What was the last book you read?

[Hiking Fox]

Made me want to write again.

write write write in creative writing thread!!!

Yeah do it! It's gone quiet. It's making me feel like a show-off every time I post summat.

Anyway, re. books; I've recently read 'The Apprentices', the latest installment of the 100 episode graphic novel 'Thieves and Kings' by the Canadian cartoonist Mark Oakley (each book contains about 6-10 episodes).

I have to say, this is one of the best things I've ever read. It's the only graphic novel in which male friends of mine will pick a female character as their favourite, not because she's 'hot', but because she's complicated, powerful and humane.

If you like the thought of beautifully-drawn magic, trolls, fight scenes, forgetful wizards, talking cats, teenage friendship, and complex characters who are trying to address past issues while surviving in the present day, you'll love this.

[The Duke]

Yeah do it! It's gone quiet. It's making me feel like a show-off every time I post summat.

Well don't let it! Just cos I've dried up and can't think what to write shouldn't get in your way.

[Hiking Fox]

Duke - I didn't in any way mean that as a criticism of any regulars on the thread. I was just being encouraging, that's all.

Writing has to flow, after all. You can't force it.

[The Duke]

Duke - I didn't in any way mean that as a criticism of any regulars on the thread. I was just being encouraging, that's all.

Writing has to flow, after all. You can't force it.

No criticism implied HF. Honest. Quite the opposite.

Just didn't want you hoarding stories when I could be reading them.

I want to hear more about the seal people!

[helmut]

just read the virgin suicides- such a great book. every time i had to put it down for work or some other ridiculous activity i would be tingling with anticipation to get back to it!!!

ps duke i love your signature....... thats one of my favourite stranglers songs!!!

[The Duke]

Helmut,

I should have read a poem called Ozymandius to you instead.

[helmut]

Helmut,

I should have read a poem called Ozymandius to you instead.

how i love google!!

the last thing i read was just what the duke recommended

thanks, it was beautiful!

[cactuspear]

Is Chesil Beach similarly dark?

Haven't heard of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, tell more?
Excellent what subject do you teach?

Chesil Beach is not near as dark as Williams. The character studies are intimate but subdued - restrained, even. It works splendidly with the story, though, because painfully polite restraint is what ruins the characters' love.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a book published in 1970 about the philosophy of education. Friere, from Brazil, began his career teaching illiterate peasants to read while helping them organize unions, etc. It's based on the idea that everyone is capable of thinking critically if they are empowered to do so, and fostering education as dialogue rather than students being passively filled with whatever knowledge the teacher deposits into them. Some of the language about the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy seems a bit outdated due to how wierdly enmeshed and mediated everything is these days, but most of it remains relevent and inspiring. There's also discussion about cultural invasion and the effects of colonialism that, sadly, could have been written today.

I teach art, and while I wouldn't say I'm exactly fomenting revolution in the classroom, I do try to go beyond the subject at hand to help the students become critical thinkers and better actors in the world. A lot of my students are dealing with poverty, violence, and lack of access to technology, so I want to help them discover their voices and become empowered to use those voices to change our world. It sounds corny, but that's where the little seed of revolution begins to sprout, right?

[emm7]

I teach art, and while I wouldn't say I'm exactly fomenting revolution in the classroom, I do try to go beyond the subject at hand to help the students become critical thinkers and better actors in the world. A lot of my students are dealing with poverty, violence, and lack of access to technology, so I want to help them discover their voices and become empowered to use those voices to change our world. It sounds corny, but that's where the little seed of revolution begins to sprout, right?

yes, critical thinking is crucial to be able to sort and sift the truth from the bullshit, and if someone hasn't got their critical thinking switched on, they can become an easy target for manipulation and bamboozlement by others. Critical thinking requires a certain degree of detachment.

I find in my own experience that having my emotional buttons pushed can override critical thinking and deactivate it. So it's important for people to be aware when another is attempting to push their emotional buttons in order to deactivate their critical thinking faculty by swamping it with emotionality. Emotional reaction overpowers critical thinking reaction.

NB lot of advertising actually works this way. It attempts to hook in to base emotions at a rather primal level thus attempting to circumvent the audience's critical thinking faculty. (Also known as Bullshit Detector).

Art has saved my life so many times and given me so much. I can't thank it enough. It's through writing that I have been able to get through difficulties. And experiencing music and film and theatre play and novels and paintings. Frieda Kahlo's paintings helped me a lot. Just to know that one other person understands that is consolation and really helps. Art is about telling our truth as we see it and sharing. So it's about connecting and reaching out. One person alone is not as powerful "no man is an island" as Donne said, but through art we can share and we know that we are not alone.

I think your approach to your teaching is fantastic.

[cactuspear]

Thanks! Kahlo is always a favorite. Have you seen the painting in which her head is on the body of a deer shot by arrows? Talk about a feminist/animal rights image!

I used to know a guy who taught media literacy to high school students and I thought that sounded fascinating in addition to being totally essential. I'd like to read more on the subject, particularly about how graphic design plays a role.

Looking forward to more of your reading suggestions, emm7!

[emm7]

cheers cactuspear thanks for your suggestions!
yes the image of Kahlo as the deer is very powerful. And some of her work moves me to tears. Her images, they communicate a lot of emotion, I get a lot out of them, also a sense of Recognition.

[KC Masterpiece]

cactuspear, you should check out some of the guys / gals associated with the Institute for Critical Animal Studies. There's one guy in particular, Richard Kahn, who deals a lot with critical and environmental pedagogy and takes many of his cues from Friere. Very vegan friendly bunch.

I'm in the process of finishing Discourse Networks 1800/1900 by Friedrich Kittler for grad school. Unfortunately I don't have time to do any non-school reading at the moment. But fortunately (for me ) I just found this thread to get some of the reading off my chest !! I'm in what's basically a media studies program, but i'm also interested in the "question of the animal" as a tenet of "posthumanism"--my primary research area--so the writings of Donna Haraway, Carol Adams, Matthew Calarco and Cary Wolfe figure in heavily.

I'll try to keep my nerdiness to a minimum.

DN is about how certain practices, from pedagogical procedures to the "reverie of the origin" in Romantic poetry, are "function[s] of historically specific discursive technologies."

The first half of the book, 1800, deals with those technologies (primarily print-based book augmented by the pedagogy associated with them) that are more responsible for shaping, in this instance, German romantic poetry and literature that had previously been admitted or acknowledged.

1900 gets more interesting with the advent of "technology" as we know it and i'll post more in the hope that there's a fellow theory-geek here on VF!!

[emm7]

oh I've read some Haraway! and Carol Adams (Sexual Politics of Meat) too.
MPhil in feminist, postmodern and postmodern feminist readings of the female body in Atwood. Plenty of lit theory involved.

Have changed a lot in the subsequent years and especially over the past year or so have got an incredibly uneasy and disillusioned relationship with feminism as I feel it's too often a cover story for Misandry (Misandry is something I can't bear and it makes my blood boil). Also I feel that the Theory is all very well but awareness of the Theory does nothing to actually help casualties at the sharp end.

ninearms is more of a theory geek than me, he just wrote up a thesis which involved pomo.

so yeah if you want to talk pomo then I may be very rusty but will give it a go!

[DougP]

Phantoms in the Mind, Dr. V.S Ramachandran.

Highly recommended.

[KC Masterpiece]

oh I've read some Haraway! and Carol Adams (Sexual Politics of Meat) too.
MPhil in feminist, postmodern and postmodern feminist readings of the female body in Atwood. Plenty of lit theory involved.

Have changed a lot in the subsequent years and especially over the past year or so have got an incredibly uneasy and disillusioned relationship with feminism as I feel it's too often a cover story for Misandry (Misandry is something I can't bear and it makes my blood boil). Also I feel that the Theory is all very well but awareness of the Theory does nothing to actually help casualties at the sharp end.

ninearms is more of a theory geek than me, he just wrote up a thesis which involved pomo.

so yeah if you want to talk pomo then I may be very rusty but will give it a go!

Haraway is great, isn't she? She teaches at my school and I hope to court her for my diss when the time comes... I am, however, critical of her stance on veganism (at least in her most recent work, When Species Meet).

Theory is an odd beast. As one of my former co-workers said (and I didn't understand him for the longest time) reading Badiou and Lacan is like "falling down an elevator shaft." It's easy to check out of the "real world" when you're surrounded by the Derrida and Delueze's of the world, but it doesn't do much, for you or anyone around you.

I think it edifying, if you're irretreivably hooked on theory, to augment it with some tangible "cause" or "manifestation." I write about technology and its "psychological" effect on "us." (Further proof of a theory-geek, scare quotes on everything). I can have my theory but because I'm writing about a tangible, relatable, and relevant topic, I (perhaps delude myself into thinking that I) can resist theory-for-its-own-sake...

I also write for the Institute for Critical Animal Studies--a controversial group with whose positions I do not wholly and universally identify--but they view animal abuse and cruelty as one among many symptoms sprung forth from the advance of techno-capitalism... blah blah blah.. you get the point.

Your MPhil sounds wonderful... what are you up to now emm?