The New York Sophist

Enjoying the ECA Conference very much. Heard a lot of smart things today. Reflecting on them quite a bit, but I have a couple of initial thoughts.

First, I think I have found a new rhetorical move similar to Mary Daly’s argument about how feminist and gender issues are always put on the back burner in favor of “more important” policy or issues. The typical form of this move is, “How can you be worried about X issue in a world where these other horrible things are happening? [List goes here]”

Here is the move that I saw about two or three times today: Scholar is presenting a paper that moves toward a gender issue or gender theme. Scholar takes pause to identify to the audience that there is a gender component or issue here, and that it is important to attend to it. Scholar then explains the gender/feminist element of the argument is so important, it warrants a paper and/or panel of its own. It would be terrible to undercover it, so we are going to return to the argument of the paper, sans gender/feminism consideration.

This is a nice move for the patriarchy, as it gives due deference to the importance of gender and feminist issues with a sincere hat tip. But if the issue is that important, why does the paper continue in a direction that totally tables – or ignores in other words – the issue completely until an uncertain, future paper or panel? This way, the gender and feminist concerns of any research project can be addressed by being tabled indefinitely.

The second is more of a question – where is the line for media scholars between being a fan of a TV show or movie, and wanting to talk about how awesome it is that it dove tails with the scholarly literature, or glances off of a theory, and doing serious theoretical or critical work on a TV show or a movie? That line is a tough one to nail down, but I don’t have a lot of tolerance for papers where the author sounds like I do when describing a show I enjoyed or a movie I thought was cool because it reminded me of a theory. I think the direction that best serves us and the field is the direction that uses the show or movie to elucidate, re-read, or enlighten some aspect of communication or rhetorical studies, instead of enlighten us as to the hidden or clever elements of the show.

More to come tomorrow. Our Minecraft presentation went really well today, and our papers merged pretty well with one another – without any planning to do so. More on Minecraft in a later post.

Enjoying the ECA Conference very much. Heard a lot of smart things today. Reflecting on them quite a bit, but I have a couple of initial thoughts.

First, I think I have found a new rhetorical move similar to Mary Daly’s argument about how feminist and gender issues are always put on the back burner in favor of “more important” policy or issues. The typical form of this move is, “How can you be worried about X issue in a world where these other horrible things are happening? [List goes here]”

Here is the move that I saw about two or three times today: Scholar is presenting a paper that moves toward a gender issue or gender theme. Scholar takes pause to identify to the audience that there is a gender component or issue here, and that it is important to attend to it. Scholar then explains the gender/feminist element of the argument is so important, it warrants a paper and/or panel of its own. It would be terrible to undercover it, so we are going to return to the argument of the paper, sans gender/feminism consideration.

This is a nice move for the patriarchy, as it gives due deference to the importance of gender and feminist issues with a sincere hat tip. But if the issue is that important, why does the paper continue in a direction that totally tables – or ignores in other words – the issue completely until an uncertain, future paper or panel? This way, the gender and feminist concerns of any research project can be addressed by being tabled indefinitely.

The second is more of a question – where is the line for media scholars between being a fan of a TV show or movie, and wanting to talk about how awesome it is that it dove tails with the scholarly literature, or glances off of a theory, and doing serious theoretical or critical work on a TV show or a movie? That line is a tough one to nail down, but I don’t have a lot of tolerance for papers where the author sounds like I do when describing a show I enjoyed or a movie I thought was cool because it reminded me of a theory. I think the direction that best serves us and the field is the direction that uses the show or movie to elucidate, re-read, or enlighten some aspect of communication or rhetorical studies, instead of enlighten us as to the hidden or clever elements of the show.

More to come tomorrow. Our Minecraft presentation went really well today, and our papers merged pretty well with one another – without any planning to do so. More on Minecraft in a later post.

Minecraft Castle (Photo credit: Mike_Cooke)

Rhode Island is my staging area for my first trip to the Eastern Communication Association conference. I’m giving a paper tomorrow on Minecraft and the ancient practice of Declamation at around 18:30 GMT in Cambridge, close to Harvard University, but not really hosted there or in any association with them at all. My paper, and hopefully the whole panel, might be recorded in some way, so look for a post. I’m not making a promise here, but I’ll try my best.

At this conference there are a couple of panels I’m interested to see. There are some papers by friends and colleagues that look interesting, but most important to me are panels that begin to address WUDC debating. Nothing so far, although there are a couple of panels where scholars are starting to grapple with non-American formats of debating, and I think it’s interesting to see the initial approaches. I hope to make the audio of these panels available here on this blog for those who are interested in what international formats of debate look like and sound like to American debating scholars at this early entry point. There’s also a historical angle here too, archiving these views so that some future scholar can do a long study across the different approaches.

More updates to come about the conference tomorrow. For now, time to enjoy some Rhode Island local flavor, including (and probably limited to) lobster.

Minecraft Castle (Photo credit: Mike_Cooke)

Rhode Island is my staging area for my first trip to the Eastern Communication Association conference. I’m giving a paper tomorrow on Minecraft and the ancient practice of Declamation at around 18:30 GMT in Cambridge, close to Harvard University, but not really hosted there or in any association with them at all. My paper, and hopefully the whole panel, might be recorded in some way, so look for a post. I’m not making a promise here, but I’ll try my best.

At this conference there are a couple of panels I’m interested to see. There are some papers by friends and colleagues that look interesting, but most important to me are panels that begin to address WUDC debating. Nothing so far, although there are a couple of panels where scholars are starting to grapple with non-American formats of debating, and I think it’s interesting to see the initial approaches. I hope to make the audio of these panels available here on this blog for those who are interested in what international formats of debate look like and sound like to American debating scholars at this early entry point. There’s also a historical angle here too, archiving these views so that some future scholar can do a long study across the different approaches.

More updates to come about the conference tomorrow. For now, time to enjoy some Rhode Island local flavor, including (and probably limited to) lobster.

bowery mission (Photo credit: niznoz)

This debate was set up by the King’s College, as a way to engage a public issue and get public response from it. Not shown in the video was an interesting talk by members of the Bowery Mission – a homeless shelter and education facility in New York.

One of the residents watched the debate and gave some good commentary. Again, it’s not in the video, as it seemed the video was shutting down people’s comfort in addressing the assembled group with their thoughts about the debate.

I have an idea that I approached the Mission with after the debate: Would it be possible to use the residents as judges in a debating competition?

They said they would think about it. I extolled the idea that the judges would learn the art of critical feedback and giving a positive, constructive commentary on something they have just heard. This is a great job skill.  As for the students participating in the competition, it would be good for them to get some commentary from people in the public to help reduce the inevitable drive to speak like a debating automaton and reference tropes that only have meaning for a cloistered few in the debate universe.

The topics would be about homelessness and poverty. And yes, as I already addressed one student’s concern – the audience will be very biased. But that might be something we lack the capacity to train for in debate. Competition dictates that the debates must be fair and evaluated on the most even standard possible. What happens when a judge is too far gone to one side? We must offer some moments where students are forced to be creative in how they appeal to convicted audiences.

Would anyone participate? I hope so. But first I have to convince the Mission staff that this project would be worth their time. This debate, as presented here, did inspire them and make them express that they would like to participate in some way.