Assistant Professor of Art and Art History and Emerging Media & Digital Arts David Bithell (by Rory N. Finney)

David Bithell Audio Introduction

Don’t let his baby face fool you. With an oeuvre rivaling even the most prolific of veteran creatives, David Bithell has performed his nearly fifty experimental theatre works, instrumental compositions, and structured music improvisations at ninety-five events around the globe. That includes venues in Belgium, Lithuania, France, and South Korea as well as stateside in New York City, Brooklyn, Boston, Princeton, Providence, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Miami, Austin, Dallas, San Francisco, Berkeley, and San Diego. Exhausted yet? Bithell isn’t. He’s just begun making his synaesthetic mark on the emerging genre of digital art, music, technology, and theatre he’s helping to define.

When we say “define,” we mean that literally—as in writing the definitions for “Experimental Music Theater” and “Intermedia Performance Art” in Oxford University Press’s forthcoming second edition of The Grove Dictionary of American Music. For Bithell, wedding these traditionally segregated disciplines through theatrical performance art is simply one more way to tell a story, evoking emotion by unfolding a meaningful narrative across a span of time.

He is obviously striking a chord that resonates, having been commissioned to produce works by nine different organizations and artists, ranging from WaterTower Theatre to Yarn/Wire music ensemble to violinist Mark Menzies to carillonneur Scott Paulson. Bithell has been funded by grants from the American Composers Forum, Centre National de Creation Musicale, the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, and the Hispanic and Global Studies Initiatives Fund.

Encapsulating excerpt (by David Bithell)

His repertoire includes Whistle from Above, the eye (unblinking), The Liminal Surface, The President Has His Photograph Taken, Encapsulating, and Situations [plural/fixed]. Whistle from Above features percussionists, musical robotics, lighting, and computer sound, while the eye (unblinking) involves six musicians and computer-controlled lighting. Comprising trumpet/actor, video, and interactive electronics, The President Has His Photograph Taken premiered at the IS ARTI Festival in Lithuania. Encapsulating is an interactive audio/video work composed to accompany choreography by Ellie Leonhardt. It premiered at the Dallas Museum of Art and was later performed at the DUMBO Dance Festival in Brooklyn. With Bithell on trumpet, Situations [plural/fixed] adds trombones, slide projection, and live electronic sound to create an enveloping sensory experience. It premiered at the 24th Annual Festival International des Musiques d’Aujourd’Hui MANCA in France.

With a PhD and MA in music composition from UC Berkeley and a BA in music with honors in composition from UCSD, Bithell brings extensive musical training to his vanguard works. He studied ethnomusicology, music composition, new technology, contemporary trumpet technique, conducting, improvisation, and contemporary performance studies with more than a dozen notable mentors, including Ed Harkins and Philip Larson.

Recipient of the UC Berkeley Eisner Prize for Excellence in the Creative Arts, Bithell has received numerous awards, including the Meet the Composer “Creative Connections” Award and Nichola De Lorenzo Prize for Music Composition. At UCSD, he was named the John Muir College Most Outstanding Senior. He also received the Department of Music’s Peter Farrell Award for Most Outstanding Senior and the Thomas Nee Award for Outstanding Contribution to the La Jolla Symphony.

The Townsend Center for the Humanities postdoctoral fellow is the founding coordinator of the Initiative for Advanced Research in Technology and the Arts (iARTA) and the founding principal investigator for an interdisciplinary research cluster at the University of North Texas. Bithell oversaw the development of MOEBIUS, a new academic journal focused on arts, technology, and critical theory. He co-organized the iARTA:LEAP Leadership Perspectives on Technology and Art Research symposium as well as co-producing the ART-TEC Dialogue Series.

Demonstration of The Liminal Surface (by David Bithell)

Bithell was artist-in-residence at Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology and a featured artist at the Dallas Museum of Art. He has presented seminars, workshops, and lectures across the US and at Hanyang University in Seoul, South Korea, and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Ghent) in Belgium.

The founding co-director and conductor of sfSound, Bithell served as guest conductor with the Nova Ensemble during the artist residencies for Mario Davidovsky, Augusta Read Thomas, and Boknam Lee. He was the orchestra manager for the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus and conductor/music director for the John Muir Musical Ensemble at UCSD.

Bithell has performed as a trumpet player with a dozen world-class ensembles and artists at nearly an equal number of venues. A former member of the traditional Javanese ensemble Gamelan Sari Raras, he played trumpet with the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus for four years.

Lest you think all of Bithell’s talents fall into the humanities sector, his technological credentials also impress. The head programmer for UC Berkeley’s Space Science Laboratory Sonification Project, Bithell received a CalSpace Summer Fellowship to develop solar sonification software. He designed and implemented a multichannel video matrix environment for live performance and developed a lab for Multimedia Physical Computing. Bithell is currently setting up a laboratory for emerging media and digital art at Southern Oregon University.

His articles have been published in Computer Music Journal and San Francisco Classical Voice as well as appearing in proceedings for the Biennial Symposium on Art and Technology and American Geophysical Union meeting. Bithell’s work has been featured in the following media: Computer Music Journal, Futurelab/VISION Magazine, KERA Public Radio’s Art&Seek Blog, KQED Radio Online, KQED Public Television, San Francisco Classical Voice, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Oklahoman, American Music, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Transbay Creative Music Calendar, and New Instruments for Musical Expression conference proceedings.

Bithell brings this arsenal of accomplishments, connections, and creative talent to bear on his enthusiastic teaching. He’s developed and taught courses such as Intermediate Performance Art; Intro to Electro-Acoustic Music; Art as Research: Experimental Music Theater and Multimedia Composition; Transcription, Quotation, and the Art of Musical Re-Use; and Physical Computing for Experimental Music and Intermedia. At SOU, Bithell is teaching Interactive Art, Robotic/Kinetic Art, Live Cinema, Interdisciplinary Collaboration, and Digital Performance. He is already laying the groundwork for future collaborations with Southern Oregon University creatives of all disciplines.

Conversation with David Bithell

E-interview conducted by Melissa L. Michaels in October 2011

Art speak with colleague Melissa Geppert (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: You have a PhD and MA in music composition from UC Berkeley as well as a BA in music from UCSD. How does someone with a background in music end up teaching digital art?

DB: Well … there are two answers to that. The more general answer is that I find all of the arts to be very close cousins. Sometimes the separation of disciplines into music, art, theatre, dance, etcetera hides a great deal of commonality in terms of ideas, methods, and modes of inquiry.

More specifically, I studied music composition and music technology but have always been interested in interdisciplinary practices. My background adds significantly to my current artistic voice—I create work in the fields of art, dance, and experimental theatre that are shaped by an intimate knowledge of how placing events in time and space can create meaning, emotion, and narrative. So this interest has led to more and more of my output being harder to define as simply “music” and more appropriately categorized as interdisciplinary practice. I’m very excited to be working in a department that values these things and that views the field of art as a truly evolving and expanding project.

Mentors Ed Harkins and Philip Larson; also with Deborah Kavasch and Linda Vickerman (courtesy of UCSD)

MM: Beginning with your childhood and “all that David Copperfield kind of crap” (as Holden Caulfield would say), what is the narrative that led you to pursue music, art, and technology? What are some of the pivotal, life-changing moments in that story?

DB: The most pivotal moment in this area (after abandoning an early interest in astrophysics one summer hiking in the Cascades!) was the extended interaction with my undergraduate trumpet professor at UCSD, Ed Harkins. While studying contemporary compositional practice and tools for incorporating music technology (largely from other faculty), Ed served as a remarkable model of someone who had developed a trans-disciplinary identity. His performance art duo [THE] with singer Philip Larson combined the virtuosity of contemporary musical practice with the absurdity of mid- to late century theatrical sensibility. This idea of applying the structure and technique of one discipline to the content of another has been continually rewarding in my own work.

Interdisciplinary dialogue with colleagues Robert Clift, Melissa Geppert, and Jackie Apodaca (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: You are the founding coordinator of the Initiative for Advanced Research in Technology and the Arts (iARTA). As you’ve already mentioned, you have a passion for bringing traditionally segregated disciplines together to create new forms that defy classification. Can you give some examples of cross-disciplinary projects you’ve been inspired by—as well as ones you’ve undertaken yourself?

DB: iARTA was set up as a vehicle to get faculty in arts and technology working together. It turns out that if you put a bunch of interesting people together in the same space, they often find fascinating ways of collaborating. This, of course, has happened many times before (I’m thinking of things like the Experiments in Art and Technology, which, in the 1960s, connected multidisciplinary artists with researchers from Bell Labs), and it is certainly happening at SOU through the Center for Emerging Media and Digital Art (eMDA).

This interdisciplinarity can work in a couple of ways: 1) by connecting technological practices with individual arts practices (e.g., sculptures that sense and respond to the presence of a viewer), and 2) by combining multiple artistic disciplines in new ways. In terms of the latter, the works that seem to inspire me the most lately come from theatre and dance. I’m continually excited by the interdisciplinary theatrical works of directors like Robert Lepage and Robert Wilson, the circus-influenced work of James Thiérée (grandson of Charlie Chaplin), and the Japanese dance-theatre troupe Dumb Type.

Personally, in addition to most of my creative work (which combines disciplines), I’ve had fun working on research projects connecting arts and technology ranging from the sonification of solar winds with UC Berkeley and NASA to designing interfaces for human computer interaction in my Liminal Surface project.

With The Liminal Surface (by Rory N. Finney); a performance utilizing The Liminal Surface at the 12th Biennial Symposium on Arts and Technology at Connecticut College (by David Bithell)

MM: Tell me about The Liminal Surface. What is it, exactly, and what kind of international attention has it attracted?

DB: The Liminal Surface is an ongoing project in collaboration with interactive media artist Ali Momeni. We studied music composition together at UC Berkeley and have both ended up teaching in art departments (Ali now teaches at Carnegie Mellon). The surface is an interface we designed to allow for a manner of tabletop theatre that combines contemporary music and theatre, performative sculpture, robotic musical instruments, and interactive software-enhanced performance. The tables are designed to accommodate a wide range of sensors that provide our specialized real-time audiovisual software with information about our physical gestures. At the same time, we can control motors, lights, and percussive strikers with musically precise timing.

We’ve had a lot of fun with the project so far and had some preliminary showings at the Ghent International Film Festival and the Ammerman Center for Art and Technology. It is a project that is constantly evolving, both in terms of writing pieces for the surfaces and the technology we’re using. We’re working through a new way of connecting components to the surface—once that is done, I envision turning most of our energy to a more active performance schedule.

(left to right) the eye (unblinking) and Whistle from Above (by David Bithell)

MM: Art/music projects such as Whistle from Above and the eye (unblinking) involve not only musicians but also computer “collaborators.” How has technology influenced contemporary art, and what role does it play in your creative process?

DB: Technology is, by definition, a tool. The pencil is, for example, a type of technology. It allows for certain things to happen more efficiently (e.g., pressing graphite onto a surface in a rather precise way) but isn’t good for everything (e.g., eating breakfast cereal!). The same is true with emerging technologies—including computers. Computers are now highly flexible, but they still have limitations. As such, the role of the artist is to be in an active dialogue with the tools they use in their practice, finding what computers do best and what they fail at.

Whistle from Above excerpt (by David Bithell)

For Whistle from Above and the eye (unblinking), I utilize computers for different purposes. In Whistle, the computer creates an electronic sound environment upon which the live performers play, and it synchronizes theatrical lighting and robotic musical instruments at the same time. The eye (unblinking) uses the computer as a novel type of musical score. Performance commands are sent individually to each of the six performers, prescribing the type and timing of their musical and theatrical actions. Since a majority of the performance happens in the dark, the technology allows for a type of coordination not possible with traditional sheet music.

So, for me, the role of technology changes from work to work. Usually, I begin with an overall artistic conception of the piece and then find technological solutions to certain aspects of the project. Occasionally, I stumble on a technological opportunity that suggests a work. The origin of the work can come either way. Once a work is started, though, a necessary and rewarding dialogue is played out between the vision of the work and the technologies used.

MM: You’ve developed and taught courses such as Intermediate Performance Art and Intro to Electro-Acoustic Music. What role does music play in your own performance art?

DB: Experimental music is the structural underpinning for much of my work. My favorite aspect of music is its ability to structure time. This is something that translates very effectively to other media. So, in addition to using music as one of many elements, my performance art uses time—and the unfolding of events across a span of time—in very musical ways.

(left to right) Sonoluminescence members Terry Longshore, Michael Maag, Suzee Grilley, Bruce Bayard, and Todd Barton

MM: Are you familiar with Sonoluminescence, a hybrid group of musicians and artists who create experiential performance pieces? SOU music professors Terry Longshore and Todd Barton are both members, as are artist Bruce Bayard, dancer Suzee Grilley, and video projector Michael Maag. Like you, they’re seeking to merge various creative media into a collective performance art. I’d be curious to hear what you think of their work if you’ve had an opportunity to experience it.

DB: I’m good friends with Terry (we were both at UCSD at the same time), and it’s great to have him as a colleague now. I haven’t had a chance to see this group yet, though I’ve heard a lot about them. Their type of cross-disciplinary performance is right up my alley, though. It’s wonderful to have so much like this already happening in town!

Encapsulating still (by David Bithell)

MM: You’ve described pieces like The President Has His Photograph Taken and Encapsulating as interactive projects. How does the interactive component technically function for each of these pieces, and what has been the response of audiences to these artworks?

DB: Both of these works, though very different in attitude, have provoked very positive responses from our audiences.

The first plays with technology like a magician plays with cards. You’re meant to never quite know who or what is in control—and there is always something up my sleeve.

Encapsulating, however, uses interactivity as a tool to generate a visual environment for dance. Composed in collaboration with my wife, choreographer and dancer Ellie Leonhardt, the technology presents live video that is parsed into a series of slowly moving columns. These columns freeze her live image as they pass, “encapsulating” her movement into still frames. We’re actually going to be performing this in SOU’s Music Recital Hall as a part of a new music concert organized by Terry Longshore and Tessa Brinckman.

Getting inspired with Melissa Geppert, Jackie Apodaca, and Robert Clift (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: There is a definite movement in art and theatre to create increasingly interactive pieces that engage the audience in concrete ways. Do you think that is a response to the widespread apathy toward art prevalent in younger generations of viewers, who themselves have become accustomed to interactivity through video games? Or is it simply the next evolutionary step as media transitions from static to dynamic formats?

DB: I think the interest in interactivity is more driven by artists’ interest in these forms rather than an attempt to woo new generations to art. Younger artists themselves have a wide range of experience with interactive media and are, as a result, more inclined to utilize them in their works. It is like the generation of composers (now in their fifties) who grew up playing rock and roll in their basements, went on to study classical music, then—surprise!—found ways of incorporating popular music into their own works (e.g., composers like David Lang and the whole Bang on a Can scene in New York). We are influenced by the things we encounter.

I would pause before saying interactive works are an “evolutionary” step. Traditional media are still very much alive and remain critically engaged with contemporary issues. Maybe it is just an “expansionary” step as the range of materials with which artists create meaning continues to grow.

At the podium in the Center for the Visual Arts (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: What are some of the courses you’re teaching at SOU, and what kinds of activities do you hope to engage your students in?

DB: As I work on setting up a laboratory for emerging media and digital art (one that I expect students to be a major part of!), I’ll be teaching a number of courses to get students making more art/theatre/music with new technologies. This fall, I’m offering an introduction to programming for artists aimed at creating interactive video works (Art 399 – Interactive Art) and supervising individual projects in digital art (Art 450 / EMDA 350 – Special Projects). In coming terms, I’ll be team-teaching a number of eMDA introductory courses in digital media as well as teaching topical courses on Robotic/Kinetic Art (Winter 2012 – Art 399), Live Cinema (Spring 2012 – Art 399), Interdisciplinary Collaboration, and Digital Performance.

MM: Sounds like fun! What are you most looking forward to experiencing during your first year at Southern Oregon University?

DB: I am already excited by the energy of our students and their engagement in class and out of class. Having just moved from Texas, I’m also looking forward to seeing snow. And mountains. And mountains in the snow …

Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Language, Literature, and Philosophy Department Devora Shapiro (by Jeremy Speer)

Devora Shapiro Audio Introduction

How does a theatre geek with a penchant for the sciences end up as a philosopher? Well, by way of the pre-med program at Johns Hopkins University. That’s where Devora Shapiro started as a chemistry and philosophy double major, only to realize she had been studying philosophy all along in the form of theatre—from Sartre to Shakespeare to Aristophanes, with a helping of absurdist and existentialist plays on the side. 

Seduced by Kantian aesthetics, Shapiro soon developed expertise in social and feminist epistemology, philosophy of sexuality, philosophy of science, and modern philosophy from Descartes to Kant. Her obsession with conceptual structures and models for interpreting the world led to a focus on experiential knowledge in her PhD dissertation, “Experiential Knowledge: The Knowledge of ‘What It’s Like.’” There, she argued that a theory of knowledge must also account for the messy, the complicated, and the personal to be truly complete.

Shapiro obtained her PhD in philosophy from the University of Minnesota, where she was awarded a Swenson-Kierkegaard Fellowship, a Graduate Research Partnership Program Grant, and a Graduate Student Grant from the Central American Philosophical Association’s Society for Analytic Feminism. She earned her MA in philosophy and medical ethics from the University of Tennessee following her BA in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University.

A member of the North American Society for Social Philosophy and the Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love, Shapiro previously served on the Conference Committee for the Society for Women in Philosophy. She sat on Institutional Review Boards at two prior institutions and belonged to the University of Minnesota’s Feminist Philosophy Group.

Just this past year, Shapiro presented “The Arbitration of Experiential Knowledge” at the International Social Philosophy Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and “Experiential Knowledge, Narrative, and Its Uses in the Classroom” at the Minnesota State College and University System Conference. Other intriguing talks include “Introducing X-Experiential Knowledge,” “Stars upon Thars: Artificial Wombs as a Breeding Ground for Class Struggle,” “Lockean Mechanism: A Mechanism of Substance,” and “The Genetic Person.” Shapiro also served as a commentator on Minnesota Philosophical Society presentations “Knowledge Does Not Imply Truth” and “So Good it’s Bad.”

Her coauthored chapter, “Gender Issues in Corporate Leadership,” will appear in the forthcoming Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics. “The Communication and Arbitration of Experiential Knowledge” is currently under review by the Journal of Social Philosophy.

Shapiro has taught Philosophy and Sexuality; History of Philosophy: Modern Period; Formal Logic and Accelerated Formal Logic; Business Ethics; and Critical Thinking. During her first year at SOU, she is teaching Ethics, Moral Theory, Feminism and Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, History of Philosophy, and Logic. Shapiro looks forward to helping students with passions ranging from the sciences to the arts discover the unifying and original discipline of philosophy.

Conversation with Devora Shapiro

E-interview conducted by Melissa L. Michaels in October 2011

(left to right) Jean-Paul Sartre (courtesy of Wikipedia), Shakespeare (by John Taylor), and bust of Aristophanes (courtesy of Michael Lahanas)

MM: What inspired you to enter the field of philosophy? Has this been a lifelong pursuit?

DS: I found philosophy in a roundabout way initially. As a high school student, I spent nearly all of my academic time doing work in the sciences, and every bit of every other portion of my day in the theatre. When it came time to apply to colleges, I had offers for theatre scholarships, but I was also interested in going to medical school. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to study theatre or be a doctor, so I did the only sensible thing I could: I applied early decision to the best pre-med program there was. Acceptance through early decision was binding, so when I got in, I had to go, and I had no choice about it.

I entered as a chemistry and philosophy double major, and when my father laughed at me and told me I didn’t even know what philosophy was, I told him this might be so, but I was still pretty sure I’d be good at it. In fact, I, too, had thought I’d never read any philosophy before. As I went through my philosophy education, however, I slowly realized I had actually been reading philosophy all along. While in high school, my audition piece was Sartre’s Electra from The Flies. I had adapted and directed Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, and I was very focused on Shakespeare, which I had performed and directed as well. I had also studied absurdist and existentialist plays as well as methods of acting. And all of these things, I slowly realized, were quite philosophical.

My focus in college was initially on literature and philosophy, the history of philosophy, and German philosophy. As I progressed in my science and math coursework, however, I slowly began to realize I was always mainly interested in the conceptual structures of the theories and the methodological choices in the scientific studies I was presented with. I finally realized my interests were so disparate that I needed to figure out what all of it had in common. And the only thing that really united all of my interests was my obsession with conceptual structures and models for interpreting the world. All of what I had always been doing really boiled down to philosophy.

And so I suppose philosophy has likely been a lifelong pursuit for me, but for at least part of that time, I was unaware of it. We’ll have to discuss whether knowing that you are in pursuit is a requirement for being in pursuit, but that’s a separate question

(left to right) René Descartes (by Frans Hals) and Immanuel Kant (courtesy of Tischbeinahe)

MM: (laughs) You’ve specialized in modern philosophy from Descartes to Kant. Which philosopher, when you first encountered his or her work, spoke most profoundly to you?

DS: This question is easy: Kant. I started off with the Critique of Pure Reason, but I have to admit it was Kant’s aesthetics that actually really interested me. The Critique of Judgment is still one of my favorite philosophical works, and though Kant is no longer the central historical figure in my own work, I think that deep down, I will always be a little bit Kantian.

MM: Can you recall an epiphany you experienced while reading a certain passage in a philosophical text?

DS: I’m not sure I’ve ever had an epiphany sparked by a particular philosophical text. Most of mine are the result of people asking “the wrong question.” Recognizing that an approach to a problem is mistaken, for me, is usually the first step toward realizing there might be a better solution that offers improved explanatory power.

Sometimes, though, I just take a nap. I find it’s really the best way to make sense of the insensible.

(left to right) David Hume (courtesy of Wikipedia), Archimedes (by Domenico Fetti), and John Locke (courtesy of Wikipedia)

MM: Agreed! You list feminist epistemology and philosophy as one of your areas of expertise. How would you describe feminist epistemology to the layperson?

DS: Well, “epistemology” generally, refers to the study of knowledge: what we can know, how we can know it, what it consists of, etc. Traditionally, though, its scope has been fairly limited. In the history of Western philosophy, the search for knowledge begins with the Greeks and generally picks up again with modern philosophers such as Locke and Hume, to name a couple. These philosophers focused mainly on knowledge from what some call an Archimedean point: a point situated above our heads, from which one can see “objectively.”

This goal of objectivity, and the expectation that it reasonably can be achieved, has left many people out of epistemology, however. What I mean by this is that what people mean when they claim something is “objective” is that something is “standard,” untainted by personal feelings, perspectives, or unique points of view. But what we take to be the untainted “standard” is often just the dominant view—the view held by those who feel their physical and cultural difference least, those of a more powerful class, etc. What this means in the Western world is that the “objective” world—the standard—would generally reflect the experience of someone who is of a racially dominant group, from an upper economic status, male, raised from a vaguely Christian religious perspective, and so forth.

Feminist epistemology, first of all, points this out, and then goes on to point out all of the parts of the world and ways of viewing it that expectations and epistemologies based on these mistaken premises leave out. Feminist epistemology is actually only sometimes focused on women (though women were absolutely responsible for the beginnings of the tradition), and in fact it is often more focused on race, culture, gender, and sexuality.

Finally, feminist epistemology fundamentally questions the subordination of feeling and emotion beneath reason, and it asks whether perhaps our knowledge of the world comes not just through what we can understand from the cold gaze of reason but also from the human experience of a living, breathing, sexed, raced, messy, and real person.

(left to right) Louise Weiss and fellow suffragettes in 1935 (courtesy of Keystone), Sojourner Truth (by Randall Studio), 1970 women’s liberation demonstration in Washington, DC (courtesy of the Library of Congress), Bikini Kill lead singer Kathleen Hanna (by Denis Gray), and Dhaka rally organized by Jatiyo Nari Shramik Trade Union Kendra (National Women Workers Trade Union Centre)

MM: Well-put. It seems everyone has a different definition of feminism, and with each new wave, the movement continues to transform and evolve. What does feminism mean to you?

DS: Feminism is a movement that has traversed many historical periods, petered out, gone underground, and then popped up once more to try again. What we think of as second-wave feminism (bra-burning, mainly upper-class, white women) is responsible for starting the current train we’re riding, but it has been succeeded by third-wave feminism (postcolonial feminism), and perhaps now by something else. People lately have begun to call it post-feminism, which I find both sad and frightening. What feminism ultimately means to me is just that we are still paying attention.

MM: Your dissertation is titled “Experiential Knowledge: The Knowledge of ‘What It’s Like.’” First of all, is experiential the same as empirical knowledge, or is there a distinction? And secondly, can you summarize your thesis and what you discovered about experiential knowledge?

DS: Experiential and empirical knowledge are not the same. They don’t really run parallel to one another, so it might be confusing to contrast them with one another. Empirical knowledge is just knowledge gained from our experience of the world. This could be knowledge from scientific observation, from basic interaction with our environment, from running into one tree and thinking it might be good to avoid the next.

Experiential knowledge has obviously got something to do with experience, but it is a particular sort of knowledge that isn’t often discussed and is often discounted. Most of what philosophers put under the heading “knowledge” is what we think of as propositional knowledge. It’s “knowledge that …”—and we generally decide whether someone has it by considering whether the statement “S knows that p” is true. Experiential knowledge, though, has more to do with the understanding. It captures the content of all that other stuff that makes up our knowledge of the world from the particular experience of person, in a particular body, living in a real world, and growing in understanding of how one can interact with the world and how one is connected to others in the world.

When we find ourselves saying, “Ahh, I know what you mean,” we are expressing an understanding that goes beyond what can be captured in a sentence and that doesn’t fit comfortably under the headings of “true” or “false.” Further, the fact that we discount this kind of knowledge, preferencing “standard” claims and “objective” statements, often leads us to discount the knowledge of those who are most often forgotten and whose voices are less often heard. Accepting experiential knowledge as real and legitimate, therefore, is important to issues of social justice. And that, in summary, is the thesis of my dissertation.

MM: Some people would assume philosophy is primarily an academic discipline with few practical applications or connections to the community. And yet, one would be hard-pressed to find a subject more fundamental to our very being—or society, for that matter. What would you say to people who don’t recognize the significance of philosophy to their daily lives?

DS: Philosophy is often forgotten and pushed aside because it seems so abstract and vague from a distance. Philosophy, however, underlies all of the academic disciplines and is actually the original discipline. But just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s valuable. It turns out that it’s actually quite useful, though, and even more necessary than people realize. Philosophy, first of all, teaches how to ask good questions. Philosophy as a method for inquiry and analysis teaches us to organize our thoughts, interpret the world with focus, and critically assess the value of the arguments and messages we receive from our politicians, scientists, car salesman, etc. As a historical body of work, philosophy takes us through the evolution of the ideas that built our society, and it allows us to see our questions considered, developed, and rephrased. Still not convinced? It can help you improve your GRE and LSAT scores. Big time.

Assistant Professor of Spanish Ariel Tumbaga, Foreign Languages and Literatures Program in the Language, Literature, and Philosophy Department (by Rory N. Finney)

Ariel Tumbaga Audio Introduction

Ariel Tumbaga Audio Introduction (Spanish Version) (en Español)

If you go with third-wave feminism’s inclusive definition of seeking equality for all—regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, or creed—then Ariel Tumbaga could be seen as a feminist extraordinaire. He exposes the bigoted stereotypes present in literary representations of indigenous peoples, instead illuminating the identity expressed by the indigenous cultures themselves. He draws on Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe to critique gender inequality in the Mexican patriarchy. Tumbaga combats the ignorant belief in phrenology still clung to by many older Mexicans. Coming from a working-class Mexican family, he challenges the academic elitism evident in the oft-revered José Enrique Rodó’s Ariel. In short, Tumbaga unmasks the cultural prejudices that disempower the vulnerable and impede the struggle for social justice.

His PhD dissertation examines how Yaqui people are portrayed in three different contexts: “The Yaqui Warrior Myth: Literary Representation of Yaquis in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Mexican and Chicana/o Literatures and Cultural Production.” Prior to earning his PhD in Hispanic languages and literatures from UCLA, Tumbaga completed his BA in Spanish and French literature as well as an MA in Spanish literature from UCSD. His understanding of French literature and philosophy helped inform his master’s thesis, “Construcciones estéticas: el cuerpo y el espacio en Los de abajo y El águila y la serpiente,” which drew inspiration from Gaston Bachelard and Auguste Comte.

As an undergraduate, Tumbaga was awarded a Students for Economic Justice Internship, planting an awareness of the connected learning so central to a Southern Oregon University education. He received UCLA Alumni Foundation, Shirley Arora, and Rae Hepps fellowships, in addition to being named a UCLA Faculty Fellow in 2009–2010.

The quatrilingual Tumbaga speaks Spanish, French, Portuguese, and English. His recent article “Arraigamiento: Contesting Hegemonies in Alfredo Véa Jr.’s La Maravilla” is currently under review, and “Relación de Chimalhuacán o pueblo de San Andrés Apóstol (1579)” appeared in CECI (Centro de Estudios Coloniales Iberoamericanos).

Over the past five years, Tumbaga has averaged two conference presentations a year, with titles ranging from “Tambor y Sierra: In Search of an Indigenous Revolution in Mexican Literature” to“El ciclo yaqui: Intellectual Authority in Mexican and Chicana/o Representations of Yaquis” to “Re-Territorializing Sonora: Indigenous Topographies in Cajeme: novela de indios” to “Brown Pride: The History of U.S. Colorism Ideologies.”

Although he is a Spanish professor, his past courses and scholarship demonstrate a cross-disciplinary breadth that encompasses language, literature, sociology, Native American studies, history, philosophy, cultural studies, political science, and anthropology. He is currently teaching Recent Representations of “the Indian” in Latin America, and he will teach a course for the Native American studies program next term. At previous institutions, he taught Twentieth Century Mexican Literature, Mediterranean and Pre-Columbian Myths in Latin American Literature, Civilization of Spanish America and Brazil, and Culture and Ethnicity.

In his classes, Tumbaga complements the literature curriculum with news reports that underscore the themes of the novel, such as one story in which Latin America gender inequalities become poignantly real as a grieving Mexican mother laments that it was her “little men” rather than her daughters who were killed. He brings politics into play by integrating contemporary examples such as Bolivian indigenous groups’ resistance efforts against water rights infringements.

Tumbaga’s classroom discussions spill over into students’ lives as they examine their own cultural preconceptions. Their awareness expands to embrace the “other” as they consider what role they will play in the grand global battle to achieve justice and equality for all.

Conversation with Ariel Tumbaga

E-interview conducted by Melissa L. Michaels in October 2011

A bit of Portuñol (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: You are quatrilingual: Spanish, French, Portuguese, and English. How did you become such a linguaphile—and what role did nature and nurture play in forming that penchant for languages?

AT: Well, I am primarily multilingual because of my academic training. I had migrated from México not speaking English, and I had an interest in the French language early on in college. The UCLA doctorate program also required me to learn Portuguese, much of which I have lost due to lack of practice. I do try to say “Bom día” and “Como fica você?” to the very nice Portuguese man working at the Grower’s Market, who actually tries to practice his Spanish with me. The result is a lively and humorous ten minutes of Portuñol.

(left to right) Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre meeting with Ernesto Che Guevara (courtesy of Museo Che Guevara); Émile Zola (courtesy of Van Nuytts); and Emiliano Zapata (courtesy of Blurpeace)

MM: After earning your bachelor’s in Spanish and French literature, there must have come a point in your academic career when you had to step back and choose which language to focus your graduate studies on: Spanish or French. How did you arrive at Spanish, and was that a difficult decision?

AT: As an undergrad, I really enjoyed learning about important French writers. I remember being one of the few students in Professor Jaime Concha’s Spanish literature class at UCSD who had read some Sartre or knew something about Zola. I have to admit to feeling proud and smart.

Though I never became an expert in French literature, it has proven helpful to know it. For example, my MA thesis relied partly on Gaston Bachelard’s La Poétique de l’Espace and refers to Cours de Philosophie Positive by Auguste Comte. Today, when teaching Rosario Castellanos’s Balún Canán, in addition to my knowledge of Mexican state Indigenismo practices, I still talk about Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe to explain the author’s perspective of women’s roles within the Mexican patriarchy.

I decided ultimately to pursue Spanish literary studies because I felt a level of cultural identification with many of the Latin American texts I was reading (even when the texts uncomfortably questioned cultural norms). So while French studies attracted me through its exciting difference, Latin American literature drew me both because of its cultural familiarity and diversity. The vocabulary and history can differ so sharply between literature written in México and Argentina, for example.

Concepts of race, culture, and national identity have similar roots throughout Latin America but play out distinctively on national and regional levels. All Latin American nations had revolutions, independence, and caudillos, yet there is but one Emiliano Zapata. We all have the incredible impact of the Spanish Catholicism, but there is only one Santa Teresa de Cabora (from Sinaloa and Sonora), and no one can doubt the uniqueness of Brazilian Candomblé or the Argentine pronunciation of the ‘ll’ (double ‘l’).

Choosing Spanish over French was initially a bit difficult because learning a language and studying French literature, music, and film is such an investment. Not being able to practice French regularly diminishes my fluency on all levels. In graduate school, however, I quickly became very happy with my decision.

(left to right) Book covers from El águila y la serpiente (courtesy of Casiopea), Ariel (courtesy of CreateSpace), and Todo Calibán (courtesy of Clacso)

MM: What book has had the most profound influence on your life?

AT: There are so many books that I would find it extremely difficult to choose just one. In my academic life, I would have to go with Martín Luis Guzmán’s El águila y la serpiente, which spans the Mexican revolutionary movement through the author’s view of the Mexican Revolution’s forces; the Yaqui soldiers atop a train and the frightening grimace of Pancho Villa; the accordion-like shape of a sleeping infantryman’s legs; and the offended pride of Emiliano Zapata when told a horse saddle better suits him than the presidential throne.

Criminal Man According to the Classification of Césare Lombroso (1911) also impacted me greatly because this text partly explained to me the popular Latin American beliefs (hopefully now waning) in phrenology, and the influence of phenotype and race to judge one’s character, intellectual capacity, and criminal tendencies. These beliefs are still present today among older Mexicans (though perhaps not as strongly as in the past) and can be found in the early twentieth century literature of México: the size of a character’s forehead, his/her eyes, and dark skin tend to indicate intellectual and moral inferiority. Lombroso attributed crime to atavism—a leap backward in evolution—which is ironic considering the refined levels of corporate and state crime today.

José Enrique Rodó’s Ariel (1900) also had an impression on me because of the way he describes an intellectual caste that should somehow have great influence over the barbarous masses. Before reading Retamar’s response to Rodó (Calibán), I recall feeling an academic-class elitism at work while most of my fellow grad students felt inspiration. Coming from a working-class Mexican family, the only thing I had in common with Rodo’s “Ariel” was my first name.

(left to right) A group of Yaqui, circa 1910 to 1950 (courtesy of the Library of Congress); Gen. Alfaro Obregon and his Yaqui staff (Library of Congress)

MM: Interesting—I was going to ask if there was a relationship with your name! Now, can you explain the crux of your PhD dissertation, “The Yaqui Warrior Myth: Literary Representation of Yaquis in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Mexican and Chicana/o Literatures and Cultural Production?”

AT: What sparked this topic was the abundant presence of Yaquis in anthropological, political, and literary texts of the nineteenth and twentieth century in México as well as the lack of its research in the literary field. My dissertation collects depictions of Yaquis in three literary genres—Mexican novel of the revolution, indigenista literature, and Chicana/o literature—and analyzes these depictions through the ideologies pertinent to each historical era.

I approach these representations through the question of myth (per Roland Barthes) as the altering of the concept of “lo yaqui” (all things Yaqui) to mean something outside itself. As a point of comparison, I propose that Yaqui origin myths, legends, and other traditional stories are examples of Yaqui self-representations and a way of highlighting a complex ancient culture.

For example, the concept of civilización y barbarie is abundant in historical and political texts dealing with Yaquis and other indigenous people in the early twentieth century, as is Científico Positivism and Social Darwinism. This explains the almost cultureless representation of Yaquis in the novel of the Mexican Revolution.

I study Indigenista literary depictions of Yaquis through the lens of post-Revolution anthropological studies, whose goal it was to unite the vast Mexican nation through the integration of its indigenous population. These texts usually depict Yaquis as a hopelessly backward and violent people who also possess a beautiful dance culture. This is what I call a Mexican Yaqui Warrior Myth, which is continued by some Chicana/o writers.

I end by demonstrating how a small community of Chicana/o writers of Yaqui descent create Yaqui characters with elaborate cultural-historical backgrounds. Even when depicting Yaqui warriors, Chicano-Yaqui writers tend to undercut the Yaqui Warrior Myth by referring to traditional origin stories, history, and religion (via dance or ritual) as a form of identity and a counterhegemonic instrument.

Yaqui ceremonial dress (by Carolyn Leigh, courtesy of RimJournal) 

MM: Can you describe the Yaquis’ poetic division of the world (anía) into five separate worlds—the desert wilderness, the mystical, the flower, the dream, and the night? How has the introduction of Catholicism transformed their beliefs?

AT: Sure. My research focuses on how Mexican literature ignores this ancient heritage as well as the recovery thereof by Chicana/o writers of Yaqui descent. I explore the importance of huya anía (wilderness world) and sea anía (flower world) in Yaqui culture through origin stories and what I have been able to learn about the Pascola and Maso (or Deer Dancer).

Mexican indigenista politics and literature, albeit very interesting and even beautiful at times, often carry out a type of cultural erasure that ignores pre-Columbian religion and rites. Chicano-Yaqui writers recover origin stories, like that of Omteme, the angry ancestor who confronts none other than Christopher Columbus himself within a Yoeme dream world. This yo anía is revisited by Alfredo Véa Jr. and Luis Valdez in his ambitious theatrical piece Mummified Deer, which features a Deer Dancer who exists in an old Yaqui woman’s dream state. Similarly, Alma Luz Villanueva ostentatiously embraces a Yaqui identity instead of a general Chicana/o indigenous mestizaje, which usually is represented through Aztec symbols.

As for the question of Catholic influence, it was the Jesuits whom the Yaquis first permitted into their territory. When the Jesuits were expelled, the church found it difficult to fill the ecclesiastical void, resulting in a Yaqui autonomous religion that included pre-Columbian beliefs. Thus the appearance of the Deer Dancer within the Church during the Easter ceremony. Similarly, some origin stories about magical animals and brujos contain Catholic motifs.

MM: One of the first courses you are teaching at SOU is Recent Representations of “the Indian” in Latin America. Can you talk a bit about what you cover in that class?

AT: This course is ambitious in its span. I focus on twentieth century representations of indigenous people, beginning with Latin American thinkers such as Cuban José Martí, Peruvian José Carlos Mariátegui, and Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio. I am hoping to help students understand why Latin Americans traditionally shy away from indigenous identities by demonstrating the sometimes obviously concealed instances of the concept of civilización y barbarie. This concept promotes a Europeanized sense of cultural and even racial superiority and a belief in a base American indigeneity, a powerful force in the Latin American popular and intellectual imaginaries.

The first half of the class deals with this concept in anthropology and literature. The second half addresses the indigenous experience in Central America, as in the case of Guatemala during the violencia of the 1980s. Students then will see the effects of international markets on indigenous identities in Ecuador and Bolivia in recent years. US and Mexican concepts of indigenous people appear quite foreign in contrast with the high level of organization of Ecuador’s CONAIE (Confederacion de nacionalidades indigenas del Ecuador ) or the massive political agency displayed by the communities in Bolivia in response to infringements on their water rights.

Deep in discussion with LLP colleague Margaret Perrow (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: SOU is different from many institutions in that it has forged a coalition of three traditionally isolated disciplines in the Language, Literature, and Philosophy Department. Students still major in specific foreign languages or English and writing, but the cross-disciplinary nature of the department inspires a broader and perhaps deeper ethos that infuses the individual fields. How does this approach suit your particular teaching philosophy?

AT: One thing I believe about learning is the need for a low affective filter, which is the need to learn in a reduced stress environment. What the Language, Literature, and Philosophy Department provides students with is the ability to take advanced classes with those professors who may have taught them in beginning language courses. This can be a great advantage in that students enter the classroom already knowing their instructor, his/her personality, and style of teaching. That, and a level of collegiality, can really make a difference for a student.

Elucidating a concept (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: How do you inspire students to arrive at that “aha” moment, when they’re suddenly struck by an epiphany that helps them connect language, literature, and the larger world with their own personal lives and experiences?

AT: I believe in contextualizing and historicizing literary and culture courses. This being the case, I have frequently received feedback from students who openly amazed will say, “I didn’t know that!” or “Now I understand why…”

Sometimes it is a literary issue, as in the ethnographic work Juan Pérez Jolote and the types of narrative it conceals. And other times it may be more cultural. In Rosario Castellano’s Balún Canán, students read about a girl protagonist who realizes her secondary status when her brother dies and her mother becomes indifferent toward her. I follow this up first by inviting personal experiences of gender inequality, and then with a 2010 news article in which the Mexican federal army accidently fires on a family’s vehicle, killing two of the five children, both boys. The grieving mother announces to a reporter, “¿Por qué no me hicieron el favor de tirarme por enfrente para que mejor nos mataran a todos porqué nomás a mis dos niños? Tengo tres niñas, me quitaron a mis únicos hombrecitos.” This translates roughly to, “Why didn’t they do me the favor of shooting at us from in front to better kill us all. Why only my two boys? I have three girls, they took my only little men.” This often has the effect of demonstrating the recentness of Latin America gender inequalities, while helping them understand that the novelist is not just rendering a personal opinion. Yes, sometimes culture and literature is best illustrated with extra-textual examples.

Associate Professor of Native American Studies Wesley Leonard (by Rory N. Finney)

Wesley Leonard Audio Introduction

Wesley Leonard almost became a seismologist. But then he discovered linguistics while attending Miami University in Ohio. Growing up half-Japanese and half-Miami, Leonard has been navigating multiple languages and cultures since childhood, when his grandfather—a Miami tribe chief—taught him his first handful of words in a language linguistic databases once described as “extinct.” Resurrected from written documentation after a three-decade silence, Myaamia is a living language today, thanks in no small measure to Leonard’s contributions.

As a linguistic anthropologist, Leonard has devoted his career to the reclamation of Native American languages. He examines issues of language from an anthropological point of view, and his cross-disciplinary skills enable him to teach not only Native American studies but also international studies and anthropology courses.

His PhD dissertation, “Miami Language Reclamation in the Home: A Case Study,” serves as one of the research pillars of the Miami language reclamation movement. After completing his BA in linguistics and French (literature) at Miami University, Leonard earned both his PhD and MA in linguistics from UC Berkeley. His numerous awards include Ford Foundation and University of California Chancellor’s Opportunity predoctoral fellowships as well as a Crane Award from the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma Education Committee. The Linguistic Society of America Committee for Endangered Languages and Their Preservation presented Leonard with a special award during the 2006 Georgetown University Roundtable on Linguistics Conference. As an undergraduate, he received the Outstanding Senior in Linguistics Award from the Miami University Department of English.

Leonard has chaired the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma Language Committee since 2004. He served as a steering committee member and instructional faculty for the Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages. Leonard was co-director of the Miami Language and Culture Youth Annual Eewansaapita Educational Program and co-organizer of the international Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Conference. He has been a team mentor for Yowlumni Team, a master-apprentice language immersion program that pairs native speakers of US indigenous languages with a younger person. Leonard also worked on the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma NAGPRA Documentation Project for the Miami Tribal Museum. He was an L. Thomas Frye scholar-in-residence at the Oakland Museum of California.

His most recent refereed article, “Challenging ‘Extinction’ through Modern Miami Language Practices,” was published in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal earlier this year. Others include “Making ‘Collaboration’ Collaborative: An Examination of Perspectives That Frame Field Research” in Language Documentation and Conservation; “When Is an ‘Extinct Language’ Not Extinct?: Miami, a Formerly Sleeping Language” in Sustaining Linguistic Diversity: Endangered and Minority Languages and Language Varieties; and “‘What Does It Mean to Be ______?’ Framing Language Reclamation for Everybody’s Empowerment” in Gender and Language.

Traveling frequently to Japan as a child prepared Leonard for his cross-country jetting as an academic. Sporting intriguing titles such as “Grammar Without Tears” and “I heart this camp,” his dozens of conference presentations and invited lectures have whisked Leonard to cities such as Honolulu, Ann Arbor, Philadelphia, Davis, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Diego, Albuquerque, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Washington, DC, and Gatineau, Québec.

From 1998 to 2000, Leonard served as coordinator for international relations in Yukuhashi, Japan, where he also lived. Leonard created a homestay program that brought a group of Japanese adults to Oklahoma, where they visited and enjoyed a cultural exchange with the Miami tribe.

In addition to Miami, English, and Japanese, Leonard also speaks French, Chinese (Mandarin), and Korean, making him sextalingual. His areas of expertise comprise endangered language theory and language reclamation, language acquisition, language and ethnicity/identity, sociolinguistics, language policy, indigenous community development/decolonization, museum studies, public education, and field research methods and ethics.

He has taught such courses as Politics of Endangered Languages; Japanese Society; Native America Meets the Europeans; and Thinking, Doing, and Living Linguistic Anthropology.

Leonard has been thinking, doing, and living linguistic anthropology his entire life. His grandfather would be proud to witness the blossoming of that handful of Myaamia seeds he planted in his curious grandchild. Today, Leonard honors generations of displaced, dispossessed, and downtrodden Miami ancestors as he proclaims, “myaamiaatawiaanki noonki kaahkiihkwe”—“We speak Miami today.”

Conversation with Wesley Leonard

E-interview conducted by Melissa L. Michaels in October 2011

Chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet (by Melroch)

MM: What first drew you to linguistics? Did you find yourself falling in love with languages as a child?

WL: It would make for a great story if I could talk about my childhood love of languages and how I taught myself the International Phonetic Alphabet as a child because I thought it was so cool, but nothing like that really happened. My life in linguistics came later, and I’ve never been entirely sure exactly how it all came to be. I didn’t even know such a field existed until I was in college, and until that time, I always thought I’d become a seismologist.

Now that I think about it, however, there was a series of circumstances that informed the professional life I have today, so let me say a bit about my past. My father, who is a Miami tribal member, was in the US Navy, and in the early 1970s, he was stationed in Japan, where he met and later married my mother, who is Japanese. This is why I have Miami-Japanese heritage, and this has fostered a lot of interesting things in terms of language.

Before I go into that, I’m guessing many people will not be familiar with Miami people, so let me first provide an overview. The Miamis are a North American indigenous group with ancestral homelands in present-day Ohio and Indiana (with no connection to Miami, Florida), and both our people and our language are called “Miami.” As with many other tribes, a portion of the Miami community was forced to leave our homelands as the United States expanded westward, and my ancestors were among the group who ended up in northeast Oklahoma after two removals. This is why I am a citizen of the nation officially called the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, even though I’m not personally from Oklahoma. I was born close to there in southwestern Missouri, but I grew up in the ancestral Miami homelands because my family moved to Ohio when I was young.

Moving back to my story … I was a Japanese-Miami child with strong influence from both parts of my heritage. I spoke Japanese at home with my mother, and most of my Japanese relatives are—for lack of a better term—very Japanese in their lifestyles and values. Meanwhile, my father’s side of the family has always been heavily involved in our tribe, and my paternal grandfather served as chief from before I was born up until the day he died in 2008. Because of this heritage and the frequent international travel that resulted from it, I had experiences in which I’d be with my Japanese maternal grandparents one day, and then back in the United States at a tribal event later in the same week. I understood my parents were from different groups, and it made sense to me that the Japanese parts of my life would be Japanese and that the Miami parts would be Miami.

However, unlike my time in Japan, during which I spoke Japanese, something was different about the Miami gatherings I attended as a child. They always took place in English, not in Miami. I don’t recall consciously feeling like I was lacking something because we weren’t speaking in Miami, but it was something I wondered about. My grandfather was among a handful of elders who knew some Miami, and he taught me a few words, so I understood we had a language of our own. However, that was the extent of my knowledge. I was comparatively lucky because I was able to learn at least a few words; I think most Miami children at the time knew none of our language whatsoever.

Things really changed in the early to mid-1990s across Indian Country. Indian languages, which had been in a period of heavy decline, started moving into increased use. There has been a growing international movement toward indigenous language revitalization since that time.

My own tribe got formally involved in language revitalization efforts in 1995, and the year is important because this was when I was in college and around the time I took my first linguistics class. Maybe you can guess how things went from there. I got interested in linguistics, eventually declared it as my major, and then naturally fell into involvement with tribal language programs. I later decided to do graduate work in linguistics with a focus on Miami language revitalization. That’s the short version of how I became a professional linguist.

(left to right) Alta (Judith Delgado) offers Resten (Richard Elmore) some food in a gesture of love; Emma (Susannah Flood) and George (Rex Young) read about the Ellowan curse (by David Cooper, courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival)

MM: Wow! What a fascinating journey. I’m curious—did you get a chance to catch Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s recent production of Julia Cho’s The Language Archive? The protagonist, George, is a linguist who has spent his life attempting to preserve vanishing languages. George documents the fictional Ellowan language, which would otherwise disappear with the passing of its last two living speakers, a couple named Alta and Resten. If you did see it, I’m wondering what the play evoked for you since you, too, have devoted your life to preserving vanishing languages. There’s something particularly tragic about the idea of a language dying—and that it is inextricably tied to the mortality of human beings makes the thought of a language’s fragility all the more poignant.

WL: Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to see The Language Archive, but I certainly heard a lot about it, and it has obvious parallels to my personal and professional life. Since I haven’t seen the play, I won’t comment on specific issues, but I’ll instead share a few comments I have about language endangerment and documentation.

Most importantly, my tribal heritage language, Miami—or as we say in the language, myaamia—is one that exists today in the lives of Miami people because of language documentation. I mentioned earlier that my grandfather was among a handful of elders who knew a few words of Miami, the keywords being “handful” and “a few.” Anti-Indian policies of the United States, the circumstances surrounding our two forced removals from our ancestral homelands, and the general dominance of English all led to the Miami language entering what we Miamis call a “sleeping” state in the 1960s. While there has been some language knowledge learned directly from elders, most of the Miami spoken today comes from analysis of approximately 300 years of written documentation of our language, which exists in various archives. Some individuals took it upon themselves to teach themselves the language from this documentation, and now some children are being raised with the language by these initial second-language learners. I know firsthand that this is working as it was the focus of my dissertation. I followed the language development of two Miami children for four and a half years and in the process, they taught me a lot of the language.

Working with one of children whose Miami language acquisition Leonard reported on in his dissertation (courtesy of Wesley Leonard)

Coming back to linguistics as a field, language documentation and analysis used to be among the field’s primary goals, and this usually involved a model in which a professionally trained linguist would work with speakers of another language and would then write up a grammatical analysis or a dictionary based on this work. In other words, the default practices of the field yielded language documentation. Linguistics then moved away from this practice and instead started to focus more on questions about language and cognition and language as a grammatical system. However, there has been a recent return to the ways of the past, and endangered language documentation could arguably be called a hot topic in linguistics today. It’s probably self-evident that I’m glad that this is happening because I know how important the work can be.

MM: The loss of a language becomes even more disturbing when you consider how the languages that thrive and ultimately survive are those of the dominant culture; it is the languages of the indigenous whose cultures have been subjugated, oppressed, murdered, and enslaved by a colonizing power that are at greatest risk. So the story of an endangered language parallels that of its people. Can you talk a bit about the politics of endangered languages?

WL: One of the basic principles that guides my work is that language endangerment and revitalization never occur in a sociopolitical vacuum, but rather always stem from—and also affect—the larger sociopolitical context in which they occur. One of the big points linguists and others frequently miss is that language “death” (a problematic term for languages with revitalization potential because of documentation) is not an endpoint, but rather just happens to be the last overt symptom of everything that’s happened to Native peoples.

All of the things you mention and some related ones are what started the decline of indigenous languages in the first place, but the “end” of the language doesn’t mark any shift in the legacy of colonization and subjugation. Rather, those issues are still there until something is done to reverse them. Through my work, I have come to strongly believe that language revitalization allows communities to heal because it responds to issues of cultural shame and allows people to reconnect to the culture embedded in their language. We can’t change the bad things that happened in the past, but we can move beyond them today by speaking our languages and practicing our traditions.

(left to right) Early nineteenth century lithograph of Miami Chief Little Turtle, Leonard’s great-great-great-great-great uncle (possibly based on a lost portrait by Gilbert Stuart); detail of a 1778 representation of Miami Chief Pacanne (courtesy of Wikipedia)

MM: You have served as the chair of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma Language committee since 2004. What unique concerns do Miami people face when it comes to preserving the Miami language?

WL: Many of the challenges surrounding indigenous language reclamation are shared by all, or at least a large majority, of indigenous groups. The single biggest one may be that it can be hard for a small, minority language to establish a stable coexistence with a more socially dominant language such as English.

A unique problem for the Miami people is that people have told us, in some cases overtly and in other cases through their actions, that the Miami language cannot successfully be incorporated into contemporary Miami life. As much as I’ve challenged this idea in my professional work—including in two major publications—there is still the idea that the Miami language is “extinct” and that it therefore will never be used again. Conversely, there is a comparatively high recognition of revitalization potential for languages that are in decline but still have fluent native speakers. People understand and accept the notion of learning a language from somebody who speaks it. They often don’t, however, recognize the possibility or the legitimacy of learning a language from documentation.

This has changed significantly over the years as the story of the Miami language has become better known, but there’s still a sense of skepticism and disbelief that hovers over us and our language efforts. First, people think we can’t really do it. Then when we do speak Miami, the same people will then challenge the authenticity of what we’re speaking because there is a widespread idea that Indian languages and cultures are real only if they exist in the way that they are perceived to have been prior to significant European contact. The Miami language has changed; the contemporary language has some obvious influence from English and has undergone additional changes beyond that, but it is probably close enough to the Miami of 200 years ago that a speaker from then would be able to understand a speaker from now. Interestingly, people rarely question the legitimacy of English, which of course changes all the time, but Indian languages get treated differently. Much of my work within my own community involves pointing out these sorts of fallacies so we Miamis are in a better place to determine for ourselves what counts as our culture and our language.

(left to right) A-Bomb Dome at the Hiroshima Memorial, which Leonard visited while in Japan (by Daneish); a shrine in Yukuhashi he sometimes visited (by Lega-maru); and the Ima River (called “Imagawa” because “gawa” part means “river”) Leonard crossed every day on his way to work (by miyasei)

MM: You were also coordinator for international relations in Yukuhashi, Japan, and you have an understanding of Japanese linguistics. What was your experience of Japan like?

WL: Sometimes I momentarily forget that I used to live and work in Japan because it seems so removed from my daily life now, but I did, and it was a valuable experience. As I alluded to earlier, I spent many summers in Japan as a child with my Japanese relatives, and I also attended a Japanese Saturday school for several years. I thus had a lot of Japanese influence, but I wanted to try actually living in Japan as an adult. That was what motivated my work there.

My study of Japanese linguistics came later and was more directly a result of being a linguistics graduate student, though my proficiency in Japanese from having worked in Japan certainly added something. Living in Japan was generally a very good experience, and I got to design a lot of neat programs. One of the most exciting involved my taking a group of Japanese adults to do a homestay visit and cultural exchange with my tribe in Oklahoma. We all observed that there are a lot of parallels between Japanese and Miami culture.

The Linguistics Department bulletin board at UC Berkeley (courtesy of Wesley Leonard)

MM: Linguistic anthropology is one of your other areas of expertise. What does studying a language tell you about its people?

WL: This is actually probably my primary area of expertise, though the irony is I’ve taken only two anthropology courses in my life! This is because my graduate training fell largely into linguistics proper, which tends to look at language more as a grammatical system. What happened was I came to realize the extent to which language and culture are intertwined and when my teaching and research also gravitated in that direction, I realized I’m actually a linguistic anthropologist; linguistic anthropology is the field that encompasses the areas I work in. As for what a language reveals about its speakers, this is far too large a topic for me to cover here, but let me give a couple of examples that illustrate how language and culture can be related.

First, as systems of grammar and vocabulary, languages often reveal how their speakers have come to understand and categorize the world around them. In Miami, for example, nouns are either animate or inanimate (similar to how nouns in many European languages fall into gender-based categories), and this grammatical animacy usually corresponds to real animacy. For instance, the Miami words for monkey, horse, and our word for ourselves—myaamia—are animate nouns, while the words for pencil, chair, and abstract concepts are inanimate. This dichotomy is generally straightforward, but there are some interesting cultural difference between Miami culture and wider American culture that get exemplified when one considers how certain nouns are classified. Of course, English doesn’t mark animacy in its grammar, but I’m guessing most English speakers would say drums are inanimate. However, from a Miami worldview, drums have a spirit, and ahkihkwa, our word for drum, is grammatically animate.

Secondly, in some Native American groups, people express that their language is the defining element of their people, and this differs from wider American society in which language is considered to be a part of culture but not the defining factor. My work looks not just at languages themselves, but also at how people fight for, challenge, reclaim, or strive to learn languages.

Language is a powerful tool, and how people conceptualize its role provides insight into their cultures and belief systems. For example, some individuals have pointed out to me that language learning is difficult and have then asked me why so many American Indians are putting so much effort into learning their heritage languages—even when their daily communication needs are already met through English. I like to turn that question around and ask, “Keeping in mind that language learning takes time and resources and that most American Indians speak English, what can you take from the fact that people are nonetheless so committed to learning their heritage languages?”

Discussing language and politics (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: Southern Oregon University puts connected learning at the heart of its educational philosophy. What kind of field research methods and ethics do students need to be aware of when they are conducting research and interacting with community agencies and individuals?

WL: This is where I’m going to put out a call to SOU students. I can’t fully answer this huge question, but it’s a major topic in my work, so I encourage students to take my classes! After the directly linguistic issues surrounding Native American language endangerment and revitalization, questions about ethics, field research, and applied research represent major areas of current discussion and are certainly among the most important.

In my courses, I teach about various common topics that come up in this area, and these include the notion of informed consent, legal restrictions, institutional review boards, privacy, and so on, but I also focus on why these principles have come to exist in the first place, especially in terms of who created them and what cultural frame they were coming from. In these discussions, I find myself repeatedly challenging a recurring question that takes many forms but ultimately comes out to be something like, “How should trained academics work with Native Americans?” In my line of work, the query is usually specifically about the role of linguists, and while I don’t think any harm is intended, the framing of this question reinforces a line of thinking in which university researchers and Native Americans are separate entities, even though I’m just one of many examples of individuals who fall into both groups.

MM: How do you get your students to grapple with intellectually challenging topics?

WL: The short answer to this question is that I am an adult, I assume my students are adults, I believe we should strive to explore topics in their full complexity, and I organize my classes accordingly with detailed syllabi that usually include a disclaimer that the class is rated “R.” My students over the years have always been amazing, and when I set my standards high and we explore difficult concepts, they rise to the challenge.

Speaking in more concrete terms, what tends to happen in my courses is that intellectually challenging topics are generally also socially charged topics, and what I strive to do is to incorporate real examples from daily life and to have students grapple with those ideas both on a scholarly level and also on a personal one. I thus tend to give assignments that explicitly require both the application of course concepts and also a high level of informed personal reflection.

Hanging with colleagues Devora Shapiro, John Taylor, Ariel Tumbaga, and Margaret Perrow outside Hannon Library (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: What excites you most about teaching at SOU?

WL: There are several things that I look forward to—many of which I have already been experiencing. These include the flexibility I’ve been granted by my department to develop my own courses, the intellectual stimulation associated with the diverse topics I’ll have the opportunity to teach, and the joy of being around colleagues who value teaching as much as I do. The biggest thing, however, is that I really feel needed and wanted, and this means a lot to me.

Assistant Professor of English Education in the English and Writing Program, Language, Literature, and Philosophy Department Margaret Perrow (by Rory N. Finney)

Margaret Perrow Audio Introduction

Margaret Perrow loves words. She loves the way they feel as they tumble around on her tongue. She loves word games and puns. She loves how words can create private, imaginary worlds we can secretly enter both individually and as a community of readers. She even loves how the typographical characters appear on a letterpress-printed page. For Perrow, words and literature are windows into our personal and cultural identities, and she has devoted her life to savoring the medium of language and its power to transform our lives.

Perrow is no stranger to Southern Oregon University. She not only completed her Oregon Initial Teaching License requirements here, but she also spent the past five years teaching in SOU’s School of Education. Now she is stepping into a slightly different pair of shoes as Assistant Professor English Education in the Language, Literature, and Philosophy Department’s English and Writing Program. In addition to tackling new courses such as Grammar and Style in Writing, Perrow will continue to teach many of the English education courses she has taught in the past, including Language Arts Methods for middle and high school teachers.

She earned her PhD and MA in education (language, literacy, and culture) from UC Berkeley. Both the American Educational Research Association and UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education gave Perrow Outstanding Dissertation Awards for “Learning in Transition: Youth Development in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Her research documented the intersection of historically shifting macro discourses about learning and identity in South Africa through the individual trajectories of the young adults in an NGO youth development program. Perrow also spent time in Johannesburg as a Visiting Fulbright Researcher for the Joint Enrichment Project.

Perrow’s interest in French was first piqued by the French folk songs she and her Canadian mother sang during car drives. She was dreaming in Proustian sentences by the time she was completing her BA in French language and literature at Yale, where she was awarded the Montaigne Prize for Proficiency in Oral and Written French. Perrow also speaks basic Spanish and a little bit of isiZulu.

Her areas of expertise include critical literacy and equity in education; sociocultural and historical contexts of education, learning, and literacy; discourse analysis; ethnographic methods; English in international development contexts; language and identity; and young adults in transition. Perrow applied this expertise to her role as a research associate for the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools in Oakland, California. She also taught GED preparation to at-risk young adults and writing and reading through San Francisco Conservation Corps. Perrow has been a consulting research editor for the National Writing Project since 2005.

In a previous life, Perrow was director of marketing and sales for NeoScribe International, for which she launched a line of desktop publishing typefaces. At Yale, she won the Lohmann Prize for Excellence in Letterpress Printing.

Today, she focuses on the signified more than the signifier, but as someone who loves cycling between the abstract and the concrete, the macro and the micro, Perrow will continue to spread her passion for words at all levels to her students and future teachers.

Conversation with Margaret Perrow

E-interview conducted by Melissa L. Michaels in October 2011

Cover of Robert MacNeil’s Wordstruck (courtesy of Random House)

MM: What indicators were there in your childhood that you would later develop a passion for language and literature?

MP: I think the passion developed early, rather than emerging later! I learned to read early, partly because my mother was busy with twins who were two years behind me, and partly because I simply loved the sensation of entering a book, a world, so different from my own. And my mother read to us all together every night.

I’ve recently been reading Robert MacNeil’s memoir Wordstruck, and I find so many parallels with my own early years. He talks about the pleasure in gaining “a feeling for the weight of words,” words spoken and read, words in action in different contexts, words as they jostle and nestle against each other in expected and unexpected ways, and this really resonates with me.

My father wasn’t much of a reader, but he did tell me stories at night: long, ongoing, chapter stories that came somewhere out of his dreams and memories. Stories about a girl named Prudence (with whom I identified deeply), who lived on a farm with her Aunt Methuselah and uncle. Like books, these stories connected me with imaginary worlds that could absorb and hold me. They created a special, private world that my dad and I entered together. So stories and books have always had positive emotional connotations for me.

My dad, though a taciturn guy, loved word games and puns. We’d play endless rounds of rhymers at the dinner table (Create a two-part clue for a two-word rhyme; guess it first, and it’s your turn. “What’s a wagon tale?” “A lorry story!”). These could get pretty tricky.

They say it’s about 50-50 nature-nurture, so I guess I was lucky to be in a family that drew out my aptitude for language and literature from an early age!

Sharing books with LLP colleague Ariel Tumbaga (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: When it came to choosing a foreign language to study, what was it about French in particular that attracted you?

MP: I guess a confluence of factors that came into play well before I had made a conscious choice about it. I had learned French folk songs on long car trips from my mother. Although she was Canadian (as am I), her family was English-speaking. But she had majored in French and had been a French teacher, and we had records of kids’ songs in French at home. In seventh grade, French was the only foreign language offered at our school. I jumped at the chance, and despite Miss Fortier’s rigid adherence to making us recite verb conjugations and her attempts to make me feel badly about my enthusiasm (she once asked me disparagingly, “Do you have your hand on a spring?”), I loved learning to speak another language. At that point, it could have been any language; I just liked the sensation of finding my way in a new set of words.

At college, I gravitated toward French as a major fairly quickly, much to the dismay of my engineer father, who thought it was an utterly impractical course of study. At the same time, I was encouraged by professors whom I admired and liked. I was good at it (that “flow” thing has a lot going for it!), and it was just plain fun. I loved dreaming in Proustian sentences, as weird as that probably sounds.

At her wedding celebration with friends from the youth development program in Soweto, South Africa (courtesy of Margaret Perrow)

MM: You earned your PhD and MA in education (language, literacy, and culture) from UC Berkeley as well as a BA in French language and literature from Yale, where you were awarded the Montaigne Prize for Proficiency in Oral and Written French. You also completed your Oregon Initial Teaching License requirements through SOU. That shows quite a bit of breadth and depth. Do you find that you enjoy thinking at both the macro and micro levels? Do you tend to see the forest and the trees?

MP: Interesting question. I think I struggle to see the forest sometimes. I can easily get caught up in the intricacies of the trees. I’m something of a perfectionist, which exacerbates this tendency. On the other hand, yes, I do like thinking on both micro and macro levels—and seeing how they connect to each other. That’s what my dissertation was about, really, the intersection of historically shifting macro discourses about learning and identity in South Africa, with the individual trajectories and discourses of the young adults in an NGO youth-development program. The zooming in and out, from micro to macro and back, made the research fascinating. Too many details, though—my fascination with the trees, so to speak, made it an inordinately long process!

Giving a grammar lesson to colleagues Ariel Tumbaga and John Taylor (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: You’ve taught in SOU’s School of Education since 2006, so you will be transitioning from teaching pedagogy to teaching language and literature. Are you excited about putting into practice the principles you’ve been demonstrating to future educators at a meta level?

MP: Some of the classes I teach will in fact remain the same: language arts methods for middle and high school teachers, for instance. Others will be new and not specifically focused on education or pedagogy.

One of the things I love about teaching pre-service teachers is the necessity of thinking on several levels at once: the content of the class, the connections between that content and other important “text” of student-teachers’ experience in their field placements, and the pedagogical lens. This last one means you have an opportunity (an obligation!) to be as transparent as possible about what you are doing as a teacher—and why. It keeps you thinking, keeps you moving, and keeps things interesting! I expect that in my undergraduate classes, I’ll do less of this explicit unpacking of my own pedagogy, but I’m delighted to have the mix of both undergraduate and graduate students now.

MM: What role does language play in individual and cultural identity?

MP: Wow, that’s a big question! Language is, in my opinion, at the heart of our identities, both individual and cultural. We aren’t always conscious of it, but our language both reflects our realities (the world as we see it) and creates those realities in the processes of speaking, writing, and interacting. Language is central to how we construct our relationships, and our relationships are central to our identities—we are who we are in large part through our alliances and our distances, our friendships and our discomforts. And we do all of that largely with language.

Professor of Education William Greene sings along with Professor of Education Younghee Kim (top), master of arts in teaching students, and schoolchildren (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: One of your areas of research is critical literacy and equity in education. What can we as a society do to promote more equity in education?

MP: Interestingly, this ties well to your previous question. A step that individual teachers and schools can take is to promote language awareness in schools: a critical awareness of how language functions in relation to power and control, an empathetic awareness of language diversity and the connection between language and identity, and a functional focus on building language skills that develop empathy and respect.

I had a very privileged education as a young adult, but when I think about what fundamentally constituted the “privilege,” it was the relationships I was afforded with caring, competent teachers and mentors who knew me and therefore were able to support and challenge me. So we need to ask: What are the environmental conditions that support such relationships between young people and adults who hold the highest expectations for their students—and have the resources to hold them to those expectations in a caring way?

So it wouldn’t hurt to put teachers’ salaries up there with other highly respected professionals. Teaching is an inherently inequitable occupation in our current system, yet teachers are expected to be the agents of equity in our society. Simultaneously reducing class size (rather than increasing it, as has been steadily happening in Oregon and elsewhere in the past few years) would go a long way toward allowing teachers to differentiate instruction effectively and to develop strong personal relationships with all of their individual students, as relationships are at the heart of learning.

San Francisco Conservations Corps (courtesy of San Francisco Conservations Corps)

MM: You’ve taught GED preparation to at-risk young adults as well as writing and reading through San Francisco Conservation Corps. What have you found are some of the best ways to keep young adults in transition out of trouble and on a path toward success?

MP: Engage them in writing that expresses their realities and reading that connects to their realities and then expands them a bit. Actually, your question contains a bit of the answer: When people realize they are “in transition,” they can become excited about the adventure. If they think they are “stuck” or “going nowhere” (or if they have reason to believe this), it’s much harder to engage them. This is where writing and reading have a huge role to play, connecting young adults who feel “stuck” with people who have been there before and helping them find a way to get back into motion.

Poet Laureate Ted Kooser talks with a small group of writers and teachers during his 2007 visit to SOU, sponsored by the Oregon Writing Project (affiliated with the National Writing Project)

MM: You have been a consulting research editor for the National Writing Project since 2005. Tell me about that project and what your role entails.

MP: This project is a multi-year research program involving National Writing Project sites around the country. Sites designed and implemented longitudinal research studies and were required to submit annual reports documenting their findings. These studies are all available on the NWP website. The project was tricky because of the post-NCLB requirements that federally funded studies be based on control and comparison groups as well as including quantitative analysis. Much strong writing research, on the other hand, is based on qualitative data and analysis. So my role as research editor has been a fascinating process of supporting the site directors and research assistants in documenting their work.

(left to right) Young adults Perrow worked with at Youth Work Scheme (a job training and youth development project run by the Joint Enrichment Program) in Johannesburg; children in Soweto (courtesy of Margaret Perrow)

MM: Both the American Educational Research Association and UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education gave you Outstanding Dissertation Awards for “Learning in Transition: Youth Development in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” You also served as a visiting Fulbright researcher for the Joint Enrichment Project in Johannesburg, South Africa. What is your assessment of the education system in South Africa, and how did participants respond to the Joint Enrichment Project (JEP)?

MP: South Africa continues to face enormous educational challenges, not the least of which is the relationship among their eleven national languages. Another factor is that while apartheid is legally a thing of the past, for many people pragmatically it is still the daily reality. You may be legally able to move freely in your country but not have the financial means (or even the motivation) to do so. That said, there have been incredible positive developments in South African education in the past fifteen years.

Participants responded with incredible enthusiasm to the JEP, in large part because it let them tap into a country that was in transition. It let them become young adults in transition, people who were in motion along with the rest of the country (or such was the perception).

MM: In a previous life, you were director of marketing and sales for NeoScribe International, for which you launched a line of computer typefaces for desktop publishing. You also won the Lohmann Prize for Excellence in Letterpress Printing at Yale. As a typophile, I couldn’t resist asking about this phase of your life. Did you actually design the typefaces yourself, and do you still keep a hand in the graphic design and letterpress world?

MP: I didn’t design fonts myself, but I do love them. I loved letterpress printing: the smell of the ink and the grease late at night, the feel of the imprinted letters on soft paper, the thrill of getting something aligned just right, the tedium and black fingers after hours of resorting type into a job case. But no, besides the letterpress prints that I have at my office, I don’t have anything to do with the graphic design/letterpress world any more. I still love typefaces, though, and the way they can communicate in concert with words.

MM: You speak fluent French, basic Spanish, and a little bit of isiZulu. How do Latin languages like French and Spanish compare with the Zulu language?

MP: Well, isiZulu is nothing at all like Latin or Germanic languages in many ways. One thing that sets it apart is that it’s concatenative: the parts of the words all attach together and accumulate into this “pile” of lovely syllables. The way verbs operate is also different—what changes most is the pronoun or noun at the head of the verb. And of course, there are the clicks (three kinds, each in different parts of the mouth).

MM: What are some of the courses you’re most looking forward to teaching?

MP: I’m excited to be teaching Grammar and Style in Writing this fall. Not everyone would find that a glamorous course to teach (let alone take!), but it turns out that grammar and glamour are closely related. When the invading Normans brought French to Great Britain with all of its Latin influences, grammaire referred to all of intellectual knowledge—and especially to magic and the occult (which was a specialized and secretive domain of knowledge). The Scots adopted the word but, since they had no formal written grammar to apply it to, “cast the glamaire” came to mean “cast a spell.”

I haven’t taught undergraduates since 1999 at UC Berkeley, so I’m looking forward to that. I’m also excited about designing some of my own classes. I’m working on an idea for a writing class revolving around educational memoir, and I’d love to teach a class in critical language awareness.

SOU student Mark Butterfield has an “aha” moment in a creative writing course with Associate Professor of English and Writing Program K. Silem Mohammad (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: What do you love most about teaching?

MP: Being a fortunate witness to people’s growth and discovery—both of themselves and the world—and constantly thinking of ways to facilitate that growth and discovery!

I view learning as a process of becoming, not merely of acquiring knowledge. At its best, education helps students realize their full potential as human beings in community with others. This means education “points” in two directions simultaneously: 1) inward, to help students discover their talents and pleasures—that is, to help them connect to their inner selves, and to help those selves take flight; and 2) outward, connecting students in meaningful ways to the new, the different, the unexpected. In this sense, teaching is fundamentally about helping students actively make connections—to their own inner qualities and talents as well as to the world they live in, resulting in an expanded sense of self, of the world, and of the possibilities for agency. That kind of becoming is an exciting process to be a part of!

Assistant Professor of Psychology John Taylor (by Rory N. Finney)

John Taylor Audio Introduction

John Taylor wants to know why people do bad things. He’s curious about the cognitive processes behind memory, and his research explores what causes us to occasionally experience a flicker of recognition, albeit false. Taylor began his studies with a particular interest in sensation and vision, and he soon found his passion in memory and cognition.

He has a PhD in experimental psychology with a major emphasis in memory and cognition as well as an MA in experimental psychology—both from the University of Nevada, Reno. For his master’s degree, Taylor chose a major emphasis in memory and language with a minor emphasis in artificial intelligence. He focused on physiology while earning a BA in psychology at Western Washington University, where he also minored in Russian.

Taylor’s PhD dissertation is titled “Syntactic and semantic information in combination contribute to false recognition of novel sentences,” and his MA thesis is “Recognition of words post-assimilation: Contrasting two models of speech perception.”

The journal Memory published his article “False recognition following study of semantically related lists presented in jumbled word form.” Taylor’s interest in vision is evident in his piece “Simultaneous Blur Contrast,” which appeared in the Proceedings of SPIE, published by the international society for optics and photonics.

Manuscripts in progress include “Implicit processing of list themes in a memory exclusion task,” “Anticipating list items as a result of network structure: evidence for triad closure from an order reconstruction task,” and “False recognition of novel sentences induced by semantic and syntactic associates.”

Over the past eleven years, Taylor has presented at nearly twenty conferences, city-hopping across the US to deliver talks in Minneapolis, Reno, Maui, New Orleans, St. Louis, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, DC. He has even headed north to Canada, presenting in Toronto, Ontario, and Vancouver, British Columbia.

Taylor is a member of the Psychonomic Society and the Association for Psychological Science. He has served as a reviewer for the Journal of Psycholinguistics, and he established a tutoring center in the Psych Department at his previous institution.

Last year, Taylor won the student-nominated CEHSP Outstanding Teaching Award at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. There, he taught classes ranging from Learning & Behavior to Cognition to Sensation & Perception.

He still doesn’t know why people do bad things, but Taylor’s starting to understand why people do good things after his first month of teaching classes at SOU.

Conversation with John Taylor

E-interview conducted by Melissa L. Michaels in October 2011

MM: What first drew you to the field of psychology? Did you tend to analyze the people around you, even when you were young?

JT: After I graduated from high school, I had a strong desire to understand people and why they sometimes behaved badly toward each other. My goal was always oriented toward scientific pursuit, and I still feel that urge to have a better understanding of what makes us all tick.

Getting to know the SOU campus (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: Your PhD is in experimental psychology with a major emphasis in memory and cognition, and your MA in experimental psychology focused on memory and language. What is it about memory in particular that captured your scholarly imagination?

JT: Originally, I went to graduate school to pursue an interest in sensation, particularly vision. This focus shifted to memory after I came to realize my advisor and I were not a good fit for each other. It turns out to have been a positive change. Cognitive psychology is prone, I think, to exaggeration in its explanations of how we think and remember. I enjoy looking for simplicity in explaining these things. It seems to me we are not as complicated as we think we are.

Office hours in the Ed-Psych Building (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: Speaking of simplicity and complexity, you also had a minor emphasis in artificial intelligence. What similarities do you see between AI and human intelligence when it comes to memory, cognition, and language?

JT: Actually, I would say that, at the moment, there is not much similarity between AI and human intelligence. My dabbling in AI has led me to conclude that AI systems will require dramatically different architecture, including integration of more sensory systems, more complex parallel processing, and perhaps even distributed memory storage systems. I would love to explore AI a lot more than I have, but it will require some serious collaboration to move forward with that.

MM: Your article “False recognition following study of semantically related lists presented in jumbled word form” was published in the journal Memory. Can you tell me a bit about that study and what it revealed to you about the tenuous nature of memory?

JT: There was an old email that floated around a while back that was written in all jumbled words, yet was perfectly readable. We decided to work with this concept and find out whether we could induce false remembering for concepts when the words themselves were jumbled up. We found that semantic processing appears to happen pretty automatically. People appear to unscramble words to understand them and retain that meaning in memory. When presented with a novel but related concept again later, they unscramble that word as well and judge it based on its familiarity.

Neurologist, author, and fern lover Oliver Sacks (courtesy of oliversacks.com)

MM: As someone who has studied the physiology of vision as well as face and contrast perception, I’m curious what you know about prosopagnosia and whether there are psychological dimensions to this neurological condition. Have you read any of Oliver Sacks’s writings on his own struggles with face blindness?

JT: Prosopagnosia is a bit beyond my expertise, I’m afraid, although it is a fascinating topic. Oliver Sacks is a great writer who provides a neat window into some of the strangeness that results from brain damage.

MM: Yes, he’s quite wonderful. Since you have expertise in both facial recognition and memory, I’m wondering how you feel about eyewitness evidence in court, which has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years.

JT: Eyewitness memory should never be the primary evidence to convict someone. Additionally, we need to ensure an unbiased and non-biasing chain of testimony collection. Memories are extremely malleable, and we should treat them that way!

MM: What role do sound and music play in forming new memories and triggering recognition?

JT: Again, this is very difficult to answer because memories are generally composed of encoded neural responses of sound and images and our other senses. I wouldn’t say sound and music play a role so much as they are encoded and associated with non-audible information just like visual information is.

MM: Have you had an opportunity to work with Alzheimer’s patients or to do any research that helps illuminate the nature of this disease? Why is it that the earliest memories are more resilient while adult memories tend to vanish first?

JT: I have not, but I would say it is probably a combination of brain maturation and the fact that we tend to rehearse or relive memories of our youth more often than memories of adulthood.

Deconstructing cognition (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: How do you spark students’ intellectual creativity?

JT: I try to get students involved in a hands-on manner. The most I’ve ever learned about psychology and psychology research is by struggling with all of the difficulties of actually doing it properly. It can be a messy process but one that teaches many great lessons about the creative process behind research design, implementation, and dissemination.

MM: Can you give some examples of how psychology students might apply their learning to practical problems in the community?

JT: Psychology is everywhere! We are constantly trying to learn people’s names and directions to new places, falling prey to errors in decision making and reasoning, dealing with stress, and a myriad of other aspects. Psychology is about being human—in all the flaws as well as the amazing potential that implies. These qualities can manifest in business decisions, education, or simply driving (don’t text and drive, everyone!). So understanding our limitations and our potential can reach into many facets of daily life.

Engaging in a bit of psychoanalysis with Assistant Professor of English Education Margaret Perrow (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: As you begin your first term at Southern Oregon University, what are you most excited about experiencing here?

JT: I am just excited to get involved with students and other faculty. Teaching and research make for a fun job, so I look forward to connecting with the SOU community and building a strong relationship in every way that strengthens our teaching and scholarship here.

Assistant Professor of Art and Art History Melissa Geppert (by Rory N. Finney)

Melissa Geppert Audio Introduction

Melissa Geppert wasn’t a typical teen. Her idea of a good time was savoring the contemporary artworks lining the walls of Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center, which she visited incessantly. Later, as an adult, she became a docent lecturer at the center that had played such an influential role in her years growing up as an artsy kid who loved to create and study art—as reflected in the BFA in studio art and BA in art history she simultaneously earned at the University of Minnesota. She followed her dual bachelor’s degrees with a master of arts in performance studies from New York University, topped off by a PhD in art history from the University of Minnesota.

Geppert’s dissertation—“Favela Effects: Brazilian Art at the Intersection of Community Development and Global Markets”—examines representations of Rio de Janeiro’s informal housing settlements (favelas) and their crucial role in Brazilian art and visual culture. Her research spans the 1960s to today, covering a range of genres that includes performance, installation, film, web-based, and participatory art. As she describes in her research statement, Geppert traces “the networks through which contemporary art incorporates marginalized peoples and places into global cultural markets and, in turn, the means through which artists and community activists re-route these networks to bolster local struggles for rights and resources.” In other words, she documents how art is literally changing local communities and, consequently, the world.

Recipient of the Dwight Conquergood Award at last year’s Performance Studies International conference, Geppert has collected a broad range of fellowships over the course of her career, from the Harold Leonard Memorial Fellowship for Film Studies to the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship to the Tisch School of the Arts Academic Fellowship. She was also awarded multiple grants to fund her graduate research and dissertation.

With a queue of conference presentations stretching into next spring, Geppert has or will present on topics as widely varied as “Cannibals and Funkeiros: Dias and Reidweg’s Politics of Collaboration,” “From One Screen to Many Cameras: Models of Participation in Community Development,” and “Reciprocal Views: Community-Based Art and Urban Heritage in Rio de Janeiro.” If you’re lucky enough to have her as one of your professors, you might just find out what cannibals have to do with the contemporary art world—although you can probably hazard a guess.

Conversation with Melissa Geppert

E-interview conducted by Melissa L. Michaels in September 2011

(left to right) Walker Art Center (by T.loewen) and the Center’s Cargill Lounge (by Wac-pr)

MM: When did you first become interested in the world of art, and what initially sparked that interest?

MG: I suppose I was always an “artsy” kid, and my parents were good enough to really encourage those interests—they both had a little bohemian streak in them. So between them and other family members and family friends who were artists, I got exposed to a variety of different aspects of the world of art, ranging from local festivals to galleries and museums to design. I found it all very exciting and really wanted to be a part of it in one way or another. By the time I was in high school, I was constantly visiting the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (where I grew up), which is a world-class contemporary art museum. I get nostalgic when I go back there because it was just such a fabulous early education in modern and contemporary art, film, dance, et cetera and a huge part of why I wanted to pursue it in college.

MM: In addition to your PhD in art history, you’ve earned a master’s in performance studies, a BA in art history, and a BFA in studio art. That’s quite a rich spectrum! It means you understand art from both the artist’s and the historian’s perspectives. How has your art-making background informed your scholarship, and vice versa?

MG: I think that it probably gives me a greater degree of sensitivity to the processes, materials, and technical aspects. Maybe more importantly, it gives me some insight regarding the pragmatic concerns of being an artist. So much about studying modern and contemporary art has to do with tracing some very grandiose yet contradictory claims, an aspect of the art of these periods that some people find alienating (or at least annoying). There have been occasions in which I’ve had very grandiose ideas about my art, but I’ve also faced pragmatic limitations that stand in the way of those ambitions, ranging from a piece falling flat to an audience not reacting in the desired way to having to make rent. These kinds of frustrations undergird so many of the debates about art of the past century. So I have a lot of empathy. I should also add that the performance studies background (which is very oriented to the relationship of theory and practice) and my own involvement with social activism support a more “generous” understanding of past efforts at enacting change. In the end, it’s about individuals, in all their idiosyncrasies, trying to bring about change in their societies, often against impossible odds and in totally unpredictable ways.

Casting a backward glance (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: What mediums do you work in, and how would you describe your own artworks?

MG: My stock response to this question is that “I no longer make art, I just write about people who do.” It’s sad but mostly true. In my past life as an artist, I was primarily a painter, and I did very large oil paintings of hyper-realistic women, girls, and infants. I was really interested in bodies and time and flux. Media like performance, video, and interactive digital were not yet integrated into the undergraduate program, and I probably would have taken a very different path if they were, but I tried to get at some of these issues through the very static media of oil paint, for better or worse.

(left to right) Miguel Borges, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Carlos Diegues, Marcos Farias, and Leon Hirszman, Cinco Vezes Favela (Five Times Favela), 1962; Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Rio 40 Graus (Rio 40 Degrees), 1955 (courtesy of Melissa Geppert)

MM: Film studies is another one of your areas of expertise. What are some of the films that most excite you?

MG: Too many to list! I guess from a scholarly perspective, I find mid-twentieth century Latin American and especially Brazilian film endlessly fascinating. Directors associated with a movement in Brazil called Cinema Novo (New Cinema) such as Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Glauber Rocha, Carlos Diegues, and Joaquim Pedro de Andrade were working in the 1950s and 1960s to produce a uniquely Brazilian style of experimental cinema that was based in the realities of poverty. They had to confront a largely indifferent Brazilian elite as well as spectators from Europe and the US who had been conditioned to think about Brazil as beginning and ending with palm trees and Carmen Miranda. So these directors made films that are pretty difficult to watch, both formally and thematically, and they tried to transpose social inequality and the experience of hunger to film.

I’m pretty much a sucker for any kind of experimental documentary from any period but especially the sixties (I like most straightforward documentaries, too).

(top to bottom, left to right) Hélio Oiticica, Parangolé capes worn by performers in the Mangueira favela, from Ivan Cardoso’s film H.O. 1979; JR, Women Are Heroes, 2008; Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, Samba, 1925; Candido Portinari, Morro (Hill), 1933; Tarsila do Amaral, Madureira, 1924; inside a Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro, 2010 (all images courtesy of Melissa Geppert, except for the last image, by chensiyuan)

MM: Your dissertation explores artistic representations of favelas, informal housing settlements in Rio de Janeiro. Can you talk about how Brazilian artists function as intercessors between the dispossessed and the global community? What are some specific examples of how art has literally impacted the political and socioeconomic landscape of the impoverished villages represented in their artworks?

MG: Well, I’ll try to be as concise as possible. Brazilian favelas are an aspect of Brazil’s development as a modern nation and, because of this, artists have turned to them repeatedly throughout the twentieth century as a space through which to negotiate what it means to be Brazilian and what an authentically Brazilian art might look like. So, in the early twentieth century, modernists tend to depict favelas as one of several uniquely Brazilian themes, and they serve as a space of aesthetic experimentation. Later in the thirties, due to a host of shifts in the political landscape as well as a new enthusiasm for Afro-Brazilian culture on the part of intellectuals and the state promotion of samba, favelas begin to be understood as the origin of “authentic” Brazilian popular culture and are taken up as subject matter in regional and nationalist art making. Favela imagery gets more explicitly politicized in the forties to sixties by left-leaning artists who hoped to transform the popular culture of the favelas into a kind of revolutionary consciousness. They have also served as they basis for experimental film and conceptual artworks examining the nature of poverty and social marginality (Cinema Novo, or the Tropicália movement).

In terms of the global community, almost all of these efforts in one way or another are trying to simultaneously grapple with social realities on the domestic front while also articulating an image of Brazil to foreigners (Europe is typically the big concern, though the US becomes important later in the twentieth century).

And for specific impacts? That’s hard to measure, as is often the case with art. For most artists working in the earlier part of the twentieth century, they were primarily concerned with simply depicting Brazil’s social reality, for better and worse. For many, the favelas were troubling, and they might have hoped their art would address that and have some diffuse impact in terms of formal or thematic critique, but it wasn’t about direct action. For others, the favelas were believed to be the soul of the nation and were celebrated, not necessarily because they were poor but because that poverty was, paradoxically, the thing that guaranteed their authenticity and enabled them to be symbols of national identity. It was not really the intent for artists to make any direct interventions into favela communities until the 1960s, when leftist artists and student groups used art (visual art as well as every other type) to engage in consciousness-raising. Both high and popular culture became the tool to organize, instruct, and “uplift” communities. These kinds of activities are largely repressed (to put it kindly) during the military dictatorship (1964–1985) and don’t really start to spring up again until the 1990s. And here, it’s a whole different story because favela communities have, by this point, been devastated by the narcotics traffic and government neglect. There is a huge presence of local grassroots groups and international nongovernmental organizations in favela communities today (especially in Rio), and they have become really important arbiters of contemporary artists’ work, facilitating collaborations between artists and residents or, in some cases, providing the resources for particular projects and/or receiving resources from the display of an artist’s work.

(left to right) Detail from Paula Trope, Meninos do Morrinho (Kids of the “Little Hills”), 2007; Projeto Morrinho (Little Hills) at the Venice Biennale, 2007 (courtesy of Melissa Geppert)

One brief example is a group called Projeto Morrinho, and it is a model of a favela made out of bricks and trash by kids (now adults) who live in the favela community. Through a set of chance circumstances, this model—which began as a pastime—was featured in a small documentary and some local exhibitions. Then an artist named Paula Trope finds out about the group and collaborates with the kids in a photography project, which she exhibits around Brazil and splits any money she earns with the kids. The kids then start an NGO around the model, and Trope introduces them to the curator of the Venice Biennale, a very prestigious international exhibition, and he invites them to display their project at the show. This then opens up to all kinds of other exhibition opportunities all over the world.

Due to this exposure (which, by the way, pays very little beyond per diem expenses and a plane ticket), they start a small tourism operation in their neighborhood where people who maybe saw or heard about the model from art world sources want to see it in its natural environment. Tourists pay a fee, and proceeds go to various community projects. The increased tourism is good for the city, so now they have received municipal funds for community upgrades and to maintain the project.

Tracing the impacts is never very straightforward and usually involves a complex network of agents and agendas. The hope is that there is some equity in the compensation of various kinds of cultural work, which is not always the case.

(left to right) Preparatory drawing for Discovery of the Land mural (by Candido Portinari), Del porfirismo a la Revolución (by David Siqueiros), Rivera the Arsenal (by Diego Rivera), and the storefront window of a Japanese-American business owner in San Francisco on December 8, the day after Pearl Harbor (by Dorothea Lange)

MM: Do you see parallels between Brazilian artists and WPA artists such as David Siqueiros and Diego Rivera, whose social realism helped bring national attention to issues of social justice in their communities? Or Dorothea Lange, whose poignant photographs put faces on the victims of the Great Depression?

MG: Yes. There were parallels in terms of how art was mobilized to create a sense of national unity around the nation’s most disenfranchised groups (the Indigenous Mexican in the case of the Mexican muralists and the rural and urban poor of Depression-era US).

Brazil has its own cast of national character types that fulfill similar roles, and some of the most important ones are irreducibly linked to the favelas. Some Brazilians, like the artist Candido Portinari, received state sponsorship in the thirties and produced very populist imagery and public murals that were often likened to Rivera by US critics (though Portinari would have much preferred to be compared to Picasso). One thing I think is a bit different about Brazilian artists of the past century, and this is to really generalize, is they tend to be quite concerned to simultaneously deal with national themes/problems and with international artistic currents of modernism. There was not the same division between social realism and high modernism in Brazil as there was in the US. However populist they may have become, there was typically a line between depicting “the people” as a learned modernist and being merely “folkloric.”

Art Workers’ Coalition demonstration in front of Picasso’s Guernica, 1970 (courtesy of Melissa Geppert); My Lai Massacre aftermath, March 16, 1968 (by Ronald L. Haeberle); Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110 (by Robert Motherwell)

MM: Films like The Cradle Will Rock and the 2007 Alice Neel documentary reference the political agenda behind de-funding works of social realism in favor of less-threatening abstract expressionism. Although I personally adore abstract expressionist works and feel they have the capacity to address sociopolitical issues—take Robert Motherwell’s Elegy to the Spanish Republic series, for example—I recognize they lack the emotional directness often required to call people to action. What are your feelings on abstract artworks and their potential for effecting change in comparison with more realistic artworks?

MG: Well, that’s a tough question. I guess I’d start by saying that I don’t think art “does” anything by itself and that people make art political regardless of what it looks like. As a historian, I am interested in tracing what people do with art, what kinds of investments they make in it and how they make it do different things at different times. A US art collective called the Art Workers’ Coalition that was active in the 1970s was promised sponsorship by the Museum of Modern Art to produce a poster that was critical of the Vietnam war. The museum retracted its funding upon seeing the poster, which was a large-scale reproduction Ronald Haeberle’s photo of the My Lai Massacre with a quote from a Mike Wallace interview with a soldier who participated in the massacre (“Q: And babies? A: And babies.”) printed across the image. MoMA’s claim was that it was not the place of the museum to deal with politics, and so the next day, members of the collective staged a protest in front of Picasso’s Guernica image, one of the most condemning images of war ever produced. The point was that the museum, like art, is always involved with politics, even if those politics are obscured by individual or institutional claims to the contrary. One endlessly fascinating thing about art is that its politics are always being made anew, and works that were made thousands of years ago still continue to be embroiled in all kinds of contemporary political disputes.

Illustration of the 1864 Metropolitan Sanitary Fair (courtesy of Melissa Geppert)

MM: Your master’s thesis examined performing public culture at the 1864 Metropolitan Sanitary Fair. How did the performers of that fair compare with today’s postmodern performance artists?

MG: Well, I have never though about that, but it’s an interesting question. On the surface of things, they have very little in common. Sanitary fairs were these massive fundraising fairs that were held in nearly every northern US city between 1862 and 1965 to raise funds for the “sanitary” needs (e.g., soap) of Union soldiers during the Civil War. They were organized almost exclusively by women from a wide range of class and ethnic backgrounds, and they would display and sell all kinds of handcrafted items (baked goods, doilies, quilts, etc.) and just about anything else they could think of (they typically raffled off locks of hair that people like Lincoln or Grant would donate!). They were very popular, raised A TON of money (the one I looked at from 1863 in New York raised $3 million in two and a half weeks), and were a space for women across class and ethnic boundaries to exercise public autonomy at a time before there was a space for it. A few of the lead women had cut their teeth with abolitionist work before the war, and many more went on to be involved in the suffrage movement. So it’s this weird little blip in the history of women’s political history that, due to its inherent ephemerality (they traded in tiny, largely consumable or disposable items, and the fairs only lasted a few weeks for those few years), had not really been registered.

And so, since you mention it, it DOES have a lot of overlap with feminist performance art that was also concerned with carving out a space for women in an art world that was indifferent or hostile to them. These performances were also often intentionally set within the public sphere, had an element of display to them, and left very little physical trace after they were completed. Similar to the “Fair ladies” (as they were called), the politics of much feminist performance is based in social interactions, communication, organization of events, and exchange. And it has also served to consolidate political movements.

Chatting with fellow Assistant Professor of Art and Art History David Bithell (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: What are some of the classes you’re going to be teaching at SOU this coming year?

MG: In the fall, I will be teaching an introductory survey as well as a course on the history of alternative media (performance, video, digital art). Then in the spring, I will be teaching the Early Modern survey and possibly a course called Art and Politics. In the spring, I will be teaching the modern and contemporary survey and possibly a class on Art and Technology. Going forward, I am hoping to develop courses on twentieth century Latin American art, Art and Technology, and Art and Globalization.

MM: How do you help students make the connection between the visual and cultural impact of art?

MG: I tend to be “less is more” with my discussion of images. I know the cliché of the art history professor is that they just endlessly keep clicking through the slides of images (I don’t know very many art historians who actually do this but somehow we’ve gotten a bad rep), but I like to spend the time to really situate a particular artist or image historically and then have students pick out all of the visual details of the piece. Students are master “readers” of images since they’re bombarded with them every waking second of the day, so it’s about helping them developing a vocabulary with which to discuss image critically and carefully and then relating the formal elements of a given work to the history of which it is a part. Even when talking about the most minimal piece or maybe a performance that only lasted a second and all that is left is some old blurry photograph, I think it’s really important to spend time thinking about how an artwork is put together before rushing to the big interpretations. I also try to always emphasize that art does not merely represent or reflect history but rather that it is an active agent, and I think this is especially important for studio majors to help them be more conscious and conscientious about their work.

(left to right) Strolling through the Center for the Visual Arts; at the whiteboard (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: What is your favorite aspect of teaching?

Sounds trite, but I love that I get to talk to people about the things that I care about, and I get to tell all of these wild stories about people and places who are often historically or geographically distant from us. It’s a lot of fun! I also think it’s important to think about history, how it gets produced, and who is entitled to produce it—and art’s a great object through which to think about those questions because artists tend to cause historical friction.

Assistant Professor of Communication and Emerging Media & Digital Arts Robert Clift (by Rory N. Finney)

Robert Clift Audio Introduction

What does a forgetful kid who’s notorious for losing retainers and jackets grow up to become? Well, naturally, an award-winning documentarian. Now Robert Clift never forgets what he records—and neither does his audience. Producer, director, videographer, editor, and writer Clift has just added one more title to his list of vocations: assistant professor of communication and emerging media & digital arts at Southern Oregon University.

Clift, whose oeuvre explores the tensions between the individual and the collective, most recently won acclaim for his thought-provoking documentary Blacking Up: Hip-Hop’s Remix of Race and Identity, which premiered on PBS in January 2010. Boldly examining the controversial topic of race in America through the lens of hip-hop, the film is currently being distributed by California Newsreel as part of its African-American Perspectives Collection. The American Library Association named Blacking Up one of the most notable documentaries released in 2010.

The prior year saw his Ethnographic Film production of Road Comics: Big Work on Small Stages in collaboration with Co-Director and Editor Hillary Demmon. The documentary follows three road comics as they travel the Midwest comedy club circuit, analyzing the relationship between standup comedy as a mode of verbal art and the performative landscape on which it is developed.

Clift’s filmmaking talents were recognized early in his career, with a 2002 16mm short winning the Brian Freidman Best of Festival Award at Indiana University’s annual Iris Film and Video Festival. This followed the success of his 2001 PBS documentary Stealing Home: The Case of Contemporary Cuban Baseball, which received nearly $250,000 in funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Latino Public Broadcasting, and Technical Assistance & Training Corporation.

In 1998, Clift served as assistant editor on a two-hour ABC documentary titled ’68: A Look Back, by award-winning producers Paul and Holly Fine. He was the consulting editor on Proud, a feature-length fictional film about the USS Mason, the only African-American naval ship to serve in combat during World War II. An official selection in the Tribeca Film Festival, Proud was nominated as Best Independent Feature at the 2006 Black Reel Awards.

With Blacking Up: Hip-Hop’s Remix of Race and Identity playing in the background (by Hillary Demmon)

His interactive and new media projects include “See This: Video Jazz,” “Multimediatic (A Video-Jazz Dialogue),” and “Project 360,” for which he was awarded a grant from the Independent Television Service (ITVS) for a new media campaign in support of Blacking Up. This was in addition to the $80,000 in funding he secured from ITVS to produce Blacking Up.

Clift earned a PhD and MA in communication and culture from Indiana University, with specializations in film and media studies; performance and ethnography; and rhetoric and public culture as well as a doctoral minor in cultural studies. Prior to that, he completed his BA in political science/international relations at Pomona College.

His dissertation, “Disrupting Reality: Doubt, Authority, and the Documentary Performance,” points the lens at documentarians who fabricate situations and purposefully mislead their subjects. Clift’s research untangles the layers of reality and deception presented by such experimental films as William Greaves’s Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 1.

Clift’s essay “Confusing the Frame: Interviews, Dramatizations and Deauthorized Performances in Errol Morris’s Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr.” will appear in a forthcoming Errol Morris anthology edited by Lou Thompson. He has traveled the country as a guest speaker, screening his documentaries and leading discussions on Blacking Up and Stealing Home at Georgetown University, Saginaw Valley University, Bridegewater State University, Indiana University, and DePauw University. His screening of Stealing Home at Monroe County Public Library in Bloomington, Indiana, was sponsored by the Cultural Studies Association and the Sisters of Cuba Foundation.

Since 2003, Clift has served on the board of the Corporation for Educational Radio and Television. Last year, he donated time and resources to produce two PSAs for the Washington Animal Rescue League. From 2005 to 2009, Clift acted as curator/judge for the annual Iris Film Festival in Bloomington, Indiana.

Clift served as a volunteer film and video instructor at the Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where he taught a four-week Film and Video Production Seminar to a group of high school students as part of The Sioux Nation Cultural Awareness month. Participants wrote, directed, shot, edited, and acted in a collaborative piece entitled Yawn: Life on the Rez’. Other volunteer activities include teaching an eight-week Film Production Seminar at Indiana University’s Collins Living and Learning Center.

He has taught courses such as Narrative and Experimental Film Production, Documentary Theory and Production, Production as Criticism: The Mockumentary, and Production as Criticism: Science Fiction. The latter three courses earned him individual Outstanding Teaching awards.

Today, Clift looks forward to inspiring future generations of filmmakers to document the unforgettable individual moments within the grander collective experience.

Conversation with Robert Clift

E-interview conducted by Melissa L. Michaels in October 2011

Clift as a child (courtesy of Robert Clift)

MM: Have you been a documentarian in one form or another since birth? What early evidence can you find for your talents as an observer capable of formulating a compelling narrative about a subject?

RC: I was a forgetful child—one of those children teachers would pin notes on to bring home. And I would lose things. Jackets and retainers were my specialty. My mother still enjoys talking about how much money the orthodontist made on my lost retainers. She’s funny when she talks about it. I’ve thought about filming it. It’s a nice little story. It doesn’t have a big compelling narrative, but it’s a fragment of something that maybe, someday, I could incorporate into something bigger. Or maybe not. Either way, I suppose I would say that I’m a documentarian because I had a bad memory as a child. Or I’m just too old to pin notes on myself.

Sparking discussion in the Center for the Visual Arts (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: I hope you do film that vignette with your mom. I would love to see it. Now I’m wondering, how has your documentary career influenced your teaching philosophy and style?

RC: I approach teaching very much like I approach my documentary work. I start with general goals and directions, but I know the strength of my films will depend on the strength of my collaboration with the people in them. If my work falls flat, it is because I haven’t engaged them: interviews are stale; footage illustrates the obvious; and the viewer is not challenged to reflect on what they’re watching. Similarly, I believe teaching should avoid a banal learning environment and encourage students to actively confront ideas. Like the people I work with on my films, I see students as creating the learning experience with me. I enter with an agenda, just like I might have a set of questions prepared for an interviewee, but that agenda is a blueprint for engagement, not an unyielding set of concepts to be fed or followed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn4rJLzv4Jk

Trailer for Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 1 (by William Greaves)

MM: Your PhD dissertation in communication and culture was titled “Disrupting Reality: Doubt, Authority, and the Documentary Performance.” What did you discover?

RC: People often think documentarians seek to give viewers an objective representation of reality and that they do so by following certain protocols, like not interfering in the scene of what they film or communicating honestly with the people they film. I looked at documentarians who take the opposite approach—filmmakers who fabricate situations and purposefully mislead their subjects—and I asked what aspects of reality they are able to represent because of it. So, for example, there’s one film I write about from the late 60s, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 1, where the director misleads his subjects, a group of other filmmakers and actors, into thinking they are working on a fictional film. Once gathered together on a set, he then acts confused about what he wants from them and frustrates their attempts to participate in a manner familiar to them from past work experiences. Eventually, the film’s crew becomes so annoyed that they surreptitiously smuggle the equipment off the set and film each other talking about the director: Is he actually incompetent, or is he just faking it? Does he want us to rebel? Should we make our own film, one that is the expression of our collective voice and not the vision of a particular director? What would that look like? What would be the point of making a film that doesn’t have a director’s signature? These conversations are edited into the final film, and Symbio becomes a documentary that brings a number of unquestioned assumptions about movies to the surface: assumptions about how they should be made, about what they should look like and about whose vision they should express. It is because of the fabrications and the lying, the director’s “misdirecting” so to speak, that the film is able to represent these aspects of reality.

MM: It’s funny you should mention Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, because that film actually came up in a conversation with my husband just the other day. We hadn’t seen it for years, but it really left a profound impression on us, and it is such a brilliant example of meta-film. What’s fascinating is how William Greaves is not only deceiving the crew present in the moment of filming, but he is also fooling the viewer, who only gradually begins to realize the levels of reality and deception as they unfold through the course of editing.

RC: I love that you and your husband have seen Symbio and agree wholly with your comments about spectatorship.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHuI2JIPylk

Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority experiments

MM: But going back to your dissertation topic, the authority question makes me think of psychologist Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority experiments, in which he documented subjects’ willingness to inflict electric shocks on unseen victims (actually actors) when told to do so by an authority figure. How do your own findings about authority relate to this study?

RC: That’s a great observation. There’s a spirit to the Milgram experiments that continues to live—uncomfortably and in odd ways—in some of the films I look at, in the strange world of reality television or in mixed fictional-nonfictional hybrid films such as Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat. The difference is that Milgram was testing the influence of an authority figure on the decision-making ability of others in the experiment, and what I look at is how the insights of an experiment such as his depend on the deceptions committed in the name of it and, consequently, the undermining of the people’s authority who participate in it. This all raises, of course, some complicated ethical questions. Interestingly, it’s these questions that tie Milgram, for better or worse, to some of the programming we’re familiar with from reality TV.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWF-peyRuvA

Trailer for Blacking Up: Hip-Hop’s Remix of Race and Identity (by Robert Clift)

MM: Your most recent documentary, Blacking Up: Hip-Hop’s Remix of Race and Identity, aired on PBS in 2010. Winner of the American Library Association’s 2011 Notable Videos for Adults Award, the film poses the question, “Is this the face of new racial understanding in white America? Is this transcending racial stereotypes—or is it reinforcing an ugly history, mimicking a degraded idea of what it means to be black?” The documentary has struck a major chord with viewers across America because it is an honest and sincere exploration of complex issues such as race, culture, history, and identity, and it provokes so many salient—and perhaps unanswerable—questions about these topics. What did you find most difficult about making a film that dealt with such complex topics?

RC: The most difficult part about making that film was getting white people to talk openly about race. That difficulty doubled when it came to white rappers. I would have loved, for example, to have interviewed Eminem, but I didn’t get much further than his handlers. The perception was that he has too much to risk—that race, as a topic of discussion, is bad for business. I encountered the same perception with every white rapper I spoke to about being in the film. This made getting interviewees quite difficult. For this reason, I think those who did agree to be in the film, particularly those with a fan base, deserve some credit for not simply avoiding the topic. Even Vanilla Ice, who has been the butt of the joke for so long that his appearance in a television show has the effect of a laugh track, deserves credit for his willingness to enter the conversation.

Part of the fear, I think, is tied up to the kneejerk responses people often have to white rappers, or even whites who are into hip-hop generally. In talking about the film with people who haven’t seen it, I find that they often side for or against whites in hip-hop, as if the topic were as simple as choosing sides in a football game—on one side, the color-blind participants, who just love the music for what it is; on the other side, the racists, who are mimicking, mocking, romanticizing, and capitalizing on it. It’s simply not that straightforward. Communicating those nuances in the context of how race is framed in America, however, was not easy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDsRhMVpADw

Trailer for David Holzman’s Diary (by Jim McBride)

MM: You’ve actually designed and taught a course titled Production as Criticism: The Mockumentary. What did your students come to realize about the mockumentary genre and its capacity for social critique? What’s your favorite mockumentary—and why?

RC: Mockumentaries take aspects of documentaries or straight discourse, turn them on their head and expose the appeals to authority at their foundation. That process opens a lot of space for critique—for understanding how media messages are produced, and for fostering a critical eye toward media programming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYKlRL84MZI

Trailer for Forgotten Silver (by Costa Botes and Peter Jackson)

Two mockumentaries I often recommend are David Holzman’s Diary and Forgotten Silver. I like mockumentaries that take more of a satirical than a parodic approach, and both of those do that.

 
Trailer for Stealing Home: The Case of Contemporary Cuban Baseball (by Robert Clift)

MM: Your other documentaries include Road Comics: Big Work on Small Stages and Stealing Home: The Case of Contemporary Cuban Baseball. What drew you to these ostensibly rather dissimilar topics, and what common concerns underscore all of your works?

RC: Each of my films is concerned with tensions between the individual and the collective. Stealing Home, for example, explores the tensions between the Cuban ballplayer—aware of the amount of money available to him in the United States Major Leagues—and the interests of fans, government officials, sports trainers, broadcasters, managers, and the like in seeing that La Liga Nacional Cubana thrives and everyone isn’t faced with cheering for North American teams. If US-Cuba relations were shaped similarly to how it is between the US and other Latin American countries, Cuban baseball would merely be a feeding system for the US Major Leagues.

 
Excerpts from Road Comics: Big Work on Small Stages (by Robert Clift and Hillary Demmon)

Road Comics explores the particular conditions that shape the Midwest comedy circuit and the effect of those conditions on a group of comedians and the type of comedy they perform.

MM: As a side note, I’m also curious to see if you can help me figure out a term I’ve been trying to remember for years—it describes the effect that occurs when a documentarian attempts to record reality. The very presence of the documentarian alters the nature of reality by influencing the behavior of its subjects, thus making it virtually impossible for the filmmaker to document “reality.” The closest I got when trying to find this term was the observer-expectancy effect, but it doesn’t relate specifically to documentaries.

RC: Film theorists call it the Heisenberg Principle. From what I understand, scientists claim that it’s a misapplication of that term, but that claim may or may not be accurate. There’s a long and divisive history between different disciplines, much less between the humanities and the sciences. It’s essentially a fight over who owns the term.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niBw8JakaFg

Trailer from Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr. (by Errol Morris)

MM: Thank you!! That’s exactly the term I’ve been trying to figure out for years! What a relief.

I’m also interested in hearing more about your essay “Confusing the Frame: Interviews, Dramatizations, and Deauthorized Performances in Errol Morris’s Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr.,” which has been accepted for publication in a forthcoming Errol Morris anthology. Morris is particularly well-known for his invention of the Interrotron, a device that serves as an intermediary between him and his subjects as he conducts his interviews. It allows his subjects to look at his reflection (and vice versa) instead of a camera lens, perhaps creating a more human exchange through, ironically, a mechanical instrument. Did the Interrotron factor into the issues explored in your essay?

RC: Yes, but what I find most interesting about his approach to interviewing is that he employs equipment designed to heighten the sense of the interviewing situation. This approach flies in the face of documentary orthodoxy, which says that interviewees should be put at ease and the presence of technology should be downplayed. The premise, however, that interviewees will be more truthful if they feel more comfortable is a tenuous one. Errol Morris’s films and his approach to interviewing demonstrate that.

Deep in conversation (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: In what ways do your students have an opportunity to practice intellectual creativity in your classes?

RC: Learning is about growth. Teaching is about creating the kind of conditions that are conducive to growth. For me, this means grounding students in a particular disciplinary or practice-based tradition while also encouraging them to think outside of that tradition, to experiment, to foster new connections, and to not be overwhelmed by the weight of how things are typically done.

MM: What are you most looking forward to experiencing at SOU?

RC: I look forward to working with students over the course of their entire academic careers and having the opportunity to work closely with them during that time.

Associate Professor of Theatre Arts Jackie Apodaca (by Rory N. Finney)

Jackie Apodaca Audio Introduction

She acts, she directs, she writes, she teaches … occasionally, she chases tornadoes. Whether she’s on stage, off stage, or writing for Back Stage, you’ll want to catch Jackie Apodaca in action.

Her extensive theatre and film acting credits include playing lead roles in feature films and shorts as well as portraying dozens of leading women in productions at National Theatre Conservatory, Shakespeare Santa Barbara, Genesis West, and ONE Theatre Company. She served as an understudy in the Broadway production of A Thousand Clowns with Judd Hirsch. You may have even spotted her in a commercial for Lexus, Jeep, Scotch Brite, Panda Express, HBO, Lifetime, or Kragen Auto.

She has directed an equally impressive number of plays at theatre companies in New York City, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Denver, Santa Barbara, and Venice. Apodaca has her foot in the production world as well, having served as head of production at Modern Media in Los Angeles and a freelance producer/editor/coordinator in Hollywood. She has written and adapted the plays In a Warring Absence, Shakespeare’s Joan d’Arc, and Franny and Zooey.

Apodaca earned her MFA in acting from the National Theatre Conservatory at the Denver Center Theatre Company, where she was recruited and mentored by Royal Shakespeare Founding Member Tony Church. She had previously completed her BFA in acting at UCSB, graduating with high honors and distinction in the major. During her career, she has studied under such masters as Jim Edmondson, James Donlon, Archie Smith, Jennifer McCray-Rincon, Gary Logan, Judi Dickerson, and Ursula Meyer.

Her seemingly bottomless bag of tricks includes juggling, puppeteering, and clowning. Oh, and did we mention that Apodaca also sings mezzo soprano, performs dialects, and is certified by the Society of American Fight Directors in Unarmed, Rapier and Dagger, and Broadsword Stage Combat? It’s no wonder she continues to remain in high demand on stage, behind the scenes, and in the classroom.

As a senior columnist for Back Stage, Apodaca has counseled thousands of young and emerging actors in her “Working Actor” column over the years. Over the past decade, she has brought hundreds of industry professionals into conversation with her students through courses such as Hollywood: Anatomy of an Industry. No one will benefit more from Apodaca’s talents, connections, and experiences than the next generation of Southern Oregon University theatre arts majors.

Conversation with Jackie Apodaca

E-interview conducted by Melissa L. Michaels in September 2011

Chilling at SOU’s Center for the Visual Arts (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: When did you first fall in love with the theatre? Can you pinpoint a moment in your childhood when you suddenly knew you wanted to become an actor?

JA: I’m not sure about an exact moment … it was more of a gradual realization. I couldn’t believe something this fun was actually a career option. As I went through my junior high and high school years, theatre was something that kept me grounded and gave me a really clear focus on where I wanted to go. I was lucky to have a supportive family and a wonderful high school drama teacher, Bill Waxman, who encouraged me to believe I could have a “life in the theatre.”

Dylan and Caitlin Thomas (by John Griffiths)

MM: Your BFA senior honors thesis, In a Warring Absence, was a one-person show on Caitlin Thomas, the wife of Dylan Thomas. Very few people know anything about Caitlin. I’m curious what inspired you to choose this subject and what you learned about her life as you wrote and performed this piece.

JA: Caitlin was an incredible person. I discovered poet Dylan Thomas in college and was trying to come up with a way to incorporate his poetry and person into a show when my advisor, Judi Dickerson, suggested I read one of Caitlin’s books, Leftover Life to Kill. That, the many biographies of Dylan, and her later book, Not Quite Posthumous Letters to My Daughter, became the meat of my piece, which used almost entirely Caitlin’s words to tell her story. She was a very gifted writer—like Dylan—and fought with and for him throughout their tumultuous relationship. They had three children together, and his death (at thirty-nine—he always said he’d never see forty) almost killed her. Instead, she rebuilt a more peaceful life in Italy until her death in 1994, when she was buried next to him.

(left to right) “Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII” (by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres), “Joan of Arc is interrogated by The Cardinal of Winchester in her prison” (by Paul Delaroche), and “Joan of Arc’s Death at the Stake (Right-Hand Part of The Life of Joan of Arc Triptych)” (by Hermann Stilke)

MM: You created another one-person show, Shakespeare’s Joan D’Arc, for your MFA thesis. This female lens on a male lens of a female heroine is intriguing. Did you draw your perceptions of Shakespeare’s views from Henry VI, Part 1?

JA: Again, I did copious research on Joan for this show and drew on material by Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw as well as Joan’s actual trial transcripts for the final piece. She was a complex character, seen very differently by those on various sides of the conflict, but her trial transcripts make clear just how strongly she believed in her mission. She was almost unwavering in her version of holiness—it’s shocking to read the calm beauty of her words, knowing she was facing a horrible execution and that she was just 19 years old.

(left to right) With Tom Hinshaw as well as Leslie Gangl Howe and Ed Romine in La Terrasse, written by Jean-Claude Carrière, produced by Genesis West and directed by Maurice Lord at the Center Stage Theatre in Santa Barbara (by David Bazemore)

MM: You not only act, but you also direct and write. What do you love most about each role?

JA: That’s a tough question. I feel as if they are very bound up in each other for me, each another way of creating a—hopefully–moving experience for an audience. As an actor, I love the chance to see the world from another person’s eyes, get outside myself, and, well, play.

As a director, I enjoy seeing the big picture, scheming about how to improve one thing or another, and puzzling out the never-ending questions. I love to create truly surprising moments for an audience, knocking them off of the expected pathways and leaving them with something new to consider. One of my all-time favorite things to accomplish is a moment when an audience is laughing, moaning, and covering their eyes all at the same time because they find something both horrible and incredibly funny. That makes me sound pretty dark, and I love traditional comedies and romances as well, but taking an audience someplace they don’t expect, or someplace they’d actually like to avoid, is always a treat.

As a writer, I’m often inspired by historical events—real people dealing with difficult situations. It’s the same impulse that drove me into acting: delving into and understanding the human experience.

On the cover of Back Stage (by Jamie Young)

MM: You also write in your role as senior columnist for Back Stage.

JA: Yes, I have been writing for the actor’s trade paper, Back Stage, for over ten years and have been doing my column, “The Working Actor,” for about eight. It’s a Q-and-A column—I’m sort of a Dear Abby for actors. It’s wonderful to be able to get questions I myself had as a young actor and give helpful advice and encouragement. I draw frequently on my own acting experience, but I am also blessed to have numerous wonderful sources to go to with tough issues. So much of actor education focuses on the craft, we sometimes forget these young artists have to go out and make a living in a very complex industry. My work at Back Stage keeps me current with theatre and Hollywood business trends so I can bring this information to actors both through my column and in my SOU courses.

Sean Casey in Stormchasers clip (courtesy of Discovery Channel)

MM: I can’t help but ask about your experience as a National Geographic tornado chaser. How did you wind up in that field (so to speak , and what is it like chasing tornadoes?

JA: I went to school with IMAX filmmaker Sean Casey of Discovery Channel’s Stormchasers fame, and I’m married to IMAX producer Greg Eliason. My first year of storm-chasing came about because I semi-jokingly volunteered to help Sean out for a few weeks on the film Forces of Nature. This was before Sean’s TIV (Tornado Intercept Vehicle) days, when he was literally in the back of a truck in a harness and helmet as we raced down the road. I ended up doing a lot of the driving and went out again the next year to do more for National Geographic. I saw some beautiful storms, got too close to a few tornadoes, and ate at far too many gas stations. If you ever plan to chase, keep in mind that you don’t get to stop when you’re chasing an active storm system—except for gas.

MM: You’re certified in stage combat by the Society of American Fight Directors. How has that training helped you with movement on the stage?

JA: Most of my movement training was actually by master teacher James Donlon, who taught me mountains about creating physical meaning in a space. My combat training came later, at the National Theatre Conservatory. I’ve used it in a few shows, but sadly, male actors get most of the fights. I’m certified in Rapier and Dagger, Hand-to-Hand Combat, and Broadsword—so don’t mess with me

Playing Beatrice opposite James Bladon in Shakespeare Santa Barbara’s production of Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Jeff Mills (by Sean Casey)

MM: Let’s talk favorites. Your favorite play, your favorite playwright, your favorite role that you’ve played—as well as the role you dream of playing.

JA: You’re killing me! Okay, favorite play: Uncle Vanya. Or Hedda Gabbler. Or King Lear. Don’t make me choose! And similarly, favorite playwright: Anton Chekhov, but I also love Ibsen, and Shakespeare, and Shaw. I played Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing a couple years back which I truly enjoyed, and I’d really like to give Hedda a whack.

MM: You played Beatrice for Shakespeare Santa Barbara. Tell me a little about your work with that company.

JA: Shakespeare Santa Barbara was started in 2001 by a friend of mine, Jennifer Casey, who had the brilliant idea of bringing Shakespeare to Santa Barbara’s burgeoning wine country. The press and community really embraced the concept, and we had eight years of very successful productions. I worked with the company throughout its existence as an actor and director, and I got to play fantastic roles like Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Viola in Twelfth Night as well as direct the ever-popular Taming of the Shrew set in the Wild West. In its later years, I served as the company’s producing director, which presented a new set of challenges and rewards. Sadly, we closed the company down a last year because both Jennifer and I had moved on to other pursuits—me to SOU.

On set at a student film by Steven Ray Morris (courtesy of Jackie Apodaca)

MM: You taught in the Film and Media Department at UC Santa Barbara. How did that come about?

JA: Yes, though I am a classically conservatory-trained actor, I had an unusual day job during my years in LA. I served as head of production at a Los Angeles–based commercial production company and got a hands-on education in all things production. I lucked out in that my bosses were much more flexible than they probably should have been—they let me leave for auditions anytime I needed. I would sometimes leave a commercial set on which I was the producer to run off and audition for another.

I began teaching at UCSB in the Theatre Department but found my way over to Film and Media, where I taught acting and directing. Once they realized I could also teach production, I did quite a lot of that, too. It was incredibly rewarding working with students on their film and digital projects, and I hope to do more of that at SOU.

(left to right) With Professor Constance Penley in the Hollywood, Anatomy of an Industry course and interviewing Tom Pollock in the Pollock Theatre (by Addison Woody Smith)

MM: At UCSB, you taught a course called Hollywood: Anatomy of an Industry. What did that entail?

JA: The course was started twenty years ago by studio executive Paul N. Lazarus—who had retired to Santa Barbara and regularly brought his Hollywood friends up to speak to students at UCSB—and I had the privilege of teaching it for the last couple years. The class meets every Friday evening and packs in 200 students from across campus, despite competing with the beginning of weekends at a notorious party school. It’s a Q-and-A format along the lines of Inside the Actors Studio, and I had the pleasure of interviewing such notable guests as Director Brad Silberling (Casper, Land of the Lost), Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can, Men in Black III), former President and CEO of Viacom Tom Freston, William Morris Endeavor Lead Agent Rick Rosen, Academy Award Nominated Animator Don Hertzfeldt, Producer Robert Papazian (The Day After, Rome), President of Warner Brothers Digital Distribution Thomas Gewecke, Producer Tony Bill (The Sting, Shampoo), Universal Pictures Chairman Tom Pollock, and many others. What I found most interesting was just how captivated the students were by guests from all areas of the business. Whether a famous producer or a panel of recent graduates working low-paying production assistant gigs, the students—who came from various majors—were genuinely curious about the inner workings of their jobs and the industry as a whole.

At the blackboard in SOU’s Theatre Arts Building (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: Which courses are you going to be teaching at SOU?

JA: When I asked that question during the hiring process, I got an answer that I think accurately reflects my future SOU class lineup: Acting, acting, and more acting. I’ll be teaching beginning, intermediate, and advanced techniques as well as specialty courses in various acting styles, such as Greek, Modern, Shakespeare, Contemporary, Film, Auditions, and Acting Industry as well as collaborating with the film and digital production faculty on new courses.

Getting into character (by Greg Eliason)

MM: What are your thoughts on acting methodologies? Which approaches have you found to be most successful with students?

JA: I’m very fond of the work of Michael Shurtleff, who was incredibly pragmatic in his approach. Acting training can be very mystical, and while I agree there’s an enigmatical aspect to acting, as in any art, much of it can be tackled logically and head on. I also believe there is no conflict between acting for the stage and for the screen–an acting career today all but demands proficiency more than one area. Acting requires the same honesty and specificity in a Greek tragedy as it does in an episode of Modern Family, and I’ll be integrating an on-camera aspect into many of the classes historically thought of as within the theatre domain. An actor’s performance is flexible—that’s the thrill of live work—and I’m eager to show these young performers that what they are doing on stage can translate to the screen with only minor technical adjustments.

As to my courses, I believe students want and can handle huge challenges, so my classes are very demanding. I don’t stick to a particular acting methodology but am ready to employ whichever technique a situation demands. Students work differently, and it’s my job to be flexible in how best to guide them, just as I expect them to be present from moment to moment in my class or during a performance.

In conversation with Assistant Professor of Art and Art History David Bithell (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: What are you most looking forward to experiencing in your first year at Southern Oregon University?

JA: I am so looking forward to my classes! I can’t wait to get to know this student body, and discover how we can work together to take our program to the next level. I feel really blessed to be able to do what I love in such a beautiful place, and I am looking forward to being part of this lively, collaborative community.

Assistant Professor of History Sean McEnroe (by Rory N. Finney)

Sean McEnroe Audio Introduction

Who would’ve guessed that a 1970s world of shag carpets and wood veneer could produce a historian, let alone an aesthete? While the peers in Sean McEnroe’s working class neighborhood focused on the hip now and coming future, McEnroe found himself enchanted by the things of beauty passed down from his grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generations: antique oak furniture, lead glass, and, even more dear, musty piles of books with yellowing pages and linotype print.

Flash-forward three decades, and McEnroe is tucked away in a corner of Mexico’s national archive, rapt as he discovers an exquisitely hand-painted sixteenth century map hidden in the back of an eighteenth century legal case. Not long after, he is awarded a prestigious Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Abroad Fellowship to conduct research in Spain.

McEnroe earned his PhD in Latin American history from UC Berkeley after securing an MA from Portland State University in United States history. Before that, he completed his MAT in social science education at Lewis and Clark College and BA in Modern European history from Vassar College. His broad spectrum of studies equipped him to join the growing vanguard of Atlantic historians, who see the cross-Atlantic relations among the Americas, Africa, and Europe as sharing a collective narrative that cannot be cleanly segregated from one another’s influence.

Yet he is also particularly interested in history near to Oregonians’ hearts. His article “Painting the Philippines with an American Brush: Visions of Race and National Mission Among the Oregon Volunteers in the Philippine Wars of 1898 and 1899” won the Joel Palmer Award for Best Article of the Year in the Oregon Historical Quarterly. McEnroe also garnered a Rose Tucker Fellowship to study the history of the Pacific Northwest. He has served on the Oregon History Project Advisory Board and provided consulting and research for the Oregon Historical Society.

His latest research endeavors have taken him further south, with Cambridge University Press scheduled to publish his forthcoming book on Mexico’s history, From Colony to Nationhood in Mexico: Laying the Foundations, 1560–1840. McEnroe is already beginning work on a second book in which he will examine the place of respected non-Europeans in the larger world of early modern Atlantic empires.

Pursuing that childhood flicker of curiosity about the past has led him on adventures to mysterious worlds—and times. Whatever part of the globe, library, or classroom his penchant for history takes him, McEnroe is certain to find beauty and intrigue.

Conversation with Sean McEnroe

E-interview conducted by Melissa L. Michaels in September 2011

(left to right, top to bottom) Antique oak and hickory rocking chair (courtesy of Old Plank Road); lead glass (courtesy of TerriersFan); bookshelf of old books (by guldfisken)

MM: As a historian reflecting on your own life, what would you identify as the pivotal moments in your personal narrative that led you to your present career?

SM: Anything of beauty in a working class home of the 1970s was something from the past. As a kid, my first exposure to modern material culture was shag carpeting and fake wood veneer. In my home, everything beautiful came from my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generations: oak chairs, lead glass, tools with hand-carved handles—and especially old books. So my initial attraction to history was purely aesthetic.

My father began his adult life wishing to be a historian; in the end, he became one of the world’s best-educated bartenders; and in the middle, he channeled his interest in history into his parenting. My bedtime stories were adaptations of Herodotus and comic mash-ups of Robert Luis Stevenson and Horatio Hornblower. So I started my life with a lot of enthusiasm for history, and I credit my father for this. But it is my high school and college teachers to whom I’m indebted for instilling a sense of discipline and persistence in my studies.

Map showing the Atlantic Ocean and surrounding continents (CIA World Factbook)

MM: You are an assistant professor of Atlantic history. Can you describe what that field encompasses for those new to the term—and explain how it differs from imperial history?

SM: Sometimes when a new term comes into vogue among historians, it’s more a matter of fashion than substance. However, I think the phrase “Atlantic history” has contributed something important to the field. I admire the writing of many people who call themselves Atlantic historians because they are so alert to the influences that have crisscrossed the globe in all directions. In the colonial period, the exchange of people, crops, diseases, social organizations, and ideas across the Atlantic constitutes one of the most complex periods of change in world history. I can no longer think about phenomena like slavery, republicanism, or environmental and economic change in strictly national or even continental terms. People who describe themselves as Atlantic historians tend to view the history of Africa, Europe, and the Americas as very closely connected—especially in the early modern period. “Imperial history” sometimes brings to mind a historiography bound up with the defense or critique of empire. That is a long and important academic discussion, but it’s not the kind of work I do.

(left to right) Foundation of the twin Spanish and Indian republics of San Esteban and Saltillo in 1591 (Elena Huerta Múzquiz mural in the courtyard of Centro Cultural Vito Alessio Robles, Saltillo); stained glass from the eighteenth century Templo de San Juan Nepomuceno, Saltillo (by Sean McEnroe)

MM: How has your study of art history informed your understanding of Latin American and modern European history?

SM: I am drawn to the study of art as an end in itself, but I also consider artwork an indispensible source of historical documentation. Much of the joy I find in research comes from seeing the world though the eyes of people in the distant past. I think we come closest to “seeing”—in the literal sense—when we study visual culture.

A powerful example of this in my field is to be found in the codices produced by indigenous artist/scribes. When the Spanish arrived in Mesoamerica, they encountered a firmly established tradition of scribes who produced histories, tribute records, and works of divination in pictorial and pictographic forms. In the sixteenth century, missionary colleges taught the next generation of indigenous scribes to transliterate their spoken languages and to employ some conventions of European artistic representation. In these books—but also in colonial era maps, religious icons, and architecture—one can see the worldviews of Europe and the Americas growing together.

(left to right) The Rio Grande, which forms part of the Mexico–United States border, first seen at San Francisco Creek in Texas (Robert T. Hill), then from the Overlook Park at White Rock, New Mexico (Andreas F. Borchert)

MM: Many of your publications examine topics related to borderlands. What are the unique politics faced by borderlands? How does that compare with frontier lands?

SM: A lot of ink has been spilled splitting hairs about the difference between frontiers and borderlands. There is something to this discussion. One wants to get away from an idea of frontiers in which we imagine humanity on one side and a vacuum on the other. However, in Spanish, the same term (frontera) is used for both. I’ve noticed that Anglophone scholars have been more interested in the debate than their peers in Mexico.

Part of the borderlands tradition is about viewing a boundary from both sides and about seeing the middle as a distinct cultural space—and this is an important idea. The cultural encounters I study are often between several groups—for instance Spaniards, sedentary indigenous groups, and mobile ones. There are a lot of languages and cultures at these points of contact. These places of diplomacy, translation, and synthesis are at the center of much of my work.

(left to right) Procession of the Virgin of la Macarena, Seville, Spain; irrigation systems created by early Nahua colonists in northern Mexico near today’s US border (Bustamente, Nuevo León); sixteenth century open-air chapel (posa) at the Convento de San Francisco, Tlaxcala, Mexico; McEnroe and fellow graduate student Phillip Ramirez before Nuestra Señora de Ocotlán, Tlaxcala, Mexico; courtyard of the Alhambra Palace in Granada; Bell tower of the Convento de San Francisco, Tlaxcala (third, fourth, and last photos by Brad Benton; the rest by Sean McEnroe)

MM: You received a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Abroad Fellowship to conduct research in Spain as well as Sonne Chair research travel grants for archival work in Mexico. How would you convey the importance of studying primary resources to undergraduates? How was your abstract understanding of these cultures altered by your direct empirical knowledge?

SM: I always list the funding I’ve received from the Sonne Chair on my CV, but this is more out of gratitude than pride. My dissertation advisor, William Taylor, was able to fund some of my research from his endowed chair, so this is not a competitive award or a special distinction. The Fulbright fellowship was a different matter—it was flattering to receive one.

There are a lot of ways to be a historian, but working with archival sources has always been the most exciting part of the profession for me. My first exposure as a student was in a course on Georgian England. One of my favorite professors at Vassar, Donald Olsen, used to end class by giving us individual reading assignments. One day, he told me, “Mr. McEnroe”—he always called us Mr. and Ms.—“I want you go into the Rare Book Room and read the entire print run of Gentleman’s Magazine from 1730 to 1740. Don’t come out until you’ve forgotten what century you live in.” I didn’t—and in some ways, I still haven’t.

Sometimes primary sources provide the material historians use to set the record straight. However, in less well-trodden fields such as mine, we are often still writing the first draft. I work in big national archives in Spain and Mexico but also in small town and church archives. Sometimes I open a box of documents, and I suspect they’ve been sitting there unread for centuries. Finding something important recorded there is like making an archeological discovery.

Once, while working in Mexico’s national archive, I found a hand-painted sixteenth century map bound into the back of an eighteenth century legal case. The indigenous cartographer had painted every detail of the landscape with loving attention: springs burst from hillsides, crops sprung from the fields, and fish peered up from eddies in the river. I was sitting there wearing my mask and gloves in an archive that had once been a maximum security prison, but I felt transported to this lovely town four centuries earlier.

(left to right) Filipino insurgents laying down weapons prior to surrender (US Army) and a depiction of an insurgent attack on the barracks of Co. C, 13th Minnesota Volunteers, during the Tondo Fire in Manila (Harper’s Weekly, April 24, 1899, drawn by G.W. Peters)

MM: Your Oregon Historical Quarterly article on race and national mission in the Philippine Wars won a Joel Palmer Award for best article of the year. Your master’s thesis also explored the perception of Filipinos by Oregonians at the end of the nineteenth century. What were the Philippine Wars, and how did the Portland press portray Filipinos during that time?

SM: I worked on the Philippine Wars from a number of different vantage points: the “official” description of the wars from the congressional record and executive pronouncements; the internal institutional record in the privileged correspondence of diplomats and military commanders; journalistic representations of the conflict in regional and national papers; and the very personal accounts that I found in soldiers’ diaries and letters. Ultimately, American journalists didn’t know very much about the Philippines or what was going on there. Writers tried to fit the Philippines into the kind of racial schemas that dominated American perceptions of the world at the time, but the Philippines didn’t fit very well. Americans were sailing west and conquering a people in what they thought of as the Far East. They were encountering people who could seem Asian or African to American eyes, but who also fit some Western Americans’ ideas about indigenous Americans. Writers were charged with explaining a war that was first described as an independence movement but soon became a US conquest. The worse it got, the more soldiers and journalists fell back on familiar stories used in the past to justify the treatment of African slaves and North American Indians here at home.

Map documenting Mexico’s territorial evolution (Hpav7)

MM: Your book From Colony to Nationhood in Mexico is scheduled to be published by Cambridge University Press next year. Can you talk a bit about the thesis of your book, or do we have to wait till the book comes out?

SM: The book is about the origins of Mexican citizenship. On one hand, the new Mexican nation of the nineteenth century was inspired by foreign examples like the French and American Revolutions—that’s a story that has been well-explained many times in the past. But the political life of Mexico also has deep roots in the colonial republics, and this is where my book contributes something new.

Mexico became an independent nation in the 1820s. Before that time, there was no country called Mexico and no “Mexican people” (apart from the residents of Mexico City). New Spain was a society based on a model of parallel governance in which indigenous and European communities had their own municipalities and elected leaders. These two kinds of communities were referred to as Indian republics and Spanish republics.

My thesis, in brief, is that by the late eighteenth century, military and civic cooperation between Indian and Spanish republics was already constructing a national political culture from the ground up. Co-colonization of frontier areas was bringing northern peoples into the Indian republics, even as the boundary between Indian and Spaniard was beginning to blur. I argue that the independent Mexican nation was not so much a repudiation of colonial projects as a fulfillment of them. It was the culmination of a very old set of missionary projects and of time-honored practices that already existed in Spain’s multi-ethnic empire.

MM: Your op-ed letter “A Schoolroom of One’s Own” was published in Harper’s Magazine in 2007. What was that article about—and does it have renewed significance in the context of your arrival at SOU, where you will have a classroom of your own?

SM: That letter was written in response to a piece they had published on politics and history education in America. As a former high school teacher, I still pay attention to political debates on secondary education, and I chime in from time to time in the press.

I’m fond of the phrase “A Schoolroom of One’s Own” for other reasons entirely. Virginia Woolf’s essay “A Room of One’s Own” is a very perceptive piece of writing, but I think it’s often read too narrowly as speaking only to women’s experiences. I’m equally fond Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House. Both describe the struggle to carve out a time and space for contemplation apart from the surrounding social chaos. I’m kind of an introvert-extrovert, and that’s why I’m so receptive to these writers. I love this profession, both because I am able to spend time with interesting students and peers and because my office or my favorite desk in the library can always be a room of my own.

Studying a map in Hannon Library (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: How would you describe your teaching philosophy?

SM: Before I became a historian, I was a high school teacher, and I have a graduate degree in education, so I’ve been exposed to a lot of education theory, but I identify more with the tradition of education as an art than as a science. As a college student, I gravitated first toward professors who gave good lectures, yet many of my big intellectual breakthroughs came in discussion with my friends outside of class. Later, much of my best training came from my academic advisors. I try to create similar experiences for my own students. I consider lecture a real art form, and I put a lot of energy into it, but I also want my students to try being historians, not just reading or listening to them. I want them to develop a lively peer community and to cultivate good working relationships with their professors.

Hanging with Assistant Professor of Anthropology Jessica Piekielek (by Rory N. Finney)

MM: What excites you about coming to Southern Oregon University?

SM: In truth, I have always wanted to live in Ashland. I first came here almost twenty years ago, just after college graduation, to set out for a summer on the Pacific Crest Trail. Later, while living in Portland and in the Bay Area, my wife and I often stopped to spend the night. Each time we drove past the campus, we would weigh the slim odds that a chance to work here would ever arise.

SOU has some special attractions for me. I strongly identify with the liberal arts tradition, and I prize the sense of community that exists on residential campuses rooted in the surrounding town. In scale and character, this feels like my kind of school. Though I’ve only recently begun my work here, I’m beginning to learn about the rest of the faculty. I’m looking forward to sharing interests, not just with the historians and political scientists, but also with the faculty in anthropology, Native American studies, and geography. My work is fundamentally multidisciplinary, and I see at SOU a community of people in a variety of fields that will be exciting to work with.