ugh

!!!

yes yes

yes....?

hmmmm

but really tho?

oh oh

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As always, I agree so much with your thinking on this. And I especially know how much this matters because of the kindness that you and so many other people in the English program showed me when I first showed back up at PSU after failing out 5 years before. I know this so well that I changed my major to English in very big part because of this kindness and support and I have t h r i v e d because of it. And I've only continued to thrive with the support of the CoLab and my involvement with the CPLC and all the wonderful people in it.

I love that you explicitly named this as something you want to do--sharing these ideas and also trying to get TL's involved with the CPLC. And though it's kind of a small thing, I actually really appreciate your wording and how you emphasized not just that TL's could learn things from the CPLC, but that the CPLC has stuff to learn from TL's--that's so important and sometimes doesn't feel emphasized as much when we're trying to hard to cover so many topics and talk about so many things.

Hi, hello, I've loved getting to talk with you more Kristin! I also am excited to have more student voices in the CoLab this semester and also in the CPLC (including Becca, who wrote a reflection after reading all these Pressbook entries and who is going to be involved in the CPLC now!)

This reminds me a lot of that post you made in the Moodle forum ("Gregorian Speech & Interdisciplinarity Prompt" section--everyone should go read it, it's great!) months ago about how students love to make connections between classes and how they love to talk to you about those connections. I'm so glad you're still interested in that and intend to make it a goal for your classes! I know that I personally love doing that and also love talking about it with profs, so I'm clearly BIASED, but genuinely, I see other students talk about connections between their classes (just to me or to each other) and I think it might be worthwhile to really foster that kind of synthesis/ integrated understanding.

When I first read your post, I was so curious about how this went--how did students react to this meta discussion? Did you just talk about your/ your class' transformation, or did you invite students to share their thoughts about it too? I'm particularly interested in the possible ways to get students thinking/ talking about Open Ped, and am so interested in the seeds you might have planted/ could plant in a first class like that! Also so interested in whether you've continued that kind of meta thread throughout the course after the first day?--did you end up recalling these things as you talked about the assignments and how they have changed (as you did the more experimental stuff?) So cool, Whitney!

Your whole reflection excites me with the possibilities of connecting Open with the course topic. One of my most interesting and important experiences of really integrating my understanding of Open was in my Critical Theory course, where so much of the content was itself related to Open Ped (So much of Theory being somewhat about power, knowledge, discourse, etc.), and it allowed me to make so many connections myself and even utilize my thoughts to get about meta about class dynamics IN class, when I worked with a group to teach a whole class.

In what ways have you found it easy to connect these ideas, in what ways has it been harder than you imagined? Has teaching this content made y o u think more about Open Ped?

I'm so excited to hear what kind of successes and challenges you've had in trying to facilitate an atmosphere of trust. Do you feel like you've fostered trust as well as you hoped/ planned to? What's worked? What has been an obstacle? Are the obstacles ones you already know how to work on in the future, or are they more long term obstacles within the institution/ structure of higher ed?

Because I think so much about classroom dynamics, I know that I personally can "feel" when a class trusts each other, trusts the profs, trusts themselves, and I really do think it makes a d i f f e r e n c e in how we learn, so I'm so glad you've tried to work on that.

The only hint of why she has written this account?

I do agree with this to some degree, but also, we are basically given a selection of texts by the instructor and then asked to comment on those and chose from those to put in this anthology. The students are working within the boundaries that the instructor has imposed with their definitions (via selections) of American literature. Not that this could be necessarily 100% eliminated (esp with the constraints that would become a problem if students were asked to explore texts on their own--particularly time constraints), but this should maybe be made more obvious in this prefatory note. Somewhere else in here is says "we have whittled down"--and, like, WHO has whittled down, and from what original selection did they whittle it down from? Is not the instructor whittling it down more than the students, from the jump? Again, maybe just make this more obvious? idk

This paragraph is maybe my favorite and feels more genuine in what it says this anthology is doing. It doesn't necessarily make claims to even gesture toward what "truly characterizes American literature," which is relatively different than the rest of the prefatory note, and is also maybe significant that it is the closing paragraph.

I sometimes have questions about the assumption about what constitutes "fun" when learning, or maybe particularly the appeals to a specific kind of student that I sometimes feel I'm supposed to make with posts. Sometimes having discussions about/ or which draw on our class' collective uncertainty and humility is more fun for me than reading a blog post meant to polarize through certainty, "clapbacks," humor and gifs. I also wonder about how the selection process of these anthologies may have an unintended effect of reinforcing a homogeneity about what is "fun" and "critical," which then determines the selections included in this text (esp when students have limited time for selection and may simply pick posts that they already read, or posts that are quick/ easy to read or posts that are at the top/ conveniently located). I sometimes wonder about the way that this selection process could be troubled and rethought, though I certainly don't have "the answer."

These three words together is interesting! At first, the first two words together made sense to me, while the third felt like an "outlier;" but then I could also see the first and third being related. Curious about what these words really mean--individually, and as a seemingly collective statement.

So much to be said about the ways humans have not stuck to "what nature has given them" and the arguments for/ against going with or against "nature." Reminds me of Dark Ecology, Morton, etc (from Crit Theory). Also reminds of the resurgence of the narrative of the perils of "going against" "our nature" or Nature in general. Reminds me of essentialism and constructivist discourse.

This line feels pretty important. Though their effort doesn't pan out, it makes me wonder if the people who developed this story had thought about the idea of their own weapons being turned against them and the philosophical implications of that? Who knows.

You would thing I have something to say besides "!!!" but n o p e: !!!

!!!

Also interesting language, given that Morton specifically critiques the ability of having a holistic understanding of anything, let alone a "grasp."

But, of course, I'm just nit-picky. This article is actually very good in most aspects!

I think someone also wrote something similar in a blog post--something like "embrace the darkness." I wonder about that wording and about the idea of celebrating the darkness of nature. Can this be easily co-opted to justify violence? Are we not capable of modifying nature--is the whole point partially that the boundaries of what's "natural" and "supposed to be" are not so rigid? I don't know the answers to the questions, but I do wonder about them.

This is an interesting list... These are all human made (presumably; though, I guess an oil spill could potentially be caused by a natural event in some strange geological event? I don't know enough about it to actually say though).

I feel like this is a useful question. When I went to an academic conference on Contemplative Practice in Higher Ed, there were SO MANY breakout sessions centered around the appropriation of contemplative practice, and especially because that appropriating happens in academic spaces by people who should really be more conscious about it. There were also sessions that used contemplative practice to have authentic cross-racial dialogues and the POC in the session got to speak freely about the whitewashing of the conference we were literally all attending at that moment. It was noticeably a little tense at first, but then it seemed to really become helpful for everyone, but specifically (hopefully) for the POC in the room. I think about this as one of the few times I've seen such powerful and direct communication and I think how it would be to have those dialogues everyday. The entry mentioned that the instructor could acknowledge Indian culture, but going further would seem even more valuable--perhaps integrating education with the yoga practice itself. The entry wonders if a white woman should be the one doing that, and I honestly don't really think so. I would very much bet that there are other yoga instructors that are not white, or are, at the very least, very engaged with the history of colonialism, whitewashing, and with cultural appropriation that would be available to teach it instead, if someone really wanted to work towards that.

Here at PSU, there's a contemplative community that works with mindfulness (which I am very much a fan of), but I have been reluctant to really participate because I've noticed that the student members are mostly white, and I worry there is no awareness or dialogue around the appropriation of mindfulness and contemplative practices. I also wonder/ worry that it's infused with a similar kind of escapism from capitalist systems via "self care," that still keeps in place the value of capitalism and doesn't critique the system that is overextending and exploiting the participants themselves, the people that help keep our university going, and our entire life as we know it going. I suppose this is an unfair judgement or worry, since I've never actually been, and is just based off of the very numerous times I have seen this happen again and again.

I'm not sure that I agree that this is technically a discrete form of secondary colonialism. It feels more like cultural appropriation. For me, this example is different from the Kincaid excerpt because these aren't Western people directly taking pleasure in something that directly is difficult for previously colonized countries. In A Small Place, the vacationer takes pleasure in the sun, wishes for the sun, actively doesn't want to be rained on--and this is specifically at odds with the fact that Antigua has been in a drought and desperately needs rain. Or, the Westerner takes pleasure in the terrible roads, for they are in contrast to Western life of privilege. If the people of Antigua got the water they desperately need, or got their road fixed, this would directly make the Westerner feel less pleasure. In this example, Western's are appropriating a cultural practice without recognizing or being engaged with what that practice means for that culture, but it seems a little different, because they're not taking pleasure in something directly disadvantageous to Indian people. (I suppose you could make an argument that Western people not fully understanding, empathizing with, thinking regularly about, and actively engaging with Indian people ~in general~ directly causes them to be secondarily colonized. But it seems somewhat less direct).

Of course, I'm tempted to bring everything back to the idea of this oscillation that comes about when things do not fit neatly into categories.

In "The Madwoman in the Attic," Gilbert and Gubar write about the "mythic masks male artists have fastened over her human face both to lessen their dread of her "inconstancy" and by identifying her with the "eternal types" they have themselves invented to possess her more thoroughly." To me, this polarization stems from the unbearable multiplicity of women as people (and, indeed, the multiplicity of all things). I think it speaks to our desire to have things be coherent, make sense. If only women were "coherent," ie predictable, men would have an easy set of instructions on how to interact with them, they would not have to understand them. When a woman breaks this predictability, they are seen as deceptive--deceptive because they have tricked a man into believing he already knows her, and therefore, can assume an outcome. To be unpredictable--say, to flirt with a man, but not "put out" would make you a "tease." A "tease" is a woman who does not follow the script, who upsets prediction models, and is therefore, a threat.

When I think of all of this, I think of our need for control and short cuts that we carry out by sorting phenomena into categories to easily possess them. I think of the entitlement that those with power (often white men) display in expecting the world to conform to their expectations--and indeed, their ability to force a desired outcome.

I think of the way that those with less power (women) do not get to create polarized narratives of men because they are upset about their "unpredictability." Women accept men's multiplicity, their inconsistent affection, their inconsistent reactions to rejection (being called a bitch, being hit, being stalked, or even killed), etc.

To admit women are humans that contain multitudes, would mean having to actually understand them and their subjectivities--would mean women becoming people and not objects.

[In general, I think "subjectivity" is a pretty ideological concept and am suspicious that we truly have that kind of autonomy, but regardless--men with power seem to have significantly more access to at least a practical illusion of subjectivity. Also, the gender binary is a literal construct and I don't believe in it, but I had to be reductive for this comment].

Again, this idea of stability in "the truth" is so uncanny to me--especially because this film directly calls into question whether the mother is a ghost or not.

I don't even know, man. The universe is just absurd, honestly. Existence is uncanny and I will never be convinced that there is a "truth" we could know, and I especially am suspicious of the way we define "truth" and how that relates to human-centric positioning within our world, our reality. Is "the truth" to us, the same "truth" to a cow? When we delineate the boundaries of a mountain and call this "truth"--call it "a mountain," does that really make it its own separate entity? Where does the mountain become just "the ground?" Where are the boundaries and are they not just something we have projected onto the world and deemed "reality?"

This sentence made me laugh so hard, because it feels so uncanny to me.

I tend to think about how the uncanny has to do with viewpoints, but specifically about how the viewpoints are endless, and the consensus of reality fall apart because of it; rather than the resolution coming about from seeing another viewpoint. It makes me think about multiplicity and grand narratives and the tension between them. Also about the thin line between conspiracy theories and points of view that differ from the grand narrative--about the difficultly and nuance needed to examine them and maybe even the impossibility of distinguishing some of them,

Lately I've been thinking of the relationship between "the uncanny" and "irony," "paradox," "contradiction," "dichotomy," "duality" etc. etc. Especially after reading ideas about literature being partially grounded in paradox.