A Roundup of Teaching Tips & Advice

September 3rd, 2010 § 0

Profhacker has posted what they refer to as a “Teaching Carnival” in honor of, for many of us, the first week of school. I’ll be honest, I have not yet ready any of the links they provide, but I do plan on reading several of them this weekend. I highly suggest you take a look at this post to see if you might find something of interest.

Profhacker also recently posted an open letter to grad students that I would recommend all new grad students read. You can read that here.

My week has gone fairly well, though I’ll give more of a rundown on the details in my post on Saturday. Two things stand out, however. Whenever students portray college teachers in skits or scenes, I am always astonished at how negative those portrayals are. My god, they must see the majority of us as petty, vicious, and mean-spirited people. Actually, there’s a dissertation for you (if it hasn’t been done already): popular culture representations of college professors.

The other point that I wanted to make stemmed from my conversation with E. today: I am extremely privileged to be where I am and to have the support of my department and my university in order for me to spend the bulk of my time reading, thinking, writing, teaching, and talking about ideas which mean something to me. No matter how individual moments may feel negative or stressful or even just plain bad, I should never forget how lucky I am to be in an environment and around colleagues who care about theatre and education and critical thought and the sheer pleasure of learning new and complex things.

The Official Start of My PhD

August 30th, 2010 § 0

Classes begin today at the University of Pittsburgh, though I don’t have any classes to teach or take today. Last week was a relatively busy one, with several orientations and meetings. Some, like the workshop/orientations for Intro to Performance teachers were fun, while the all day TA Orientation was not.

So, my semester looks like this:

I’m teaching two sections of Intro to Performance on Tue/Thu 11-12:15 and Wed 6-8:30. I’m also working as a grad assistant for the marketing department of the Theatre Arts department, which I’ll be doing on Wednesday from 9:30 – 2:30. For classes, I’m taking a class on the later Shakespeare plays with Attilo Favorini on Tuesdays at 3, Materials & Methods with Bruce McConachie on Wednesdays at 3, and then a seminar with Lisa Jackson-Schebetta on Thursdays at 3. I have Mondays and Fridays available for reading/writing days. I’m very clear that I’m not considering those “days off” but very much working days and I will likely spend at least one if not both on campus doing work in the library or the Cathedral of Learning. I do, however, greatly appreciate my schedule and will probably manage a couple of long weekend trips to see friends and family during the course of the semester.

What does this mean for ThisThus.com? Now that I’m actually in the process of getting my PhD, I’ll be attempting to post here on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays throughout each semester. As I mention in the About this Site page, I will be offering up a variety of topics, from emotional responses to my academic work, to tips and tricks, to links and discussions that are pertinent to both my discipline (theatre and performance) and broad pedagogical/academic interests.

The next few years will be exciting, challenging, sometimes difficult, and always interesting and I would be honored to have you along for the ride. I also hope some of what I can offer here may provide information and inspiration for your own journey, whether you are attending graduate school or not.

Thanks for being here and please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or two and share your own experiences/thoughts/problems/interests.

Theatre at a Crossroads: ART

August 24th, 2010 § 0

 

That’s not all that has changed. As Paulus heads into her second season at ART, she has largely replaced the company’s steady diet of serious avant-garde productions with audience-pleasing musicals and adventurous interactive experiences. She has been a commercial smash, while shedding actors — and longtime staffers — who defined the company for decades.

Now, she’s facing the ultimate byproduct of success, a backlash. To her supporters, Paulus is a crowd-inspiring theater revolutionary. To her detractors, she is the Broadway-obsessed, box-office-driven director who has dismantled a prized institution.

(From Some say ART’s artistic director has gone too commercial – The Boston Globe)

 

I don’t claim to have much information about ART one way or the other, and honestly, as I read this piece, I kept vacillating in my support from one side to the other. I think serious questions need to be raised about how theatre is presented in this country and about that live performance and drama mean, to both the practitioners and the audience. However, I am also very leery of making money, Twitter counts or other such markers as the sole arbiter of what direction a theatre should pursue.

However, one of the ways it might be interesting to frame the discussion is to ask the following: what would artists like Bertolt Brecht and William Shakespeare think of the kind of arts that Paulus is bringing to the table? Because, all nostalgia aside, I think they would completely dig what is going on at ART these days.

Stanley Fish on Plagiarism and Morality

August 11th, 2010 § 0

Stanley Fish has an interesting opinion piece in the NY Times “Opinionator” section in which he argues that the question of plagiarism is not one of philosophy or morality, but rather falls under the aegis of disciplinary rules.

And if you’re a student, plagiarism will seem to be an annoying guild imposition without a persuasive rationale  (who cares?); for students, learning the rules of plagiarism is worse than learning the irregular conjugations of a foreign language. It takes years, and while a knowledge of irregular verbs might conceivably come in handy if you travel, knowledge of what is and is not plagiarism in this or that professional practice is not something that will be of very much use to you unless  you end up becoming a member of the profession yourself.  It follows that students who never quite get the concept right are by and large not committing a crime; they are just failing to become acclimated to the conventions of the little insular world they have, often through no choice of their own, wandered into. It’s no big moral deal; which doesn’t mean, I hasten to add, that plagiarism shouldn’t be punished — if you’re in our house, you’ve got to play by our rules — just that what you’re punishing is a breach of disciplinary decorum, not a breach of the moral universe. Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal

Honestly, I feel that Fish is putting forth a bit of a straw man argument here with his assumption that most of us involved with academia see the issue as a Big Moral Deal. In my experience, plagiarism occurs because the student doesn’t quite understand how and when citations are necessary, self-doubt in their ability to construct an argument, or sheer laziness. While sometimes annoying and certainly irksome to deal with, plagiarism by students is rarely treated as a Big Moral Deal and, if it is, I would absolutely side with Fish in denouncing such a stand. However, as a teacher, I have never taken such a stance and don’t feel that there is an overwhelming majority of teachers in higher education that will make Big Moral Judgements about their students.

I also wonder about his focus on student behavior. Not only does he seem to belittle college students and their ability to learn how to deal with citations, but he also shares an anecdote about finding his own work plagiarized by other academics. In fact, he ends his essay with the following:

This brings me back to the (true) story I began with. Whether there is something called originality or not, the two scholars who began their concluding chapter by reproducing two of my pages are professionally culpable. They took something from me without asking and without acknowledgment, and they profited — if only in the currency of academic reputation — from work that I had done and signed. That’s the bottom line and no fancy philosophical argument can erase it. Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal

On the one hand, he spends the bulk of his argument situating the question of plagiarism within an academic student/teacher dynamic, but bookends that with a story that, seemingly, demonstrates a situation where there is a moral argument to be made. Furthermore, there are plenty of situations that he doesn’t address that do seem open to moral considerations, such as journalism and political speech. Sure, he may dismiss such notions as complex and (for some bizarre reason) not applicable to politicians, but I would argue that there is more than just professional rules at play in those arenas. There is a public trust at stake in these rhetorical acts. The playing field here is not about getting a grade, but about informing the public, or persuading them one way or another on an issue or policy. There is a moral value to being truthful about whose words are being used in these situations. In part because we are not talking about undergraduate students struggling with new and arcane rules, but people who have been trained to do what they do and should, therefore, know better when they appropriate another person’s words for their own benefit.

Certainly, the lines are not always clear. Of course the issue of plagiarism can become murky and complex. That does not mean, however, that there are no moral repercussions to the act of plagiarism. If taken to it’s logical extreme, could Fish’s perspective in this essay be used to argue that there is no moral component to any rhetorical act?

Via Big Think. You should click on that link for Lindsay Beyerstein’s take on Fish’s article.

More Academic Humor from XKCD

August 1st, 2010 § 0

 

People go to the website because they can't wait for the next alumni magazine, right? What do you mean, you want a campus map? One of our students made one as a CS class project back in '01!  You can click to zoom and everything! (From University Website)