Against the Sophists

My podcasting colleague and collaborator, Joel Jonientz, passed away last month. Joel was famous at UND for being a kind of Swiss-Army-Knife scholar. He could write, draw, build, talk, paint, animate, shoot, record, design, and conceptualize any number of projects with any number of people. One reason he was so useful to everyone who met him was that he was unafraid of experimenting, of trying something new, of learning on the fly.

In that spirit of risk, I've been working on turning Isocrates' "Against the Sophists" into a comic book. Joel would have scoffed at the quality of the artwork, but he would have appreciated the creative spirit that calls this artifact into being.

But why a comic book, and why Isocrates? While so much of our pedagogy is urging us to consider the rhetoric of risks (and crises and strategies and on and on), I offer these early pages up as a different rhetoric of risk, a risky rhetoric of production for a complex multimodal rhetorical environment.

I also think Isocrates is useful now because so many of his critiques about Sophistry are applicable to higher education. In the first page, I put the words of E. Gordon Gee, former head of Ohio State, now President of West Virginia University, in the mouth of the clown-sophist. The plan for the comic has numerous instances of invoking education professionals to demonstrate the lasting value of Isocrates' thoughts on pedagogy.

Finally, I like the idea that as I work through my own complicated relationship to the academy, I can provide an artifact of potential value to my rhetoric colleagues who have provided so much value to me. The comic will be available to all as a pdf formatted for tablet devices. The final product should provide an updated version of "against the Sophists" that brings classical rhetorical theory into contact with contemporary issues in higher education (MOOCs and for-profits and the 10k bachelor degree to name a few).

The comic will also allow students of rhetoric to ask questions about the representational and juxtapositional logics of visual communication while it works through a classic rhetorical text. I hope it serves as a reminder that the ancient and the new can exist in the same spaces at the same time, that we can "do" Isocrates and new media together, that classical rhetoric can still be productive of something. I hope (and this is self-serving) it marks the ways rhetorical scholarship can fall in-between disciplinary categories without falling out of view.

So to all the rhetoric folks heading to San Antonio this weekend for RSA (the Rhetoric Society of America conference for more casual readers of this blog...assuming any readers at all exist), enjoy the first three pages of ISOCRATES AGAINST THE SOPHISTS and take some time to discuss digital rhetorical production over a beer.

On the value, discernment, and durability of the humanities

When I announced to friends and colleagues that I was leaving my job, few seemed shocked and even fewer seemed sad. In fact, many declared it a moment for congratulations, a moment of profound bravery for me and of envy for some. I take these reactions as an indication that many a rhetorical scholar is dissatisfied with their job, and many an academic wonders at the world outside the ivory tower. I am less convinced that my letting go of what many regard as brass ring of intellectual life is brave. The Avett Brothers have a line in “The Perfect Space” that boasts: “I want to have pride like my mother has, but not like the kind in the bible that turns you bad.”  I’m not sure of its valence, but my departure is certainly a function of pride.

I assert that one of the fundamental traps academics let themselves fall into is the idea that we have value (or have access to negotiate value) only when there is another academic job offer on the table. That’s foolish in any number of ways. First, it suggests that we can only understand our value as a measure of competition between two academic institutions. Considering that institutions hire in tiered slots (with fewerand fewer advanced and even tenure-track slots offered every year), academics have the potential to become undervalued because of a stagnant marketplace (to say nothing of the marketplace being willing to risk hiring in new directions). Second, value as a measure of academic competition undercuts our particular articulation of the universal value of humanities education. Many of us don’t merely teach in the service of the university (though we certainly do that). We are committed to the fundamental portability and contingency of rhetorical and communication education. And yet, we understand our value based on an increasingly fleeting and servile notion of employability. As a result, we tend to be complicit in devaluing ourselves.

But that’s a boastful statement. That’s the kind of pride that might turn you bad. I believe rhetorical education is a value in and of itself, and that my contributions as a scholar and teacher of rhetoric are valuable. The University of North Dakota does not share this view. Increasingly, the curriculum privileges an empty and industrial notion of “strategic” communication. Rhetoric courses were written out, and my value to the university was clearly measured not in terms of my expertise but in my labor. The provost went so far as to encourage me to think of my research and my teaching as separate practices. Students increasingly want a utilitarian education. I think my classes are rewarding for students, but none of my students stood on their desks and recited Whitman when I announced my departure. None of my colleagues advocated for rhetorical scholarship and coursework. Everyone shrugged their shoulders and went about their business. And I don’t point that inactivity out to indicate apathy or passivity but to note that such is the articulation of value in higher education. But that’s only one way to discern value.

When discussing my departure with friends in the university, the notion of discernment came up quite a bit. Colleagues would consider the intractable members of the professorate that exist in any university and wonder how it is the administration couldn’t discern the difference between collaborative scholars and the other kind of scholar. I’m not sure I’m one kind of scholar or another. One terribly honest colleague explained: I was a pain in the ass of the administration, but a pain that seemed reasonable considering what I did on campus. Of course, there’s a certain amount of pride in recounting that conversation.

Less proud is this question: why should the administration be able to discern my value? Set aside the fact that I’ve seen three deans and three provosts in six years at UND. Even without the resets in institutional memory, administrators are increasingly focused on top-level issues: assessment, funding, legislation, and on and on. Why would they be able to discern between the pain in the ass that collaborates and does rhetoric and any other pain in the ass on campus? If there are fewer and fewer tenure and tenure track jobs, it seems that there is also an increasing gap between university administration and curriculum delivery. So it is silly to think that administrators would have the time, wherewithal or expertise (especially in a field as broad and rough as Communication) to discern rhetoric from strategic communication, pain-in-the ass version one from pain-in-the-ass version two, and on and on.

And so rhetorical scholars, humanity scholars, and even scholars in general have a discernment problem. It is a problem of the administration not being able to discern the value of scholarship. It is a problem of scholars’ failure to discern the gap between administrators and educators. And finally, it is a problem of discerning our own value in a broader economy of ideas and possibilities. When I decided to leave UND, I sent an email to the one person I thought would have solid advice. I reached out to a former professor who is now on the Board of Trustees at the university that denied him tenure. He wondered: why is it more and more humanities professors are leaving universities in pursuit of professional careers? Why don’t they try to develop those professional interests in the classroom?

I appreciate the questions. If we believe we have something to offer industry, why don’t we teach it in the classroom? But that’s a discernment problem. What we have to offer is a function of an education that focused less on industry training and more on a broad range of intellectual questions. We believe a commitment to the humanities demonstrates its value outside of training metrics. And if we’re going to be asked to do the industrial work of training and utility, we might as well be valued appropriately. Academic work is the best work in the world if you feel properly valued. You think and work in tandem. The hours are great (in that you decide how much you want to think…which is usually quite a bit). But if you aren’t valued for your expertise but only for your labor, the hours are terrible (because you keep thinking, but not passionately). The pay isn’t great. And the contempt is unbelievable.

If you’re going to feel contempt, feel under-appreciated, and feel overworked, you might as well end up with more to show for it than an academic career offers. No one will care that you have a Ph.D.? The provost doesn’t care that my Ph.D. is in rhetoric and my students are equally suspicious. I’m just some guy delivering content in a classroom. I can be some guy and get paid more and live in a place where my family has access to a broader set of cultural experiences. It’s time we discern the value of the humanities otherwise, and one way of discerning that value is to recognize that we have value outside of the academy. A value that pays off in different ways and that doesn’t require us to abandon our commitment to humanities education (or, if we’re going to abandon it, we can abandon it on our terms).

One gigantic caveat. The above is marked by a whole lot of pride. I’ve tried to draw attention to that pride. My leaving UND is a condition of pride: I feel I’m worth more than UND has shown, and I feel the kind of work UND has offered me is beneath my expertise (this last one sounds positively awful and elitist). A more charitable version of that caveat: value and discernment needs to find a more durable home than the life of the mind. The greatest challenge to the humanities is our relatively weak ability to demonstrate our durability because we produce so little that is materially durable. We can argue about the long history of the academic model (much older than capitalism). We can talk about the history of ideas. But—and this is supremely interesting—when Wrage writes about rhetoric as a history of ideas, he concludes his essay by explaining how that concept plays out in the classroom. Rhetorical studies seldom connects research to the classroom. As such, it is understandable why a provost would recommend something as ridiculous as separating your teaching and your research. In the words of Radiohead: “you do it to yourself, you do, and that’s why it really hurts.” We have abandoned a durable notion of humanities and rhetorical scholarship. And so perhaps the best way to remind ourselves of rhetoric’s durability, if we will not do it in our scholarship, is to go out into the world and embrace Aristotle’s notion of practice. It’s time, for me at least, to go out and do rhetoric, to seek value in other ways.

I’m looking forward to it.

Against the Sophists

A while back, I had posted a mock cover for a comic book based on Isocrates' "Against the Sophists." The whole piece is likely beyond my talents to complete, but the first line seems really fitting for the contemporary higher education environment.

On Podcasting

One of my recent experiments in binary invention has been the development of a podcast with my colleague, Joel Jonientz. Like most of Joel’s ideas, the podcast began with a simple premise: “Let’s talk about interesting topics.” Obviously, that wouldn’t help us stand out in the podcasting marketplace and it wouldn’t do much to provide an editorial voice to the end-product. But Joel’s motivations were instructive: he thinks academics are most interesting when the talk about things beyond their academic interests. For academics, that probably sounds flattering. For non-academics, it’s probably evidence of the suspected egotism of the academy.

All that said, we call our podcast Professor Footnote and the more we’ve thought about it, talked about, and explained it to colleagues (or had it explained to us), the podcast presents some interesting scholarly possibilities.

1     It trains us in a new practical pedagogical mode

      It traffics in the politics of discussion

3    It remediates scholarly work

More after the jump

On the Freedom to be Interesting

For the last three years, I’ve been part of a group that organizes and hosts an Arts & Culture Conference at the University of NorthDakota. The conference’s mission: to promote a conversation within our university and our community about the relationship between the arts and public life.

We hold a series of talks on campus, featuring each of our visiting-artists (and thanks to Aristotle’s treatment of techne, we feel confident calling all our guests artists). We feature artistic performances each night of the conference in the downtown community—typically a concert and a film screening. We run an art exhibit at a downtown gallery throughout the month of October, and close the exhibit and the conference on the same evening. We also produce a series of art prints exclusive to the conference that are then archived in the university’s collection.

When we invite our visitors, we ask them to do three things. First, they give a presentation or performance of some kind. Second, the sit on a panel with the other visitors and have a conversation with each other. Third, they visit at least one classroom. Lunches during the conference are also reserved for students and artists.

As a result, our conference engages students inside and outside classroom settings. It brings interesting events and art to the greater community. It puts diverse people into conversation with each other. And if we wanted to examine the macro-economic impact, it feeds a whole bunch of people in area restaurants and contributes to what I can only imagine is a noticeable uptick in the local Old-Fashioned market.

The reasons I lead with this belabored account of the conference is two-fold. First, it is important to recognize how the conference works to understand why I think it is such a vibrant and unique way of doing academic work. Second, it underscores how the institutional mechanics of the university work against that kind of work and imperil a truly interdisciplinary approach to higher education.

When I picked up Kerri Miller, Minnesota Public Radio host and one of our 2013 visiting artists, she asked what her background had to do with this year’s theme, “Cultures of Curation.” The truth is, there are two answers. One answer posits public radio, and Miller’s shows in particular, as gatekeepers of a complex cultural environment, curators of information. The second answer is much more interesting to me: Kerri Miller is interesting. This story can be told about every guest we’ve brought in for the conference. There’s a way to use a theme to justify bringing someone in, but there’s an easier path to identifying potential visitors: by asking if they’re interesting.

Kevin Schreck, the director of Persistence of Vision, came because he messaged Joel Jonientz while Joel was live-tweeting The Thief and the Cobbler during family movie night. Is Persistence of Vision a good example of how the film The Thief and the Cobbler gets made, shaped, and ultimately circulated? Sure. But it’s also interesting. In addition to Miller and Schreck, this year’s conference included art critic David Pagel of the Los Angeles Times, Jennifer Preston of the New York Times, and artist Craig Drennen (who curated the conference exhibit, Canon Fodder).

The point I’m trying to make, hastily and perhaps sloppily, is that a theme (like “curation”) makes your happenings recognizable, but recognition implies familiarity. What if you’re interested in the unfamiliar? What if you want to see what happens when a commercial print journalist, a public radio host, a print journalism art critic, a painter, and a filmmaker get together and have a conversation? Where on your campus is the venue for that kind of trans-disciplinary, trans-professional discussion?

We hear an awful lot of chatter about the desire for an interdisciplinary university, but I’m not sure we’ve thought about what it will look like (as much as we love what it sounds like). I suspect the struggle is a function of wanting it to seem familiar and predictable. I can’t say I knew what last week’s panel discussion was going to produce. I didn’t think it would involve the filmmaker asking the print journalist for a phone number so he could see how “Page One” gets curated. I didn’t think it would involve the radio journalist using a metaphor of a train window spurring on the painter to talk about John Cage’s curation of an art museum. I didn’t think it would result in the print journalist exclaiming that thinking alongside artists was thrilling and insightful. I didn’t know any of those things were going to happen. When the panel wrapped, fellow planner Joel Jonientz asked “Who knew that was going to be interesting?” We did. We didn’t know how or why, but we had complete faith that it would be interesting.

But how to qualify (or even quantify) interesting. Our conference attendance is fair to middling. We had over 100 audience members at about half our events, closer to 60 for the rest. If you divided our budget by our attendance, it isn’t a great deal. But we also put about 40 students around lunch tables with our guests. The first lunch, everybody ate together: artistis, professionals, undergraduates, graduates, Art students, Communication students, English students. The second day, the crowd broke up into smaller groups. We put visitors in classrooms across the disciplines, we brought students from one discipline into the classroom of another. And, perhaps most importantly, students were able to watch and join in a conversation that acknowledged their disciplinary grounding and then mixed it in with other disciplinary backgrounds. The artist can talk with the radio journalist, the print journalist can talk with film-maker and curator. A conference that secretly aims only at interesting (and it has to be a secret, because you don’t fund aimless hunting expeditions) makes it interesting to imagine the role of academia outside its typical structures and strictures.

And that’s all a lot of long talk to note that the Arts & Culture Conference faces an uncertain future. Funding is hard to come by, even harder for an event that has trouble quantifying what it plans to do. For all of the selfless talk about “the interesting” it is important that those involved get recognized for their efforts, and because “the interesting” is a squirrely metric, the work gets conflated with other speaker-series and academic conference activities on campus. In an institution where credit, recognition, and expertise all depend on the narrow categories of departments that tend to work against the logics of the interesting, I’m not sure what kind of future the interdisciplinary university has. Normally, I’d say unpredictability is “interesting,” but—in my experience—higher education’s predilection for predictability has me thinking otherwise.

Breaking from Binary Invention for Belva!

For Belva, on the occasion of her birthday.

I had friends who welcomed their daughter, Belva, into the world. Baby names are a weird thing: bound up in family history, aspirational politics, and (increasingly in neo-liberal culture) individual branding. There’s a way to read Belva as a deviation from the terribly popular Bella iteration of Isabella. Bella is off-the-charts popular because of the Twilight series, which makes variants like Belva a useful alternative. It beckons to the other Bellas in her future classrooms while having plausible deniability that her parents were Twilight fans.

But I like Belva for other reasons (that have only a little to do with my fondness for her parents).  Belva peaked in popularity in the 1880s (and by peaked, I mean, it’s highest point was when we started tracking things like baby-name popularity. That this tracking coincides with the height of industrialization, urbanization, and consumer capital shouldn’t come as a surprise. But even at its most popular, Belva seems to have barely broken into the top 400 names. So what does this data tell us, as we contemplate little Belva of the 21^st century? It tells us that her parents have tapped into a recognizable but still rare signifier from the American Victorian Era. And that’s why baby names are awesome.

Belva is a chance to learn something about our past, to indicate (however subconsciously or accidentally) a willingness to connect our future with a previous aesthetic. And Ranciere notes that aesthetics (secondarily, in the aesthetics of the name, I suppose) indicate the conditions of belonging. So to what historical trajectory does Belva belong? The trajectory of Belva AnnLockwood, a proponent of coeducation at a time when that wasn’t the norm. That Belva also got a law degree, though only after being refused entry to one school (she’d be a distraction to the men, apparently) and completing coursework at another. She only received her law degree after she wrote to President Grant to lean on the school to grant the diploma. Not surprisingly, Belva Lockwood went on to use her education and legal experience to petition for equal rights, equal pay, and women’s suffrage. She was the first woman to argue before the U.S. Supreme court (and so Belva’s arrival in the wake of important court decisions has a kind of cosmic synergy…if you’re into that thing). Lockwood managed to secure $5 million for the Cherokee people, because it turned out the U.S. Government owed it. Like many suffragettes of her time, Lockwood was a prohibitionist, which isn’t exactly a policy my friends support (but don’t we all want our children to follow in the footsteps of prohibitionists, for at least a little while?).

I wouldn’t have learned anything about Belva Lockwood, were it not for little Belva of the 21^st century. And here’s to hoping the new Belva has the tenacity and conviction of Belva Lockwood of the 19^th century…because as it happens, Lockwood’s work is clearly not quite finished. But anyway, thanks Belva of the 21st Century. You've been here for 8 hours and already I'm a better person because of you.