La Marquesa's b-day

All right folks. Y'all got to watch an alt.celebrity death match (one fac/one admin) yesterday. For those who missed it, Pat and La Marquesa got into it over: multimodal analysis, triangulation, Hinton 1993. Now that Pat and I have "modeled the behavior" of knights, we all (The pICT 2005) have to return to the lowlier (and less prestigious--go to my web site http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~marquesa/ and click on Manuel de Landa--in the interview with Manuel Landa, there is a section on knights vs. archers) task of strategizing together about bringing those of us in the humanities into a project being run out of the College of Undergraduate Education. This is my concern: it's being "run" with certain unexamined/unstated assumptions that "feel" more like "College of Sciences" than "Arts and Letters," or English and Comp Lit.

We all need to read, if we have not (I have not yet), Perry R. Hinton, The Psychology of Interpersonal Perception.

Those in the sciences who get grants are judged by a different set of criteria than those in the humanities. We have to do research because that's how they judge us--not by grant amount--many of us do not get grants.

Simply put, it's not that Pat and I are on opposite sides of anything. I want to bring quantitative and qualitative thinking together into our classrooms. Math and lit in the same undergrad lower division class. However, like all real research institutions (and we are now having the kinds of problems they have), we will have "tense" moments when funding seems threatened--anyone's--for any reason.

Assessment is more complex. We are moving from party school to think tank. Out of respect for all sides, we need to be UN-style "sensitive" to possible misunderstandings. When the term "assessment" is used by an administrator in the presence of both tenured and untenured faculty without cushioning/explaining--many of us got to feel like students during the last four days--we're being graded on what????? We are not "recalcitrant." We are terrified. There's a difference.

Brock and Hicks haven't had lunch yet to work out the relationships among: digital culture, ontology, epistemology. I am sure he will inform me of the correct relationships and the software that can be used to relate all data in all possible configurations using multidimensional scaling, peanut butter....sunlight...a piece of glass...

It's all good. I remember being a grad student at UCSD and hanging out at UC Irvine (Program in Comparative Culture) (late 70s). The hard/soft divide can get much uglier than yesterday--yesterday, we were on the same side. Ugly is when people have fully funded high stake differences--when "multimodal" is not a term respected by all.

Real research institutions get their labs shut down, their funding lost...all the time...really important stuff...delayed, ruined...over... I went to Berkeley as an undergrad. My grandfather has patents (ionizer, electric car). Tracy and I both grew up with some exposure to all this (Tracy grew up in a lab). It's pretty sad seeing grown researchers trying not to get emotional when it happens. Tracy's father worked at Rockland Institute. One day you're inventing the precursors to Prozac (no, Tracy's father didn't make any money---would we be here?) running the lab...next day you're in charge of making sure the top floor is secure--a sort of well-respected night watchperson (but woops, you lost your funding/space). It happens. So bajale (calm down and, please, get over yourselves) non-humanities people. Quit "telling" us and consider learning from us. We're "way" closer to our colleagues at the elite research institutions than you are. Like them, we already know how to "do it in our garages." Just like good fashion, ideas come from the street.

I would like to answer a question Brock implied.

Brock made a statement which I mentally rewrote as a question he was having trouble formulating. He stated: "You (read: tiny earthlings) don't have to do research (in relation to the last four days). You can just do a project (that he gets paid to study????)." What he may have meant was: "Wow. You seemed stressed. Just add a blog assignment to your class." Or " Why are you stressed?" We in the humanities do not have the time/infrastructure to "just do a project." We have to do research all the time--not curriculum development that we do and you guys study as we do it. For some of us, this is not the first workshop/curricular reform project activity at SDSU. For some of us, we have done so many of these projects that a special form of post-traumatic stress kicks in when we see the weird brown plastic coffee cups/holders (topographically speaking, what are they and will the coffee really stay in there?), no more coffee in the big icky silver thing (we're four minutes late and the coffee's already gone), and we're asked to "come up with new ideas for courses." We need to do research in relation to all other activities all the time.

Please do not look down us. No one shot stipend is worth giving up our dignity (all we have left).

Curriculum development in our world (the humanities) is despised (ranked lowest for you quantitative types) by all committees (from who decides which lecturer for which class to RTP) all the time judging all aspects of our lives (ranking, room assignment, use of Xerox machine). We get that you don't get that. We brought it up over and over for four days. You did not hear us yet. Each one of us in the humanities can explain our own, unique versions of lack of access to rooms, etc. What version would you like: a high level researcher from a country that is not the United States, a leader in her field, who gets invited to international film conferences constantly and can't get a smart classroom to teach film? She crosses the border from unnamed country, parks, goes to AH, checks out the equipment (laptop, whatever), carries the equipment upstairs. That's what we're talking about. Some of us can explain these counterintuitive relationships to you in several non-English languages. If what we do does not lead to an article in a refereed journal, it will not "count." We do what we do (teaching/research) without grant money, for the most part. Regarding the research, we do it, as in free beer, for free.

Sara warned us not to put things in blogs that we don't want to be there forever (or until The Singularity/the big black hole suck). I live a little less sad knowing that this pre-wicki still in blog form attempt at communication in which I try to get those outside the humanities to "understand" may never die. Please read it over and over. We can help you "get it." We won't be impatient explaining it to you over and over...

On a happier note, Qualcomm corporate headquarters is not what they showed us. It's HTH. Latest report (while driving to school) from my son on what he and Alex Dodge were discussing last night on line: the computing capabilities of a rock. Discussion began in relation to how far back the ability to lie goes. That (using John Nash's chart and the entire tradition of software and other research out of which it came, genealogically) was "caused" by concern with Bush's "lies" about Iraq and rhetorical tactics used by Hitler. They were discussing an issue in the field of rhetoric: how far back lying goes... So we in the unfunded humanities win this round...the kids are talkin' about "our" stuff (in relation to computing, of course). For free.

Off topic: today is my birthday. 54. Happy to be working with researchers...hopin' to move towards policy shifts...thank you Qualcomm. I applied to Stanford when I was twelve...they asked me to finish the sixth grade...the eighties were good...it's been hard...when my son quit making math the center of his life (may be temporary), I remembered I loved set theory...and now it's getting good again...

Don't forget to check out that journal Sara mentioned. Cool web site: http://www.reason.com/

La Marquesa Goes to Qualcomm

Ok. Enough "polite." This blog has been taken over by La Marquesa. Emily Hicks, the overachiever of all time, who is such a dork she arrived early to the Italian restaurant last night (wow, the chcolate mousse was extraordinary) is getting ready to go to Day 3, but I'll be going to Qualcomm in her place. Must bring her badge. I will be bringing a portable altar: a photograph of myself in my normal attire (7" heels, a tutu), an empty pill box with red/black tiger stripes (purchased two years ago with Mark Deutrom, ex-bass player, The Melvins--he told her to bring the same small items to every gig) and a little Buddha. If asked, I will say it is my "digital story-telling shoe box stuff." This piece (for art historians) is La Marquesa's second major border crossing piece. The first one was about crossing the U.S.-Mexico border as The Wrestler Bride; this is one is crossing the digital divide.

Back to that old performance piece. When asked for ID, I opened a portable altar (eye glass case) with items from a botanica (Botanica Ochun). For that piece, Berta Jottar (filmmaker) followed me (unbeknownst to the border patrol) with a hidden video camera. Oh yeah. I was wearing a wrestler's mask. They asked me to remove it (border patrol). I said I would only remove for a female border patrol officer (I'm a QD feminist!). They got me a female border patrol officer, we were taken to a private room (I said I was going to meet with G.L.O.W.--Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling--in LA) and I removed the mask for her only. Berta taped me coming out of secondary.

Hicks did one good thing today, and it may have been a result of her attendance at this Emerging thing she's doing. She got her kid to laugh. She was going on, on the way to High Tech High, this morning, about growing seeds, and environmental chemistry, and the relationship between photosynthesis and global warming, and how she could wear a hemp T-shirt and teach this stuff in a GE course, because she's straight-edge when it comes to "seeds"...and the students would do the assignment (she's tried it before--they grow the seeds in their closets)...anyway, her High Tech High kid, as they are driving to school, listening to Flogging Molly ("I've been down in this world, down and almost broken") got that little smile that sixteen year-olds don't normally get on their faces when talking to their moms...

Off to Qualcommm...a ver que pasa

My plans

Thoughts about the future after Day 2 of the 4 Day Event/Emerging. In the summer session course I will be teaching in CCS and in the composition course I will be teaching in Fall 2005 I plan to continue my research on the The Border e-Model. The Border e-Model has grown out of my earlier work on holography and border culture. In early versions of the model, I discussed the experience of living in border regions, border semiotics and holography. Now, I am analyzing underrepresented ethnic communities in relation to the building of cybercommunities. I plan to encourage students to engaged in study about their own ethnic backgrounds/family backgrounds during the Fall semester classes. By doing so, they will quickly immerse themselves in threaded discussions, Netiquette, flaming (:)) and many other aspects of digital culture. The methodological approach I am developing in my work on the Border e-Model is influenced by over twenty years of research in semiotics, deconstruction, holography, nonlinear narratives, border theory, and most recently, set theory. I have written a paper about the model and how I have tried to implement some of John Seely Brown's ideas in my classes (Spring 2005), particularly in relation to Xboxes and zines. In Fall 2005, I will be adding two of Bernie's idea: 1) moving up the triangle to assigning authentic, adult tasks (writing letters about the situation of women who have disappeared in Ciudad Juarez, for example) and 2) shifting from talking about novels with nonlinear plots (Cortazar's Hopscotch in this case) to having students choose characters and blogging in the voice of those characters. Other ideas include (for the summer class) introducing the recycling/refurbishing of technology and an environmental approach to digital culture. I want students to understand how exciting it is to take old, discarded computers and install Linux. The literary component of analyzing technology will include a short story about Polaroids (by Cortazar), Vinge's story (the one we are reading). In the middle of the course, a guest speaker will it all together in relation to RFCs (Requests for Comments). The importance of being able to use "old" stuff, again, will be emphasized. The high tech/low tech relationship is what I want students to think about.

deleuze

Comments on Day 1 of pICT/Department of Ed Celebrity Death Match. Bernie's discussion of "defining end points." This is a nice way to introduce our students to Vinge's concept of singularity/the critique of Vinge as "rapture for nerds" and Heidegger's concept of finitude. For a Day of the Dead altar, created by students, there could be a sugar skull with a group blog for a particular class. This would work best for Fall semesters:)