Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 338

November 3, 2014: Exemplary Elections: 1800

[I don’t have high hopes for Tuesday’s elections, but I also know they’ll be far from the most complex or significant ones in American history in any case. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five such exemplary elections and election years. I vote that you add your thoughts, on this year’s elections or any others!]

On the moment that definitely changed things in post-Revolutionary America—but also, inspiringly, didn’t.

It’d be an overstatement to say that the first decade of post-Constitution America was devoid of national or partisan divisions—this was the era of the Alien and Sedition Acts and their responses, after all; also of that little rebellion up in Pennsylvania—but I don’t think it’s inaccurate to see the first three presidential terms (Washington’s two and John Adams’s one) as among the most unified and non-controversial in our history. That’s true even though Adams’s Vice President was his chief rival in the 1796 election, Thomas Jefferson; Jefferson had gained the second-most electoral votes, which in the first constitutional model meant that he would serve as vice president (an idea that itself relfects a striking lack of expected controversy!). There were certainly two distinct parties as of that second administration (Adams’s Federalists and Jefferson’s Republicans), and they had distinct perspectives on evolving national issues to be sure; but there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of significant partisan divisions between them in that period.

To say that things changed with the presidential election of 1800 would be to drastically understate the case. Once again Adams and Jefferson were the chief contenders, now linked by the past four years of joint service but at the same time more overtly rivals because of that prior election and its results; moreover, this time Jefferson’s running mate, Aaron Burr, was a far more prominent and popular candidate in his own right. And this combination of complex factors led to an outcome that was divisive and controversial on multiple levels: Jefferson’s ticket handily defeated that of his boss, greatly amplifying the partisan rancor between the men and parties; but at the same time Burr received the same number of electoral votes as Jefferson, an unprecedented (then or since) tie between two Republicans that sent the election into the hands of the Federalist-controlled Congress. Although most Federalists opposed Jefferson (for obvious reasons), through a murky and secretive process (one likely influenced by Alexander Hamilton) Jefferson was ultimately chosen on the 36th ballot as the nation’s third president.

Four years later Burr shot Hamilton dead in the nation’s most famous duel, and it’s entirely fair to say that, in the aftermath of this heated and controversial election, the nation could have similarly descended into conflict. But instead, Burr and Hamilton’s eventual fates notwithstanding, the better angels of our collective nature rose to the occasion—Adams peacefully handed over the executive to Jefferson, all those who had supported Burr recognized the new administration, and the parties continued to move forward as political but not social or destructive rivals. If and when the partisan divisions seem too deep and too wide, and frankly too much for me to contemplate, I try to remember the election of 1800; not because it went smoothly or was perfect (far from it), nor because the leaders in that generation were any nobler or purer (ditto), but rather precisely because it went horribly and was deeply messed-up and the leaders were as selfish and human as they always are, and yet somehow—as untested and raw as we were—we came out on the other side. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll do the same this time.

Next exemplary election tomorrow,Ben

PS. What do you think? Other elections you'd highlight?

November 1-2, 2014: October 2014 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]September 29: American Collectors: Isabella Stewart Gardner: A series on famous collections begins with the life and legacy inside my favorite museum.September 30: American Collectors: P.T. Barnum: The series continues with two sides to the famous showman, and how to reconcile them.October 1: American Collectors: George Catlin: What the artist and collector got right, what he got wrong, and what we owe him in any case, as the series continues.October 2: American Collectors: The Smithsonian: Three exemplary moments in the history of our national collection.October 3: American Collectors: Phil Collins!: The series concludes with a wacky recent moment and collection, and what it can help us analyze.October 4-5: Crowd-sourced American Collections: But wait, a crowd-sourced post on collectors and collections rounds off the series—add your thoughts in comments!October 6: AmericanStudying Appalachia: Wrong Turn and Deliverance: A series on cultural images of Appalachia starts with films about cultural clashes, and how to complicate them.October 7: AmericanStudying Appalachia: Miner Texts: The series continues with three different types of representations of mining lives and communities.October 8: AmericanStudying Appalachia: Murfree’s Mountains: Multiple compelling reasons to read one of Appalachia’s most talented writers, as the series rolls on.October 9: AmericanStudying Appalachia: The Black Mountain Poets: How cultural and historical contexts can add to our understanding of individual authors and works.October 10: AmericanStudying Appalachia: The Fire and the Furnace: The series concludes with the interesting messages behind a couple macho action flicks.October 11-12: AmericanStudying Appalachia: Online Resources: For those interested in further AppalachianStudying, a few great websites and resources.October 13: New NEASA Books: Beyond the White Negro: A series highlighting recent books by NEASA colleagues starts with an exemplary work of public scholarship.October 14: New NEASA Books: Inventing the Egghead: The series continues with a book that reveals the crucial stakes of inter-scholarly debates.October 15: New NEASA Books: Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life: The compelling historical biography that’s also a lot more, as the series rolls on.October 16: New NEASA Books: American Blood: The challenging academic analysis that reminds us how constructed and contested even the seemingly simplest American concepts are.October 17: New NEASA Books: A History of Spiritualism and the Occult in Salem: The series concludes with the latest SalemStudying book by one of my favorite AmericanStudiers.October 18-19: My Own Current Projects!:  As I wait for word on the status of my own next book, an update on three spaces to which I’ve recently contributed pieces.October 20: De Lange Follow Ups: The Rice CTE: A series following up my opportunity to serve as a Social Media Fellow for the De Lange Conference begins with the impressive and important work being done at Rice University’s Center for Teaching Excellence.October 21: De Lange Follow Ups: Ruth Simmons: The series continues with two vital contributions from the conference’s most inspiring keynote speaker.October 22: De Lange Follow Ups: Keynote Speakers:  Some of the provocative questions raised by the rest of the keynote speakers (questions that need more answers, including yours!), as the series rolls on.October 23: De Lange Follow Ups: Pedagogy Sessions: On my specific and broader takeaways from the conference’s wonderful breakout sessions.October 24: De Lange Follow Ups: Backchannel Conversations?: The series concludes with three ways to think about our conference-long Twitter responses and conversations.October 25-26: De Lange Follow Ups: My Fellow Tweeters: One more De Lange post, on my amazing group of fellow social media chroniclers.October 27: AmericanSpooking: The Saw Series: A Halloween-inspired series starts with the question of morality in horror films, and whether it matters.October 28: AmericanSpooking: Found Footage Films: The series continues with the appeals and the limitations of the ubiquitous contemporary genre.October 29: AmericanSpooking: The Birds and Psycho: Defamiliarization, horror films, and social prejudice, as the series rolls on.October 30: AmericanSpooking: Those Scary Foreigners: The terrifying travails of young Americans abroad in two recent, hugely successful film franchises.October 31: AmericanSpooking: The Scream Series: The series concludes with the benefits and the drawbacks of metafiction, in any genre.Next series starts Monday,Ben
PS. Topics you’d like to see covered on the blog? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know, please!

October 31, 2014: AmericanSpooking: The Scream Series

[For each of the last couple years, I’ve featured a Halloween-inspired series. It’s been spoooooky fun, so I figured I’d continue the tradition this year, focusing specifically on scary movies. Share your thoughts, on these or other AmericanSpookings, and I promise not to say boo!]On the benefits and the drawbacks of metafiction, in any genre.In this post on E.L. Doctorow, Robert Coover, and the Rosenbergs, I highlighted postmodern theorist Linda Hutcheon’s concept of “historiographic metafiction,” a genre of creative art that blurs the boundaries not only between fact and fiction (as do the found footage works I discussed in Tuesday’s post) but also between art and reality, the work and its audience. The characters and creators of such works step back to examine and address themselves, the works as creative works, and their audiences, among other layers to their metafictional engagements. In the mid-1990s, master filmmaker Wes Craven and his collaborators introduced such metafictional qualities into the horror genre: first in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) and then, far more successfully and influentially, in Scream (1996) and its multiple sequels.Scream has plenty of qualities of a straightforward slasher film, as the justifiably famous opening scene with Drew Barrymore amply demonstrates. But the discussion of “scary movies” integral to that opening scene is extended and amplified in the movie proper, which features a cast of characters who have been seemingly raised on such films and who engage in multiple (even constant) metafictional conversations about the genre’s “rules,” conventions, and expectations. The metafiction unquestionably works, elevating what would otherwise have been a largely unremarkable horror movie into an analytical commentary on its own existence, the legacy of which it is part, and the guilty pleasures it and its ilk offer (and make no mistake, Scream remains scary and gory despite, if not indeed through, these metafictional qualities).As with any genre and form, metafiction has its potential drawbacks and downsides, however, and as the Scream series evolved it reflected quite clearly one of those drawbacks: the tendency of such self-referential commentaries to multiply to the point where they’re chasing their own tails more than either analyzing or entertaining an audience. So, for example, Scream 2 features both a movie version of the first film’s events and a killer hoping to get caught so he could be the star of a televised trial; Scream 3 is set in Hollywood , on the film set of the third movie version of the prior films’ events; and so on. When metafiction amplifies both the effectiveness and the meanings of the text that features it, it can be an important quality of 21st century works of art; when it becomes an end unto itself, it can reflect our most self-aware and snarky sides. Or, to quote a film that was terrifying in entirely distinct ways, “it’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”October Recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Spooky films (or other texts) you'd highlight?

October 30, 2014: AmericanSpooking: Those Scary Foreigners

[For each of the last couple years, I’ve featured a Halloween-inspired series. It’s been spoooooky fun, so I figured I’d continue the tradition this year, focusing specifically on scary movies. Share your thoughts, on these or other AmericanSpookings, and I promise not to say boo!]On the horrifying xenophobia at the heart of two recent hit films.It’s hard to argue with success, and Eli Roth’s Hostel (2005) and Pierre Morel’s Taken (2008) are by many measures two of the most successful films of the last decade. Hostel made more than $80 million worldwide (on a budget of $4.5 million), led to a sequel two years later, and contributed significantly to the rise of an entirely new sub-gerne (the horror sub-genre generally known as “torture porn”). Takencost a lot more to make (budget of $25 million) but also made a lot more at the box office (worldwide gross of over $225 million), has its own sequel coming out later this year, and fundamentally changed the career arc and general perception of its star Liam Neeson. Neither film was aiming for any Oscars or to make the Sight and Sound list, but clearly both did what they were trying to do well enough to please their audiences and hit all the notes in their generic (in the literal sense) formulas.What the two films were trying to do is, of course, a matter of interpretation and debate (although Eli Roth is more than happy to tell us his take on what his film is about); moreover, they’re clearly very different from each other, in genre and goal and many other ways, and I don’t intend to conflate them in this post. Yet they both share an uncannily similar basic plot: naïve and fun-loving young American travelers are abducted and tortured by evil European captors, against whom the travelers themselves (in Hostel) or the traveler’s badass special forces type Dad (in Taken; young Maggie Grace apparently gets to fight some of her own fights against additional Euro-types in the sequel) have to fight in order to escape. While it’s possible to argue that the travelers in Roth’s film help bring on their own torture as a result of their chauvanistic attitudes toward European women (in the sequel Roth made his protagonists young women, and much more explicitly innocent ones at that), there’s no question that the true forces of evil in each film are distinctly European. Moreover, since all of the young travelers are explicitly constructed as tourists, hoping to experience the different world of Europe, the films can’t help but seem like cautionary tales about that world’s dangerous and destructive underbelly.It’s that last point which I’d really want to emphasize here. After all, bad guys in both horror and action films can and do come from everywhere, and that doesn’t necessarily serve as a blanket indictment of those places; if anything, I would argue that the multi-national and multi-ethnic villainy of (for example) James Bond films is a thematic strength, making clear that evil can and will be found everywhere.  Yet both Hostel and Taken are precisely about, or at least originate with, the relationship between American travelers and Europeans, about the naïve ideals of cultural tourism and about creating plots that depend on very frightening and torturous realities within these foreign worlds. “Don’t travel to Europe, young people,” they seem to argue; and if you do, well, be prepared either to kill a ton of ugly Europeans (or have your Daddy do it) or to be killed by them. Not exactly the travel narrative I’d argue for, and indeed a terrifying contribution to our 21st century American worldview.Last AmericanSpooking tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Spooky films (or other texts) you’d highlight?

October 29, 2014: AmericanSpooking: The Birds and Psycho

[For each of the last couple years, I’ve featured a Halloween-inspired series. It’s been spoooooky fun, so I figured I’d continue the tradition this year, focusing specifically on scary movies. Share your thoughts, on these or other AmericanSpookings, and I promise not to say boo!]On defamiliarization, horror, and prejudice.In his essay “Art as Technique,” pioneering Russian Formalist theorist Viktor Shklovsky (whom I never imagined I’d be discussing in this space, but I am an AmericanStudier and I contain multitudes) developed the concept of “defamiliarization”: the idea that one of art’s central goals and effects is to make us look at the world around us, and particularly those things with which we are most familiar, in a new and unfamiliar light. Such defamiliarizations can have many different tones and effects, including positive ones like opening our minds and inspiring new ideas; but it seems to me that one of their chief consistent effects is likely to be horror. After all, the familiar is often (even usually) the comfortable, and to be jarred out of that familiarity and comfort, whatever the long-term necessity and benefits, can be a terrifying thing.Steven King, by all accounts one of the modern masters of horror, seems well aware of that fact, having turned such familiar objects as dogs and cars into sources of primal terror. And Alfred Hitchcock, one of the 20th century’s such masters (and, yes, a Brit, but he set many of his films, including today’s two, in the U.S.), certainly was as well, as illustrated by one of his silliest yet also one of his scariest films: The Birds (1963). The film’s heroine Melanie, played by the inimitable Tippi Hedren, asks her boyfriend, “Mitch, do seagulls normally act this way?”; it’s a ridiculous line, but at the same time it nicely sums up the source of the film’s horror: we’re always surrounded by birds of one kind or another, and there are few ideas more terrifying than the notion that such accepted and generally harmless parts of our world could suddenly become constant threats. I defy anyone to watch Hitchcock’s film and not look askance at the next pigeon you come across.The Birds was Hitchcock’s second consecutive horror film, following on what was then and likely remains his biggest hit: Psycho (1960). Psycho relies for its horror more on a combination of slow-burn suspense and surprising and very famous jump scaresthan defamiliarization, with one crucial exception: the ending, and its relevation of the killer’s true identity and motivations. If that ending is meant to be the most terrifying part of all—and the film’s marketing campaign suggested as much very clearly—then there’s no way around it: the defamiliarization of gender and sexuality that accompanies the revelation of Norman Bates’ cross-dressing is presented as something fundamentally frightening, not only connected to Norman’s murderous ways but indeed the titular psychosis that produced them. That is, while those murderous birds are clearly deviating from their familiar behaviors, I would argue that Bates is presented as deviant in his normal behaviors—and that his gender and sexual deviancy represents, again, the film’s culminating and most shocking, and thus troubling and prejudiced, horror. Next AmericanSpooking tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Spooky films (or other texts) you'd highlight?

October 28, 2014: AmericanSpooking: Found Footage Films

[For each of the last couple years, I’ve featured a Halloween-inspired series. It’s been spoooooky fun, so I figured I’d continue the tradition this year, focusing specifically on scary movies. Share your thoughts, on these or other AmericanSpookings, and I promise not to say boo!]On the longstanding appeal, and the limits, of faux-realism.In this very early post on Washington Irving’s History of New York (1809), I noted how interestingly Irving’s book foreshadows (in form, although clearly not in genre or tone) early 21st century found footage texts such as The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Mark Danielewksi’s House of Leaves(2000). There are obviously just universal and longstanding appeals of such works, among which I would include the possibility that we are encountering something genuine (always a challenge to find anywhere, including in creative art), the blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction (and the resulting discomfort, in the most provocative sense of the term, that such blurring produces), and the undeniable thrill of following along in the processes of making and finding such texts (ie, of putting ourselves in the shoes of both those who filmed and those who “found” Blair Witch’s footage, of both House’s creators and its initial readers, and so on).If found footage has been an artistic element for centuries, though, it has nonetheless reached new levels of popularity and ubiquity in recent years. In film alone we have seen found footage monster movies, found footage superhero films, found footage alien invasion dramas, and, most consistently and most relevantly for this week’s series, the exploding genre of found footage horror films. The latter category includes, to name only a fraction of the entrants (and only some of those that have thus far spawned sequels), the Paranormal Activity series, the [Rec] series, the Grave Encounters series, and the Last Exorcism series. Each of those series fits into a different sub-genre or niche within the horror genre, but all rely on the same found footage trope, and thus all to my mind tap into some of those same aforementioned appeals. (With, perhaps, the added bonus of being able to yell at stupid horror movie characters whom we can imagine are actual people.)When it’s done well, as I would argue it most definitely was in Blair Witch, found footage undoubtedly and potently taps into all those appealing qualities. But I think it has a significant limitation, and not just that it’s become far too frequently used (and certainly not the blurring of fact and fiction, for which I’m entirely on board). To me, the central problem with found footage works of art is that they too often tend, by design, to eschew artistic choices and complexity—after all, their amateur filmmaker characters likely weren’t concerned with such artistic elements (especially not once the crap started hitting the fan), and so their actual filmmakers often seem not to be either. But while we might well look to works of art for the kinds of appealing elements that found footage features, we also look to them to be artistic, to be carefully and effectively designed as something more than—or at least something other than—the reality with which we’re surrounded. Great found footage works, that is, help us escape into their artistic alternate reality—they don’t simply remind us of our own.Next AmericanSpooking tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think? Spooky films (or other texts) you’d highlight?

October 27, 2014: AmericanSpooking: The Saw Series

[For each of the last couple years, I’ve featured a Halloween-inspired series. It’s been spoooooky fun, so I figured I’d continue the tradition this year, focusing specifically on scary movies. Share your thoughts, on these or other AmericanSpookings, and I promise not to say boo!]On different visions of morality in horror films, and whether they matter.There’s an easy and somewhat stereotypical, although certainly not inaccurate, way to read the morality or lessons of horror films: to emphasize how they seem consistently to punish characters, and especially female characters, who are too sexually promiscuous, drink or do drugs, or otherwise act in immoral ways; and how they seem to reward characters, especially the “final girl,” who are not only tough and resourceful but also virgins and otherwise resistant to such immoral temptations. Film scholar Carol Clover reiterates but also to a degree challenges those interpretations in her seminal Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992); Clover agrees with arguments about the “final girl,” but makes the case that by asking viewers to identify with this female character, the films are indeed pushing our communal perspectives on gender in provocative new directions.It’s important to add, however, that whether conventional slasher films are reiterating or challenging traditional moralities, they’re certainly not prioritizing those moral purposes—jump scares and gory deaths are much higher on the list of priorities. On the other hand, one of the most successful and influential horror series of the last decade, the Saw films (which began with 2004’s Saw and continued annually through the 7th and supposedly final installment, 2010’s Saw 3D), has made its world’s and killer’s moral philosophy and objectives central to the series’ purposes. The films’ villain, John Kramer, generally known only as Jigsaw, has been called a “deranged philanthropist,” as his puzzles and tortures are generally designed to test, alter, and ultimately strengthen his victims’ identities and beliefs (if they survive, of course). That is, not only is it possible to find moral messages in both the films and which characters do and do not survive in them, but deciphering and living up to that morality becomes the means by which those characters can survive their tortures.That’s the films and the characters—but what about the audience? It’s long been assumed (and I would generally agree) that audiences look to horror films not only to be scared (a universal human desire) but also to enjoy the unique and gory deaths (a more troubling argument, but again one I would generally support). So it’d be fair, and important, to ask whether that remains the case for Saw’s audiences—whether, that is, they’re in fact rooting not for characters to survive and grow, but instead to fail and be killed in Jigsaw’s inventive ways. And if most or even many of them are, whether that response—and its contribution to the series’ popularity and box office success and thus its ability to continue across seven years and movies—renders the films’ sense of morality irrelevant (it would certainly make it ironic at the very least). To put it bluntly: it seems to make a big difference whether we see the Saw films as distinct in the inventiveness of their tortures/deaths or the morality of their killer. As with any post and topic, I’d love to hear your thoughts!Next AmericanSpooking tomorrow,BenPS. So what do you think? Other spooky films (or scary texts in other genres) you'd highlight?

October 25-26, 2014: De Lange Follows Ups: My Fellow Tweeters

[Last Monday and Tuesday I had the honor of being invited to attend Rice University’s De Lange Conference IX  as a Social Media Fellow, helping to create conversations about and around the conference theme (“Teaching in the University of Tomorrow”) and talks. It was a wonderful experience, and I followed it up this week with posts on a number of the issues and ideas I encountered there. For this weekend post, I wanted to make sure to acknowledge my fellow De Lange Tweeters.]A few words on each of my four fellow Fellows, all of whom I got to meet (in person, that is!) for the first time at the conference:1)      Dr. Kelly Baker: Kelly has a PhD in Religion from Florida State, and has become one of our foremost independent writers on and scholars of religion in American society, history, and popular culture. Her first two books, the first on the KKK in the early 20th century and the second on zombies in American culture, exemplify this impressive range.2)      Dr. Jason Jones: While a ground-breaking Victorianist at Central Connecticut State University, Jason helped launch the Chronicle’s ProfHacker blog , one of the preeminent spaces for academic writing and conversation (on- and offline). He has recently moved to Trinity College, where he is the Director of Educational Technology, and where he continues to write all over the web.3)      Dr. Dorothy Kim: Dorothy is an Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College, where she works on medieval literature and the digital humanities. Yet in true 21st century style, Dorothy combines that historical and literary focus with a consistent and deep engagement with contemporary cultural social, cultural, and political issues and conversations.4)      Dr. Liana Silva: Liana is one of our most talented and significant freelance writers and editors, having published and worked extensively in the fields of gender studies, cultural studies, musicology, and academic labor studies, among many others. She currently works as Editor in Chief for Women in Higher Ed, and as usual has a ton of great stuff in the works.A very impressive group, and I was honored to share this role with them. Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Any other follow ups to the conference and/or the week’s posts?
PPS. Unrelated to the week’s series, but I wanted to remind any Canadian readers that I’ll be giving a talk on the American and Canadian Chinese Exclusion Acts on Monday afternoon at 2:30 at the University of Toronto’s Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library. I’d love to see you there!

October 24, 2014: De Lange Follows Ups: Backchannel Conversations?

[Last Monday and Tuesday I had the honor of being invited to attend Rice University’s De Lange Conference IX  as a Social Media Fellow, helping to create conversations about and around the conference theme (“Teaching in the University of Tomorrow”) and talks. It was a wonderful experience, and I wanted to follow it up this week with posts on a number of the issues and ideas I encountered there. Whether you attended as well, followed on Twitter, or just have thoughts on any of these topics, I’d love to hear from you!]On two ways to see our Twitter conversations, and then a third level.As the conference went along, an interesting running joke developed: that the Twitter feed was “unhappy with X”; that presenter Y was worried that he/she was “not doing well on Twitter” (and/or was reassured by another presenter that “Twitter likes you”); that, in short, the “backchannel conversations” (as such conference Twitter feeds and other electronic responses to in-person presentations have come to be known) offered consistent counter-arguments and challenges to the presentations and presenters. I think that’s an accurate assessment of much of the Twitter response, as provided both by us Social Media Fellows and by others (at the conference and elsewhere) weighing in, and that thread culminated in a very specific moment during the conference’s final panel, which featured six of the prior keynote speakers and moderators: I raised issues of contingent faculty, faculty with heavy teaching loads (such as my own 4/4), and related questions of academic labor; and when the panelists acknowledged but offered no thoughts on those issues, the Twitter feed more or less exploded.As it did so, however, another conference attendee and frequent Tweeter, Dr. Derek Bruff (director of Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching), rose and asked the question again; after Bruff’s follow up (which, to be fair to the panel, was more of a question than my own series of statements), most of the panel did respond, and did so with some interesting perspectives to be sure. Moreover, I’m not sure that my phrasing in that prior sentence was quite right—it’s perhaps more accurate to say that becausethe Twitter feed erupted, Bruff raised the question a second time (at the very least, he was engaging with his fellow Tweeters while waiting in line to ask his question), and thus that in a key way the panel conversation proceeded as a result of, not just in response to but literally because of, the Twitter conversation. And if we see the conversation as unfolding in that way, it casts a different light on the running jokes about the Twitter feed—which, seen in this light, offered a humorous but clear and striking recognition of the way in which the Twitter conversations were contributing to the in-person ones (as well as vice versa, which is the more obvious direction).I would argue that both of these perspectives—the Twitter feed as backchannel challenge to the presentations; the feed and presentations as codependent conversations—have validity and value. But I would also take a step back and make one more connection. The Twitter conversations included not only us Social Media Fellows and many other conference attendees, but also a number of colleagues around the country and world; some of these colleagues commented throughout the conference, others added their voices at particular moments, and (I’m quite sure) others never Tweeted but followed the hashtag and conversations nonetheless. Virtually all of the conference’s presenters highlighted the role that technology and online spaces/communities will play in the future of higher education, not (as I noted in Wednesday’s post) as an alternative to traditional in-person institutions, but rather as a complementary part of those institutions. And in every way, the presence, role, and relationship of our conference Twitter feed helped model the complexity, challenge, and value of such in-person and online hybridity.Special post on my fellow Social Media Fellows this weekend,BenPS. What do you think?
PPS. For the perspective of one of my co-Social Media Fellows, Dr. Jason Jones, on many of these same questions, see this ProfHacker post of his.

October 23, 2014: De Lange Follows Ups: Pedagogy Sessions

[Last Monday and Tuesday I had the honor of being invited to attend Rice University’s De Lange Conference IX  as a Social Media Fellow, helping to create conversations about and around the conference theme (“Teaching in the University of Tomorrow”) and talks. It was a wonderful experience, and I wanted to follow it up this week with posts on a number of the issues and ideas I encountered there. Whether you attended as well, followed on Twitter, or just have thoughts on any of these topics, I’d love to hear from you!]On my specific and broader takeaways from the conference’s wonderful breakout sessions.While the conference’s keynote addresses, on which my last two posts have focused, generally engaged with sweeping issues related to the future of higher education, the complementary breakout sessionsdid something very distinct and much more immediately applicable: highlighted pedagogical ideas and strategies, and presented in-depth examinations of why and how educators can make them part of their own teaching and courses. I had the chance to hear and learn from Music Professor Karim Al-Zand on an individualized critique model of feedback-giving, from English Professor J. Dennis Huston on how he works to engage each and every student in his course discussions, and from Communications Professors Tracy Volz and Jennifer Wilson on strategies for teaching speech and communication. I took valuable lessons away from each presentation, but by far the most eye-opening of those I attended was offered by Rice CTE Director and conference organizer Joshua Eyler.Eyler’s session focused on the subject of his current book project: “The Science of Learning and Why It Matters.” We humanities types (Eyler was a medievalist before he moved into his current gig) love to throw around the term “science” far too loosely, but that’s not the case with Eyler’s work; he means it, and discussed what such disciplines as neuroscience, cognitive psychology, human development, and evolutionary biology/biological anthropology can help us understand about how we learn and what that might mean for our teaching practices and strategies. Among many other topics about which I learned a great deal from Eyler’s talk, he got me thinking about neuroplasticity(the way the brain changes when we learn things); the role of curiosity and play in human development, and how our teaching practices can tap into them; and the connection of gestures to language and learning, and how we can work to maximize those relationships. He highlighted and engaged with relevant research, noted controversies and limitations, and even featured cute pictures of his daughter—all while guiding us through a number of broad and complex topics.In the question and answer period, I asked Eyler to expand a bit on one of his final points: that fuller engagement with these ideas could help produce higher ed reforms. His main answer was simple but vital: that we could, and need to, do a much better job putting this kind of research and information in front of teachers. And indeed, I would say the same about all these pedagogical breakout sessions, both specifically and generally: that the more we teachers share such ideas and issues, the stronger and more successful our work will be, collectively as well as individually. Partly that’s about preparing future teachers for their careers in the field, as is the overt goal of the Cross-Sector Partnership initiative here in Massachusetts. But honestly, we current teachers need those conversations just as much, and the more we make such engagement a shared, supported, and incentivized part of our work (rather than, as often happens with Centers for Teaching, an opportunity offered to those self-selected faculty who choose to pursue it), the stronger our collective efforts will be.Last follow up tomorrow,Ben
PS. What do you think?