Future paper topic: Cats and Gender in Medieval Europe

This horrifying incident on campus made me think about the treatment of cats in the Middle Ages and how they always seem to be the ones to get tortured and maligned if any animal is going to be. I was especially interested in the folklore of cats and their connection to witches, and I wondered if a connection could be made between medieval attitudes toward women as witches with cats as companions, and the modern stereotype of the crazy cat lady or the sad single woman who lives with her cats.

Then again, here is a very different kind of cat companion from an Old Irish monk's poem: 

Version by W.H. Auden:
Pangur, white Pangur, How happy we are
Alone together, scholar and cat
Each has his own work to do daily;
For you it is hunting, for me study.
Your shining eye watches the wall;
My feeble eye is fixed on a book.
You rejoice, when your claws entrap a mouse;
I rejoice when my mind fathoms a problem.
Pleased with his own art, neither hinders the other;
Thus we live ever without tedium and envy.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdtamsHbqJ1qbisi2o1_r3_400.gif

It would be very interesting to sort out the cultural and folkloric origins of these different beliefs about cats, evaluate them with respect to gender and female sexuality, and follow them into the modern era.

Books I reread, and why

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

This is probably my most reread book, and my reasons for rereading overlap the most between pleasure and professionalism, though it's safe to say they still lean more toward pleasure. I read the trilogy about every other year, and I find that it grows richer the more I know about the real medieval literature and myth that inspired it.

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

I haven't been back to this one in a few years, but it is still the standard against which I measure character development and tightness of plot.

The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende

I've read this one twice, and I once tried (unsuccessfully) to read it in Spanish. Both times were purely for pleasure.

Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card

I read this one a couple times when I was in middle school and high school, and then again recently, and it is one of those books that, as Spacks notes, shows its literary greatness with every reread. There are lots of science fiction novels, like The Hunger Games, that are spellbinding for a while but which lose a lot of their luster on a rereading, but every time I read Ender's Game, I am more impressed. (Now that I think about it, it has a lot of interesting similarities to The Hunger Games.) I have always read this book for pleasure, but my most recent rereading has convinced me that this book might be worth devoting some research to.

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle

Another childhood favorite that I've seen pop up in surprising places lately. Only a couple weeks ago, I read some of a new graphic novel version of the book. A pleasure read.

To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee

I read this book three or four times in high school, but I haven't read it lately. It doesn't have the impact for me that it used to, and now when I read it, I am reading for the sentimental love of favorite scenes and narration and the fond memories of past readings.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

This one started out as a pleasure read, but subsequent rereadings have been mainly professional. I've been rereading it aloud this semester with Song School for an entirely new professional purpose: polishing my pronunciation of Middle English.

Beowulf

Probably my most reread professional book. I gave it one cursory reading in high school, reread it in college, mostly out loud because I liked how the words sounded, again in college for a class, and then again for another class. Over break, I will be reading it again in preparation for my Beowulf course with Rob Fulk next semester, and then over the course of the spring, I will read it in Old English with that class. This is an especially interesting rereading because it will be the first time I have read it entirely in its original language, so in some ways it will be a first reading as well as a rereading.

"Wulf and Eadwacer"

"The Wanderer"

Rereading Davis

"Theatricality is not likely to be present when a performance is so absorbing that the audience forgets it is spectating." (Tracy Davis, "Theatricality and Civil Society in Theatricality", p. 128)

-The spectator must decide that the performance is significant for them before they feel sympathy. (p. 129)

"As long as sympathy is withheld, the theatrical circumstance persists; only if sympathy is granted can we cease to be spectators to ourselves and others." (p. 141)

-The spectators feel admiration and sympathy for the brave man on the scaffold, but they turn away from the brave man being pilloried. We choose sympathy when it benefits us, ennobles us, not when it makes us feel shame. (p. 150)

"A world where only sympathy occurs would be a dull one indeed, but it is the conditioned choice to sympathize or theatricalize that matters." (p. 153)

"Is this not how new law is conceived: not by cathecting with victims but by enabling the seeing of acts (sexual harassment, stalking, driving under the influence of alcohol) where before there was either 'nothing' or sympathetic social sanction?" (p. 154)

New things to consider in my second reading:

1) The first time around, I didn't focus so much on her interpretation of sympathy as a choice, but now I think that has far-reaching implications for transport. We can be transported only because we are willing to allow ourselves to do so, and that allowance is predicated on complex personal, cultural, and social situations. Maybe the important question is not, "What is the quality of science fiction that transports me?" but "What is it in me that is so willing to be transported by science fiction?"

2) Empathy is not unselfish. This was underlined by the example about the pilloried man vs. the hanged man, and although it might seem obvious, it deserves closer attention than I have given it. If sympathy/empathy is a choice we make, then it is affected by the flaws of human nature that affect every choice. I often think of empathy uncritically as a good effect of encountering difference through literature, but I should be more aware of the circumstances in which empathy is generated and its more selfish benefits to the one who empathizes.

3) Naming something brings it into view. This one comes mainly from the last quote from page 154. Science fiction and fantasy is uniquely equipped to give new names to things, especially when it constructs societies radically different from our own. I think immediately of the concept of shifgrethor in Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and the dispossessed language usage in The Dispossessed. I never thought of the ways that possessive language might have negative consequences with regard to the way I think about other human beings (for example, Le Guin's Odonians would say "the mother" instead of "my mother" because the use of a possessive would imply ownership over another person).

Notes on Spacks

"Rereading of this sort, the kind we do for the sake of teaching or writing, may feel at times merely routine, yet it can also come to serve as an index of literary quality."
-Patricia Meyer Spacks, "Professional Rereading" in On Rereading, p. 163

"The value of recreational rereading inheres largely in its unpredictable results."
-p. 164

Professional rereaders "direct the text to our purposes rather than give ourselves over to its intents."
-p. 165

-collective rereading is largely responsible for canon formation

Visits to living history museums

http://www.connerprairie.org/Plan-Your-Visit/1836-Prairietown/Meet-the-Citizens.aspx

http://www.indianahistory.org/indiana-experience/you-are-there

http://www.indianahistory.org/indiana-experience/you-are-there

http://www.indianahistory.org/indiana-experience/you-are-there

Witcomb Notes

"This opposition [between multimedia and high art] in relation to the introduction of multimedia into museums is sometimes unhelpful." (Andrea Witcomb, "The Materiality of Virtual Technologies: A New Approach to Thinking about the Impact of Multimedia in Museums", p. 36)

-defining multimedia as 'other' results in limited readings and applications (p. 36)

-through multimedia, museums become more openly politicized (p. 37)
-an experiential model of democracy (p. 46)

Notes on Walsh

"It is the mechanical reproduction--the photograph--that created the aura of the original, much as it was the machine that created the 'handmade,' the negative that created the 'positive,' and the digital that gave retroactive birth to its latent opposite, the 'analog.'"

-Peter Walsh, "Rise and Fall of the Post-Photographic Museum: Technology and the Transformation of Art", p. 29

Election Day: Looking back on a private transformation

I have voted in two presidential elections, and the only constant for me between the two was watching the election results in my room from my computer. I've undergone many changes in the four years that passed between, my party affiliation not the least of these, and in some ways, voting in this election was a consummation of that change. It's a very neat way to track cycles of personal development, and it will be interesting to see where I am at and how I am thinking when the next election comes around. I don't expect to careen crazily between parties again as I have these past four years, but I do hope to see a refinement of my views and a filling in of the fine lines between broad platform statements.

The way I spent both election nights--sitting up late with my laptop, wearing pajamas and flipping between Facebook and news and Netflix--speaks to the privacy of this transformation, and also the ways in which I have kept it silent. The election polarized my Facebook friends pretty neatly according to rural and urban geography, and I chose not to add my voice to the mix. My brother and I have been having a lively series of political debates via private messages on Facebook, and I received and sent a message to him the next day, but I didn't make a single public comment on the election results. I often keep silent because I am unsure what to say, and I don't like to say anything until I'm sure about it, but I hope that by the next election I will have found a voice in this discussion. I want to find the right balance between confidence and picking fights with my younger cousin over a pro-Romney blog.

Best of luck to future-Andrea in her 2016 voting.

Kirschenblatt-Gimblett and the New Zealand Hobbit

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/category/hobbit/

http://www.nme.com/filmandtv/news/
the-hobbit-star-martin-freeman-calls-bilbo-baggins/289698

As I read Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett's article on how museum curation is heavily tied to tourism, "Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Culture," my mind turned to The Hobbit, a common occurrence when I am reading anything lately, but this time it seemed applicable to the article. New Zealand has been in the news a lot lately with Hobbit-themed marketing ploys/displays of national pride. It's increasingly difficult to separate the two as the nation has embraced Jackson's Lord of the Rings industry with enthusiasm.

These Hobbit-themed gold coins, featuring elvish runes and the movie faces of Gandalf, Bilbo, and Thorin, are not only collectibles but also legal tender in New Zealand.

This New Zealand airline safety video also made the social media rounds a few weeks ago.

With these kinds of ads, New Zealand is positioning itself as Middle-Earth--the place to come when you want to visit the actual land of Tolkien. It's the only place I know of that has so successfully supplanted the original 'real location' of a fictional world. England still has its claim on Middle-Earth, as illustrated by the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremonies, where many saw a stadium recreation of English countryside as a hobbit village. But if you want to actually walk in Middle-Earth, you go to New Zealand.

http://www.comrz.com/blogs/my-blog--stefan/london-2012-
olympics---opening-and-closing-ceremony-highlights

I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from all this. Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, who is quick to point out the imperialist and cultual heritage motivations behind museum-keeping in different ages, might decide that the use of New Zealand as surrogate Hobbiton still whispers of imperialist disregard of the cultures of places that aren't England--we need an exotic and faraway land to serve as a real-life fantasy world, and we can cover over its native culture in favor of our imported one. But I don't think this interpretation fully explains the pride that many New Zealanders seem to take in their image as Middle-Earth, not the sizable benefits they gain from it. To me, it is most interesting how we have cultivated so many different locations and museum preserves for Lord of the Rings--it exists in England and in New Zealand, in movie studios and sound stages and scale models. 

Impressions of the IU Dance Gala

via indiana.edu

http://madeira.hccanet.org/project1_2011/devinep1/gamestats.html

http://centaursleepover.blogspot.com/2010/06/

Kealiinohomoku

Ethnic qualities of ballet, as listed in "An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance":

-proscenium stage
-3-part, 2-hour performance, curtain calls and applause
-French terminology
-Western customs enacted onstage
-romance, sorcery, mistaken identity, tragic misunderstanding
-biblical themes, Christian holidays, afterlife
-humans as animals, fairies, witches, step-parents, beautiful virgins
-bodies create long lines, legs revealed, slender bodies, airy quality
-set and props: horses and swans (not pigs, buffalo, eagles), grains and roses (not yams, coconuts, acorns)
-economic pursuits portrayed

This list in Kealiinohomoku's article reinforced for me that these are the kind of things that make study interesting for me. I've only seen a ballet once in my life, when I was invited by a friend to see The Nutcracker in elementary school, and the main thing I remember is being disappointed that there was no dialogue, so ballet has never been an interest of mine. But for a moment this list made it interesting because ballet was no longer a omnipresent high-toned blandness but a cultural artifact made up of myths, religion, and conditioned expectations. On this list, what most attracts me is the styling of human actors as animals, fairies, witches, beautiful virgins, and sorcerers.

Conquergood and Hybrid Scholarship

"Performance studies struggles to open the space between analysis and action, and to pull the pin on the binary opposition between theory and practice. This embrace of different ways of knowing is radical because it cuts to the root of how knowledge is organized in the academy."
-Conquergood, "Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research," in The Performance Studies Reader, p. 145-6

"Scriptocentrism is the hallmark of Western imperialism."
-Conquergood, p. 147

"I want to be very clear about this point: textocentrism--not texts--is the problem."
-Conquergood, p. 151

-hybrid scholarship produces creative performances alongside written research
-Conquergood, p. 152

Conquergood reminds me of Jackson in impressing that we should be departmentally inclusive and try to cultivate practical and creative projects alongside research. As someone who is neither a performer nor really a researcher of performance, I still think this injunction has value for me. We all end up in the English department because at some point in our lives we really liked to read, but many of us also arrived here harboring a desire to write. Some of the scholars I admire most were active both in research within their field and creative writing outside of it, and you can see both sides of their work overlapping and enriching each other. In the same way, I want to hold onto the enjoyment of writing as I delve into a research-heavy field. Even when my creative writing is not suitable for the light of day, it helps me better appreciate and understand the things that I am reading.

Kinetic Empathy

"In what ways might one come to feel inhabited by the sense of motion, but also emotion conveyed in and by another's body movement?" (Susan Leigh Foster, "Choreographing Empathy", p. 81)

-Rainer's analysis of dance separates the kinetic from the emotional
"Rainer worked assiduously to cultivate and valorize a 'pure' physicality and to imbue it with its own kind of power and dynamism, in part in order to eschew claims of universal sharings of values based in universally shared emotional states." (Foster, 89)

"In contemporary discourse, empathy is frequently viewed as embodied simulation and sympathy as a response involving feelings." (Matthew Reason and Dee Reynolds, "Kinesthesia, Empathy, and Related Pleasures: An Inquiry into Audience Experience of Watching Dance", p. 53)

Two different interpretive motivations in dance:
Don: "engagement and empathy are produced by intimacy and intensity."
Nicole: "a degree of distance, facilitated by music, is necessary for a kind of empathetic engagement, which involves a suspension of reality." (Reason and Reynolds, 70)

-three different methods of engagement with dance: sympathy, empathy, contagion (Reason and Reynolds, 71)

Ngai, "Stuplimity" in Ugly Feelings

Stuplimity creates an "open feeling" in the reader: "a condition of utter receptivity in which difference is perceived (and perhaps even 'felt') prior to its qualification or conceptualization."
-Ngai, p. 261

Could stuplimity offer one way to overcome Davis' objections to transport? Open feeling could create empathy on the part of the spectator for difference without "insisting on sameness as a criterion of worth." (Davis, Theatricality and Civil Society in Theatricality)