Telling Local Stories

Last night, I attended play called Conjure: the Folklore of Dr. Jim Jordan at one of our local cultural centers.  The story is narrated by F. Roy Johnson, who founded the newspaper in our area, and who wrote about Dr. Jordan in the 1960s -- and, as the playwrights point out, this is significant because he was a white journalist interested in recording African-American lives in a time when most of white America was not invested in doing so.  The stories of the play are based on F. Roy Johnson's book about him, and the recollections of our local historian E. Frank Stephenson, Jr.

The play was written by Stephenson's daughter, Caroline Stephenson and her husband Jochen Kunstler -- two filmmakers who have come to our area, raising their children while continuing their work as artists.  And we're incredibly lucky to have them here.  (They've also made a great short documentary on the Rosenwald Schools in the area.)

I had fun. And it was an especially great experience to be in the audience with people from the area who remember the man.  Even in our small community, with our local community members acting, there's something special about live theater and watching things in a room full of attentive near-strangers.

Watching -- and thinking about -- the play also causes me to reflect on the importance of telling the local stories.  Roy Johnson thought it was important; so does Frank Stephenson; and so do Caroline and Jochen.

I've written elsewhere about the importance of taking the time to embrace the community that you find yourself in.  And even right now, in the midst of a degree of alienation from the community I'm currently in,* I really do still believe that.  But more important, perhaps, than simply embracing a place is investigating its history, its culture -- and telling that history and culture.**

Every place has a history.  Every person has a story.  And those stories are worth telling.

Fundamentally, it's about a radical notion of valuing every person, no matter where they come from.  And as artists and scholars (and I'm going to be bold enough to now go ahead and categorize myself as both), we can share those stories, no matter our particular medium.  We can be inspired by places, and we can share that with the world, even if it's just the world right around us.

Of course the danger for the artist is that not everyone might like the story that you've told.  Some may disagree with your perception.  And perhaps, more dangerously, some may not want to face the truth of a place -- our histories are not always things of beauty, and contain injustices and outright horrors.

Those stories are worth telling. Every place has a history, no matter how complicated and sordid that history may be. Every person has a story, no matter how flawed and contradictory the person may be.

And we really should be telling them.

And we should be teaching everyone that their stories are worth telling -- and worth sharing with the wider world.


*Suffice it to say, my bio will soon say "Ohio" and not "North Carolina." I have a new job and will be leaving my current one, a move made inevitable in part because of the actions of other people.  It's a long story for another day. Or not.
** Also, I'm not advocating for embracing a place completely: there are problems everywhere, and we don't have to turn a blind eye to poverty and injustice. But we don't have to scoff at the local history, simply because it's "not significant."

Authorship and Critical Thinking

This morning, a number of my early modern tweeps were in a bit of a fuss over a post at Brain Pickings, a site I normally like. But the post in question made me roll my eyes excessively, sigh, and say "really, are we doing this again?"  The post in question was about a book -- and companion website -- that once again rehearses the Shakespeare authorship question.

(And I'm going to try to be fair-minded here and not begin with authorship and controversy in quotation marks.  Though it is only fair to tell you that this is a test of my own ability to be fair to not do so.)

What particularly bothered a number of people was the fact that this is a book that is posing the authorship question as an issue of critical thinking.  I don't think I have to point out to those few of you who read this blog that the insinuation, then, is that scholars of Shakespeare who dismiss out of hand the notion that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare are not thinking critically.  Frankly, this is not a good way to begin a discussion: it begins by insulting the opponent.

A number of people have done what I consider amazing and extensive work discussing the problems raised by the authorship conspiracy -- Holger Syme has a number of posts about it, including critiques of the problems of Shakespeareans focusing on the wrong things in order to dismiss Anti-Stratfordians; and James Shapiro's book Contested Will does a remarkably thorough and fair job tracing the history of the conspiracy and refuting each alternate authorial identity.

So I really don't feel like I need to address that particular argument: much better early modernists have already done so.

But I want to talk about this in terms of critical thinking.

I do this (so you know my point of view) as both an early modern scholar and a critical thinking program coordinator.  I teach this.  I teach classes in it.  I train faculty in it.  It's important to me, and that fact that one of my friends was most distressed by the linking of the question (did Shakespeare write Shakespeare?) with the concept of critical thinking spurs me to consider the whole thing (especially this particular project) with critical thinking in mind.

And I will fully admit that I am doing this without reading the book.  I am rather interested in what the website's "About" suggestion puts forward as the purpose of the book.  So, please don't think me entirely unfair for doing this without reading the book, but I have read many of these arguments, so I'm familiar with the general tenor of them.

Anyway ... onward ...

SAA: collecting my thoughts

CN Tower

I spent the last several days in Toronto, at the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America. I cannot emphasize enough how much I have enjoyed attending this conference: I began going in 2005 and I've found something incredibly refreshing and renewing about attending every year. I've attended a number of other conferences, but the way that this conference is set up encourages intellectual experimentation.  The seminar sessions -- where most of the papers are presented -- are clearly places for working papers.  The other sessions -- the panels with completed papers -- are always fascinating.

Looking out from the boardwalk

This conference, I participated in a workshop -- entitled "Shakespearean Dance: A Practical Introduction" -- and this was a departure from anything I'd done previously.  We prepared for the workshop with a great deal of reading and discussion via an email list.  And then we met in Toronto and danced.  Or at least tried to.

While the dances we learned we fairly basic (a good choice, as a number of us have pretty minimal levels of coordination, myself included), the experience of actually participating in these dances establishes a more visceral, material experience of the practice for me.  (I'm going to try to sort out my thoughts more clearly on this later. I've got lots to think about and organize, intellectually.)

St. James's Cathedral Church

But the opportunity to audit other seminars is always useful as well -- where we can listen in on other people's conversations.  I get worn out on auditing, and only sit in on 2 or 3 sessions each year, but I certainly learn a lot when I do.

And this year, there was the joy of seeing people that I know: I met up with a number of people I've known almost exclusively through social media; I saw friends that I see every year; and I spoke with completely random strangers, both at the conference and serving beers in the bars around town (uh ... we do that a lot).  My husband was able to join me, and he partook in a great deal of the socializing and tourist-ing.  We also got to spend some time with one of the editors of a major textbook publisher, who is looking over a proposal of mine right now.

Poutine (with bacon)

All in all, a successful conference.  We looked at things. We tried new drinks. We ate some really alarming local delicacies.

Hey look! They have Canadian flags here

Towards the St. Lawrence Market

As I think more about this, I'll try to post more thoroughly, either here or at LitBits.  I've also got some pictures put into the queue on my new photo tumblr.

Self-imposed anxiety

Excuse me momentarily while I mope this evening.

It is always about this time of year that I start to really put an insane amount of pressure on myself -- just as I'm also feeling incredibly tired and losing motivation.

Part of it is that this is the time of year when I'm feeling a little burned out from the academic year -- I'm much more interested in working on side projects and playing around with my hobbies.  It's also partly the build up to the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America.  It's a conference I love, but it's also the source -- up until I actually arrive -- of my annual falling deeply into my own belief that I'm an impostor in the academy.  I realize that we all feel it.  Almost every one of the faculty members at my PhD granting institution has expressed some degree of the impostor syndrome.

Part of this is probably linked to the type of person who would intentionally spend as much time in grad school as we do.  We're already convinced that we need to work hard, that we need to impose ever higher standards upon ourselves.  And the outside pressure that we get -- both from the places that we work and the larger culture that we live in -- make the whole thing even worse.

I worry as I head into these conferences that I'm distracting myself with things outside of my field.  I know a lot about pedagogy and educational theory.  I know a lot about creative nonfiction.  I know a reasonable amount about photography.  I know more about pop culture than I should admit to.

But do I know enough early modern stuff?

I don't know.

What I do know is that part of what makes us (relatively successful) academics is that we're willing to put our ideas out there.  Ideally, yes, it should be in academic writing.  But it's also about having conversations, about taking risks.

And that's something that I have to remember.  We take risks.  Not stupid risks like bungee jumping (so not doing that), but we do take risks.  And I take risks.  I talk to people.  I ask questions.  I try out ideas, sometimes in public.

It's a little scary.  But it's also the reason for doing what we do -- and it's the type of intellectual challenge I'm trying to instill in my students.

Okay, I think I've talked myself partially out of my funk.  I cannot control the future.  I can simply do the best work that I can do.

Thank you for indulging my mope.

Seeking Sanctuary

The end of February and the beginning of March have been hectic (and we're now at about the middle of March!) -- and I've had little I felt like reflecting publicly upon.  I've simply had a huge number of tasks, both professional and personal, and I'm feeling rather worn down (oh, also: allergies. Spring is springing here in North Carolina, and I'm incredibly sneezy).

But my husband is with me this week -- our spring breaks coincided this academic year.  And we've been working on several projects together, including the book we're co-authoring.  We've put everything together and with one more piece for it (as well as a final editorial glance at everything), we think it's ready to head out into the world, looking for a publisher.

Being together also means we're taking some time to continue our exploring.  Sunday, after waking up in a bad mood, my husband announced that we should get out of town if only for a few hours.

So we went looking for a church I'd read about in A Guidebook to Virginia's Historical Markers (one of the books I'm constantly scouring for such things).  It's the sort of thing that you have to know that you're looking for, but we found St. John's Episcopal Church in Suffolk (before incorporation into the city of Suffolk, the area was known as Chuckatuck. And I constantly keep calling it Chuck-a-duck).



The congregation was founded by settlers from Jamestown -- and so it's foundation was in the 17th century. The present building is an 18th century structure.

What was particularly delightful was that the minister was at the parsonage, and as we were out taking pictures, came up to us asking if we wanted to see the interior of the church.  I am always incredibly grateful for people who want to share the history of a place with a couple of people just wandering into their vicinity.

It's something that we do -- talk to people about the local experience, the local history.  When we were in Ashland, Pennsylvania a few weeks ago, we spoke with a bartender who would visit her aunt and uncle's house in Centralia -- and she remembered the lights of the fire under the highway glowing purple and teal.  We find things out that way.  It's just what we do.  We talk to new people.  We look at things.  It's something that appeals, I think, to our artistic sensibilities -- and certainly has influenced the way that we look at the world.

Typically, we're so far off the beaten path that no one has mentioned things in the guidebooks -- or even in the guidebooks that are supposed to take you off the beaten path (though we've certainly visited our share of those places).  It's the exploration that we're always up for.  Wherever we are.

Alienation and the Artist

At the request of my husband, I recently read Willa Cather's short story "The Sculptor's Funeral" -- he pointed to it as incredibly powerful, but also as something that's incredibly relevant to our own lives, our own observations of the power plays in small town life.

And it absolutely is.

But it also puts me to mind of the idea of the alienation of the artist.  Perhaps it's because I've recently taught Kafka's "A Hunger Artist."  Perhaps it's because I'm fairly deep into Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs.  Perhaps it's because I'm feeling a bit alien myself these days.

Whatever it is, Cather's story points to the problem of place.  So often, we think that we're rooted to a single place -- and in many ways we are (Russo's novels are rooted in Gloversville, NY).  But the question really becomes why are we rooted there -- are we rooted because we want to be (like one of the central figures of Bridge of Sighs, Lou Lynch) or because we are trying to exorcize that place from ourselves (like the other, Noonan)?

In Cather's story, the sculptor's body has been brought home to his small hometown in Kansas, accompanied by one of his students.  The student finds himself bewildered by the people in this town, people who do not recognize the great talents of the sculptor, but rather think that he squandered his life by pursuing his art rather than a business degree in Kansas City.  He does not even initially recognize the sculptor's childhood home as a location of origin:

He looked painfully about over the clover-green Brussels, the fat plush upholstery; among the hand-painted china plaques and panels and vases, for some mark of identification, for something that might once conceivably have belonged to Harvey Merrick. It was not until he recognized his friend in the crayon portrait of a little boy in kilts and curls, hanging above the piano, that he felt willing to let any of these people approach the coffin.

This is the sculptor's home -- or should be -- but it is a place unpromising of the greatness of the artist.  While the story suggests that in his lifetime, the sculptor went home, it also suggests that such a trip was out of obligation rather than fulfillment.

And it is because of those people who do not understand.  Some try.  But most do not.  To them, the sculptor was simply weird.

This is the alienation that permeates the life of the artist -- and it is what drives people forward and away from the small town.  And even for those who return to the small town, it is a place that removes the ambition of greatness.  The lawyer -- a classmate of the sculptor -- rails against the small-mindedness of the townspeople:

Harvey Merrick and I went to school together, back East. We were dead in earnest, and we wanted you all to be proud of us some day. We meant to be great men. Even I, and I haven't lost my sense of humor, gentlemen, I meant to be a great man. I came back here to practise, and I found you didn't in the least want me to be a great man.

So the small town -- the townspeople who do not want change, but rather the sameness all the time -- claimed the dreams of someone who wanted something beyond the town, beyond the known.

Of course, life in small towns is not always like this.  And life in big cities can be like this.  But this sense of alienation on the part of those who want to reach for a world beyond the circumscribed possibilities of the known is palpable in this story, and in those others that I mentioned in the beginning.

And, as Cather's story ends, what does it matter?  We all come to the same end: the sculptor is dead; the lawyer dies.  So it is best, perhaps, to do what matters most to us, to pursue the world just beyond the frame we know.

Cemetery Views

 Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, Centralia, PA

Coming alive in the audience

Recently, I attended a performance of Romeo and Juliet, presented by the National Players. Between this, the American Shakespeare Company's Love's Labour's Lost that I saw in October, and the huge number of Shakespearean films I watched in conjunction with my Shakespeare class, I've seen a lot of Shakespeare lately.

And I've been thinking a lot about the live theater experience, particularly with early modern plays.  One of my friends in the audience at R&J remarked that while he wasn't 100% sure of what characters were saying throughout (it's original language and spoken very quickly), he was following everything in the play very well.  And a number of other people I spoke to about the performance of the fight scenes -- and just the general energy and enthusiasm of the performers.

And more than anything, this recent performance of R&J reminded me of how much humor is mixed into the play -- and that like most performances for the early modern stage, there is a huge mixing of genres.  The director, of course, makes choices to highlight the bawdy humor.  But it's there -- so why wouldn't performers have done the same 400 years ago?

What struck out even more for me, though, was the audience reaction -- and more specifically how the audience was drawn in, was able to suspend disbelief.  It's one thing for me to talk in the classroom about how costume makes the characters -- and how we're too wrapped up in our need for realism.  But it's quite another thing to see it in effect -- both the ASC and the National Players double parts.  And it's  changes to the costumes that make the difference.  We know what side someone is on, simply based on colors that the character is wearing.  We read the sartorial clues without question.

And it's different -- being drawn in to a live theatrical performance.  We don't actually expect full realism, no matter how realistic the play.  We're alway somehow cognizant of the fact that this is artifice.  But we're so used to film -- and I use a lot of film in my Shakespeare classroom.  While film gives us a lot, it doesn't do quite the same thing for us that a live performance does.

It's something to think about.

It's also one of those "world enough and time" conundrums for teaching dramatic texts.  I wish that we could see performances of everything.  Film versions -- but more importantly, live versions with people who can treat the early modern language as spoken language, and not as a text for recitation.

Happy Valentine's Day

Seeking Narrative

I've been reading -- and watching -- such a wide variety of things lately, that my mind is sort of in constant overdrive looking for patterns and connections across all of the things that I've encountered lately.

For example, I recently watched the PBS American Experience episode on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.  I've been reading a lot of creative nonfiction.  I've been reading drafts of WB's commentary on creative nonfiction.  I've been reading early modern plays -- and the scholarly articles that I've assigned my students.  I've been reading an insane amount of commentary about the state of politics in congress.  And I've been re-watching the Ben and Leslie storyline on Parks and Recreation.

And it's the idea of storyline -- of narrative -- that actually fits all of these things together.  Or rather, it's the urge to fit things within a narrative.

In the Triangle Fire documentary, the narrator talks about the owners of the factory -- two eastern European immigrants who had ambition and worked hard.  They labored and built a massive factory -- and were incredibly successful.  In many ways, exactly the American Dream fantasy that much of the appeal of the United States rests upon.  But when the women in factory went on strike for better pay, more reasonable hours, and safer working conditions, they balked -- as did all factory owners at the time.  The wealthy factory owners, as described by the documentary, saw themselves as providing jobs for these new immigrants -- and this implies a sense that if the immigrants would just work hard and have enough ambition, they too could make it to the top.  Never mind what the working and living conditions actually allowed people to achieve.  There's a disconnect in the story for the factory owners -- they did not see their own rise as something achieved by anything other than their own hard work.  It didn't matter that by the time they're factory owners, they are no longer doing the labor: they have provided the capital.  There's a desire, it seems, to stick to the narrative that exists -- and not allow inconvenient facts, like the way that their labor practices actually inhibited the new immigrants from making the same inroads into American society, to get in the way of that narrative.

And that's what I've been seeing in some of the nonfiction that I've been reading lately, too -- in Kristen Iversen's account of the Rocky Flats nuclear facility, there's clearly a need among people to follow a certain narrative -- and particularly to believe the narrative that the government and the government contractors have presented for them.

William Bradley and I have discussed the fact that when he teaches creative nonfiction, students sometimes get frustrated when things don't tie up neatly, as if real life fits an inverted checkmark pattern, where we find all things resolved satisfactorily in the denouement.  And my own students sometimes express some small consternation when all of the strands of a play do not resolve fully -- that there may be ambiguity at the end instead of a neat resolution.

So, I've been thinking about this idea.  And I think it's relevant to things beyond the literature classroom, but our ability to view it and to think about it certainly comes from the literature classroom.  The narrative of makers and takers was a huge part of our political conversation last election.  The narrative of resolving "drama" -- as Chuck Klosterman has observed -- has become an attempt among people to have confrontations, just like on reality television shows.

But life is sometimes messy.  Or mostly, it's messy and disorganized, and there's no clear trajectory as we live through it -- we wait, we do, we try, we interact, and we can only make reasonable predictions based on past experiences.  We have to make choices, not knowing the outcomes.  It's ambiguous.

And so, I've been thinking about the importance of -- for lack of a better term -- disrupting the narrative.  I've been thinking about this particularly because my students just read an article about Tamburlaine 1& 2 that attempts to refute the post-colonialist readings of Marlowe's plays.  The argument, quite briefly, is that post-Orientalism readings of the play are anachronistic, because the primary argument of Said's work is built on nineteenth century literature and British colonialism -- and particularly on a 19th century idea of British supremacy.  The article goes on to suggest that we need to reexamine the early modern understanding of the Ottoman empire and of the figure of the Muslim.  (And I've read a number of interesting papers over the last few years at Shakespeare Association of America meetings that are doing just that.  There's really interesting stuff.)

So, even in our literary criticism, we begin to fall into a complacency about our readings -- we want things to fit into a narrative, or into an already pre-determined pattern.  But, of course, when Said wrote Orientalism, he was disrupting that earlier pattern of reading literature -- that's really just how this whole thing operates.

In the end, what I think I'm trying to assert is that this is what we do in literary studies: we reconsider the narratives we've told ourselves, whether it's through reading a wider variety of stories on the same topic, or whether it's trying to read the same story with a new focus or lens.  We open ourselves to the complexity of thought and the complexity of possibilities.

That's something that resonates beyond our classrooms.  Like I said, life is messy.  If we try to cram everything into a fixed narrative, we'll certainly lose out on the beauty of life and the possibilities of this world.