Category Archives: academia

mills blue rhythm band madness

Here is an experiment with embedding media players. The trouble is, very few of these have the music I’m after. But here’s a Mills Blue Rhythm Band song, in honour of ‘going complete’ and posters on SwingDJs‘ obsession with the band.

E-36992-A Savage Rhythm (Br 6229, 10303, CJM 23, TOM 57, GAPS (Du) 130, Decca GRD2-69 [CD]
Recorded by the Mills Blue Rhythm Band in New York on the 31st July 1931. Musicians included: Buster Bailey (clarinet), Wardell Jones, Shelton Hemphill, Henry Red Allen (trumpet), George Washington (trombone, arranger), JC Higginbotham (trombone), Gene Mikell (sop, as, bar, clarinet), Joe Garland (ts, bar, clarinet), Edgar Hayes (piano), Lawrence Lucie (guitar), Elmer James (bass), O’Neil Spencer (drums), George Morton (vocal), Benny Carter (arranger), Lucky Millinder (dir).
Note: Date used here as given in Storyville #108 (Rust listed date as July 30, 1931).
Brunswick 6119, 6229 as ‘Mills Blue Rhythm Boys’.
Decca GRD2-629 [CD] titled ‘An Anthology of big band swing, 1930-1955’; rest of this 2 CD set by others.
Title also on Hep (E)1015, CD1008 [CD].
Title also on Classics 676 [CD] titled ‘Mills Blue Rhythm Band 1931-1932’.
NB: below are some very preliminary thoughts I’ve had after very little research.
I’ve been spending an awful lot of time in the library lately. It began with the Con’s copy of the Tom Lord Jazz Discography. That’s twenty-odd volumes of dry and boring nerdery. According to The Squeeze. For a jazz nerd, that’s twenty-odd volumes of orsum. I have spent hours in there already. Days. Doing what? Going through my music, adding in dates, full band names, band personnel, recording locations. Extra, extra nerdy. But also quite interesting.
Wolverines.jpg
(that’s the Wolverines in the Gennett Records studio from this interesting site)
I’ve gotten much better at identifying when a song was recorded, and I’m getting to know how a band changed or an artist changed over time. And I’m recognising not-so-big-name band members now, which is fascinating. I’m also beginning to be curious about things like travel. A band might have recorded a song on one day in one city, but another song in another city on the next day. This information alone gives you and idea of just how hard these guys worked – travel, travel, record, record, live show, live show. But when you consider the fact that they usually didn’t use planes (in the early days especially) and that segregation meant that these musicians were traveling in pretty shitty conditions…
I’m also interested in the way songs were often recorded only once in a session (or ever) in the early days. No time (or money) for second takes. This makes me think about the mad skills these guys had. Or the cost or difficulty of recording. And all one track as well – everyone just playing along all at once, just recording then and there as the technician heard it.
I’ve just come across a quite from Mary Lou Williams (from a book called The Jazz Scene: an Informal History From New Orleans to 1990 by W. Royal Stokes, 1991) where she talks about just how poor Andy Kirk’s band was in Kansas during the depression. The band simply wasn’t getting paid for gigs, so the musicians went days without eating. All that, and they’re still producing truly amazing, inspired music. Or perhaps because of that?
no2.jpg
Though the discography is just awesome (and I will continue to make return trips as my need for detail increases – at first dates were enough. Now I need everything), I have moved on. I want to know who was where in what years. Why did people leave a city at a certain time? What was the relationship between the northern migration, Jim Crow laws and the development of jazz in Chicago, New York and Kansas? What was New Orleans like, exactly?
(that image above is of Canal St, New Orleans in the 1920s from wikipedia. If you’re a big map nerd like me, you’ll love this collection of historic maps)
So I’ve been up the university library looking at books. Now, though, I’m thinking more critical questions. How come all the jazz book are written by men? Even the later ones? And what’s the significance of jazz scholarship having its roots in jazz criticism? What role did jazz music clubs (clubs for listeners not musicians) play in the New Orleans ‘revival’ (I’m wary of that term – my thesis has made me suspect a ‘revival’ is really another word for white middle class folk appropriating black culture)? What are the effects of researching a music using only recordings? Where ARE all the women in these stories?
I’m also wondering about jazz scholarship itself, in bigger ways. Where is the critical reflection? What are the effects of research so focussed on autobiography? The emphasis on auto- and biography is interesting; it suggests that some musicians were simply so great, so awesome, so influential, they created in a cultural and social vacuum, simply churning out greatness for the rest of the world to admire. But that simply isn’t the case, of any art; art is created in cultural and social context. So to divorce a musician from the rest of his life (and it is ‘his’ – there are no women here) suggests that the rest of this life was unimportant. As I’ve read recently (and I can’t find the ref, sorry), this lack invites an immediate investigation.
One of the things that comes up time and again in the oral histories of the period is that, for musicians, listening to other musicians is as important as playing. Young musicians (no matter how ‘gifted’) would seek out experienced teachers to learn from. Musicians would spend as much time listening to other bands as playing themselves. There’s this great bit in one book (the one I ref’d above) where the musician describes listening to a band at the Savoy: there were as many musicians as dancers there, drooling over the amazing band (Savoy Sultans? I can’t remember).
And of course, every great musician needed a band. These early jazz recordings are about the relationships between musicians in the band. They don’t – cannot – work alone. In fact, no matter how great one musician, they cannot lift an ordinary arrangement or recording to greatness if the rest of the band isn’t there, or if they aren’t working with the band. At the end of the day, the goal is to produce a great song, a great bit of music. That is the point of a lot of this stuff: it’s about collective improvisation in earlier jazz (where everyone mustwork together – order out of chaos) and about collectivism in the more tightly orchestrated big band swing of the 30s and 40s (where musicians must play together, perfectly, must step in at just the right moment for their solo).
This is of course, all besides the point that being a musician was about earning money to buy food or pay rent. This point makes me think about gender and travel. Linda Dahl (in Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen) makes the point that travel, while so central to the live of post-emancipation black men (who’s right to travel had been so viciously curtailed under slavery) was impossible for many black women. Women, as the carers of children and the aged could not uproot and travel with a band or to become a musician:

It was in the years of elation, confusion and turmoil following the Civil War that jazz began to take shape. The war brought an end to slavery and to the isolation it imposed, which had prevented among blacks the free exchange of ideas that fertilizes art. With abolition came mobility, if not equality. Many black men wandered, looking for work or luck or new vistas, and music traveled with them. But black women, history tells us, were more likely to stay put and hunker down for new roots. These were women who, as slaves, had carried double, even triple burdens. Not only did they work in the ‘big house’ or in the fields – as cottonpickers, eve as logrollers and lumberjacks, – but they of course did their own housework, bore their children and cared for their men. After abolition they were hungry for stable family environments, and it was easier for them to find work as cooks, laundresses or maids than for black men to find employment. Although circumstances dictated that they were often the breadwinners, they deferred to their men, especially in matters political. Above all else they devoted themselves to the hope of better lives for their children. Great were the physical and emotional demands upon them, and most found few opportunities and little time or energy for goals beyond survival (Dahl 1992:4).

For women, cultural and social context was absolutely clear and absolutely present in everything they did. While jazz historians can imagine a Sidney Bechet leaving New Orleans and gadding off to Chicago, New York, Paris, a free agent following his art, it is a little more difficult for them to write the stories of women who played and sang music from the home or the family or their (less romantic) place of work. There are many stories of the ‘whore house pianists’ but far fewer stories of the whores, who were occasionally musicians in their own rights.
Dahl also makes an interesting point about ‘anonymous’ music:

And black women certainly contriuted their share to the development of this music [jazz]. During slavery they made up songs that both drew upon and became part of everyday experience. ‘Anonymous’ was often a slave woman who crooned lullabies to the babies she birthed and the babies she reared, who made up ditties at quilting and husking bees or while she planted in the fields and tended her garden, who created music in her capacity as midwife and healer, at funerals and dances and in church, who developed distinctive vendor calls as she sold her wares. ‘Anonymous’ invented music to meet the occcasion out of a communal pool of musical-religious traditions. Women and men stripped of their names passed on standards and tribel memory to those who came after (Dahl 1992:4).

That point, of course, leads us to a discussion of black women blues singers in the 20s. But I don’t have the time now, and I haven’t read the books I have here. But I was very interested in this link between ‘jazz history’ and race and class and gender. I need more information, though.
This anonymity was the product of domesticity and ‘everydayness’; simply made invisible through its very ordinariness and ubiquity. It was not framed or positioned as ‘art’, and so it was invisible. This reminds me of discussions about vernacular dance. It’s only when it takes to the stage (and away from its mutability and use-value in everyday life) that it becomes visible to mainstream or elite audiences. This is perhaps the greatest problem with reading white histories of black music: these observers could only ‘see’ jazz or black music when it was on a stage, or in a recording, stripped of its everydayness. And these spaces were not accessible for many black women.
Reading jazz as a history made up of one great ‘artist’ after another is, then, highly problematic. I’m also wondering about the other, dominant approach: reading jazz as a history of a series of cities (New Orleans, Chicago, Kansas, New York). What about the ‘territories’ of the midwest, a series of smaller towns and cities strung together on the route of itinerant bands which played only to these towns and rarely (if ever) recorded? Perhaps, as the territories suggest, it’s more useful to think about these cities as sites in a network of ‘jazz place/space’. I want to follow up the idea of travel in early jazz – from the northern migration to individual bands and musicians migrating between cities and countries.
(There are some nice pics in this neat little article about territory bands).
Note: I’ve just found this interesting interview with Tim Brooks, author of Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890 – 1919. This book is on my list of ‘things to find’. And of course, if you’re interested in the early days of the American recording industry, the David Suisman article ‘Co-workers in the kingdom of culture: Black Swan Records and the political economy of African American music’ is a great resource.

and then I’ll write some

Someone should go to the shops and buy veggies. But I don’t think it’s going to be me. Yesterday I made it down to the shops for a few bits and pieces, but today I’m feeling a bit too crap to ride to Ashfield (all of fifteen minutes away, at my usual speed). Yesterday I spent about fifteen minutes walking around the video shop trying to think. I don’t want to spend time wandering around the veggie shop trying to think today.
I have a bad cold and I don’t feel so great. But Fats Waller is trying to cheer me up. He might succeed.
I don’t actually feel bad, mind you. Well, I feel rough physically, but I don’t feel bad in an emotional way. I actually feel pretty good, post-orthotic ecstacy-wise. I think I might do some hardcore jazz history research soon. I need a decent music journal. But I don’t think there’s much cultural studies work on jazz. Seeing as how it’s from the olden days. But I’ll have a look. And then I’ll write some.

oh no

Faceplant and twitter are killing my blog. Or, more accurately, my blogging skills. I haven’t written a longer and thought-out entry in ages. I was never one for hardcore planning and editing (I just write straight into MT here, then do a bit of cursary editing once it’s published), but the one-line update has killed of what little stamina I had. But I do update regularly.
I do quite like the short, one-line update. I like experimenting with content and style. I like using lines from songs I’m listening to (most of which are oooold and fairly dirty), and I’ve just started adding sections from books I’m reading (for review). Yesterday, while adding a few bits from a book I’m reading about censorship, I was suddenly struck by the potential of one-line updates. If you have a group of friends, either on faceplant or twitter, you have a group of ‘listeners’. If you write something provocative, you’ll get responses (and the interesting bit is seeing which things turn out to be provocative – it’s difficult to plan these things, I think). The really nice bit is, of course, the replies. What short answers does a one-line comment from you, on your ‘profile’ (showing up in their feeds on their pages) stimulate in your group of ‘friends’? And then, what answers do their answers stimulate?
I’m a little frustrated by the short answer option, sometimes – I want to read a longer, thought-out comment in response to an update. But then, I think the shorter answers keep us reading. It’s more of a conversation and less of a series of lectures or conference papers.
This all made me think: couldn’t you use this feature to encourage learning? I mean, I don’t think it’s going to work if you announce a teaching mission, or even if you demand your students use faceplant or twitter or whatever (I prefer faceplant for the way it threads responses – though twitter might have the option, I’m not sure). But it could work if you were sneaky. And if your group of friends has ‘naturally’ formed around a shared interest or even just a shared relationship.
I’ve also been interested in the way a ‘high status’ poster/personality/friend, who has a larger group of friends stimulates discussion. If they post just one comment (on a photo, an update, a note), the hits for that comment (and that page) leap. This isn’t anything new – this sort of thing is played out in more familiar public spheres, when a TV star (celebrity) comments, when an MP visits, when a famous scientist opines. But I’m interested in the way these statuses play out on a smaller scale, within peer groups.
A ‘high profile’ personality might simply be an agreeable sort – someone you like to talk with in person, someone whose comments entertain you. In the dancing world, the ‘high profile’ person is almost always a ‘famous’ dancer. But on faceplant, the highest ‘high profile’ personality always has a large group of friends (a large audience), offers something to these friends (interesting comments, funny jokes, and so on) and posts regularly. They have a high profile. There are, of course, gender correlations (at least within the online world of swing dancers).
I have a friend whose comments (on both faceplant and twitter) are not only very clever and funny, but also kind and socially gentle. She doesn’t score points with cheap jibes. But she is assertive and ‘present’ as a speaker as well as a listener. In my mind, I’m equating lurking with listening. On facebook – as with discussion boards and blogs – the number of listeners always far outweighs the speakers. Which of course lets us think about the way speakers gain social status but listeners do not, and yet listeners are essential for the success of any speech or comment.
At any rate, though these things are boiling away in the back of my brain, I’m not writing long posts any more. Nor am I writing any academic posts. I found that I was at my most prolific academically when I was also writing masses online, whether on my blog or on discussion boards. I was also reading a whole lot. These days I’d say my feelings about writing and reading aren’t so good. In fact, I’m not happy. I’m very unhappy with my inability to get full time work. I guess it’s your typical overachieving academic crisis: so many years depending on educational institutions for a sense of self worth, and then suddenly I’m outside that system and there’s no more affirmation. It doesn’t help that I can’t do any serious exercise (but I’m off to yoga next week, so things will improve there I hope). No lovely endorphines. None of that interpersonal interaction you get dancing. There’s nothing quite as wonderful as partner dancing – two people working together, communicating without talking to make something lovely and creative – and there’s no partner dancing like lindy hop. Jazz, sweet jazz – you make me happy.
But I’m struck by the way my satisfaction and inspiration in writing and reading is so necessarily social. Can’t I just enjoy my own company? I think it’s more that while I am very good company and terribly interesting ( :D ), I actually really enjoy listening to other people’s ideas. And there’s nothing so stimulating and exciting as having your brain stretched by someone else’s great ideas. I mean, you’d never have come across that thought without their inspiration – how wonderful is that?
All of this post was inspired by Lisa Gunder’s excellent post about teaching over on Memes of Production. I was struck by her comments about the relationship between casualised communication and students’ _not_ doing the [opposite to casualised] sort of learning we expect from them. I also liked her comment (and do read through the article to the comments):

Most young people do, in my experience, care about issues and have opinions on politics. Sometimes you get glimpses of this in class, but inside or outside of class this frequently seems to be the bit of their lives that they keep private even if the rest of it is lived out online or on mobiles.

I think this is a fascinating point, that students (in a world where they broadcast all sorts of things about themselves online and via their mobiles) keep their politics and feelings about issues private. I think I agree with this. And I think I’d also add that these students don’t often seem to have confidence in their ideas – they’re reluctant to explain how they feel about something in class because they’re afraid they’ll look stupid or say the wrong thing. I wonder if this is because there’s such great pressure to pass their subjects and get their degree. They don’t seem to have the time or space to sort of mosey along, taking intellectual risks and generally playing with ideas. When I enrolled in my BA in 1993 I had no idea where I wanted to go with my study. I just chose subjects (from the absolute wealth on offer at UQ in those days) that interested me. And I really enjoyed tutorials and writing assignments – I liked talking and writing and sharing ideas. I was also very, very lucky to have tutors who were – for the most part – interested in my ideas. And they weren’t massively overworked. And they were – quite often – staff members, not sessional teachers or postgraduates.
It makes me sad to think of my students not feeling brave enough or having enough time or even the interest to explore ideas. I think perhaps that this reluctance is encouraged by the way we structure assessment. I once taught a subject that had fabulous cumulative assessment. The first assignment was a literature review for a project. The second required them to plan out the project (but not actually complete it – which most of them found frustrating!). I had also taken great pains to develop tutorials (which ran for two hours, not the ridiculous one we had last semester) as places for discussing these projects. It was so wonderful to see them introducing their projects in the earlier part of the class (where we’d all just chat about the media we’d been getting into in the last week – and which we all enjoyed) and then commenting on each other’s projects and offering suggestions. As their knowledge about research techniques and theory improved, so did the depth of their discussion. It was wonderful. Perhaps the best bit was seeing their confidence in their own knowledge increase, and their sense of ‘ownership’ of their project deepen. These guys really felt that their work was interesting, their ideas were important, and that they were doing something no one else could, simply because of who they were. I also made it clear that it was ok (if not preferable) to work on stuff that interested them – to choose topics or media that they were really interested in (I have written about this teaching stuff here).
So I guess I’m going to sum all this up by saying that I really enjoyed Lisa’s post – it’s as lovely and nice as she is in person. I am also definite that I need intellectual stimulation, and that self-stimulation isn’t enough. I will endeavour to write and read more and to try to be more creative with the way I use faceplant and twitter updates (did you see I had my twitter feed up the top of that left column now?) and will have a bigger think about teaching tools.
Also, happy new year, homies. :D

teaching, dancing and making place space

Only half way through an article on taste (G. Hawkins ‘TV Rules’ UTS Review 4.1 May 1998, pp 123-139), I’m struck by the discussion of the ways in which ‘place becomes space’. How does a room become a ‘living room’, or a house become a ‘home’? Specifically, Hawkins is discussing (in the quote below) the ways in which children living in our homes force us to articulate the ‘rules’ of living in shared space. Or, in line with the discussion she presents, the ways in which articulating these rules gives us the chance to become reflexive about the way place is made into space by use. This isn’t exactly new stuff (this article alone was published ten years ago, and develops Barthes’ even earlier discussion of the cinema as place), but it suddenly seems important to me. Here’s the section that made me think:

Rules, then, are systems of order – they allow us to project ourselves into the world and project the world back to us. Rules are guides for how to act, how to be in t his space. Rules discipline in a productive sense: they produce meaning, they organise, they are creative, they make inhabitation possible. Rules are embodied in things and actions, they communicate. Rules are also specific, they take place in situ, each room is a unique system of rules and a unique network of power because rules and regulatory practices are provisional, they constitute objects for their own practice. And children elicit rules, for Wood and Beck they are the ultimate barbarians, they have to be domesticated and in the process of prescribing rules, adult values and meanings become manifest. Adult order is constituted and so too is the never ending struggle to establish it as dominant (Hawkins 128).

The thing that struck me, here, is the way in which pedagogy – teaching – makes us articulate and become aware of our assumptions about space/place. Teaching in universities forces me to think about the ways the material I am teaching ‘work’ in a broader social and cultural context. The most difficult parts of teaching cultural studies (for me) lie in teaching ‘class’ or ‘power’ or culture as articulation of/space for the negotiation of identity, class, power, etc etc etc.
The part I have trouble with is teaching this stuff in the context of the old school neo-Marxist cultural studies tradition. In that context, this discussion is, ultimately, geared towards social change. Teaching or study or research is not (and should not, it is implied), be neutral. It should be a part of a broader social project. Or, more plainly, activism. For me, one of the ways I justify what I do is by framing it as activism. Women’s studies doesn’t make sense, for me, without feminism.
I am excited by the idea of this stuff as having value or usefulness. It’s not simply ideas or theory in space – it has a job to do. It is a tool. It’s something we can use. Being raised by the sort of people who didn’t tolerate cruelty or injustice (social worker, decent person, animal activist…) has made me particularly aware of my responsibilities as a person. Simply, if I’m going to live here, I have to play nice. I have to do what I can to make things better for other people (and for myself as well). More clearly, I have a responsibility to play nice and be useful and helpful. I am sure there’s some scary gender stuff in there (isn’t that the way little girls are raised? To care, to be useful, to be helpful, to assist? Perhaps I should think more about leading or inspiring caring or begin project which require help?). But I find it makes me feel good to give a shit, and it also gives me purpose; it gives me reason for doing the things I do.
At any rate, teaching cultural studies has been difficult when I’ve been teaching wealthy kids at big, rich unis. I have found myself articulating this stuff in terms of ‘responsibilities’. When I was teaching this stuff to less privileged kids, I found that that approach was just plain bullshit. It became a matter of ‘rights’. This is one of the stickiest sticking places for me, teaching this stuff. And teaching – the breaking down and remaking and exploration of ideas – forces me to become aware of and to engage with my ideas and the ideas of authors at hand.
In another, connected point (where ideas must have practical applications), I’m absolutely struck by the way teaching works (in this context) in dance. I wrote quite a bit in my thesis about institutionalised pedagogy as a way of shaping ideology, or making ideology flesh. I placed it in opposition to vernacular dance practice – or learning on the social dance floor through more osmotic modes. Both are ideologically shaped and shaping practices. But I have trouble with pedagogy as capitalist practice – dance classes as product to be sold and bought… well, when it happens within a broader institutional context. Mostly because ‘selling dance’ on a larger, organised level demands homogeneity, and demands the disavowel of heterogeneity. In other words, it’s difficult to teach dance (in this context) without creating right/wrong binaries. The right way is, of course, the product you are buying. Everything else is wrong, and hence undesirable; you wouldn’t want to waste your money on it. Brand loyalty thus achieved.
But, continuing with this, I’m interested in the way dancers make ‘dance floors’ out of ordinary places. Hawkins refers to the role of emodiment (or bodies) in this process, largely via Barthes and his discussion of the bodily experience of the cinema (and at one point there was a reference to Frith** and taste, and there is of course reference to de Certeau). With dancers, this sense of embodiment is explicit.
The whole notion of ‘floor craft’, for example, where dancers learn (or choose not to demonstrate) the ability to dance ‘safely’ on the floor, not kicking or bumping into other dancers. Floor craft is a story of sociability and communitas, but it is also a story of social power. Which couples have the greatest liberty to ignore these rules? The most advanced. When is the idea of ‘sharing the floor’ set aside? In jam circles, where dancers display their abilities and status.
There are countless other examples. Lindy bombing involves groups of dancers descending on a ‘non dance space’ with music and dancing spontaneously (and often illictly). DJing functions as a way of making a place ‘space’. DJs often speak of the ‘feel’ or ‘vibe’ or ‘energy’ in a room – a palpable, physical emotion and sensation – and the ways in which they manipulate that experience. The very act of dancing, therefore, not only creates space, but – far more importantly – creates an emotional, social space as well. Sharing a dance floor is about engaging in a non-verbal social discourse which is all about the body. In fact, without the body, the space collapses back into place. It might carry echoes, but it is, essentially, nothing without the dancers.
I’m suddenly reminded of way I think about DJing the first set of the night: I imagine it as ‘warming’ the room. Sometimes this is a physical warming, but most of the time it’s a social, ideological, emotional, cultural, creative warming. I need to build the vibe or energy before I can manipulate it.
And to bring all this back to rules and articulating rules and teaching… dance classes are one step in the process of socialising dancers and teaching them how to make space out of place. I could argue that formal dance classes are in fact directly contributing to the breaking down of space – busting the vibe – because they insist on hierarchies and formalised, articulated modes of communication, but I’m not sure it’s that simple. I do know, though, that the discourse of formal, institutional, commodified pedagogy is an impediment to the process of making dance places spaces. This is because teaching is about verbalising dance and about shifting the way we ‘think’ dance from the body to the brain and language. And any dancer will tell you that the sweetest, most satisfying moment of dancing comes when you stop thinking or articulating and become thoroughly and completely in your body.
Roland Barthes 1989 “Leaving the Movie Theatre” The Rustle of Language Uni of California Press, Berkeley, pp 345-249.
Michel de Certeau 1984 The practice of everyday life University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. xi-xxiv.
Simon Frith 1996 Performing Rites Oxford UP, London.
Gay Hawkins ‘TV Rules’ UTS Review 4.1 May 1998, pp 123-139

i’m not saying that we should all be mad-crazy-mr-chips hippy teachers

So I’ve been thinking a lot about sessional teaching and it’s advantages/disadvantages. On one hand, I’m utterly convinced that it’s exploitative – it is the grape picking, the piece-working of the education industry. Working conditions are not good. The pay-per-hour rate seems good, but isn’t really a return due the vast amounts of time tutors spend preparing for classes. While there’s the argument that repeat-teaching is more cost-effective for tutors, in practical career terms, there is no reason beyond professional networking to teach a subject more than once – it’s not going to look terribly good on your resume. Most tutors don’t have an office on campus – they usually share space with other tutors. I use a conference room. This has some serious drawbacks: students are less likely to drop in for assistance (an advantage for full time staff, but no good for students). Staff are unlikely to drop in for a chat, to foster collaborative relationships (a topic of great issue to employers) or to provide a little incidental mentoring. Most sessional tutors, though they may take the time to peruse and pilfer the departmental stationary cupboard (I wish I knew where mine was), are more likely to spend their money on printer toner, photocopying paper, pens and bandwidth on teaching. We shall not even begin to discuss the computer facilities available to sessional teaching staff. And let’s not even approach the difficulties of working in an industry with mentors and employers and full time colleagues who are increasingly depressed, frustrated and angry with their own working conditions (I have a theory: sessional staff are mentored in dissatisfaction as much as teaching techniques, particularly as most out-sourced tutors are hired by the most desperate and overworked staff).
So sessional teaching is not a particularly excellent position for the tutors. I’m not even sure it’s a good deal for employers: casual staff who may at whim depart for sunnier climes, casual staff who, while experienced in sessional teaching may not have the research skills, interests or CV of more permanent teachers.
I have heard a number of arguments for sessional teaching – casualised teaching.
1. One can depart for sunnier climes on a whim. Hm. I think that I would trade secure employment for the suspect advantages of uprooting and repositioning.
2. One can pick and choose staff members to teach with, thus securing some sort of professional network which extends beyond one’s supervisor or even one university. Again, I’m not convinced. Most of the ‘early career academics’ in my position teach – or have taught – at more than one campus, in one city or more. This does give you the opportunity to meat more staff, but it also usually means that the staff you’re meeting are incredibly stressed and have little time or energy for mentoring or … whatever else it is you’re supposed to get out of networking. Teaching across universities also prevents you digging in at one institution – making a little nest, really cultivating proper, working mentoring relationships and contacts and perhaps setting yourself up for collaborative research projects or even – gold of golds – research funds.
I can’t really think of any other reasons which are even half as convincing.
I have been trying to convince myself that there are avenues for some sort of tactical exploitation of my own exploitation. I’m not really buying it, I’m afraid. But what have been the advantages of teaching across so many universities and departments?
1. I’ve been able meet and work with some amazing staff. All of these, but 2 (in the four universities I’ve taught at) have been middle aged woman who I have admired, respected and ultimately wanted to be. But I’ve also seen how gender works in university heirarchies. It is women (and the odd reconstructed bloke) who end up with the stooge’s share of heavy-teaching loads. And while they’ve been wonderful to meet and work with (and certainly fabulous in terms of the old girls’ network), I often wonder if it might be a good idea to attach myself to the types of academics whose ambition and general cutthroatedness have helped them avoid the need for sessional assistants. But then, would I want to work with that type of person?
2. I’ve learnt an awful lot. I’ve taught pretty much the same topics and readings and ideas, and had taught the same stuff across the five universities I’ve been involved with. But each department has had a different name: English department; Cultural studies program within an English department; Media Studies program; Communications program; Media within an English, Media and Performing Arts program. It’s been fascinating to see how each of these programs borrow from the same pool of ideas to produce and construct a ‘program’ – an ivory tower, a network of ideas, an ideology (both research and pedagogic) – which is quite unique. And reflects the professional, personal and intellectual interests and needs of the staff involved.
I am utterly unconvinced that all that institutional positioning and course restructuring makes any difference. People like me are still teaching the same things to young people, no matter what the name of the subject/course/degree, the CVs of the convening staff or the publishing profiles of the departmental heads. While the course convenors might intend a new and interesting and cutting edge subject, in practice their financial and employment restrictions necessitate using the same sessional stooges. And it is these stooges who actually do most of the teaching in universities. And course convenors beware: we are constantly negotiating our relationships to what you’re teaching, and there’s a very, very, very good (as in 100%) chance we’re adjusting and tailoring your subject to meet our own intellectual, personal and political goals*.
And it is these stooges who are steadily acquiring mad teaching skills (well, hopefully, but certainly not definitely. Or even possibly), but who ultimately regard sessional teaching as a step to somewhere else, a momentary aberration from a ‘professional’ career in academia. One which does not involve teaching.
But I have learnt a lot. I’ve seen some very good teaching in action, and I’ve seen some very bad. I’ve done my share of each (though I’d hope for a little more of the former, it’s impossible to gauge my own professional development in such an impermanent and constantly-shifting context). I’ve used some excellent readers (most of which could simply be reproduced as some sort of ‘cultural studies in Australia bible’, with a few addenda for localised interests or nods to administrative reshuffles and demands for ‘more digital content’ or ‘more practical applications’). I’ve also managed to keep up with current research – filtered down through the staff I’ve worked with, and occasionally stimulated by a particularly interesting lecture or ‘optional reading’.
3. I’ve had the chance to work with hundreds and hundreds of really bright, really motivated and interested students. Just when I think I hate teaching and never want to do it again, I have a class where someone says something so interesting it’s on my mind for days. Students bring fresh minds to familiar readings, they bring fresh ideas to familiar discourses, and they bring – in many cases – young approaches to increasingly older institutions. Many of the assumptions staff make about viewing habits or media consumption practices or just plain everyday activities are critiqued and challenged by students simply describing what it is they watch on television, where it is they go to eat and how it is they communicate with their friends, families and teachers. I love them.
I’m also struck by just how much many of the overworked staff I deal with love them. They just plain love their stoods. And they take their teaching responsibilities very seriously. Perhaps the hardest thing to see is a staff member bitching about their work load on one hand, and revealing committed, passionate caring for their students and delight in the teaching process on the other. I think that many of these people feel, quite profoundly, that teaching is important, an idea which is particularly unpopular in academia these days.
I would, quite happily, commit myself to a couple of years of doing nothing but teaching undergrads. I’d like to be set up in an office with a computer and a library and a bunch of stationary, and told to teach a bunch of subjects. It’d kick my arse, but I’d really like the opportunity. Even though – as a friend said half in jest the other day – [expressing that desire] ‘is career suicide’. I think that this is perhaps the saddest part of sessional teaching – seeing people who love teaching, who love sharing ideas and listening to students develop an interest in – and passionate attachment to – ideas feel guilt about or some sort of reticence to admit this. I’m not saying that we should all be mad-crazy-Mr-Chips hippy teachers. But I am saying that it seems the worst thing about sessional teaching is that you are faced with learning that teaching is a waste of time, is frustrating, is miserable and just plain bad news. Not terribly encouraging when you’re trying to bust on into this industry.
4. My teaching has inspired new ideas and new plans for papers and research projects which other forms of academic engagement (of which I have precious few) do not. I’m simply inspired by the process of reading and re-reading canonical texts, and then having to find ways of letting students find their own ways to fall in love or in fascination with these ideas. It’s challenging to find class activities or interesting learning and teaching games which make these ideas a) relevant, and b) just plain fun.
I think that the most important part of teaching media and cultural and communications and gender studies is to help students find a way to make this material relevant to their own everyday lives, and to find ways to just plain enjoy playing with it. I mean, de Certeau is fun. He’s dodgy, and his stuff falls, down, but it’s fun to find ways to explore and apply his ideas. And it’s also really, really fun to see students then test out the use-value of this stuff, and to begin to articulate their reservations about concepts. I think this stuff should have some sort of use-value, even if that use is only as an intellectual game, just for the sake of playing.
… but, anyway, I have to end by saying that I’m not terribly hopeful about my future in academia. There aren’t enough jobs. I can’t publish a book (I amn’t really convinced it’s actually all that useful a process anyway). No one gives a crap about dance. Working in universities is generally pretty shit. Perhaps it is better just to stick with sessional teaching, rather than committing myself – so emotionally and so finally – to a full time career in it?
* Some of us are not ready to be postfeminists just yet. Nor are we convinced that newspapers, television, magazines and radio are ‘heritage’ media.

the 9am start was especially difficult today

…but one of my students was wearing this: wwjd.jpg so it was a little easier. It made me giggle a whole lot.
I am really tired. I haven’t had a full, proper night’s sleep in a very, very long time. It’s funny how you get used to broken sleep. I don’t like it, I’m not a nice person, but I’m used to it.
Did I mention that I didn’t like it?
Thank god the tutes are only an hour. I honestly can’t figure out how I’m managing to teach when I’m this tired.
I’m going to blog the SLX soon. I promise. But, really, there’s not much to say beyond ‘I danced a lot’ and ‘I did some DJing’ and ‘I stayed up all night a lot’. This year I didn’t do any stunts, but I did go in a dance competition. Ten years lindy hopping, first comp.
Meh.
Basically, competition nights are terribly, tediously boring, even when you’re in them. Social dancing is better.
But getting to the finals of a Jack and Jill as a lead where I was expected to lead >240bpm was a bit much.

goodness me

This past week I was teaching psychoanalysis. Or more specifically, a bit of Freud and then a bit of other people using and abusing Freud. This may entertain a few of you who know my feelings about psychoanalysis and Freud. We’re not friends. But the reading for the subject was from this neat text by Cranny Francis et al and I liked it – I’ve even bought the book because it gave such a useful overview of this stuff, especially in reference to gender, and I’m collecting useful resources. For The Future.
Any how, we ended up saying p3nis, vag1na, shit, poo and a few other things quite a lot of times. I was all ‘blah blah blah’ and ‘let’s see what the difference between the phallus and the p3nis is’ and forgot to remember that firsties are afraid of naked body words. I mean, each semester I realise they’re also afraid of body hair on women (not having seen any, ever), and get a bit freaked out when I wear a sleeveless shirt as we move into summer. Any how, it took them a while, but eventually they eased up and could manage to use The Words. Not with much comfort, but use them they did. Eventually.
This is actually a more complicated issue than you might realise, especially in the context of teaching a class that’s 80% international or first gen Australian students, many of whom come from families or cultures where it’s totally not on to talk about this stuff in public, especially not in mixed-sex settings, across generations and across heirarchies. Part of me was all ‘oh come on, when I was a lass and doing gender studies we had to use the c word in my feministah classes’. And sure, we were bad ass (though I have to say, it was a bit rough on some of the private school kiddies who hadn’t gone to a rough outer suburbs public high school), but it was a bit challenging at first. I remember being amazed by the thought of ‘reclaiming’ the word. I was used to it being yelled at me out of bus windows as I rode my bike home. I didn’t much care for it, personally, and wasn’t really ready to use it, let alone reclaim it.
But I was surprised by the shyness of my stoods. I guess it’s an age thing – when you’re a teenager sex is all new and weird and freaky. You’re busy testing out your preferences (in terms of gender and relationships and what you do in bed and what you wear and … hell, everything) and you’re a bit unsure of most things, and, well, you didn’t make it to the end of the reading, so you’re not actually sure what everyone’s talking about anyway.
And there were moments when I thought ‘ok, am I demonstrating sufficient cultural sensitivity?’ I can be a blunt object, but I think that this stuff needs to be dealt with just as we would any other topic – clearly, in detail, with discussion and – if possible – looking at google maps. Well, not so much with the google maps. But I was careful to be ‘appropriate’ in my approach. And I was. Except for that one moment when I noticed that my usually-very-big hand gestures had suddenly taken a turn for the explicit when we discussed the difference between p3nis and phallus. But that was just funny. And, as I said at the time “a little ambitious, even for Freud’s neuroses.”
So anyway, this bunch of relatively outspoken Young People were quite shy and at first reluctant to talk. But then they relaxed and really got into it. I couldn’t believe how many people’d done the reading – numbers’d jumped massively from the week before. And it was a long reading with some quite challenging bits. I mean, Lacan + Freud + Saussere + Cixous and lots of other people, all in one reading? I know it took me a while to get through it all, and I’ve read this stuff before.
But they were all really into this, they were just interested and excited about the ideas. Freud always polarises students, and it was neat to see them get in their 3-people groups and hack into the Oedipal complex. Who would’ve thought?

it could just be that nerds – no matter their flavour – love to talk to other nerds about stuff they love

I’ve been crapping on about DJing on the SwingDJs board. I started a thread called mad skillz: mentoring, encouraging and skilling up (new) DJs. As with all threads I’ve begun with long, expository posts that don’t really make much sense and which tend to be far to theoretical, the thread has been languishing. Kind of like my tutorials when I ask a long question which is really a bit of exposition or otherwise impossible to answer.
But someone asked a question which caught my interest, so I’m going to answer it here, at length.
I made this comment (in a post that was far too long):

One thing I’ve noticed – if a scene values social dancing and has quite a tight community vibe, there’s a strong emphasis on skilling up new DJs. But the local culture dictates how this skilling up is achieved.

(Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2008 20:40, first page of the thread at URL above)
And Haydn replied:

Can I ask you – in practice, how does this ‘tight community vibe’ translate into DJs helping each other?

I’m going to answer this at length here, rather than cluttering up that discussion board with my own opinions/rambles.
I have to reiterate: I’m working largely from an Australian perspective, with only a bit of international experience. I’m sure things are vary in different places.
‘A tight community vibe’ needn’t actually translate into DJs helping each other. I don’t see it very often, but I’m sure there’ve been times when a DJ has made it difficult for a new DJ or experienced DJ to ‘break into’ a scene – to preserve their own status, to preserve their own profits, etc.
Also, definitions of ‘community’ (and who’s actually considered part of that community) are ideologically and politically loaded. Do you count west coast swing dancers as part of your ‘swing’ community? Rock and rollers? People from other dance schools/studios? Musicians? People you don’t know?
When I say a ‘tight community vibe’, I’m thinking about scenes where people articulate some sense of ‘communitas’ or identify themselves as part of a scene or community with some sort of pride, protectiveness, etc.
But how might that translate to DJs helping each other?
Well, if a local scene has an active social club or organisation who also run social events, then that club might have an incentive to manage DJs quite carefully – so new DJs will get a bit of mentoring or coaching. I’ve noticed that gigs run by a smaller more coherent group – or by one person, or coordinated by someone who really cares about the DJing/social dancing – often manage the DJs more carefully. If the night is only one of many, is managed by an inexperienced dancer (or DJ) or isn’t actually ‘valued’ terribly highly, the DJing might be less strictly managed. Also, interestingly, if an event (or club) has a particularly fervent revivalist bent (ie they’re really really really into historical ‘accuracy’), they’re also pretty anal about music and about ‘teaching’ their DJs to like the ‘right’ music. But people might ‘manage’ DJs for other reasons – nepotism, interpersonal rivalries, failed romances, burning desires, professional networking, etc – all might affect who hires whom for which gigs.
I’ve noticed that these trends increase as a scene develops – in a newer scene, for example, where there are fewer DJs, there’s less ‘regulation’ of DJing: people are just happy to have someone play some music. As DJing becomes increasingly ‘professionalised’ or formalised in a scene (eg introducing pay rates, introducing a DJ roster, introducing preferences for particular types of music), then it becomes more ‘regulated’. It can also become less accessible. I’ve wondered if this is as a scene or community grows it also develops increasingly complex modes of cultural production and management (whether we’re talking DJing, dancing, dress making, event management, website design, whatever). Also, people figure out that formalised ways of working together can be useful on large projects – a camp has ‘rules’ for teachers (whether unspoken or not), an exchange is run by a group who become a nonprofit organisation to deal with tax and insurance, a social night has formal (or informally enforced) ‘no aerials’ rules for public safety.
What I’ve noticed (and I guess I’m talking about Australian examples, and only very vaguely in reference to the US, etc) is that if a local scene has quite a close community – ie people volunteering their time for events, events run by committees with a ‘community development’ agenda and ethos rather than (or in addition to) a profit motive, etc – then there’s a greater interest in ‘skilling up’ DJs – for the community’s benefit. More experienced DJs are more likely to volunteer to mentor new DJs in that context out of a spirit of ‘communitas’ or ‘doing good stuff for the community’.
There are other reasons for managing new DJs, though – profit motive is a good one, especially if you’re in a scene where dancers really value or care about the quality of DJing. Or plain old competition for cultural capital – a DJ might feel it’s in their interests to discourage new DJs or to not open their night to new DJs (ie they want to keep their status and ward off competitors). If a particular event has a specific musical focus (eg it might want to showcase a particular musical style or moment in history), then there’d also be reason to manage the DJs – if you were (for example), interested in running a ‘neo revival’ night, you might favour DJs who play BBVD, etc, and not hire DJs who play old school exclusively. I’ve even played gigs where what I’ve looked like – on stage – has been important: wearing vintage gear was specifically requested… which leads to interesting questions about the ‘performance’ of DJing. And how we might ‘perform’ the role of ‘vintage music fan’ or ‘swing dancer = vintage costume fan’ for an audience of non-dancers, for example. [That last bit is interesting in the light of things like the Facebook group ‘Embracing my embarrassing swing adolescence’ which seems largely to be about aesthetics and protocols of swing dance fashion – ie what not to wear]
There’s also another interesting aspect to all this. Throughout much of the academic literature dealing with online communities, authors note the importance of ‘answering questions’, especially in an established and well-moderated online ‘community’. People might answer questions for a number of reasons: to help out; to demonstrate their own knowledge (and status); to test their own knowledge; to enter into the discussion (and hence participate in the community – basically, answering simply as a way of getting into the conversation and enjoying the process of answering and discussing questions); etc etc etc.
I’ve always been interested in noticing what type of people answer what types of questions in swing dance discussion boards. In the years I was gathering data for my doctoral thesis (and before), I was really surprised by some of my findings. Sure, the data suggested all this stuff, but I was really hoping to find that how we play online wasn’t so tightly bound to gender. But I found that female posters tend to be quicker to offer assistance (eg hosting, info, etc), but that they mightn’t do so publicly (they’re almost always over-represented in offering condolences, giving positive feedback, compliments and proffering kind words generally). Men are more likely to post ‘information’ or ‘facts’, and to disagree. There are exceptions, but on the whole these tropes are consistent, and they also correlate with the way we talk in groups face to face. I’m also interested in the way the threaded discussion echoes ‘formal turn taking’ in a meeting – which is something all-male groups tend to favour (whereas women tend to favour a more casual, more interrupting/cooperative meaning-making approach). There are also ethnic issues at work here – I was at a fascinating book launch the other day for indigenous literacy day: the speeches and discussion was very very different to the usual middle class ‘literati’ book launch: a room full of koori ladies don’t really do formal turn taking :D.
This is partly to do with how we’re socialised (which of course will result in regional variations), but also to do with the social/cultural context of online communication, especially on something like a discussion board. I’ve been wondering how Facebook changes all that, especially as it’s far more accessible than something like a discussion board.
All this might mean, in the context of DJs helping each other, that women are more likely to answer questions via private message or to ask for help via private message, and less likely to post publicly on the board generally. It also suggests that people post answers and ‘help each other’ for a range of reasons.
SwingDJs is a tricky case study as DJing generally is so male-dominated: there are more men posting regularly here than women, for example (which could be a result of the culture of online communication rather than directly correlating to the number of women DJs IRL).
Something I’ve noticed: experienced DJs, no matter what their gender, are generally very helpful and welcoming to new DJs. They mightn’t be very good at actually helping or communicating their welcome, but they certainly want to be helpful and care about this stuff. This might be a trickle-on effect from the revivalist impulses of contemporary swing dance generally – there’s this impetus towards ‘recruiting’ new dancers, so as to ‘preserve’ historic dance forms.
Or it could just be that nerds – no matter their flavour – love to talk to other nerds about stuff they love.