doing something different with language
This was too…. what…. risky? an idea when I imagined it as a promo for a conference on communication hosted by my department – with the idea that the actual artifacts would be imagined and invented by my peers, cuz I wouldn’t have the first idea about HOW to actually do it. 🙂
I got the idea reading Pattern … Read more...
My buddy Steve has sent two announcements the last few days concerning U.S. Representative Julia Carson (1938-2007).
Confronted with barely-veiled racial prejudice in the halls of Congress by a peer who did not recognize her, Carson queried, “What’s your point?” Thus sums up the Indianapolis Star, in a special report called “A warrior for the city.”
I paid no attention … Read more...
I respect this writer, Paul Rogat Loeb, quite a bit. He wrote a short piece on civil rights and heroism that I often use with students, and have been slowly working my way through his book, The Impossible Will Take a Little While.
In this piece, Hillary Clinton may be haunted by ghosts of ’06, he compares Hillary Clinton’s … Read more...
“Erotic chaos and chaotic eroticism.” The little green man embellished my summary of Open Secret, performed by the incomparable Wire Monkey.
The chaos of modern living was most marked in the second piece and in the middle of the second act: we are “bodies against steel” intoned various voices as the dancers gyrated and collided with each other, … Read more...
My stance vis-a-vis the UMass Amherst administration’s decision to grant an honorary degree to President Bush’s ex-chief-of-staff, Andrew Card, was pre-established before the event was known. I was hired to interpret the graduate commencement ceremony at least a month before the decision about Card was announced.
I witnessed the swell of protest activity from a distance, observing. I did sign … Read more...
I did not hear him give the speech, but the written text is powerful in and of itself. At best, it will raise the bar for every candidate and change the terms of the discourse.
Senator Obama’s Announcement… Read more...
“This is not the kind of publicity we would ever seek,” said Phil Kent (no relation) about the Cartoon Network’s publicity stunt in Boston yesterday that inspired the headline story: Froth, Fear, and Fury in the Boston Globe.
I wasn’t there, so I cannot attest to the felt experience of the people who were frightened by the advertising or the … Read more...
I’m observing a colleague teaching Cultural Codes of Communication. Homework for the first night included reading James Carey (foundational) and a series of questions, including what might be of interest for students to explore in this course. I’ve already snatched a quote from the Carey article for teaching this spring (!), and my brain is in high gear concerning my … Read more...
This conference on pedagogy next April is definitely a place I wish I could be, but instead I’ll be in Australia at Critical Link 5: Quality in Interpreting: A Shared Responsibility. I suppose I should not complain? :-/ (But when they finally get transporter technology, Beam Me Over Scottie!)
I submitted two proposals, they accepted one called “Interpreters: … Read more...
The dirt path beckons. I infer comrades in search and pursuit of the potentials of slippage.
Institutional wieldings of strategy threaten everyday tactics. “There’s no moral high ground” among those exercising tactics. “Who’s got the will?” to perform “on stage”?
I don’t want to compete against the tactics of my friends. As in all good fantasy, I throw … Read more...
