discomfort with this kind of reflection reminds me very much of my own discomfort with course evaluations. I've never truly felt I could say what I felt I needed to say in those documents because I don't believe anonymity (in a seminar course, in a small graduate program and even smaller cohort (rhet/comp) is ever really possible. So many things that we might write (especially those things that we feel might need addressed) would "give us away," that is, reveal our identities. I'm willing to bet that the issues brought to light in these recent blog posts (yours, Ashley's and others) might be more forthcoming than the evaluations (or at least, just as forthcoming) which really makes me wonder about the blog as medium. What is it that makes us so comfortable to self-disclose here? And I know you're not comfortable, but you're still willing to give it a stab. I'm thinking we probably would not have had this conversation in class, so while others have questioned the efficacy of the blog as a course supplement, I'm grateful that it has allowed this kind of discourse. Grateful to you and Ashley for bringing these issues to light because they can really help us think about the social dynamics of a course, how authority (and dissent) surface, and how learning is always distributed in a network of power/authority.
Like you, I'm grateful for the dissensus that arises in classroom discussion and I also found our in-class discussions "generative" - but I've also been on the other side, unable to connect my thinking to a classroom discussion in progress in which those who inhabit authoritative roles do so (to some extent) through appropriation of outside works (Ashley's namedropping). The discourse created by these ongoing structure of appropriation do become difficult to interrupt. At the same time, they also become incredibly valuable to those hoping to become more enculturated in a particular discourse.
I often think about my own enculturation in Rhet/Comp and the OU English Department. I struggled quite a bit the first year and into the second as well.(and here I go self-disclosing). I've had conflicts with instructors and doubts about my place within the community and only now feel like I'm starting to actually enculturate, that is, to become a member of this community (ecology?).
I think the realization that we all need to make is that authoritative structures within ecologies are not the sole creation of those with authority. We don't simply gain authority by namedropping (empowered appropriation) and no one intends to displace others through these acts. Rather, the course (and its surrounding cultures) is part of a complex ecology of genres, values, identities, and appropriate actions in which we are all actors.
I can only speak for myself, but I'm inclined to believe that much of a neophyte's struggle to enculturate is embedded in deeper anxieties about his (mine) awareness of how others interpret his academic identity. A disconnect between how we view ourselves and how we think others view us reasonably leads to the subject questioning the validity of the whole enterprise.
I'm starting to confuse even myself here but I'm thinking that the solution to this is to make the realization that others' interpretations of our identities are always themselves products of the identities available within the genres of the academic and course ecology.
Perhaps the best advice for someone who is struggling to enculturate, then, is to get them to realize that identity is "written" without a vast network of discourses, practices, genres, etc. but it is also ALWAYS negotiated and re-negotiated and it is always a product of multiple negotiations beyond individual human subjects. In other words, it's nothing personal.
****typo in the last paragraph, without should be "throughout"
ReplyDelete***identity is written THROUGHOUT a vast network of discourse, practices, genres, etc.
Thanks, Matthew! I enjoyed being co-constituted identities in the complex ecology of this course with you!
ReplyDeleteFunny story: Laura and I were having dinner at China Panda last week. A woman who had taught a Women's Studies course that Laura had not liked was seated beside us about halfway through our dinner. The course was over twenty years ago, but the woman was still carrying around so much hurt and anger over what Laura had written on her course evaluation that she (and her husband, who had clearly been hearing about this evaluation for twenty years) spent the next half hour or so telling us how hurtful and demoralizing it had been. Now, Laura admits it was probably really awful. That she may have said the woman was dumb. That she certainly said the woman should not be teaching at a college level. But she had no idea it had caused such a lasting wound.
Evaluations are a piece of economic capital in a deeply flawed system that seeks to quantify the qualitative benefits of a liberal arts education. I always say good things, or if I can't say good things, nothing. It's mostly a form of resistance. But it's also an acknowledgment that, at least at the grad level, the quality of the course is only slightly more determined by the professor than by the seminar participants in good circumstances; when things go awry, it's often the fault of the class and not the professor. After all, evaluations of courses in which we were students--even lousy, totaling, over-talking ones--won't show up in our P&T files.
S
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ReplyDeleteI'm having technical difficulties, but hopefully it works this time...
ReplyDeleteI want to add also that I really appreciate people who learn best by active, conversational engagement with the material at hand, because my own best learning style involves listening to the conversations and mulling prior to making any of my own contributions. I'm finding that, unfortunately, this style isn't exactly prized in many academic contexts; more often, it comes across as a lack of contribution. I've been working to actively speak as much as I can, despite discomfort, though it is always a struggle, and most often it's a struggle that distracts me from the conversations at hand. So anyway, I love it when my learning style is paired with active learners like Sarah, which allows for some people to talk their way into understanding, and me to listen my way into mine. :-)
Amanda,
ReplyDeleteThank you for reminding me that not all silence is resisting or frustrated silence. Also, I agree that it's difficult that it's often read that way, or at least read as less valuable than speaking. My one big take-away from this quarter--beyond the theory and application--was that silence has multiple meanings and multiple values, and that being silent is at least as much a skill as speaking. Often, for at least some of us, a more difficult one.
S
Wow this is a rich discussion. I am not sure if we should have brought into the seminar as an issue. My desire was not to, to let it work itself out. I think that it did to some extent. But obviously not completely and maybe it would have helped to talk about it more openly. I see the dynamic as somewhere between what Sarah wrote and what Ashley wrote, but much more on the Sarah side. I understand Amanda's more quiet process better now, although I agree that the expectation is to contribute verbally, at least some. I call on UG students, but not so much on grad students. Why is that? Maybe we are closer to being colleagues.
ReplyDelete