Teaching American Epics

Last night, doing prep for American Epics, I watched John Sayles' Matewan, which I had never actually seen before, mainly because it is so hard to find. I actually had to buy a copy in order to watch it.

Totally worth it.

Based on actual events, Matewan relates the events leading up to the Battle of Matewan, when the coal company's gun thugs came in to massacre the striking miners and found the miners fully prepared to shoot back. The movie stops there, though an epilogue hints at the increased violence poured down on the miners (by both the coal and the state) for daring to fight back.

It's a powerful examination of the struggle to create unions in this country -- who paid, how they paid, how much they paid -- and who the true enemies are. It also shows, very nicely, how they work (successfully) to set us against one another.

Watch it, even if you have to buy it.

See, Here's The Real Trouble With Poverty

It's not that you have to decide between buying antibiotics for your kid or paying the power bill.

It's not that you have to choose between gas for the car so you can get to work or milk for your kid.

It's not that you have to ignore that persistent ache in your side, hoping to shit it isn't something serious, because there is no way you can afford the thirty bucks the clinic charges, never mind whatever it would cost if it is something serious, and forget the hours you would have to take off work to go sit at the clinic.

It's not the little white flash of panic that hits you every single fucking time you put the key into the ignition of your car, because it it doesn't start? You are fucked. Finished. Done. You can't buy another car and you can't afford to get this one fixed and there is no other way to get to work and you will lose your job and your family goes under.

It's not trying not to lose it when your kid wonders, wistfully, why you can't live in a nice house like X does. Or wishes we could go to a museum in town Z, only three hundred miles away, and maybe stay in a hotel? And you know she might as well be wishing for the moon. It's never going to happen. And you don't mean it's not going to happen this year, or not going to happen next year -- it is never going to happen ever, because you are going to be poor like this forever.

And so is she.

No. None of these are the problem.

The problem? The problem is you are not sufficiently ashamed of your poverty.

You fucking loser.

Crossed Genres

...is holding a Kickstarter.

It's a great indie press, which I would say even if I hadn't been part of it for so long.

It publishes plenty of voices that don't get represented in the big markets -- women, writers of color, LGBQT writers -- and Bart & Kay do this almost entirely on their own.

Go here for details, and boost the signal!

Epic American Movies?

I am compiling a list of movies to show in my American Epics class (which starts in about one week, yeah, not that I put things off to the LAST MINUTE).

Since this is actually a class in The Revolution, just disguised as a class in American Epics, I'd kind of like these to be American Epic Revolutionary movies. So far I have a working list that looks like this (in no particular order, and yes, I do know some of these aren't exactly epic or exactly revolutionary):

Angels With Dirty Faces

Grapes of Wrath

Spartacus

Casablanca

Matewan

Unforgiven

Alien/Aliens

Reds

There Will Be Blood

The Best Years of Our Lives

Any other suggestions? They have to be American movies, but they can be from any era, and set anywhere.

The Right Stuff

But It's Not My Fault and Besides....

So John Scalzi wrote another post.

It contained an analogy which attempted to explain straight white male privilege to straight white males.

You may guess what happened next. Yep. The internets exploded.

I will not attempt to address the many layers of FAIL which followed from many SWM and their lackeys. (Though as Scalzi notes here, many SWM did not, in fact FAIL, so, yay. Though, really, my response to that has to be -- as it was when my brother shouted at me that men had "given" women the vote, so what else did we want -- uh, dudes, you want a cookie for that? Seriously?)

No, what I want to address is a response I kept seeing in the comments to the original post: SWMs and their lackeys who kept saying something like this: Okay, even granted I have something like this privilege you say exists -- which I don't accept, and which I didn't create, so it's totally not my fault, even if it exists, I'm just the accidental beneficiary of it, right? So what do you expect me to do about it?

Like, okay, I just happen to get put on third base in every single contest, and all those other folks are stuck in the parking lot, can't even get through the gates. Not my fault! I didn't ask for this privilege. What do you want me to do about it?

And they seem to think that settles something. Like they've refuted an argument. Like they can't be expected to do anything about the problem of the uneven playing field.

The fact is, if the playing field is unequal, and you are getting an unfair advantage -- if, as a straight white male (or a straight while female, for instance) -- over other candidates for a job, or slots in a journal, or publications slots in a magazine, or access to education, you can do things about that.

Do them.

If you run a journal or magazine, actively seek out voices that are not SWM/SWF. And by actively, I mean advertise and email and find writers who aren't SWM/SWF. Because it's a fact that writers give up hope of submitting to a journal when all they see getting published are the same dozen SWM names.

If you're on a hiring committee, do the same. If you run a scholarship, or have access to those who run a scholarship, or if you give grants, do that.

Oh, but this discriminates against SWM! No one is actively recruiting SWM! No one is advocating for SWMs! Yeah, sorry. Only the entire society advocates for SWM. See starting on third base, above. All we're doing here is leveling the playing field. All we're doing here is removing the privilege. I admit it does feel to SWM like being discriminated against. Having to give up the advantage you have always counted on can feel that way. It's why cops get so pissed if we don't cringe and grin and shuffle when they're giving us a speeding ticket -- they're so used to being treated like they're the Lords of the City. Not being granted the privilege stings.

In short: yes, there is something we can do it level the playing fields. It's not even that hard. (Some) SWM men and their allies are acting as though there is nothing to be done. Why? Because they don't want those things done. Why? That's also not hard to understand. They don't want to give up their privilege. Well, who would?

Don't wait for them to give it up. As MLK Jr said, the privileged class never willingly gives up its privilege. We have to take it.

Movie Review

I stayed up late last night watching Outside The Law, an Algerian film recommended over on TNC's blog.

It's not exactly 100% successful as a film -- sort of episodic, and definitely more interested in making a political point than in being a movie -- but on the other hand, it's very effective. Wonderfully shot, and some amazing scenes.

Go watch it, especially if you are at all interested (obsessed, as I am) with resistance movements and revolutions. It's on Netflix instaplay.

Oh, fair warning -- it's in French, and Algerian French, I think, at least in part. You'll have to have your subtitles turned on.

American Health Care, I Hate You

So, as long-time readers of this blog probably recall, a few years ago I had my right shoulder operated on, to remove several bone spurs.

Previous to that surgery, I endured months of -- how shall I express this -- amazing agony. Aside from gallstones, I don't think I've ever had anything hurt the way these spurs in my shoulder did. Maybe migraines. But the migraines go away with the right drugs. No amount of pain drugs took away the pain in my shoulder. This pain in my shoulder took over my life.

The surgery -- horrible surgery, the worst I've ever undergone, debilitating, difficult to recover from, painful in its own right -- worked perfectly. My shoulder was fixed. No more pain, 100% mobility, strength, no problems.

Well, one problem: over the past month, I'm having similar symptoms in my left shoulder.

No issue, right? Just go see my physician, get it fixed? An awful surgery, sure, but we know the problem, we know the cure, we know it works, it's clearly not very risky, what's the issue?

The issue is Dr. Skull has a cataract, which will use up the last of our medical savings account for the year. So we're out of medical money. And our health insurance covers only 80% of surgical costs.

So I could get my shoulder fixed, now. And then we wouldn't be able to eat or pay power bills for the rest of the year.

Or I can wait until January -- which is only, what, six months now? -- when the new medical money kicks in; and do it then.

And hope next year there's no medical emergency someone needs money for.

Except the kid needs glasses, and so do I, and so will Dr. Skull, after the eye surgery. Who knows where that money will come from. Our health insurance doesn't cover that.

This must be the wise decision making -- that medical rationing -- that the GOP is always talking about. I get to live in pain for six months, and my kid gets to live half-blind until January, so that the insurance executives can be a couple dollars richer.

Sounds like a fine system to me.

Academic Humor

XKCD this morning was great,

but this version is even better.

That's It, Folks

I have done submitted my final grades for Spring 2012.

The semester is therefore concluded.

I spent the day -- most of it -- writing and writing and writing. I love that moment when I know where a story is going and how to get there: when the Muse is chasing me, rather than me kicking her up the hill. (My Muse is a scruffy crop-haired urchin, who is sometimes female and sometimes male, and spends most of its time sulking under the table or in the corner, and has to be cussed at and coaxed into working at all. Lots of coffee works, or failing that, a bit of rum. But today! Hah!)

Toward evening I quit, because the kid turned 14, at exactly 6.27 p.m. We had chicken gruel and cheesecake, and discussed her infancy and early childhood. Also what she had been drawing, locked away in her room all day. She is drawing humans now, because if she is to be a real animator, she feels she must learn to draw humans.

Tomorrow she's going off to spend most of a month with her grandparents. While I will miss her -- Moar writin time for me!

Strange Horizons News

So this is very cool -- Julia Rios, who host the Outer Alliance Podcast, and does other work with Outer Alliance, and is just cool in general, has been chosen as the other new fiction editor over at Strange Horizons.

Excellent choice, I have to say.

The Times They Are A-Changing

Every year at the end of my HEL class I do a lecture on sexist language and on the English Only movement and on how English is changing and will continue to change -- this last bit, of course, is just the cap on the main theme of the class, the point I have been endlessly making all semester.

Generally I get the most push back on English Only: even students who I have marked as deeply liberal will argue with me that the United States "needs" to have one language, and (a sometimes directly stated corollary) that language needs to be English since it's our country and we speak English.

But I am used to also getting resistance on the part of the lecture which covers sexist language -- why it's not okay to use "his" and "he" as the generic pronoun; why "man" and "mankind" to mean "human" is not all right; why police officer and flight attendant and chair are all better than policeman and stewardess and chairman.

"But I want to know," one student did say this year. "Waitress is better than server. Because then I know whether the server is male or female. And that's important."

"You know," I said, "I never have understood that argument. William Buckley makes it too. He says he needs to know what gender someone is, that it's a valuable piece of information, and if we hide it by using gender neutral terms, we're hiding it from him. And I'm wondering why he needs to know that about someone. I mean, unless you're planning to date someone? Or have sex with them? I can't really understand why else you'd need to know their gender."

But! Aside from that student, I got almost no resistance this year, about the English Only section of the lecture, or the Feminist section of the lecture. Especially contrasted against eight years ago, when I first began teaching this class -- when I would say only about twenty percent of the class accepted my propositions at all -- this is interesting and encouraging news.

I'd also contrast what happened on our campus lately, with our transgender student being mistreated by the administration, and most of the campus objecting strongly, to this same campus in 2004, when Bush was running for re-election. Here in Arkansas, the GOP was pushing a very strong "The Democrats will make us all get GAY MARRIED!" agenda. I remember class after class in which my students -- not all of them, but many, even most of them -- were vocal and outspoken about homosexuality being evil, sinful, something that was going to destroy the world. When I would disagree with them, in as civil a manner as I could manage, they would tell me I was wrong. Sometimes they would shout.

I think some of these people are still around -- well, I know they are -- but the world is changing, and I think they realize they aren't in the majority. I think this keeps them, mostly, from taking the center stage in classrooms and the public forum.

Sadly, however, when the university administration allows a single voice to decide what can be said or taught in a classroom, that emboldens this tactic. It allows someone who thinks (for instance) that women shouldn't control their own lives, or that evolution isn't real science, or that liberalism isn't a valid political viewpoint, or that gay or bisexual or transgender people are not real human beings. Only heteronormative conservative white people's choices need to be respected and catered to -- only their voices need to be heard.

Well, that's not really the world anymore, first; and second, that is not the function of education, to re-enforce the worldview we already have.

Every year, every week, every day, I learn something new. I question what I think I know. I find out more, I reshape what I thought I knew. I rebuild and reform. That's how it's supposed to work.

Making students feel safe and comfortable? You're doing it wrong.

Query

I'ma maybe going to teach a workshop on how to write the novel next spring.

Anyone know any good texts on writing the novel?

Or, to put it less rigidly, if you were teaching a workshop on writing the novel, what books / texts might you require?

Wow

So first down in Florida the flagship university dumps their computer science program -- because who needs that anymore? -- and over in Texas, the Lone Star College (which, while we're on it fellas, whoa, coolest "rebranding" move ever -- on MARS) has decided to charge students different tuition rates depending on what majors and classes they are enrolled in.

...this year, standard tuition at the system is $200 for a three-credit course, but students [for instance] pay $212 to study dental hygiene and $206 for computer science, according to a differential fee chart.

Lone Star is in the first of three years of steady ratcheting up of differential tuition, meaning that if a course costs 30 percent more than the baseline, students now pay 10 percent more for that course, with 10 percent hikes coming in each of the next two years.

My bet? They're counting on students being too confused by the rules to understand how deeply they're being screwed.

And here's just one of the many problems I see with this little plan: suppose a student changes majors halfway through her degree plan, from a high-cost major to a lower-cost major. Do you refund the difference in tuition?

Or suppose a major that was high cost -- one that is supposed to lead to a job that makes a lot of money, like computer science -- suddenly crashes. Now you can't get jobs in computer science, even though everyone promised, ten years ago, it was the job of the future? Do we refund the premium we charged all those students?

And, by the way, are we paying the professors who are teaching all these high-cost majors more? I have little doubt that we are paying the tenured professors more -- certainly business and engineering professors probably make more than English and anthropology professors. But are we paying (for example) adjunct professors more? I know we don't at my university; though the same may not be true at the Lone Star College.

But that may be a feature, of course, not a bug. No one in administration and no one at the state level (so far as I can tell) actually has any interest in helping students or professors, never mind improving education at any level.

Update: See this.

My University? Really?

So this is what I spent most of my Friday -- which you will remember was the National Day of Silence, right? -- writing emails and posts on FB about:

Jennifer Braly, a transgender UAFS student, was scheduled to give a guest lecture for Dr. Laura King’s General Psychology class on Friday, April 20th at 9AM. The lecture coincided with the class unit on gender and sexuality. Thursday afternoon, Ms. Braly received an email from Dr. Rita Barrett, Associate Professor of Psychology and Department Chair, which, according to Ms. Braly said,

“All of my faculty are now diligently preparing for the closure of the semester. They must be in compliance with their syllabi, grading, final exams, graduation exercises, etc. and it is impossible to afford more class time to accommodate an additional speaker at one week before finals.Therefore, your scheduled speaking engagements in any course in my department (PSYC, CJ, SOCI, ANTH) have been cancelled. This includes the two scheduled for tomorrow Friday April 20th in Dr. Laura King’s classes.”

Ms. Braly spoke with Dr. King after receiving the email and the two decided to go ahead with the lecture. Before class began, Dr. Henry Rinne, Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, requested to speak with Ms. Braly in his office. Despite a letter of recommendation from Dr. Nicha Otero, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, according to Ms. Braly, she was told by Dr. Rinne that she would not be allowed to speak in any classroom at this University from that day forward. Ms. Braly reports that Dr. Rinne cited a lack of qualification to lecture in a University setting as the reasoning behind this decision.

(From the LionsChronicle, story written by Melanie Stout and J. Barnhardt)

It's hardly the first time that we've had issues like this on our university, or with this administration. But it's the first time that the lines have been so bright, the violation of academic freedom and civil liberties so clear.

We're all kind of caught between shock and fury here.

Too Early?

It's probably way too early to start obsessing over the election.

And yet I am.

Here's the two sites everyone needs if they want to obsess with me!

Real Clear Politics.

Nate Silver.

Y'all have any other suggestions?