Thinking about the syllabus

In the winding down of one semester into the next, the subject of syllabi has occupied my thoughts. I have been encountering other blog posts and the research they contain on the choices we can make to develop more learner-centered syllabi.

The topic has been a focus of mine since our university adopted the policy of syllabi being made available on our learning management site two weeks prior to the start of the semester. As a result, the syllabus has become an enduring introduction of me to my students: it is their first encounter. This first impression will set the tone and impact both students' continued enrollment during the Add/Drop period and their persistence in the course.

A useful schema for determining the qualities of a learner-centered syllabus can be found in Richmond, Slattery, Mitchell, Morgan and Becknell's (2016) work in student perceptions of teachers. the researchers found students who encountered the learner-centered variety perceived the professor to be more "creative, caring, happy, and enthusiastic" (p. 165).

It can follow that projecting these qualities from the start can lead students to consider me as more approachable. This, in turn, can foster persistence and success.

As I prepare my syllabus for the next semester, I am reviewing the moments when language, tone, and organization can be adjusted to make the students' first encounter with me and the course a cause for excitement to engage.

References

Richmond, A.S., Slattery, J.M., Mitchell, N., Morgan, R.K., & Becknell, J. (2016). Can a learner-centered syllabus change students’ perceptions of student–professor rapport and master teacher behaviors? Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 2(3), 159-168.

It is so much money: ethics and professional theatre

I open this post with an excerpt from the graduation celebration of the 2003 Open Doors Program of Theatre Development Fund. In this clip TDF Executive Director Victoria Bailey introduces the late Wendy Wasserstein. As a founder of this program Wasserstein's vision has made the theatergoing experience a reality for what will soon be generations of New York City high school students. I had the privilege of hearing Wasserstein speak about this program at the 2003 Crossing Paths conference held in Charlotte, NC. Her enthusiasm inspired me to develop a similar program for at-risk youth in New Hampshire. The idea behind these programs is to provide area youth with access to, and ownership of, arts events.

I come back to this years later in the midst of the excitement that surrounds “Hamilton” the musical. It’s a problematic piece this “Hamilton”. Why?

It is so much money.

In the run-up to the 2016 Tony Awards™ for Broadway, much was made about the premium price increases of “Hamilton” tickets and the profits that many “Hamilton” stakeholders stand to make with the show’s current popularity. Prior to the recent price increase, Melinda Lopez offered a narrative of the seesaw she rode on whether or not to purchase tickets for her and her daughter’s girls’ weekend later in the summer. The funds to afford the nearly $2,000 to purchase the tickets were available from a small inheritance borne out of a dying mother’s allotment for home care that was no longer needed. In the end, Lopez presses “enter” on the buy option of the ticket website.

Lopez’s Howlround blog post elicited mostly supportive comments especially in regards to the connection between a dying mother and her daughter and granddaughter’s living-life-to-its-fullest choice of attending “Hamilton.” But the comments also included a plea to refrain from succumbing to such high prices as it only encourages prices to climb even higher, pushing experiences like attending “Hamilton” out of the realm for most.

I have been tossing around the idea of a connection, if any, between art and commerce with ethics. Does the bonding of art with commerce, in this case commercial theatre, render the enterprise less responsible to ethical considerations of access, as demonstrated by ticket prices? One can surmise that as ticket prices increase less access is made available to the particular arts experience. While the recent price increase for “Hamilton” tickets was, according to its producers, offset by an increased number of tickets made available for $10, there are barriers to access of this opportunity. Many working people are unable to invest the time to engage in the $10-lottery and a foundation-supported program for high school students is restricted to a particular catchment area.

We might think of these $10-tickets as a latter-day equivalent to the reduced admission afforded the groundlings in Elizabethan England. Andrew Gurr (1996) notes that the groundling price at theatres at this time was a penny versus a fee of sixpence for the lusher accommodations of a lord’s room. However, Gurr estimates that more than 800 groundlings were likely admitted into a theatre space with a total capacity for 3,000 viewers. This would amount to 27 percent of the Elizabethan audience as comprised of the penny-stinker class. In contrast, it is doubtful that the “Hamilton” producers of 2016 are offering 27 percent of their seats to lottery winners and foundation-supported patrons.

What’s more, the differential between the groundling and lord’s admission prices is much smaller than that between a New York City high school student and a premium viewer: the groundling would pay six times more in admission to afford the lord’s room while today’s student needs to pay 85 times more to secure a premium seat.

An underlying premise within my question suggests that art that is not linked to commerce is inherently accountable to an ethical agenda. I am reminded of Joan Jeffri’s (1983) discussion of the mid-1970s controversy that surrounded the Museum of Modern Art’s sale of air rights to a commercial developer. Critics of the project distinguished the non-profit museum’s status as a “repository of values” against the real estate developer’s “siren call of commercialism.” This was, according to Lee Rosenbaum, a clash of values and ethics.

However, is it appropriate to assume that arts organizations that are not-for-profit are inherently ethical? Diane Ragsdale’s “In the Intersection: Partnerships in the New Play Sector” (2012) discusses the relationship between the for- and not-for-profit theatre sectors. The book recounts a convening in 2012 of 26 theatre professionals to discuss the intersection that occurs in the development of co-productions between these two sectors. Throughout the book, the professionals refer to a need for clear and transparent ethical codes by which decision-making can be accomplished by the non-profits regarding productions, research, and development: none of the discussion places the burden of ethics on the for-profit arm. This group would likely have us assume that the for-profit arm of theatre is not obligated to consider ethics in their business decisions. As Polly Carl of Emerson College stated, “Wall Street is Wall Street because they don’t have an ethics statement.”

I come away from this processing of art, commerce and ethics as somewhat disillusioned. While I don’t consider myself to be naïve—I did spend my young adulthood dealing with the ravages of ticket scalpers on Broadway--I entered the field of the arts with a love for many if not all of its forms and a growing respect for the values that the forms can impart on its public. Fighting fire with fire in the case of third-party ticket prices might be effective for the bottom line but I don’t view it as contributing to the art form.

A Return

I have been away from Living [Maxine] Greene for a while now. It had been my intention to continue with this inquiry long after the completion of the dissertation. I was teaching a course on aesthetics and surely the discussions and connections that my students and I were making should have provided content for additional inquiry. But my discipline waned and I have been remiss.

This past spring certainly brought cause to revisit this site. Maxine’s death warranted reflection on her impact on me and the worlds of the arts and social justice. But I am flummoxed and can’t recover the language to unleash my gratitude.

But this fall I have found direct occasion to re-up the discussion of things aesthetic. I am teaching a capstone course for students engaging in their honors thesis work. As Living [Maxine] Greene furnished me in my research, my students are starting their own reflexive blogs to ponder the influences of their research interests. It is incumbent on me to join them in their quest by re-establishing my queries of embodiment, situatedness, and the primordial.

Hello again, L[M]G!

Above all else, have a chorus

Numerous media sites have been paying tribute to the late Pete Seeger. In the car this morning I was listening to NPR whose memorial compelled to me sing along with the choruses of "Goodnight Irene." The broadcast included references by Tom Paxton who shared the following:

Not just through his books but also through his sheer force of presence, Seeger became a model for younger folk musicians. Singer and songwriter Tom Paxton said he learned invaluable lessons from Seeger about how to reach an audience. "Look 'em in the eye. Make a gesture of inclusion, which he did all the time. And above all, have a chorus," Paxton says. "So I learned from Pete to have something for them to sing." (http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2014/01/28/267488551/american-folk-singer-pete-seeger-dies-at-94)

It was upon hearing the recommendation to "have a chorus" that I was inspired to return to Living [Maxine] Greene after a long, dormant phase.  This gesture--or charge--for people to engage in the musical experience to create change can be viewed as a means of the transcendental/existential project that Sartre proposes and Greene picks up in her own writings.

And so I was thinking about the power that can be found in choral music, singing, chanting, text. I was reminded of a rehearsal I attended at the bequest of a director back in the early '90s. Clay Shirky asked me to visit him in Chicago where he was rehearsing A Preliminary Inquiry Into the Methods Used to Create and Maintain a Segregated Society. It was billed as "a theatrical collage about life in America`s most segregated city: Chicago, Illinois." One of the devices that Clay used in his theatrical work was choral text: actors speaking in a clear, unison voice. The power of the device is moving, to the point of being unsettling. I remember the Chicago actors moving me to pay attention, to be present, to be wide-awake.

It is this wide-awakeness that is consciousness in Greene's writings. It is the demand to pay attention and to consider other alternatives.

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My dormant phase with this blog came about after completing and successfully defending my dissertation about Greene's use of lived life in her writings. In the interim I have started working for a university where I oversee a  new general education program while moonlighting as an adjunct teaching philosophy to artists and educators. I have been yearning to return to Living [Maxine] Greene knowing that it can help me keep the wide-awakeness burning bright in my work with students and colleagues. It took Pete Seeger to look me in the eye and get me to sing along with the chorus. 



To lend and transform

Maxine Greene often writes of the aesthetic encounter as "lending a work your life." What does it mean to lend your life to a work of art, or for that matter, an experience?

It speaks of  a temporary status as a loan implies a repayment or a giving back at some point. It may speak to the loaner’s giving over and doing without during the period of the loan. Yet at the same time, ownership is never questioned, is never transferred.

Can the act of loaning change the object that was loaned out? In some cases, the loan results in an expansion or increase in the object as when interest is paid. Greene seems to apply a sense of transformation--really, creativity--through the act when she writes:

In some fashion, as one attends, one lends the work one's life. Or one brings it into the world through a sometimes mysterious interpretive act in a space between oneself and the stage or the wall or the text (2001, p. 128).

So perhaps in lending a work of art your life, you are creating through the interpretive act another entity that isn't solely owned or connected to you and yourself or to the artist. It is an added dimension to the work of art and I would think, the loaned life of the attender. It is earnings on the loan, but it's a yield that is specific to the loaner and the work of art.

Just trying to work this through...

Disappointment as validity

I have recently submitted a draft of my dissertation chapter devoted to "data collection and analysis." This is the chapter where my research question is answered--what does Maxine Greene mean when she uses lived life in her writing? And the answer was not what I had hoped for at the start of this process.

It had been my hunch--maybe even my desire--at the start of this journey that lived life in Maxine Greene's writing would designate the time and place in which the individual is fully conscious in the existential sense of coming to be as a result of reflective practice. I had thought and wanted lived life to be the already reflected life that poised the individual to consider alternative realities. But my analysis kept on questioning at what point consciousness/the consideration of alternative realities emerges within lived life. The analysis was showing me that consciousness was occurring after lived life had been established. In the end, lived life was somewhat analogous to the pre-reflective state of Husserl's life-world and Merleau-Ponty's primordial silence. Somewhat analogous.

My interpretive work revealed to me that though lived life occupies the realm of the pre-reflective state, it is distinct from the other sensibilities that name the state life-world or primordial silence. In the end, for me, lived life in Greene's writing is fully connected to the idea of personhood and the essence of being as tied to action. The lived life is distinct to Greene's philosophy.

I stumbled though with trying to comprehend just what the pre-reflective state is in an existential consciousness. I eventually was able to conceptualize physically through a gesture/physical state that is linked to the moment prior to going on stage, to singing a song, to applying paint to a canvas. For me, it is the body lifted out of its gravitational pull into the hips (for women). In this place, the body can go anywhere: forward, backward, upward or downward. It's the moment before the choice of movement or direction has been decided or communicated to the brain.

It was interesting in talking about this process and discovery this week with a colleague at work. When I described to her my difficulty in comprehending the pre-reflective, she stated easily and eagerly "well, that's what most of life is and how we operate--in the pre-reflective." It was then that I realized that I have been living in a hyper-activated state for a few years now. The dissertation has me thinking and reflecting at every moment of repose (my morning showers are especially reflective). My new job has me analyzing and assessing the best course of action with everything I do. Even house chores have me thinking about the most time-efficient way of feeding the cat while thawing the turkey sausages and gathering the recycling for pick up the next morning.

I titled this post "Disappointment as validity." The idea of triangulation with hermeneutical work can be challenging. The researcher has to be cautious in regards to confirmation bias--not allowing the interpretation to play out as I would want it to. And so now that lived life isn't what I had thought and really, wanted it to be, I feel that I have brought a valid viewpoint to bear on my answer. And so my disappointment is my validity.

The action of art: Rosenberg & Greene

I have been reading Harold Rosenberg's "The American Action Painters" (1952). This essay manifests a moment that I take for granted. It's a moment distinguished by a uniquely American contemporary foray into modernism. I have found a couple of gems from this essay that speak to me:

"What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event."
Here Rosenberg might be providing an entry into the idea of the creative act. Notice that I use the word "act" here, a term/idea that is common in 2011 but may have its provenance with Rosenberg. (This startles me. Wow.) This brings to mind the active state that Greene and others ascribe to the doing of philosophy. It is dynamic, engaging, active, something fully realized.

"It is to be taken for granted that in the final effect, the image, whatever be or be not in it, will be a tension."
I'm drawn to this because of the use of tension. In my acting training at the Experimental Theatre Wing at New York City in the mid 1980s, I was mentored by wonderful teachers who applied a physical approach to acting. Many of them spoke of the wonder of tension and its usefulness to an actor. My prior training had been disparaging of tension. The training would focus on being relaxed so as to be open to what a scene partner may be imparting. But at ETW, they recognized the forcefulness, the theatricality, the heightened sensibility that tension afforded an actor. It is the filled stillness that I recounted in my dissertation  of Greene's Monday evening classes. Could this essay be where tension was finally lauded?

"A painting that is an act is inseparable from the biography of the artist."
Could this be the lived life?

Greene notes this essay in Teacher as Stranger (1973). The reference occurs within a chapter that highlights the new art forms of abstractions and happenings in the 1960s. Greene suggests that the spirit of these new art forms forced viewers to take on new perspectives of how they viewed art and the world around them and that the same spirit should be applied to education--students and teachers should also take on new perspectives.

But the essay also provides the gems that I found above as well as a lot of writing about consciousness and the conscious action that the new art had embodied. I can't help but to think that this essay was the tipping point of the break from the post-War/the man-in-the-grey-flannel-suit/Levittown sensibility that had been emblematic of the era.

It also sparks for me a sensation that I experienced in coming to understand these kinds of tipping points in the development of unique American art forms. It was years ago in Philadelphia at a booking conference for youth performances. The Lincoln center Institute had been invited to facilitate the conferences' professional development on the day prior to the conference. I was put in a group that was assigned to study Paul Taylor's "Aureole."

I had seen the dance performed a few months earlier at City Center's "Fall for Dance" series. My colleague and I weren't particularly taken by it. It seemed really balletic. Really traditional and usual and pastoral. We threw up our hands in a "meh" way on our walk down 6th Avenue after the performance. We were more excited by Les Grandes Ballets Canadiens as they had performed works by Ohad Naharin, whose unexpected jumps and cacophonies excited us.

But with the Lincoln Center Institute and my colleagues I cam to understand the significance of what "Aureole" was all about. What I passed off as balletic was actually ballet off-hinged. The dancers weren't traditionally turned out from the hips--their legs were perpendicular to the floor and their hips. The pastoral nature was pure movement of joy--not the tempered balletic sensibility of Tudor and others.

I came to understand that "Aureole" was a turning point in dance. What was "meh" in my uninformed viewing had been sensational in its debut. While I'm still not a fan of the dance, I truly admire what is happening within it.

These are tremendous moments. And these were occurring when Greene was, in my estimation, developing her philosophy, her voice.