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I'd be kissing internet arse, making like I was the biggest bitch o' the establishment ever if I was in that position.
I mean, isn't that the scam? We get in there, softly, softly, then we make with the rabble rousing on the quiet, like?programing education just like that, can we?
That's about sixty years before NWA and Ice-T came along.
???
I like that idea - thinking like a child. This is play. But it also involes a creative and unconscious approach to physical activity. One of the things I've noticed about swing dancers - they're particularly keen to try new things, particularly sports, physical activities, games, tricks and 'stunts'. I think it's because they've discovered that you have to just try things (as Sugar Sullivan would shout at us in class - "If you don't try to dance it, you will never dance it!"), throw yourself into activities, even if you're likely to look foolish or fall over. When you know the limits of your body, you can trust yourself to do things which appear physically difficult. And when you're used to experimenting physically, you stop worrying about looking foolish or being embarassed.
February 27, 2008
ideas
I'm currently thinking about 'faceplant fatigue' as a tiny side-thought in a larger article and am collecting articles.
- Why I deactivated by facebook account
- Why do we have Facebook fatigue?
- Social network fatigue?
- Why I'm deleting my facebook account
There are heaps of other neat articles on the sudden 'rush' to ditch faceplant, but I'm tickled by the thought of 'social networking fatigue'. It's so difficult having friends.
"ideas" was posted by dogpossum on February 27, 2008 12:03 PM in the category academia | Comments (0)
February 13, 2008
sour grapes
Reading this rant here (and it is a rant, and I do think we should all allow ourselves the luxury of ranting on our blogs - that's the delight of self-publishing, no?), my immediate thought was "that's a bit rich." I mean, the author is one of those young-gun rock star type American academics. She's sporting a whole lot of academic and social privilege which plebs like myself really don't have access to.
I also thought "hey, I have a paper in that journal!" And I am, I must admit, extremely excited about my article (it's a nice one about YouTube and dancers and I'm quite proud of it). It's not in that special issue of the journal, though it was initially accepted and later politely knocked back (I guess it was bumped for some rock star, right?). As I said, I'm feeling quite chuffed about being in this journal - it's an International, donchakno? So I'm not all that cool reading that post - what does that make me, sister? Some sort of publisher's stooge (I wish, I wish - I am so ready to be some publisher's stooge).
So reading that article, I was a little bit... pooped. I mean, I don't really think it's all that cool to snub the very source of a serious part of your cred and status. That's the action that's getting her a career. That's the action that'll help me get a permanent job (anyone else just loving these semester-by-semester positions? Empowering, no? Terribly punk, yes?) and fund my future jazz spending (wait, I'll tell you about today's presents later). That's the stuff that'll make the past...15 years of work mean something.
I'm sorry, homegirl, you can't go making those sorts of calls without expecting some sort of kick up the bum... or perhaps just a polite throat clearing and measured response.
This one by Anne is my favourite so far. I also like Jason's comment on the original article and his blog entry. You can chase the other responses around the internet yourselves, but you can see the sorts of responses that sat bestest with me.
I think, from my position here, as:
- casually employed lecturer
- unemployed researcherjust-finished-(no corrections! - sorry, but I need to remind myself at times like these) PhD-person
- self-employed article-writer and book-maker (oh yes, I can't help but squeeze those papers out - it's like blogging: must share, look-at-me-look-at-me-look-at-me!, God, am I the only one?)
- serial paper-giver/self-humiliator
I'd be kissing internet arse, making like I was the biggest bitch o' the establishment ever if I was in that position.
I mean, isn't that the scam? We get in there, softly, softly, then we make with the rabble rousing on the quiet, like?
And, finally, the other immediate thought that I had when first reading that initial post was, "hells bells, woman, we're working in universities, not Médecins Sans Frontières". Yes, it'd be really nice to think that we were actually out there making people's lives wonderful, fighting the good fight and all, but at the end of the day we're working within institutions whose primary goal is to institutionalise people. And to make money. I think it's a little naive to think that universities now - if ever! - have ever really been about freeing minds, making jiggy with the knowledge and all. I know it's a wonderful idea, but in practice... let's be realistic here. Researching and writing in universities is privileged stuff. It's not easy - it's damn hard work, especially for n00bs - but it's pretty freakin' good work.
And sure, let's say our academic articles are suddenly free and available to the whole universe. Does that mean that they're suddenly also well written, accessible and meaningful to most people? I don't think so... There's far more to be done to make academic work the people's work than simply avoiding old school journals. And I do feel that there's some sort of ...arrogance? to the idea that just because our academic work's out there in the 'public sphere' that people'd actually want to read it. Pft. I don't think so. You know they'd really rather look at kitties. I had that idea when I started in on my PhD work. But maybe that's just dancers - no time for academic wankery.
...I can't help thinking about this as I type this. I might be one of those types.
"sour grapes" was posted by dogpossum on February 13, 2008 6:58 PM in the category academia
January 29, 2008
retuning for white audiences - more sister rosetta tharpe
Helen has asked for specific details about the tuning of Tharpe's guitar in her comment here. Below is a big fat quote from an article called 'From Spirituals to Swing: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Gospel Crossover' by Gayle Wald (published in 'American Quarterly', vol 55, no.3 September 2003), pgs 389-399. This is where I read that note about Tharpe's tuning - hope it's useful, Helen.
Wald's article is mostly about Tharpe's movement from black gospel music to the white jazz/blues/pop mainstream. Tharpe is taken as an example illustrating wider points about culture and music during this period. It's a really interesting read.
Although Tharpe arrived in New York already highly credentialed in Pentecostal terms, Sammy Price, Decca's house pianist and recording supervisor at the time Tharpe recorded "Rock Me," apparently wasn't feeling any of this joy. Tharpe, he recalled in his 1990 autobiography, "tuned her guitar funny and sang in the wrong key." In all likelihood Price was referring to Tharpe's use of vestapol (sometimes called 'open D') tuning popular among blues musicians in the Mississippi Delta region. (Muddy Waters is among the many blues guitarists, for example, who learned vestapol technique in the 1930s, when he was growing up in Clarksdale, Mississippi.) As common as it was in the South, however, vestapol tuning could sound distinctly crude and out-of-place in the context of northern jazz bands. By his own account, Price, who later went on to record several hits with Tharpe, refused to play with her until she used a capo, the bar that sits across the fingerboard and changes the pitch of the instrument. "With a capo on the fret," he explained, "it would be a better key to play along with, a normal jazz key."
Price's brief story of the carpo as a normalizing technology is rich with implications for the discussion of what 'crossing over' to the realm of popular entertainment might have meant for Tharpe. Resonant of southern black communities and of musicians who honed their craft in churches as well as on back porches - musicians Hammond quite unself-consciously called 'unlettered' - Tharpe's 'funny' guitar playing introduced, to Price's ear, an apparently unassimilable element into the prevailing sounds of urban jazz. It's also possible that Price was demanding that Tharpe sing at a higher pitch, to conform with popular as well as commercial expectations that high pitch evidences a correspondingly 'higher' degree of femininity. In any case, and as Price suggests, Tharpe quite literally had to adjust her guitar and singing techniques to make commercially popular, 'secular' records that would earn her an audience beyond the relatively small market of consumers of 'religious music.' The 'makeover' of Tharpe's sound also has important gender and class implications less obvious from Price's comment. In bringing her sound more into line with the sounds of commercial jazz, Tharpe would not only have to change her tuning, but 'change her tune' as far as her performance of femininity was concerned.
The 'Hammond' referred to in the article is John Hammond, an important figure in the promotion and management of a number of big jazz musicians. Gunther Schuller's book 'The Swing Era' reads almost as a history of Hammond's career. I think it's important to note that this one white man was important for his influence on the developing jazz and swing music industry. His selection and then promotion of specific artists shaped the recording industry, popular tastes and the white mainstream's understanding of and access to black music during this period. As the race records and black-run radio stations were forced out of the industry by white competitors and blatantly racist media regulation, black artists had less and less control of their own representation in mass media, and black musical culture was mediated by white corporate and cultural interests.
All of this makes for fabulous, fascinating reading. It is, though, all about America. I'm not sure how much (if any of it) can be translated to the Australian context. But that would make for interesting research in itself, particularly when you keep in mind that jazz in Australia is necessarily the product of cultural transmission - black music filtered through mainstream American recording and sheet music industries to white mainstream audiences and musicians and white Australian musicians and audiences. Sure, there were musicians making jazz in Australia (people like Graeme Bell of course), but I've been thinking about 'authenticity' and jazz in such a transplanted context... particularly as I've read recently somewhere (goddess knows where - I'd have to retrace my steps) that music tends to reflect the vocal patterns and intonations and rhythms of the culture in which it develops. So, we could draw from this the conclusion that we Australians would play jazz with an Australian accent. It wouldn't sound like American - or black American - jazz. I'm hesitant to make comments about the relative value of localised jazz, but it's an issue hanging in the background there...
But back to Hammond. John Hammond of course organised the concert 'From Spirituals to swing' at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1938 (you can see the artists here, in a recording of the concert) . This concert featured a bunch of super big artists (Jimmy Rusher, Joe Turner, Mitchell's Christian Singers, Albert Ammons, Sidney Bechet, Count Basie, Benny Goodman). It's goal was a combination of musical 'education' for the white mainstream and - indubitably, considering Hammond's impressive business sense - promotion of black music to new white audiences/consumers.
I'm interested in this concert and in Tharpe's cross-promotion to the mainstream as an example of cultural transmission - I'm fascinated by the way music and dance move between cultures. I'm also really interested in the uses of power in this process. Is it appropration? Stealing? Poaching? To quote (ad nauseum), Hazzard Gordon, we have to ask "who has the power to steal from whom?" when we're looking at this process.
I''ve been writing about the way different cultures not only 'take' dance steps or songs from other cultures or traditions, but also the way they then adapt these 'found' texts to suit their own cultural/social needs, values, etc.
I've argued all through my work that we can see the social heirarchy of the US in the reworking of dances and songs. What did they need to do to make these texts palatable for white audiences? With Tharpe it was 'retuning' her guitar and voice. With lindy hop, it was 'desexualising' and 'tidying' up the basic steps. Or at least presenting a different type of sexual performance.
Some interesting references
There's a really great page discussing race records that includes audio files, images and written text here on the NPR site.
There's also a pbs (US) site attached to the Ken Burns Jazz doco discussing race records.
For a (very nice) academic discussion, see David Suisman's article called 'Co-workers in the kingdom of culture: Black Swan Records and the political economy of African American music' (The Journal of American History vol 90, no.4, March 2004, p 1295-1324) which discusses the 'race records' of the period and the racialised nature of the American recording industry.
You can also walk through this article via the JAH's fantastic site (complete with images, sound files and other wonderful things). This is one site that really ROCKS.
Derek W. Vaillant has written a really interesting article about black radio in Chicago in the 20s and 30s which discusses these issues in greater detail ('Sounds of Whiteness: Local radio, racial formation and public culture in Chicago 1921-1935', American Quarterly vol 54 no. 1, March 2002 p25-66).
Katrina Hazzard Gordon has written quite a bit about African American dance culture. Here are a couple of references:
Hazzard-Gordon, Katrina. "African-American Vernacular Dance: Core Culture and Meaning Operatives." Journal of Black Studies 15.4 (1985): 427-45.
---. Jookin': The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
Read more about John Hammond, look at photos and listen to music here on this Jerry Jazz Musician page.
Wald, Gayle. "From Spirituals to Swing: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Gospel Crossover" American Quarterly vol 55, no.3 (September 2003): 389-399.
"retuning for white audiences - more sister rosetta tharpe" was posted by dogpossum on January 29, 2008 11:23 AM in the category academia and lindy hop & other dances i have known and music | Comments (8)
January 23, 2008
i can has female role model?
My hormones are rumbling, and I'm beginning to feel a little self-doubting.
This year's plan is as follows:
1. (semester one): make book.
2. (semester two): make teaching and/or research.
But things have gotten complicated. I've been offered different work by different university departments. Teaching? I has it. Exploitative first year tutoring? I choose not to has it. Researching? Hmmm. Interesting repeat teaching of last semester's Mega Teaching Experience, offering op to rework lectures and tutes and general Make It Gooder? I think I choose to has it.
Book? Oh, yeah, it's harder than it seemed. Rewrite? Why? It was a perfect thesis - there were no corrections needed! And what if I break it? Rewrite? But how? I mean, what exactly should I do? How should I do it? This rewriting - what exactly do you mean by that? Publishers. Yes, well. I choose Routledge. I choose them because it is an Impossible Dream, and we are in proximity to the Big Dream type stuff. Don't hold your breath though, homies - could be a long wait. There may be some resistance to my Choice.
And then, of course, there's the long, unbroken future spent tappa-tapping away at home, on my own, far, far away from other academic types. Trapped in a kind of netherworld, the Land of Far Far Away from Institutional Support. But also the land Relatively Close To (but not actually in) An Early Career.
I'm finding I'm more than a little needy with middle aged women academics. I'm looking for validation. For direction. For sound advice and useful criticism of my written work. I want pencilled comments in the margin of my work. I want an hour of uninterrupted Me Time with someone I admire and respect (and whose entire function, during that hour, is to listen to me, be interested in me, and most importantly, let me know how I'm going). I don't really know how to do this sort of larger project all on my own. Not only is the writing style I've spent 4 degrees and about 15 years perfecting almost completely inappropriate, every word I write seems to scream 'Feelings of inadequacy! Lacks confidence in own thinking! Overly defensive!' It's like I'm reading the internal monologue of a young woman dancer from the local McDance school. GoDAMN this whole over-achiever thing. I am hopelessly institutionalised and no longer capable of functioning on my own without a role model.
All these feelings are of course the product of my rampaging hormones. Premenstrual anxiety and self doubt? I HAS it.
This lolcat has, consequently, assumed disproportionate importance in my life:
"i can has female role model?" was posted by dogpossum on January 23, 2008 6:21 PM in the category academia | Comments (1)
January 14, 2008
feeling a little traumatised
There is only one solution:
Also having difficulty imagining the dissertation as a book, so rereading markers' comments, just to remind me that I don't completely suck. Academia = way great fun.
...and I'm finding editing the Transformers pages on wikipedia very satisfying. I know nothing about the Transformers universe, I can't figure out what the articles are actually about because they're so badly written, but I am feeling immense satisfaction in rewriting them. Soon, though, I will know everything about the Transformers. Just ask me.
"feeling a little traumatised" was posted by dogpossum on January 14, 2008 4:55 PM in the category academia and fillums
January 10, 2008
let's say no to perforations
Three interstate trips in one month. No more, thanks. Conference, christmas and a funeral. Brisvegas was interesting and I quite liked seeing it - it's changed, I've changed, so it's kind of nice that we could get together again after seven years and find that we had lots to talk about and quite liked each other.
Acclimating to mega-humidity? Tick.
Family visited, without incident? Tick.
Old mates visited. Tick.*
It is hot today, and I have cleverly booked in an appointment with the doctor for another ear inspection. It's becoming an annual thing. Well, something I do a few times a year, actually. I have had enough of not being able to hear properly - it makes me irrationally furious, inciting Shouting, Stamping and Offensive Language. So I will have them irrigated today at 3. When the ambient temperature is about 40 degrees C. I'm hoping it will soften the wax and aid its removal.
I have plans for films to see, and I have started thinking about redoing the thesis. I have decided that it will now be known as The Book rather than The Thesis. I will start thinking about fonts immediately, as that is obviously the most important part of the process. Pav articulates my current feelings about the project quite nicely. As an ob-con type person, proof reading and editing is really the best place to site my natural abilities and interests. Serious Tidying will commence in a few hours, once this post is written, a cup of tea made, and a little clothes mending completed.
What fillums have I seen lately? Well, one of the most pleasing was Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers. I hated this when it came out, but now, after a few years of Howard government, it makes a lot more sense. It's also part of a recent spate of early 90s sci-fi fillum delightfulness, after we watched Total Recall the other night. In discussion with a fellow nerd yesterday afternoon, I realised that they're both actually Verhoeven fillums, and that's probably why they're both so wonderfully specrappular. Having read this type of SF as a Young Person, first discovering the Adult part of the family bookshelves (at about the age of 11, when carefully scanning the Adult stuff for the least hint of sauciness), these two fillums really capture the mood of terrible authors like Peirs Anthony. It's lovely, teenage stuff, and absolutely low-brain. So that's a tick tick and a V.G. from us.
Last night on SBS I also stumbled over In the Mood for Love, a Kar Wai Wong film that I absolutely love. I keep hoping their relationship will end well, but it never does, no matter how many times I watch the film. I love the obvious stuff - the colours, the framing of shots, the slo-mo, the soundtrack, the almost-love-affair ness of it.
Let's have a look at a couple of PR shots:
And just in case that's not enough, here's the trailer:
I think I might have a Thing for Tony Leung. My Thing for Maggie Cheung continues.
This new Thing is only fuelled by the immanent arrival of Ang Lee's latest film, Lust, Caution, which I've heard has heaps of hot sex, which I know will be an absolute visual feast, and which I'm terribly excited about. I'm thinking about special preview sessions on Friday day. It also stars Leung, which is very nice, and Joan Chen, who I also love (you might remember me crapping on about this stuff a little while ago in this post). I have rewatched Lee's Sense and Sensibility in preparation. Because no one does suppressed lust and caution like Austen.
The nicest part about catching this film last night was discovering it's part of an SBS series screenings of films by the cinematographer Christopher Doyle. The worst part was realising I'd missed Hero. Dumplings is on Wednesday 23rd January. I'm not sure if the others have already been on or not, but the SBS search function on their site sucks a bit, and I can't be bothered figuring it out. Guess I'll have to go to the video shop. Oh wait, our video shop SUCKS, so that won't work. Guess I'll be the last kid on the block to get into it, and use Netflix/Quickflicks.
Additionally, I also missed the first episode of Skins, a new series by the doods who made Shameless. And that's a big poo.
Well, think of me as I make it by PT (it's probably too hot to ride) to the doctor this afternoon, and pray for my ear drum. Let's say no to perforations.
*twice in a year! Dang, we'll have nothing left to talk about next time!
"let's say no to perforations" was posted by dogpossum on January 10, 2008 11:25 AM in the category academia and brisbane and fillums and television | Comments (2)
December 26, 2007
acma's report on families, gender and media technology
I'm sorry I don't have time to write something clever, but I thought some of you would be interested in this. It's ACMA's "Media and Communications in Australian Families 2007" report. I'd seen a few news articles about it, but have only just had time (because it's boxing day and I'm home alone while the family are out buying stuff) to actually look through the report. If you can't be bothered reading the whole report, check out the the press release for an overview.
There are, of course, some concerns about the sample size, etc, though it's presented as a having used a representative sample (only 750 responses, but that's actually not too bad, considering), I'm concerned about the issues of class etc tied up in the sampling process.
But if you read the report, there are some interesting points:
- Around 70 per cent of girls aged 14–17 have a MySpace or similar profile,
compared with 50 per cent of boys. - Almost two-thirds of girls use a mobile phone, but less than half of boys do.
Interesting stuff there, about gender and media use. My interest is caught by the fact that girls are more likely to use technology with an emphasis on communications. I do think, though, that it'd be worth exploring the communicative, collaborative potential of gaming. Apparently boys spend more time gaming than doing things like MySpace, and one of the definite appeals of things like WOW is the option of real time, collaborative play. Which of course, involves real time, collaborative problem solving and communicative 'work'. Which is, of course, one of the functions of 'gossip' - real time, collaborative communicative work where participants explore potential 'solutions' or 'answers' or 'reasons' for interpersonal 'problems' (ie 'maybe he cheated on you with her because she puts out?').
I also wonder about the significance of literacy. Young people make greater use of online technologies as they get older - as their literacy skills improve. And I wonder about girls' preference for text-based media. Is there perhaps a correlation between girls' literacy and their social media use?
It's all very interesting and definitely worth exploring.
The report itself has some problems - the same comments about 'watching violence on telly making kids violent, which is actually quite difficult to substantiate. Violence is far more complex an issue than can simply accounted for by watching violence on telly. So, you might be more likely to 'use' violence on telly (whether for models for your own violence, or as inspiration or energiser) if you're already living in a violent home, if you've had experience with violence, or if you're otherwise vulnerable. So there's a confluence of factors contributing to incidences of violence, and it's inaccurate to say that 'watching violence on telly makes you violent'. So this report doesn't seem to have taken that into account.
There are also a few, similar problems about ideology and lifestyle - still the idea that 'technology has an effect' or that there's a causal relationship between media technologies and social behaviour. We don't approve of that, over here in the lefty cultural studies media studies feminist corner.
"acma's report on families, gender and media technology" was posted by dogpossum on December 26, 2007 11:53 AM in the category academia | Comments (1)
October 13, 2007
this is a good essay.
This is a very great article. It reminds me of many of my own experiences in universities. Though I tend not to be the object of sexual harassment - I tend to kick heads and take names (which is probably why I'm finding it so difficult to get a full time job now). But I have had a couple of male academics try it on with me. Once was a fellow postgrad who couldn't seem to raise his eyes from my breasts when we were 'talking' (I use scare quotes because I'm not sure it's communication when one is having trouble thinking of the other as anything other than sexualised). Another was a male academic who told a particularly offensive anecdote at a staff/postgrad party. I responded with some verbal arse kicking. And never could get a leg up in the department after that.
But recently, I haven't had any of these experiences. In fact, it's been about six years. I think it's because I don't spend so much time on campus any more. And because I'm not 21 and I've pretty much given up giving a fuck what pants size I wear. And because I really do kick arse and take names now, and most male academics who'd pull that sort of stunt are afraid of me. And I like that. Even if it means no one ever gives me a proper job, I like the thought of having frightened those bastards so much they avoid me and won't make eye contact with me in the hall. And I have been known to strut upon occasion.
But I also think it has something to do with the fact that most of the academics I deal with now are women. They're the ones running the overcrowded, underfunded, understaffed subjects I teach. They're the ones who drop my name to people looking for tutors or lecturers or research assistants. They're the ones who pass my name along and then introduce me and make sure people know I'm Good Enough. I think that's half the thing - we female academics spend so much time second guessing ourselves and downplaying our abilities we forget to tell other people just how good we are. Just how skilled we are. And we hardly ever remind ourselves of our own achievements. So it's a good thing we have each other's backs. For the most part.
But that is a good essay. Read it, if you haven't.
fyi, it was written by our pav.
"this is a good essay." was posted by dogpossum on October 13, 2007 8:00 PM in the category academia | Comments (1)
August 1, 2007
John Frow = fushizzle
The paper that made hardened ackas cry like babies has been on my mind for weeks now... hell, since December last year when I heard the Fushizz give it (or bring it, depending).
"John Frow = fushizzle" was posted by dogpossum on August 1, 2007 11:52 AM in the category academia | Comments (2)
July 14, 2007
community media r us
I'm teaching this subject on the media this semester, right?
So it starts with a fairly ordinary introduction to basic media analysis skills and tools - helloooooo semiotics. Hello advertising. Hello COWBOYS!
Then we move to 'the public sphere', celebrity, media ownership and regulation. And then we end with 4 lectures on new media. This section is partly to do with things like media convergence and Big Brother, but also (and far more interestingly), community media and culture jamming. This is where my interest lies.
Now, firstly, I just want to note my reservations about this structure. It suggests that the internet has suddenly freed 'the media' from the grip of mega media corps, and that because we're all using laptops we're suddenly all free.
Which, as anyone who's paid attention to who's actually using the internet and computers knows, is patent bullshit. The same old collusions of class and social power are at work here - the internet demands literacy. The internet demands cash for computer gear (or internet cafe time). The internet demands time. And just because we're getting online, don't mean we're not seeing the same old racism/sexism/isms getting about.
This whole internet = democracy also ignores the fact that people have been getting radical with media since... forever. Hello political pamphlets. Hello SOAPBOX. And perhaps more importantly, there are media which are far more amenable to serious social change than the internet - go radio, go! Unlike the internet, radio doesn't demand literacy, the technology is cheap as chips, and a whole group of people can happily use just one radio. There is a substantial body of literature discussing media in developing countries (media development studies type action), and while it really fascinates me, I really don't know a lot about it.
But there's no denying the fascination of the internet for kids who're interested in the media and its role in democracy.
One of our lectures this semester is specifically concerned with old and new media in times of war. I'm imagining there'll be plenty of talk about propaganda, Bush and Howard and telly and newd. And because I'm the lecturer, I know there'll be some nice stuff about YouTube and the middle east.
But I have to go do some serious work now, so I can't carry on and make this the interesting discussion about teaching resistance and community media and YouTube that I had planned.
So go and read this article about footage of detention centres on YouTube, then go to YouTube and search for detention centres in Australia and let me know what you find, ok?
"community media r us" was posted by dogpossum on July 14, 2007 2:52 PM in the category academia | Comments (2)
May 10, 2007
in which i embarass myself with poorly researched comments about other people's blogs and laugh at spideremo
It suddenly got cold yesterday and today I've shut the window so I don't get cold while I work.
Last night The Squeeze and I went on a date and saw SpidermanEmo 3. It was boring, but it was nice to see Topher, who I think should have been Spiderman all along. Glen talks about it a bit and makes that joke far more effectively than I can.
Then we went to have dinner at Bismi, because I wanted something Indian and with the sort of spices and chilli levels that skips don't like, and because I'm obsessed. It was goood: best roti in the whole world. Then we walked home (about 30minutes walk) and remembered the days when I first moved to Melbourne and walked everywhere, before I discovered bikes.
The Squeeze and I (in the days of Not Dating) would go out for dinner or a film or something interesting a couple of days a week, walking from my place in Carlton North to the Nova or Brunswick Street or whereever, carefully not touching. Then we would come back to my place, drink a lot of tea and watch some telly. Then he'd go home. It was all very 1950s and quite surprised my friends. It seems we are, therefore, an excellent advertisement for abstinence, because we're still together four (or is it five?) years later.
Now I'm sitting at the computer, trying to ignore the laundry detergent perfume that's rising from a pile of clean laundry next to me. I erred when purchasing the detergent, and it's not enviro-safe. Which seems to translate to 'way over-perfumed'. I'm also trying to finish editing that paper, but it's not really happening.
I'm also wondering about notions of vernacularness, especially after reading about Jean's recent conference experiences and her vernacular creativity on the street post. I really enjoy Jean's blog and her articles. But I can't help but giggle at that entry's post - for me, the term 'vernacular dance' is really the same as saying 'street dance' (especially a that's the better-known term with dancers). To see the implied surprise/delight in finding vernacular creativity on the street makes me smile. I like her enthusiasm and genuine pleasure in the drummer on a Boston street, and her sense of affinity, and fellow-buskerness. But something isn't sitting right. I need to follow up that thought.
I also think I need to read more about this vernacular stuff that those doods have been doing in Brisvegas, esp in reference to flickr. I just know those big brains are saying something really neat. But somewhere, I'm feeling uncomfortable with the way the term vernacular is being used. There is the implication that people are writing from outside a vernacular culture, and all the resistant stuff of 'vernacular' is getting lost. I know that's probably completely inaccurate, but I just... I just feel like I've missed something. In fact, I'm pretty certain it's my error in comprehension, rather than their error in writing, and I need to fix it. But not right now - when I've finished this article, ok? Or maybe I should read it all now, before I publish this...
Seeing as how this is what I'm writing about in my paper right now, here's a chunk where I define 'vernacular dance':
Lindy hop began in Africa, where dance was firmly planted in the everyday life of every person. Some ten million men, women and children were sent into slavery to the Americas from Africa – primarily west Africa – between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. They brought with them the music and dance traditions of a number of different African nations and cultures, as well as a history of slavery prior to the European invasions. Dance in west Africa was a significant part of public and community life, and Katrina Hazzard-Gordon writes in Jookin’: the Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture that "We can say without exaggeration that dance competency, if not proficiency, is required of all individuals in west African society" (1990, pp. 4), and she extrapolates from this to site dance in all west African descended communities. Africanist dance forms – dances brought to various other communities throughout the Americas and beyond – not only share steps and specific movements, but also more general tropes in terms of aesthetics of choreography and physiology. They also share similar approaches to the social function of dance. Dance is seen not as a ‘leisure’ activity or ‘work’ or ‘performance’, bracketed from normal life as it is in mainstream Australian culture today. It is in everyday life as rhythmic movement. This everydayness is read as a key feature of vernacular dance, wherever and in whichever culture it is found. A study of vernacular dance as everyday cultural practice seems the natural preserve of a cultural studies project, and in the following discussion I will both refine my definition of the concept of vernacular dance, and therefore its role as a public discourse for the representation of individuals’ identities and ideas and the negotiation of consensual ideology in public space.
The word ‘vernacular’ is commonly associated with discussions of language and dialect, referring to the language used by ordinary or everyday people. In a discussion of dance, the essence of the term is taken to refer to the everyday or ordinary common dances of a particular dance or culture. Though I take African American vernacular dance as my central concern, there is a substantial body of dance studies literature discussing vernacular dance in other cultures, including Sheenagh Pietrobruno's work on salsa. Vernacular dance is distinguished from concert or theatre dance through its positioning in everyday spaces, rather than existing only as a formalised, and usually choreographed performance of a particular dance on a concert stage. It is intrinsically participatory and happens in all sorts of spaces, both public and private.
Vernacular dance also always exists in a state of constant change, responding to the desires, interests and needs of its participants, reflecting the ideological and social values of a particular community at a particular time. This rhythmic hybridity (to use the term in Stuart Hall’s sense) and mutability offers evidence for dance as social discourse. All dance serves as a public forum for the presentation and discussion competing ideological positions, the representation of the self and the representation of ideology on the social dance floor, in the bodies of dancers. Its mutability and reflexivity allows performers to improvise and rework or introduce new steps to suit their cultural and social needs. Ralph Ellison describes African American vernacular in the following terms in Going to the Territory:I see the vernacular as a dynamic process in which the most refined styles from the past are continually merged with the play-it-by-ear improvisations from which we invent in our efforts to control our efforts to control our environment and entertain ourselves. And this is not only in language and literature, but in architecture and cuisine, in music, costume, and dance, and in tools and technology. In it the styles and techniques of the past are adjusted to the needs of the present, and in its integrative action the high styles of the past are democratized… Wherever we find the vernacular process operating we also find individuals who act as transmitters between it and earlier styles, tastes, and techniques. In the United States all social barriers are vulnerable to cultural styles (1986, pp. 139–41).
"in which i embarass myself with poorly researched comments about other people's blogs and laugh at spideremo" was posted by dogpossum on May 10, 2007 12:42 PM in the category academia
May 2, 2007
a long dry route
It's been a slow month or so for me.
The first rush of post-thesis creativity/productivity has ebbed, and I'm not doing any writing at all any more. Plenty of sewing, some crocheting, some quilting, some dancing, some DJing. We're also getting onto MLX7 stuff - a trifle late, but still, getting on. Slowly. But there's not been so much of the high-brain stuff lately.
I can't honestly say I've been sitting down to write much lately. But I have a heavy post-exchange cold (of course) where my throat is killing me, I sport a temperature and some snot and generally poor concentration. So writing is hard.
Yesterday I had lunch with a scribbling friend who's had similar issues. But it's pictures for scribblers, not words.
But I noticed it's Big Brother season again (why are all the characters the same person - I can't tell any of them apart! But I do love listening to them talk crap - it's like gossip. I love gossip. I love the complexities of group politics and personalities), and that seems to be a good time for writing for me. So maybe I'll get lucky. Or productive.
I have a couple of zillion papers in the works. The one that keeps catching my interest is about the type of music swing dancers are into, and how this is about jazz - as 'art music' or 'high culture' - becoming young people music with a physical purpose. It's there to be used again, not just listened to in silent clubs or theatres. It's turned up really loud, having a few beers and arguing about room on the dance floor again. It's thinking about sex, it's touching other people inappropriately and laughing loudly and rudely. Finally.
So I want to write about how young people are getting into this action, and how they're developing new relationships with bands. And, somewhere in there, I want to write about how the other people at the band gigs who best appreciate this, and really like it, are not the younger, cooler 30-somethings, but the nannas and poppas, who best appreciate the fact that jazz is about being rowdy and disreputable and having fun. And that black polar necks are really quite inappropriate wear for a jazz gig.
The other paper I'm thinking about is to do with gender performance on the social dance floor, and the way dancers use digital clips to learn ways of performing feminity or masculinity (remind me to tell you about K dancing with C at Perth: amazon lindy!). This is something I should have written about ages ago in a paper, but haven't. It's hard to write because I have so much to say. But it's the sort of thing that feminist media studies people like.
So I kind of feel as though I'm getting a bit closer to being able to write some stuff down again. We're kind of in the same room again. Not sitting next to each other, but closer.
On that note, I'll leave you with a picture from the Hullabaloo ball the other weekend. Those Perthlings give good venue, that's for sure. If you click on the pic there, you'll be taken to the larger picture in The Squeeze's gallery. And, for those who are interested, we love picasa Aperture (sorry) in our house, though it can be a bit resource hungry. It's a lovely program that organises your photos and helps you make galleries for the internet quickly and simply. It makes The Squeeze all smiley.
"a long dry route" was posted by dogpossum on May 2, 2007 1:48 PM in the category academia
April 4, 2007
rechanneling
Ok, so seeing as how I'm sitting about being bored/depressed/tiresome and cleaning compulsively, I've decided to rechannel all that ob-con potential and actually get on with making the thesis into a book. Thing is, I have no clue as to where to start. I have asked the Supes for advice and they have offered some advice. The no.1 publisher Supes (they're both big publishers and pretty kick-arse career acka types - the types young girl ackas like myself idolise and try to emulate) suggested having a look at the Routledge site.
I've also read this guide to making your thesis into a book by MUP. But if anyone has any other suggestions, I'd be very grateful. :)
"rechanneling" was posted by dogpossum on April 4, 2007 11:35 AM in the category academia | Comments (0)
February 26, 2007
nothing distracts like the frustration of being a very slow learner
I gots the email monkey. Each time the little red bubble thing pops up to let me know I have a new email I have to rush and check. If it's come to my 'official' email address (ie not one that has anything to genetic engineering gone totally wacked) my heart rate jumps.
I'm waiting word on a postdoc I applied for that is 'totally me'. In fact, so me it's like they wrote the application with me in mind. The Squeeze said I should just have sent them my thesis with a short note: "I hear you have a position for me?".
All this 'it's just so perfect for you!' talk (which seems to have spread all over the continent - friends in Canberra, Perth, Brisbane and Tasmania have commented - the Ps are still being Proud Ps and blabbing my academic achievements to the world) only adds to the pressure. It's entirely likely that I didn't write a terribly great application letter, that my CV was crap and my discussion of my current research interests was dodgy. I don't have enough experience with academic job applications to know what I'm supposed to do. And I'm not very good at being really serious and formal. It doesn't help that this is a postdoc with a very flash American university. Pressure? What pressure?
Applications had to be in by the 13th February.
Finalists will be determined, appropriate visits to campus arranged, and a candidate selected by March, 2007.So we're looking at about two weeks til I hear, right?
God, this is killing me. I don't really feel like I have a chance (though I look ok on paper, even though I don't have millions of publications - I have about 5 waiting for paper incarnations but who cares about them when the chips are down?). But I'd really like the job - it's a job where they want someone like this:
...a scholar in dance history/theory who examines dance forms as cultural practice with relationship to any of the following: international cultural exchange, globalization and globalizing practice, national and/or nationalist formations of embodied identities and cultures, and/or transnational and diasporic practice. We are open to the following geopolitical areas of specialization: Latin America (including the Caribbean, Central and South America), the African Subcontinent, the Middle East, East Asia, and South Asia.See what I mean? Even the area of geopolitical specialisation applies, as I'm big on African vernacular dance history. It really is like they thought 'hm, we want this girl. How can we get her?' That, of course, makes it even worse. I really don't feel positive about this application, but then, it is a perfect match. But did I communicate just how perfect? I mean, you have to be pretty crap to screw up a job application for which you are perfect, don't you? I know it's not helpful to think like that, but with the dentist thing dealt with and the thesis over, I need something on which to focus my irrational fears. Can't undo all those years of tertiary
And it's not like there are many of us thinking about dance as cultural practice, with an interest in dance history/theory (again, I'm both). And who's talking about international cultural exchange? God, it's like they read that paper on lindy exchanges and camps as un/national networks. Globalization? Well, more like localised globalisation, but what's one letter? Embodied identities? Embodied cultures? National or Nationalised formations of said identities? Diaspora? Baby, I got your diaspora right here.
It's scary. And so I can't stop checking my email. This is one application I haven't just forgotten about. It's bothering me. And no amount of work or music-listening or sewing (three dresses in a weekend, folks - one house dress, two wearing-to-a-wedding options, only a couple of hems and one set of buttons to finish) can distract me.
I think I need some Big Apple time. Nothing distracts like the frustration of being a very slow learner.
"nothing distracts like the frustration of being a very slow learner" was posted by dogpossum on February 26, 2007 4:18 PM in the category academia | Comments (6)
February 6, 2007
textual analysis = dangerous
This is exactly the reason I didn't name names in my thesis, and am reluctant to publish some parts of it.
I just know I'll get a serve for pointing out the obvious.
I might write more on this later when I'm not so busy.
"textual analysis = dangerous" was posted by dogpossum on February 6, 2007 11:29 AM in the category academia and clicky | Comments (9)
February 5, 2007
:(
Today is a sad day. I can no longer access the databases and online journals at LaTrobe via the internet - my library membership has expired with my lack of enrolment.
:(
Researching this article is suddenly a whole lot more difficult.
":(" was posted by dogpossum on February 5, 2007 2:55 PM in the category academia | Comments (3)
i suspect it's more a matter of post-phud malaise
I've decided dancing a lot makes you dumb. Or, rather, it makes it impossible to string a few words togethere coherently (let alone creatively). I'm arguing that it's because you've shifted gears and are now focussed in a new medium.
...though I suspect it's more a matter of post-phud malaise.
"i suspect it's more a matter of post-phud malaise" was posted by dogpossum on February 5, 2007 12:17 PM in the category academia
January 31, 2007
holy smokes
I'm kind of in shock.
My guest post has been published over here and frankly, I'm having trouble breathing.
I've cross-posted the post here. This is the title Henry gave it (as I forgot that part when I sent him the copy. Doh).
Are You Hep to That Jive?: The Fan Culture Surrounding Swing Music
This is a clip of the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers dancing a Big Apple routine (choreographed by Frankie Manning) in the 1939 film Keep Punchin'. In the last section of this clip they dance lindy hop on a 'social dance floor'.
And here's footage of dancers in the US dancing the same routine in 2006.
If you follow this link you can listen to the Solomon Douglas Swinged playing the same song on their recent album.
Both dancers and musicians have painstakingly transcribed what they see and hear in that original 1939 clip.
Lindy hop - the partner dance most popular today in swing dance communities - developed in Harlem in the late 1920s and early 30s by African American dancers. Over the following years it moved to mainstream American youth culture, carried by dance teachers and performers in films like Keep Punchin' and in stage shows, and then moved out into the international community, again in film and stage plays, but also with American soldiers stationed overseas. Though it was massively popular in its day, by the 1950s changes in popular music, where jazz was replaced by rock n roll or became increasingly difficult to dance to with the rise of bebop, saw lindy slipping from the public eye.
In the 1980s, dancers in Europe and the US began researching lindy, using archival footage like Keep Punchin' but also including films like Hellzapoppin' and Day at the Races - popular musical films of the 1930s and 40s. The aim of these dancers was to revive lindy hop, to recreate the steps they saw on screen. Learning to dance by watching films, particularly films that were only available at cinemas or in archival collections, was unsurprisingly, quite difficult, and these revivalists began seeking out surviving dancers from the period. Among these original lindy hoppers were Frankie Manning, Norma Miller, Al Minns, Sugar Sullivan and Dean Collins.
Twenty years after these revivalists began learning lindy, there are thriving swing dance communities throughout Europe, the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan and Korea. They come together in their local communities for classes and social dancing, and also travel extensively for camps and lindy exchanges. My research has focussed on the ways these contemporary swing dancers utilise a range of digital media in their embodied practices. This has involved discussing the way DJs in the swing community use digital music technology; the way swing dancers use discussion boards (Swing Talk, Dance History), instant messaging and email to keep in contact with dancers in their own community and overseas and to plan their own trips to other local scenes; and the ways in which swing dancers have use a range of audio visual technology. These uses of audio visual technology include the sorts of revivalist activities first practiced in the 1980s, but continuing now in lounge rooms and church halls in every local scene, but also to record their own dancing and local communities and also performances (on the social or competitive floor) by 'celebrity' lindy hoppers.
The Big Apple contest from Keep Punchin' is a useful example of the ways swing dancers make use of digital media in their embodied practices. But it's also the focus of my own dancing obsessions at the moment. I've been dancing lindy for at least eight years, and dance a few times a week in my local, Melbourne scene. I've travelled extensively within Australia to attend dance events, I've run events in my own city and I've travelled overseas for large dance events (such as the Herräng dance camp). This year, having just finished my Phd, I've decided I finally have time to work on my own dancing, in the sweaty, embodied sense, rather than the academic or abstract.
Writers in fan studies like Henry Jenkins and Matt Hills and Camille Bacon-Smith have discussed being a scholar-fan (to use Matt Hill's term), where you're a member of the community of fans you're researching. This approach is fairly standard in much of the dance studies literature - it is notoriously difficult to write about dance and dancing with any degree of convincingness if you don't dance - it's a little like dancing about architecture. I've also found that combining my academic work with my everyday, making my everyday experiences my work, has been a satisfying way to extend my fanatical obsession with dance into every corner of my life (a little like Henry's writing about Supernatural, a program I also love, here on this blog).
So when I decided I needed to get back to some level of dance fitness, to end the thesis-imposed hiatus from hardcore dance training, I chose this Big Apple and a number of other 'vintage' or 'authentic' jazz dance routines as my focus. I've learnt the Big Apple and Tranky Doo (another venerable jazz dance routine choreographed by Frankie Manning) before, but this was to be my first solo mission, using clips garnered almost entirely from the internet, though also making use of sections of an instructional DVD produced by a famous teaching couple.
Dancing alone is an essential part of lindy hop. The dance itself revolutionised the European partner dancing structure with its use of the 'break away', (which you can see danced by the last couple in the film After Seben), where partners literally broke away from each other to dance in 'open' position. In open, partners are free to improvise, and the most common improvisation in that historical moment and today, is to include jazz steps from the vast repertoire of steps developed by African American vernacular dance culture over centuries in America. Learning to dance alone not only offers dancers the opportunity to work on body awareness, fitness, coordination, individual styling and expanding their own repertoire (a point upon which I was relying), but also encourages a creative, improvised approach to music which they can then bring to their lindy hop for those 5 or 6 beats of the 8 count swing out - the foundational step of lindy hop.
I've written a great deal about the gender dynamics at work in lindy hop, a dance which prioritise the heterocentric pairing of a man and a woman, beginning with my own discomfort with a dance where the man leads, the woman follows, and traditional gender roles prevail. But I've also written a great deal about the liberatory potential of lindy. The open position and the emphasis on improvisation are an important part of this - in those moments both partners are expected to 'bring it' - to contribute to the creative exchange within the partnership. Lindy, as it was danced by African American dancers in that original creative moment, also embodies a history of resistance and transgression, as a dance with its roots in slavery and created during a period of institutionalised racism and oppression. One of my own research interests has been the extent to which the resistant themes of lindy hop, of African American vernacular dance, have been realised by contemporary swing dancers. The fact that most of these contemporary dancers are white, middle class urban heterosexual youth goes some way to discouraging my reading of contemporary swing dance culture as a hot bed of radical politics and revisions of dominant ideology and culture. Yet I have also found that lindy hop and African American vernacular jazz dances like the Big Apple structure and the Tranky Doo offer opportunities for the expression of self and resistance of dominant gender roles.
As a woman, and as a feminist, I've found that archival footage such as that Keep Punchin' clip offer opportunities for reworking the way I dance and participate in the public dance discourse. When we watch that Big Apple clip, while we can clearly see that each dancer is performing synchronised, choreographed steps, they are also clearly styling each step to suit their own aesthetic, athletic and social needs and interests. We see the personality of each dancer as they execute a set piece of choreography. The very concept of a Big Apple contest involves dancers performing specific steps as they are called, and being judged not only for their ability to dance the correct step in time and with alacrity, but more importantly (in a setting where dance competency, as Katrina Hazzard-Gordon has written, is demanded by the social setting - everyone can dance), for their individual interpretation of the step. This is a performance of improvisation within a socially, collaboratively created structure. The representation of individual identity within a consensual public discourse. This is the sort of thing that jazz musicians do - improvise within a given structure.
And man, is that some serious fun.
For contemporary swing dancers, the idea of taking particular formal structures and then reworking them to suit their own discursive needs extends from the dance floor to the mediated world. Online, swing dancers upload digital footage of themselves dancing, edited to best display their abilities. Or they edit whole narrative films like Hellzapoppin' and Day at the Races and edit out the sequences they're most interested in - the dancing. And dancers like myself are still watching these edited clips, recreating entire routines, and then, even more interestingly, editing out particular steps and integrating them into their lindy on the social dance floor, or into their own choreographed routines.
The notion of step stealing is not new in African American vernacular dance - it reaches back to Africa. And Frankie Manning himself is often quoted as saying 'dance it once and it's yours, dance it twice and it's mine'. For me, as a dancer, this is exciting stuff. If I put in the time and effort, I can learn these steps (well, some of them - watch that Hellzapoppin' clip and you'll see what I mean). And if I practice, time it properly and really bring it, I can pull that out on the social dance floor. Perhaps. Contemporary dancers enact that philosophy on the dance floor every day -stealing steps that catch their attention on the social dance floor, or 'ripping off' moves they see performed in footage of dancers in competitions or performances or in social dance settings all over the world. Or from seventy years ago.
For me, swing dancers' tactical use of digital media in their embodied use of archival footage is not only a source of academic fascination, but also a very practical skill to develop. I have had to learn how to watch footage of dancing in a way that lets me apply my knowledge of dance to separate out distinct steps, then figure out how they work, practically. Learning to poach dance steps from archival footage is a useful skill for lindy hoppers. But the testing of my skills is not online or in my ability to write and talk about these things. The real challenge to my creative and critical faculties comes on the dance floor, when I have to bring it - to bring the right step at the right time, but with my own unique, creative twist.
Bacon-Smith, Camille. (1992). Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
---. (2000). Science Fiction Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Clein, John, dir. (1939). Keep Punchin'. Film. Chor. Frank Manning. Perf. Frank Manning and Hot Chocolates. USA.
Hazzard-Gordon, Katrina. (1990). Jookin': The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Hills, Matt. (2002). Fan Cultures. London and New York: Routledge.
Jenkins, Henry. (1992). Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York and London: Routledge.
Kaufman, S. J. (1929). After Seben. Short film. Perf. "Shorty" George Snowden. USA.
Potter, H. C., dir. (1941). Hellzapoppin'. Film. Chor. Frank Manning. Perf. Whitey's Lindy Hoppers and Frank Manning. USA.
Solomon Douglas Swingtet. (2006). Swingmatism. USA.
Wood, Sam. (1939). A Day at the Races. Perf. Whitey's Lindy Hoppers. USA.
"holy smokes" was posted by dogpossum on January 31, 2007 4:22 PM in the category academia and lindy hop & other dances i have known | Comments (2)
January 25, 2007
nerd
The first recorded black woman blues singer (ie first black woman to record a non-religious commercially released song), Mamie Smith's 1920 song Crazy Blues had the lyrics:
I'm gonna do likea Chinaman... go and get some hop
Get myselfa gun... and shoot myself a cop.
That's about sixty years before NWA and Ice-T came along.
Adam Gussow (in "'Shoot myself a cop': Mamie Smith's Crazy Blues as Social Text" (Callaloo 25.1 (2002): 8-44) claims:
Ths song is... an insurrectionary social text, a document that transcends its moment by contributing to an evolving discourse of black revolutionary violence in the broadest sense - which is to say, black violence as a way of resisting white violence and unsettling a repressive social order (10).
Dang.
I'm doing some reading on blues and women blues singers of the 20s and 30s and it's hardcore stuff. No pussyfooting around this topic. I'm still working on ideas I wrote about briefly here, here and by extension here.
And to think a bunch of white middle class kids are using this shit to dance dirty at late night parties. Though I guess they were doing exactly the same thing in the 20s too.
I can't seem to get past the idea of the 20s as a far more radical moment than the late 30s. And the 20s were charleston time, flapper time - women dancing on their own, not wearing stockings, cutting their hair, staying up all night and getting divorced. While the 30s were lindy hop time, partner dancing, seriously tailored clothes with lots of darts and War Work.
It's really nice to have a chance to finally read and read on things that are entirely 'off-topic'. I can read whatever I like and write about whatever I like. I still can't get over that!
Meanwhile, I've done that paper I had to do and a draft of that guest blog post thing (which is scaring me - the pressure!). I've also got a stack of stuff about online community to read, including some neat stuff by Barry Wellman about the relationship between offline and online community. That dood is beginning to rock.
...I'm sure my interest in writing about seriously dance-related stuff (as opposed to more media-centered stuff) has lots to do with the fact that I'm actually going dancing more often than I have in a year - I dance pretty much every day and do at least 2 serious out-the-house dance things a week. My brain is ticking over all the time. And I feel like I have the time (and freedom from stress) to really think about ideas and make them coherent (sort of, anyway).
No doubt this is post-thesis euphoria and will soon be all over, replaced by some sort of post-thesis anxiety/depression/self-doubt.
For now I'm enjoying myself.
NERD!
"nerd" was posted by dogpossum on January 25, 2007 3:35 PM in the category academia and article ideas and lindy hop & other dances i have known
January 18, 2007
the thought of dancing in the third person
If you drop in over here, you'll see that things are sounding a lot like a whole lot of swing dancers with too little to occupy their immediate attention.
I have only two things to add:
1. I wrote my thesis in the first person and began each chapter with an anecdote, not to mention peppering the whole thing with talk about me. This is partly because I was actually spending a bit of time talking about how to do research as scholar-fan (to use Matt Hills' term)/member of the community you're researching. But mostly it was because I am a hopeless narcissist. It simply became ridiculous to write about this stuff without the first person - imagine all this in not-first-person (apologies - this is from a not-final-draft):
My earliest experience with swing dance was framed by university culture. As the social convenor for my postgraduate association in 1999, I was asked to organise a group expedition to a local venue that featured a live jazz band and swing dance classes. I fell instantly in love. Moving to Melbourne in 2001 for postgraduate study, I found the local swing dance community offered a natural complement to the work and culture of academic life, and quickly became a ‘serious dancer’. Five years later, I am well familiar with ‘the zone’ and all its attractions, have devoted countless hours and dollars to its pursuit, and become firmly entangled in both the local and international swing dance community. This doctoral thesis signals not only the completion of years of academic study in cultural studies and media studies, but also my critical engagement with a community and hobby which has played such a large part in my life.A large part of the introduction, from which this bit was taken, is devoted to my figuring out how to talk about and write about a community of which I am a part. I did try writing in the not-first-person. It was mostly ok until I started trying to talk about what it felt like to actually dance. Then it just got dumb.During my time in the swing dancing community, my interest has frequently been arrested by:
1) the encouragement and embodiment of traditional gender roles and social relations in the dance;
2) the ways in which these embodied dance practices and representations of identity are managed by communications media and technology; and
3) by the discursive activities of institutions and organisations within the community.
I am continually surprised by the way traditional gender roles are enforced in contemporary swing dance culture, despite the more liberal examples offered by the African American history of swing dances. I am also struck by the capitalist nature of contemporary swing dance culture articulated by dance schools and institutions, again, despite the social history of African American vernacular dance. These issues have led me to a more comprehensive research project where I asked how embodied dance practice in this community have been mediated by technology and institutions, and what are the effects of this mediation?Much of what I have observed in terms of media practice in contemporary swing dance culture echoes the literature dealing with media fandom in cultural studies. In this small community of interest, members adopt active and creative approaches to texts and discourse, routinely poaching ideas and structures from official discourses and media texts to create new creative works. Fan studies offers me a means by which to approach my research, not only in terms of theoretical frameworks, but also in terms of considering my role as a researcher who is also a member of the community I am studying. Despite my interest in media use within this community, swing dancers are, above all else, dancers, engaged in embodied discourse and cultural practice, always with an eye to social engagement with other dancers.
In fact, one of the major arguments in my work is that the divide between performer and audience in concert dance is a marker of middle class Anglo ideological stuff.
Here's some stuff from the paper I'm trying to write writing.
African American vernacular dance of the swing era, with its emphasis on improvisation and the creative contribution of individual dancers, rather than the prioritisation of choreographed performances and of choreographers as orchestrating artists, presents a public discourse that demands individual contributions. Social standing is assured by the ability to produce improvised or innovative new steps or variations on familiar steps, making public contributions to public discourse, representing the self in community discourse. A popular phrase in contemporary swing dance culture, shouted to encourage dancers in competitions or in jams or battles on the social dance floor, epitomises this notion: “Bring it!” And what is being brought to this discourse is an authentic or convincing self. Make it real or dance real feelings (whether these are anger or joy or derision or ironic humour), or stay off the floor....and then...
Ward makes this distinction: “there is a categorical divide between dancers and the audience in performance dance …that does not exist between dancers and spectators in social dance, where those roles are interchangeable” (18). I read this dynamic relationship between the roles of ‘spectator’ and ‘dancer’ in social or vernacular dance as a clear example of the ways in which readers participate in the making of meaning in textual interpretation. Thomas DeFrantz describes the call-and-response between performers and audiences in African American music and dance in "Believe the Hype", arguing that this structure is carried on into other media forms, and he takes music video and film as his key examples.In the case of dance, the text is a dance, or a dancer’s body, or just ‘dancing’, and the reader makes meaning through reading this text not only as a spectator, but also through their knowledge as dancers. This ability to make meaning even from unfamiliar choreography is facilitated by the cultural knowledge of movement that we all learn as social beings within a community. We know that this is dance, we recognise it as such in this moment, because we have danced, we have seen dance before. We have occupied and are occupying the roles of spectator and performer and are culturally familiar with this as dance.
I can promise you only that more quotes from my thesis will be forthcoming. No one will ever read the bloody thing if I don't, and fuck, we endorse strutting in our house.
I will also, no doubt, continue to quote from papers until I get them under control. I am working at home, alone, and don't see another acka type person more than once or twice a semester. This is the online equivalent of talking to yourself.
But, wait, my second thing:
2) If the first person is using 'I' and the third person is saying things like "dogpossum disapproves of most things" and "today dogpossum will take her tea at her desk, though she will consider wearing pants so as to avoid unfortunate scorchings", what's the second person? Is it (to make oh, perhaps another quote from a little thing I've just finished)...
In the zone, you respond without thinking, your senses taken up by the music, by your partner and by your own emotional responses in a state or way of being that can only be described as – thinking with the body.
???
I think this is the sort of question that &Duck could answer.
.... look, I'm still giggling at the thought of dancing in the third person. One of the indelible rules of partner dancing is that you have to stop thinking to make it work. And one of the most excellent bits of my research has been the way thinking academically about dancing on the dance floor is the one sure way of having a really crap dance.
oo, oo, I'd really like to write a bit about choreography and the 'third person' in that process. There's some really fabulous stuff written on the choreographic process and its ideological function/context. I'm a big fan of the idea of improvisation as choreography, which suggests that you make shit up as you go along, so the new steps you create are necessarily function-first. This is of course in direct contradiction with the sort of tortured-artist-in-an-ivory-studio idea that gets trundled along in ballet and concert dance (and much of dance studies - you should see how excited they get about the idea of geneologies of dance - where they trace the influence a particular teacher had on a line of dancers/students).
[edit: oops. forgot some references:
DeFrantz, Thomas. “Believe the Hype!: Hype Williams and Afro-Futurist Filmmaking.” Unpublished paper. Spectacle, Rhythm and Eschatology: A Symposium. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 24th July 2003.
Ward, Andrew. "Dancing around Meaning (and the Meaning around Dance)." Dance in the City. Ed. Helen Thomas. London: Macmillan, 1997. 3-20. ]
[another edit: I also like the way it's assumed that blogging is about telling the truth. Whether you're writing with emotional honesty or with careful logic and supporting linkage. Surely I'm not the only one who's digging the implied gendered assumptions about writing here?]
"the thought of dancing in the third person" was posted by dogpossum on January 18, 2007 5:06 PM in the category academia and clicky and lindy hop & other dances i have known | Comments (0)
happy coincidence
I'm doing a bit of research on youtube for this paper I'm doing (and discovering in the process that deciding to 'stop reading', while a fabulous tool for getting the thesis done, has left me... oh, at least a few years behind the published world of academia), and have come across this neat article on M/C by Paula Geyh. Do go read it - it's only a little thing, and does the nicest job of combining talk about bodies, urban space and D&G I've seen yet.
I am a massive big nerd for anything to do with bodies and dance/gymnastics/beautiful, rhythmic movement, and this stuff on parkour (which I've also heard referred to as urban junglism) is absolutely right up my alley.
To quote directly from wikipedia:
Parkour (IPA: [paʁ.'kuʁ], often abbreviated PK) is a physical discipline of French origin in which the participant — called a traceur (/tʁa.'sœʁ/) — attempts to pass in obstacles in the fastest and most direct manner possible. The obstacles can be anything in the environment, so parkour is often practiced in urban areas because of many suitable public structures, such as buildings, rails, and walls.And to continue with a quote from Geyh's article,
Defined by originator David Belle as “an art to help you pass any obstacle”, the practice of “parkour” or “free running” constitutes both a mode of movement and a new way of interacting with the urban environment. Parkour was created by Belle (partly in collaboration with his childhood friend Sébastien Foucan) in France in the late 1980s. As seen in the following short video “Rush Hour”, a trailer for BBC One featuring Belle, parkour practitioners (known as “traceurs”), leap, spring, and vault from objects in the urban milieu that are intended to limit movement (walls, curbs, railings, fences) or that unintentionally hamper passage (lampposts, street signs, benches) through the space.
So when we watch footage of that parkour stuff, we're watching a combination of practical (yet wonderfully imaginative and creative) urban locomotion. But the bit that catches my interest is the repeatedly quoted line from Sebastien Foucan,
"And really the whole town was there for us; there for free running. You just have to look, you just have to think, like children." This, as he describes, is "the vision of Parkour." (Wikipedia article)
I like that idea - thinking like a child. This is play. But it also involes a creative and unconscious approach to physical activity. One of the things I've noticed about swing dancers - they're particularly keen to try new things, particularly sports, physical activities, games, tricks and 'stunts'. I think it's because they've discovered that you have to just try things (as Sugar Sullivan would shout at us in class - "If you don't try to dance it, you will never dance it!"), throw yourself into activities, even if you're likely to look foolish or fall over. When you know the limits of your body, you can trust yourself to do things which appear physically difficult. And when you're used to experimenting physically, you stop worrying about looking foolish or being embarassed.
As an example, I am frequently (if not always) the only woman leading in aerials classes. I hear comments about how leads (or bases) should be physically strong, and there's certainly a degree of posturing by some male dancers in regards to being a base. But the truth of the matter is, if you have good technique and do moves correctly, you don't need to be ridiculously strong at all. I'm no stronger than the average woman, and certainly not as strong as most men my size, but I know that I can lift my partner up onto my shoulder and flip her over. Because I know how to use my body effectively, and work with her body. You are in greater danger of hurting yourself or your partner if you enter these activities with some grandiose idea of your own strength, or, conversely, with the idea that you're going to get hurt. In learning aerials, the conventional 'female = weak/vulnerable', 'male = strong and protective' is rubbish. Self reliance, good communication, solid technique and using spotters are key parts of safe aerials
But back to the parkour people...
There's lots of talk about military obstacle courses and so on in discussions of parkour, and escaping and leaping and reaching (the latter two I quite like, as ideas), but I'm really struck by the emphasis on creative responses to obstacles, yet with a practical eye. Ostentatious flips are debated - are they un-pakour because they're aesthetic (an unnecessary) embelishments?
But the part of this that I'm really interested in, is Geyhr's references to flow:
One might even say that the urban space is re-embodied — its rigid strata effectively “liquified.” In Jump London, the traceur Jerome Ben Aoues speaks of a Zen-like “harmony between you and the obstacle,” an idealization of what is sometimes described as a state of “flow,” a seemingly effortless immersion in an activity with a concomitant loss of self-consciousness. It suggests a different way of knowing the city, a knowledge of experience as opposed to abstract knowledge: parkour is, Jaclyn Law argues, “about curiosity and seeing possibilities — looking at a lamppost or bus shelter as an extension of the sidewalk”Flow is something that's come up in swing dance discussions. I've mentioned it very briefly in my own work, but without using that term.
Dancers often talk about being 'in the zone'. As with that notion of flow, the zone is the place where you stop consciously directing your body, but respond to the music, to the weight changes and posture and movements of your partner on an almost instinctive level. I think it's important to point out that this point of flow or zone is only achievable if your body and reactions are at a particular level of ability. To make this work, you must have a degree of body awareness, a stability of core, clear lines of alignment in joints and muscles and bones, some level of fitness and a willingness to 'give in' or 'surrender' what I call 'high brain stuff'. You have to stop planning and to just give in and move.
Needless to say, this is one of the most wonderful parts of dancing, and the point to which most dancers reach toward. It's often the motivation for travelling internationally or interstate to attend exchanges, where the sleep deprivation and intense socialising helps bring that point of flow closer. It's something that newer dancers don't feel, but suddenly, at about a couple of years, suddenly do feel, and get seriously addicted.
The thing that catches my attention in the discussion of parkour is that this flow is about the relationship between body and environment. With dancers, it is about body and body and floor.
So go read that nice article, if only to check out the neat clip.
Geyh, Paula. "Urban Free Flow: A Poetics of Parkour." M/C Journal. 9.3 (2006). 18 Jan. 2007
Photo from this site, a photo by a parkour dood, uploaded to parkour.net
"happy coincidence" was posted by dogpossum on January 18, 2007 1:34 PM in the category academia and clicky and lindy hop & other dances i have known | Comments (6)
January 12, 2007
round up
Just in case you were wondering why I'd suddenly gone all boring...
I've been very busy writing a paper for a media convergence collection/special ed of a journal/thingy. So I am making a really crappy rough draft at the moment. Soon it will be beautiful, but before it's beautiful, the editing will be horrible. I really enjoy writing (when I'm not all blocked) and write very quickly, so I feel like I'm accomplishing. I do not, however, write good first drafts - I need to edit and edit and edit and edit to make it look nice.
This paper, briefly, is about the AV stuff in my thesis. I've added on a nice bit about youtube, which was very exciting - youtube has made major changes in the world of online dance clips, and the whole 'free' and 'easily accessed' thing, as well as embedding clips in blogs and the sheer, wonderful quantity of obscure footage uploaded to the site make it a fabulous resource for dancers. It's also made some interesting changes in the economy of clip exchange in the swinguverse (to a certain extent). I've added a bit about the Silver Shadows stuff I wrote about in this entry, as it makes for a really nice example of the sorts of things I'm talking about. Not to mention the whole convergence thing.
I still haven't done the 'guest' post. But at least I've had some ideas. Once I've gotten this convergence paper done, I'm going to write something about radio and swing dancers. Now there's a bit of convergent action. I'm especially interested in the way the Yehoodi Talk Show used video podcasting (a visual element to its radio podcast) in the last edition. That's some awesome shit. Especially as they spent a fair bit of that podcast watching video clips they'd found on youtube, google movies, etc. Talk about nice timing. It all flows on nicely from my stuff on DJing and uses of sound/audio technology there.
I actually had a paper in the latest edition of Continuum if you're interested in reading some of the sort of work I'm doing. It's actually a refereed paper from the CSAA conference-before-last and I'm not actually convinced it's much good. I know I've written better. Hopefully this paper I'm doing now will be nicer.
...ok, so the other thing I've been doing is working on this. It's still looking fairly crap, but I do like the way it's going. I've not tested it in anything other than Safari (bad me), so if you're using Internet Exploder - sucked in! I doubt I'll ever actually do anything with this site once it's done (despite it's fairly high hits when I was running it more regularly), but I do like a bit of focussed web design. Viva la css!
Anyway, doing a little work on that this afternoon (paper in the morning, coding in the afternoon, then a mandatory tranky doo break in the late afternoon), I came across this thing on aural style sheets in the W3 website.
It caught my attention as I'd recently read Barista's entry on deafness stuff and my interest was caught. I'd read another comment on Barista's blog a while back about accessability, and I guess it's just been percolating in there for a while. I'm a bit strict about accessability (to a certain extent) because living with The Squeeze has made me aware of things like colours and how underlining links all the time is actually very important for colour blind people. Or even people who see colours in different ways.*
So the thought of styling websites to make them more accessible for people who use screen readers...!
I will read more about it and report back later. Meanwhile, if you know anything about this or have any ideas, points, please do drop them in the comments.
*The Squeeze actually bypasses all this shit by just reading the internet on his feedreader. Except when he's looking at photos.
"round up" was posted by dogpossum on January 12, 2007 4:10 PM in the category academia and article ideas and lindy hop & other dances i have known and webbing
December 28, 2006
very un-cultural studies of me
I've been writing a bit about women and blues music and dance lately, my ideas fed in part by my research for the thesis, but also (and perhaps more importantly), stimulated by my own experiences as a woman in the swing dance community.
I've been asked to do a guest spot on a fairly spec online culture blog, writing specifically about my own research. I've had a bit of a think about it, not much, I must admit, as I've been a bit distracted, and really, I just can't seem to put anything together in my head. I mean, I have no idea what I'd like to write about. I've kind of got stage fright. This is the first mass-public airing of my work where I'm likely to get/see immediate feedback (in the form of comments), and unlike academic journals or conference papers, I feel there's a bit of pressure to write well and accessibly. I do think that the format is quite different - shorter, lots of linkage, etc etc.
And while I just know that this is a fabulous opportunity, I can't seem to put my ideas together.
I'd quite like to do something like this hot and cool entry (with some tidying and a more coherent structure and, well point), but I'm not sure how to start.
I actually got to the hot/cool entry by way of this entry on women, blues and dance, which developed from this (fairly ordinary) entry on the same topic. And of course, that was a response to Kate's responses to a CD I sent her with a copy of a blues set I did a few weeks ago.
Of course, for me the most interesting part of this whole chain of thinking is the fact that we began with a set list posted on the internet, which is something I have started doing recently as a replacement for the fairly fizzly thread on the Swing Talk board where we did list our set lists ages ago, but which has recently fallen out of favour.
I found that thread particularly useful as a beginner DJ - I could see what sorts of songs different DJs in Australia are playing, the ways they're combining them, and then (perhaps even more interesting) I could read their own comments on the sets and how they went. I read that thread in conjunction with this DJ bubs thread (which gets interesting on the second page) and the Swing DJs board, where I'm too scared to post. And of course, I also spent a great deal of time clicking between amazon.com (or cduniverse.com) and allmusic (a site which used to be better) for sound clips and musicans' bios respectively. Radio programs like Hey Mr Jesse, which are only delivered online as podcasts have recently become really important to me (I don't think it's a coincidence, as Jesse has been producing this show since January 2006 and I started DJing in February of this year).
Talking about DJing in person, with real, live DJs has played a suprisingly small part in my learning to DJ. I think this is in part because I prefer to dance when I'm not DJing, dance venues generally aren't too good for talking about DJ, and I'm not really interested in getting together to talk DJing - I'd rather talk about other crap. I do discuss levels and technology when I'm DJing or when someone else is DJing - I ask knowledgeable friends questions like "why does that sound like shit?" and then do a little hypothetical problem solving.
These were the sorts of resources that I was using to help me learn how to DJ. I was full of ideas about DJing (in part prompted by my thesis work and chapter on DJing, but not entirely - I found that most of my theoretical ideas about DJing were actually bullshit and needed to be revised post-practical experience), and feeling creative and inspired. The fact that DJing is nine tenths compulsive CD collecting and song cataloguing no doubt helped me along (I can stop whenever I want. I don't have a problem. I don't need to organise things. No way).
Posting set lists (and posting my discussions of them), getting feedback from more experienced DJs, and learning about DJing from reading their posts, in combination with all those other sources helped me get a handle on DJing. I must add, without the practical experience of DJing, none of these things would have been any good to me at all. And of course, most of my ideas about DJing and how to DJ are in turn fostered by my own dance experience - both in Melbourne over the years and overseas - and and by listening and dancing to other DJs' sets.
I think it's also important to note that all this online toing and froing is a really interesting aspect of swing DJs' activities generally - I wrote about this in the chapter on DJing. Because we live so far apart (particularly in Australia), the internet has developed as a fabulous tool for networking between DJs, for the development of skills (and increasingly for me), networking with event organisers for scoring gigs. Travel has also been important, as it gives me a chance to touch base with DJs from out of town.
And, of course, I have to make note of the fact that I know only one female DJ from out of state who has a decent amount of experience and comes out dancing regularly or posts on Swing Talk. Here in Melbourne, there are far more female DJs than in other scenes, in part (I think) as a result of the recent 'opening up' of DJing at major venues like CBD (which has so many sets to fill each month and has been organised by people who have been clearly interested in expanding the DJing base in Melbourne), and (to a degree), the importance of buddying between new DJs. Glancing over the DJing roster for CBD in January, I can see that six out of the eight DJs rostered on are female. I also note that of those eight DJs, there are only perhaps two who I'd make an effort to go dancing for. Of all these DJs, most tend to play far beyond the limits of 'swinging jazz', with only three (myself included) playing (almost exclusively) swinging jazz from the 1930s-50s.
I have wondered if the serious emphasis on the cultural (and material) capital required for playing swinging jazz is exclusive - does it discourage women? I would suspect so. The largely exclusive language of sites like Swing DJs requires a fair bit of dancing (and listening) experience, and most of the DJs on this one sample list have only a couple of years dancing experience. The least proficient have also travelled the least (and travel, of course, demands lots of dosh). On a further note, only two of the DJs on this list are determinedly not interested in acquiring their music by illegal or file-sharing means. They are, also, the ones with the greatest interest in swinging jazz.
How do I feel about all this? I think it's quite clear (as I wrote in my thesis) that becoming a 'good' DJ (and I think that ability is a combination firstly (and most importantly) of DJing ability - combining songs, keeping the floor full, ranging across a variety of moods and styles - and musicall collection - playing swinging jazz) is restricted to those with the time, money and opportunity to invest. I feel uneasy with my personal insistence that 'good DJs' are those who play swinging jazz, even though I know that playing unswing results in inevitable adjustments to lindy hop technique (most of which I think are not good - they result in a simpler, musically and techically less interesting dance). I feel (on some level) that I should be ok with DJs playing unswing, as unswing is more accessible and therefore a means by which more women (and less financially well off DJs) can get access to the DJing role.
I have written at length about the ways in which the 'recreationist' imperative of many swing dancers is a discomforting (and selective) use of history which (as I have said before) neglects the darker parts of African American history and eventually recreates scary gender stuff.
So how am I to contribute to DJing discourse when I find so many bits of it so difficult?
There is the option of using 'buddying' to encourage new dancers to discover swinging jazz. But that feels condescending - who am I to tell people what 'good' music is, especially when many of them are patently not interested in this historical stuff? And really, when the whole history of African American vernacular dance is about cultural relevence, why should I encourage dancers (and DJs) away from the pop music of their day?
I might choose to give copies of the sorts of music I really like to other DJs - how else to be sure I get to dance to the music I like? I have reservations about this on the basis of IP, but also because I have found (in the past), that sharing really good songs with one person will see them spread out, diseminated to other dancers and DJs until I find that dancers are using that song (and that version of that song) to perform routines for paid gigs. And it's even more frustrating to find that the artists' name and recording details have dropped from the song, so it is circulating only as a digital, nameless file.
On the one hand, this is interesting stuff. On the other, it concerns me because (particularly when these are living artists), there are musicians being screwed. I will not go as far as some other DJs and say that I resent this illicit circulation because I'm losing some sort of cred as the 'discoverer' of this song who 'brings it to the dancers' (I'm not that naive or that arrogant - this is pop music, doods). Nor will I say that I resent this because other DJs play this song, so robbing me of my 'ace in the hole' crowd pleaser (and attendant status as 'awesome DJ'), mostly because it's cool for other DJs to hear a song, ask what it's called, say "that frickin' rocks", hunt it out on itunes or amazon, then play it when they next DJ (and I get to dance to that song when they play it). That doesn't worry me. It's more that the song is circulated as a burnt disc or shared file, with the song title, artist, recording year and musicians' details stripped from it. It also worries me that while I might share a song or songs as a gift, other DJs and dancers compile CDs which they then sell to others. That worries me.
As a dancer, it's frustrating when DJs simply take a 'found' or 'exchanged' or 'gifted' song and play it to death, without exploring that artist's other work. I hear one version of (for example) C Jam Blues by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and I think 'yes - now we're going to hear more swinging jazz. Finally. No more bullshit unswing that makes for crap dancing' (and as a dancer, that's how I think - I have no tolerance for unswing. I want to lindy hop to swinging jazz). But that song ends up just as one drop in anotherwise intolerable sea of overplayed pap played in clunky, unpleasant combinations that make for a night of shit dancing.
So I am in kind of a bind. My feminist instincts say 'fight the power' and 'information (and music) wants to be free'. But my dancer instincts say 'play some good frickin' music, and learn to DJ well'.
This post has rambled on far longer than I had intended. And far beyond the original point that I wanted to make. And I kind of think it's become a bit of a tirade against local media production and use practices in Melbourne swing culture. Which is very un-cultural studies of me.
"very un-cultural studies of me" was posted by dogpossum on December 28, 2006 12:01 PM in the category academia and djing and lindy hop & other dances i have known and music | Comments (3)
December 12, 2006
crazed and manic jubilation
I just found out that my thesis was passed WITHOUT CORRECTIONS!!
I have done the crazy happy dance about 10 times already (lots of high kicks up into the air, a few twirly spin-arounds, some random jiggling).
If I hurry I can do the graduation thing in March/April.
So I am now Dr dogpossum (mostly)! Hoorah!
...remind me to write about the dance conference, will you? I met some lovely (and awe-inspiring) young dancers who work with companies like Bangarra (and how did I introduce myself? "You guys rock!" - I am all about cool. But they did - their mini-performance blew me away!), networked like a crazy person, discovered someone who has Graybags for a supes (and knows Galaxy), told some inappropriate jokes, shared Frida and the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers with a bunch of doods who understood what I've been trying to say about them and ate some of the best conference food EVER.
[and hoorah for the markers - the thesis was sent to them at the end of September, and they had the marks to me by today - that's under 3 months turnaround time]
"crazed and manic jubilation" was posted by dogpossum on December 12, 2006 2:11 PM in the category academia and conferences and lindy hop & other dances i have known and thesis and travel | Comments (10)
December 10, 2006
rock on, canberra
Dang, homies, I have so much to blog. But that's the deal when you're busy - plenty to blog about, no time to do the actual blogging.
Since my last post, I have come to Canberra and been at the CSAA conference where I gave my paper to what amounted to a bunch of my friends. There were some rockingly good parallel sessions, including some terribly cool ones on computers. Dance sounds really naff in the program (and that's what it was called - 'Dance'. Mmm, appealing. And in the final session of the conference no less). There were 3 of us presenting, then an assortment of our mates and one guy* who I suspect wandered in by accident (and actually ended up having all 3 of us presenters address a few ideas and comments to his paper in the preceding (and absolutely world-rocking) session which was called something like 'Asian - the UnAustralian?'). I don't think he was ready for 3 dance nerds on speed, feeling the love and ready to Give Cooperative Paper.
We three are always in the same session, even though we don't really work on the same material. It's like when you have 'women' in your thesis title - you're popped in the gender studies department. But with us, when you have 'dance' in your title, you're popped in the dance session. Even when you're not really talking about dance so much as the relationship between online and embodied networks.
Ah well. We enjoy ourselves more and more each year. And this year I felt so comfortable with this crew (as did the other 2), I could direct particular points to the other presenters or ask them questions mid-paper. Not cool, in the world of 'serious' ackadackas, but far more fun. I think I break the ackadacka paper presentation rules every time I present. Too many dance clips. Too much fun. Too much to say. I'm also adverse to using impenetrable ackadacka language, so I'm sure I come off sounding ignorant. Or at least misinformed. I do write papers and intend to read them, verbatim, but I can never resist adding in comments. Especially when I'm showing clips.
In other conference news, it was really nice to catch up with old Brisvegas buddies. Shout out to the Gunders, Laurie Townsville, Sue, Andrea and everyone else - the sorts of people who feel comfortable in shorts and thongs and aren't afraid to show it... though admittedly, Sue's would be uber-chic, and not the Kmart variety.
I also developed a smarting crush on one of the Sydney pgrads (my lips are sealed)**, and my deep and abiding love for John Frow... abides. I was not the only one to admit to a serious crush on that tall, unusual and enduringly shy hawty acka. I am also smitten by (or should that be with?) Larissa Barendt: two top key note talks (missed all the others, and have heard mixed reports about them. Sorry I missed the unusual European with fascinating body language - the dancers on-crew gave very excellent reviews).
Tomorrow I do the cultural studies in dance seminar. It's not as well organised as the CSAA doo, so I'm not feeling terribly confident. Also, there are a few too many concert dance types in the schedule, so...
I've been haranguing KLK about high and low culture and why the only option for me (as a cultural studies stooge), really, is to look at vernacular dance.
Meanwhile, we're watching Back to the Future on telly, discussing our teenage years (during which this film was released), eating chocolate and sending each other to the kitchen for cups of tea.
I pay particular attention to Michael J Fox's sneakers - the sort of adidas that are tres chic with the kids today.
Rock on Canberra.
*He was on my list of conference-crushes, actually. Dang he gave good paper.
**Unfortunately, all my crushes are for people's brains. All my physical desires are reserved for The Squeeze. Because he gives good chop-and-freckle.
"rock on, canberra" was posted by dogpossum on December 10, 2006 11:32 PM in the category academia and canberra | Comments (7)
November 16, 2006
fewd for the mind and body
I'd really like to go to this but it's in London and I'm poor.
It's on the 19th-22nd July 2007. I could do some Herrang, go to the conference, go back and do some more Herrang. Or, rather (as I'd much prefer, having had about enough of Herrang after a week), I could do the conf, then go to Herrang. And in the weeks before the conf I could visit friends and family.
I wish I had an income. :(
"fewd for the mind and body" was posted by dogpossum on November 16, 2006 7:46 PM in the category academia
September 29, 2006
Australian-Melbourne-Irish-Global media?
As some of you know, I'm booked in to give a paper at the annual CSAA conference in Canberra in December. I wrote about my abstract here and moaned about not scoring a bursary here.
Well, things have actually turned around a bit since then. I have actually scored a smallish grant from the nice people at the CSAA, which will cover my conference registration and part of my airfare. Yay.
So, come December, I'm flying up to the Can to talk theoretical turkey with acadackas, hang out with my old school friend Kate (no, not 'old skewl', nor is she particularly 'old' - she is a friend I have had for a long time) and possibly see some local dancers.
This was all very nice to hear - I'm quite proud of having scored a competitive grant from an organisation which will look good on my CV. I'm also happy to be funded for my trip to the Can - I need to get a job some time soon, and these things are good networking activities... though I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time hanging about with old UQ buddies. And as you can see from this entry, I seemed to spend more time thinking about jazz than any professional business at the last CSAA conference.
So anyways, I'm off to do a paper.
Here is the abstract again:
Swing Talk and Swing Dance: online and embodied networks in the ‘Australian’ swing dance community.
Since its revival in the 1980s, lindy hop and other swing dances have become increasingly popular with middle class youth throughout the developed world.
There are vibrant local swing dance communities in Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart, Perth, Canberra and Brisbane for whom dancing - an embodied cultural practice – is the most important form of social interaction. Swing dancers will travel vast distances and spend large amounts of money solely to attend dance events in other cities. The success and appeal of these events lies in their promotion as unique and showcasing their local dance ‘scene’.
In travel itineraries which criss-cross the country, swing dancers develop networks between local communities that are not only cemented by their embodied interpersonal interaction, but also by their uses of digital media. In this paper, I examine the ways in which the online Swing Talk discussion board is utilised by Australian swing dancers to develop personal relationships with dancers in other cities, which in turn serve to develop relationships between local communities. This insistence of local community identity in swing dance culture in Australia defies a definition of a ‘national’ swing dance community. I describe the ways in which ‘Australian’ swing dance is an ‘unAustralia’ - not a homogenous ‘whole’ but a network of embodied and mediated relationships between diverse local communities and individuals.
Right now I'm having trouble remembering what I wanted to write about. I suspect there wasn't actually a lot of planning in there. But I have started to have some ideas. Of course stimulated by my impending trip to SLX (I'll be off to the tram stop in a few hours - nursing this horrid cold that's sprung up), but also prompted by planning for MLX6 planning.
Have a listen to this: