When I think about drawing, I think it as a way to make things practical reality, yet drawing itself is also a process of letting reality show you what it is like. Nick Sousanis’s Unflattening [1], a dissertation in comics form, invites the readers to examine the relation between thinking, image, and text. In his commentary, “Behind the Scenes of a Dissertation in Comics Form” [2], (as well as on his website [3]), Sousanis reconnects us to the process of creating these comics pages and the ideas that once generated each image-text entity. That is to say, he invites the readers who have already read the comics to read it again differently – specifically, by seeing how those comics pages respond to the practical issues and scholarly concepts in the field of education. As he recollected in the commentary, that the terms, “education”, “schooling”, “discipline”, and “interdisciplinary”, had never been used by him while creating the comics because he does not want to create a work that “turn the reader away with specialized or politicized language”; rather, he hopes that they can “find their own way of connecting to the material” [2]. In addition to that commentary, he also mentioned this intention to reach people who are not in academia in a podcast on “Revolutionizing Thought in Comics” [4].

To me, Sousanis’s way of challenging traditional scholarship successfully revives a viewpoint that has been frequently overlooked: the picture theory of language. Through his own explanation of the beginning part of the third chapter entitled “The Shape of Our Thoughts”, Sousanis emphasizes that the picture representation itself embodies the content just as the written text does. His use of both verbal and visual metaphors in communicating mental concepts confirms this idea – that is, the two kinds of metaphors are, in his words, “equally integral to making meaning” [2]. For him, comics are more like architecture; it invites the visitors to move through the organized spatial experiences [2].  

Reference

[1]       N. Sousanis, Unflattening. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015.
[2]       N. Sousanis, “Behind the Scenes of a Dissertation in Comics Form,” Digit. Humanit. Q., vol. 009, no. 4, Dec. 2015.
[3]       N. Sousanis, “Spin Weave and Cut.” [Online]. Available: http://spinweaveandcut.com/. [Accessed: 01-Mar-2020].
[4]       “Unflattening: Revolutionizing Thought in Comics.” [Online]. Available: https://www.nga.gov/audio-video/audio/sousanis-unflattening.html. [Accessed: 26-Feb-2020].

The reason why I chose the capstone project Imigration, Small Business and Assimilation: Three Stories of Small-Time Capitalism on the Lower East Side was because it was interesting that the audio link that interviewed the study participants was attached as a result of the study. It was also because I wondered how the choice of such a form contributed to drawing up the finding of the study and how effectively it revealed the theme. However, when I actually looked through the writing, I was rather confused. It was because it was more out of the form of conventional research than I had expected. Basically, the project uses a kind of ethnomethodology that is widely used in anthropology and sociology. Investigate and describe cultural background and show the talks of the study participants as it is without setting up theoretical frame. What really stands out in this project, however, is that the personal narratives of the researcher, which do not seem to be directly related to the theme itself, account for a large portion of the writing (every semester he took at the center is listed on several pages, devoting a chapter of pride in completing the study). I would like to compare this project with the most formal academic form I have learned previously, concentrating on disclosure/hiden of the author, to think about what difference they have, what meaning each of them has, and what its effect would be.

Especially in the field of social science where I majored, the existence of researchers is completely excluded from writing. Because it is science, it is wary of the author’s subjectivity and intent in revealing facts and objectively analyzing them. A clear explanation and rationale (through theoretical background and prior study review) is required in selecting research questions, objectives and targets. However, his personal experience and motivation are actively showed in the project. (Of course it’s very feeble. It’s just that he loves New York so much, and he has personal career and experience as a radio host and city guide.) Meanwhile, ordinary studies in utilizing interview in research regard it as a discourse and analyze it by researchers on the premise that they are methodologically trained. Sadly, however, it is one of the most difficult tasks to analyze, leaving their intentions completely blank. On the other hand, the project has attached a link to the audio file to listen them directly and opened the full text of the conversation with the study participants (even describing the noise and music sounds heard during the interview) as an alive form. Here analysis and judgment are left to the readers.

Then, what does each of these extreme two formats have a meaning and an effect? In the case of formal academic form, researchers tend to set themselves as an observer outside the world. This is a modern way of approaching truth and closed to elitism as a reproducer of knowledge. This project, on the other hand, cannot be said to have revealed the world technically and scientifically. However, even the author is represented as part of the world he describes, and acts as living material. Thus, because the former uses academic language, it creates a distance from the real world and universal readers, but in the latter case, it has the advantage of narrowing the distance. However, for what contents this each form contains, when given the difference that the former is in philosophical methodology and the latter is close to aesthetic form, more research is likely to be needed on what difference they will bring.

For my response this week, I watched Secret and Divine Signs: A Cinematic Ode to the Art of Cruising, a Capstone Project by Terrence T. Hunt. Hunt’s short film looks at the changing practice of cruising in New York City. The film is accompanied by an artist’s statement that elaborates on the film’s themes, its creative process, and its stated purpose.

In his artist’s statement, Hunt argues that film is the best medium to convey his thesis subject; cruising has a “close relationship to cinema” both in its many representations in film and the practice itself which shares certain “ways of looking” with film spectatorship (“film spectatorship echoes the desiring gaze”) (4). Hunt also uses film to highlight and celebrate the beauty of queer spaces. Throughout the film, Hunt shows footage of popular cruising spots, many of which are of nature enclaves within NYC (bucolic park scenes, the flowing water of the Hudson River). This footage is overlaid with audio from interview subjects, describing  their experience cruising in different locations. This footage is quite affecting and encourages the audience to think about (and maybe feel) the “erotic potential” of public space (6). 

Hunt also wants to use film to bring his work outside of the academy and reach a broader audience of “queer, gay and bisexual men of different generations” (5). The artist’s statement frames his research questions within a scholarly context of queer history and film and media studies, while the film itself attempts to explore these concepts for this broader audience. 

Although Hunt expresses the desire to show his film at festivals, perhaps an online/social media component to the project could have been an interesting addition (I understand given the still sensitive subject matter, this might not have worked). Further developing this project through a Youtube or public Vimeo channel could also have broadened his audience even more, and allowed Hunt to continue exploring the fascinating questions around class, sex and public spaces, eroticism and technology that he raises in this project. The questions he raises are maybe too numerous for the thesis film but could be creatively approached through film vignettes or interviews on an online platform. 

My analysis is on “From Mass Incarceration to Mass Education Fostering Collaboration Between State Prisons and State Universities” by Miriam Edwin. She gives a critic of the education system and their collaboration with incarcerated people. Stating that state universities should make education more available to individuals in prisons. By doing so, they will be benefited in different ways, avoiding recidivism and post released unemployment. By the end of her thesis paper, she describes what components wouldn’t make a program like this one successful. She claims that state funding is undeniably needed, but just as important is for universities like CUNY and SUNY to partner up to grant degrees to prisoners. It is also considered giving them the opportunities to obtain certifications for the skills they can use after they have been released to work. Edwin provided with some examples of graphics that can be helpful to the reader however most of the paper is just text which is completely understandable because it is a thesis for a Master’s Degree.
This issue is critical and extensive. In the past few years, I have heard a lot of activism hoping to benefit prisoners and also people who have been released. For society to be more informed and aware of the problems and solutions we could think of work being done in ways that are not necessarily considered academic. Different ways of artistic expression like image and video are essential for activism ad social change. I believe that the podcast with Nick Sousanis brought a relevant issue to the table of academia being more accepting of works that are not purely theoretical and textual because then the expression of the issue becomes and stronger as he did with comics.
Miriam’s thesis work can be expanded into the “real world” to create social justice and awareness for this cause. Thinking of Figuring the Word by Johanna Drucker, I was able to understand how visual representation supports the communication between academia and society. Perhaps, Edwin could expand her work outside academia to gain a bigger audience to this influential thesis.

In Jason Manrique’s Art and War: Republican Propaganda of the Spanish Civil War, the reader is presented with a survey of the media weaponized by the Republicans in their anti-fascist effort to defeat General Francisco Franco and his merry band of Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The introduction lays out the material conditions which led to the war and explains how the various political factions involved related with one another in the lead up to the conflict. Interestingly enough, the introduction functions as a successful exercise in anticipation. The reader knows what lays ahead, for the abstract discusses the writer’s mission, and the table of contents lists the various images to be referenced. So, in reading the introduction, the reader, whether a learned scholar on fascist and anti-fascist propaganda circa the 1930s or not, is filled with their own images of what this may look like. However, this anticipation is quelled, or is forcibly placed in the backburner, when the reader reaches the first chapter, a brief analysis of films made during the Spanish Civil War. While the writing does not disappoint, the form which the thesis hinted at, that of a multi-media historical survey, disappoints in that the reader is not offered clips nor screenshots to concretely conceptualize artistic intent in 1930s. Of course, a niche audience of European film historians, the lack of images does not represent a concern. However, Manrique’s work is brief, and I interpret as a work more inviting to the novice as opposed to the expert. Ironically enough, Manrique refers to my previous point in third chapter when discussing the photojournalism of Robert Capa, whose images magnified the impact of LIFE Magazine’s reports from the frontlines of the Spanish Civil War. While structurally-speaking there is nothing wrong with the chapter, as I’m sure multiple readers of this work sought out the films discussed, the potential of an anticipated meaning finds itself disappointed.

It is not until the latter two chapters of Manrique’s work, that his desire to present the reader with a multi-media overview of propaganda in war-time comes to fruition. In Chapter Three, “Republican Posters,” Manrique not only provides a brief history of propaganda posters used in the Soviet Union and United States, but also details how these posters were made, and how different artists and artistic movements, from Goya to Constructivism, influenced the anti-fascist militants. And we get to see some of the posters! Manrique’s words acquire a new level of meaning when paired with the color images of anti-fascist Spanish propaganda. The images, which one would think the reader would pause to analyze, allow for Manrique’s words to soak within the reader’s mind while they stop and look at the propaganda. The excitement of turning the page and seeing a hammer and sickle layered atop a star long with an explanation as to why defeating Franco’s fascist is inherently a step in the revolution towards communism serves as a modern parallel to someone turning a corner in 1930s Valencia and seeing such an image. The image, an interpretable message regardless of what language one speaks, retains a power sole words do not. This amplification carries Manrique’s work towards the end, as the last chapter focuses on the work of several photojournalists during the Spanish Civil War. In between brief biographies and descriptions of the training grounds and battle conditions in Spain, Manrique formats some of the most iconic war photography of the 20^th Century to become the centerpiece of the stage, highlighting the significance of this conflict and the work that arose from it.

Perhaps Manrique meant to keep the viewer in the dark regarding images from 1930s Spanish films to make a comment on the censorship that would follow General Franco’s victory in the Civil War—I don’t know. But, what I do know, is that this work truly reached (what I consider) its ideal form when its message juxtaposed several mediums.

In her thesis entitled “The Music in His Words: The Art of Sound and Folk in Louis Armstrong’s Manuscript for Satchmo: My Life In New Orleans, “The Armstrong Story””, Adriana Filstrup combines a number of textual genres and photography as a means to contrast Armstrong’s autobiographical and typewritten manuscript with the published book version Satchmo: My Life In New Orleans. Filstrup includes textual genres of academic prose, song lyrics, and memoir excerpts. Photographs depict Armstrong sitting at a table typing on a manual typewriter and a page of the typed manuscript. Following Bolter and Grusin’s formulations (Remediation : understanding new media, 1999), Filstrup’s thesis uses the medium of academic narrative as a contextual container within which to represent and appreciate the medium of jazz music. Music is remediated through the textual and visual media as a meta layer of meaning. The academic container offers an intellectual context for the appreciation of the sensory experience of playing and listening to music as well as the experience of typing out memories onto the permanent typewritten manuscript (or more correctly “typescript”). In this way, Filstrup uses text and photography to successfully claim that the published book form, as a form of hypermedia when compared to the manuscript form, loses the immediacy of Armstrong’s voice through the editing choices of the publisher. Armstrong’s manuscript serves as a more immediate remediation of his music.

Filstrup includes excerpt’s of Armstrong’s highly personalized musical text and language such as “Ump Ump Ump”, which corresponds, in a possibly mediated translation from visual poetics to aural poetics, to Drucker’s spectrum of texts between the personal expression of visual poetics including gesture, letterform, glyphs to mechanical formats imposed by the social system (Figuring the word : essays on books, writing, and visual poetics, 1998). In this way, we might ask if Armstrong was also playing the typewriter and if Filstrup is similarly playing the academic thesis, thus suggesting the notion that all media represent the repertoire of instruments mediating levels of both immediacy and hypermedia.

Finally, how would Filstrup’s narrative and argument have faired by using a comic strip format? While the combination visuals and text would indeed open up spaces for new ways of thinking and experiencing Armstrong’s music, as Sousanis argues (“Unflattening: Revolutionizing thought in Comics”, 2016), the question remains whether the reader could be better served by fully owning the generative imagination of text rather than the suggestive guiding of the comic strip.

     In the efforts of the academic, I find that the purpose of citation is central to what our work should reflect: the ease in introducing research to the reader. This means allotting room for the reader to refer, further investigate and seek knowledge based on their interests (think Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s filtering process for reward). For the 2017 thesis, “The Column of Constantine at Constantinople: A Cultural History (330-1453 C.E.)” by Carey Thompson Wells, it consolidates and compartmentalizes information chronologically while retaining its modern argument and introspection throughout. 

     The project’s form is streamlined in conveying a progression of the Column of Constantine’s symbolism as a product of political agendas and visions of power. The audience can then clearly correlate and find commonality among the many historical successors of the column, its surrounding land and their tactics in regards to assimilation. Concepts like reified meaning based on Hegel’s theory of sublation (Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s “Remediations”) are reinforced constantly. The overarching historical and cultural points made also had relevance in the ways we conduct and approach research, hitting on how the source can be directly affected by what it derives from (attitudes and intentions bleeding into the author’s). Overall, these strengthened the reliability of the project and positively influenced its presentation and reception. 

      The footnotes and excerpts also were seamlessly integrated to maximize the fluidity of the text, keeping the reader’s engagement. Consistency in the citation made it easy for me to trace and overview patterns throughout the thesis as well as manage to think tangentially about other points of research one could take. To note too was the unique division of primary and secondary sources as well as website articles and images in the bibliography. The references never detracted from the argument, rather the author questioned and added possible counter-arguments. This multiplicity of truth served again to give the reading more impact. This also has made room for conversation, leaving this discussion (and the many others it introduces) open-ended. 

     Wells most masterful inclusion was highlighting the modern relevance, bringing up the idea of predominant Western culture and how erasure occurs in this context. The creation of myths and how political agendas revitalize certain ideas as well made this project all the more pertinent to avenues or art historical, archaeological, anthropological and purely historical research methods. This then interdisciplinary inclusiveness, through terminology and approach, manifests this thesis’ application to any and all manners of discourse.

Terrence Hunt’s 2017 capstone project, “Secret and Divine Signs: A Cinematic Ode to the Art of Cruising,” is an interdisciplinary creative project that combines several disciplines, such as gender studies, film studies, and New York City studies. Its documentary/art film component serves as not only the audiovisual evidence and statements about “cruising” but also the analysis of related films and poems. 

The documentary progresses from the definition of cruising slowly towards the positive advocating of it as an old art form in the new century, and Hunt writes in the paper that he shoots footage of four seasons in the different cruising sites. However, the montage of “cruising footage” and the repetitive use of the same music make the film cyclical or horizontal. The vertical depth of his interview questions, which are not revealed to the viewer but could be inferred from the corresponding answers, does not cohere with the repetition of montage that becomes a little one-dimensional at the end of the film. However, Hunt’s choice to explore the cruising issues using video as the tool is inspiring. His use of audio tools, video cameras, editing software enables him to record, edit, and share knowledge in a time-based medium. The paper provides the content of his research and the context of the production of this video. 

One issue that Hunt should have considered is who his audience is. He uses it as a component of his capstone project and sends this film to some LGBTQI film festivals. His audience in academia may be very different groups of people from those who attend those film festivals. Does he intend to make this short film analytical, educational or persuasive? His project reveals the potential risks of research methods based on creative/artistic practice and compels us to rethink how university researchers can create works of great scholarships in the new digital era.

March 1st, 2020

Tian Leng 

In the thesis “From Mass Incarceration to Mass Education: Fostering Collaborations Between State Prisons and State Universities” the author backs up her text analysis with data from different surveys as well as academic sources, helping her to provide a well-researched overview of the history of carceral education, and to shed light on institutional and systemic racism in schools and the criminal justice system. By providing data on economic and workforce needs, the author outlines the benefits of correctional education, which are reduced rates of recidivism and successful employment post-release. The main argument of the thesis is that public universities such as CUNY and SUNY have a responsibility to provide education for incarcerated people, thus helping to dismantle structural racism in general.

Throughout the paper, the author uses charts that reflect numbers in funding resources and give an overview of the correctional systems that offer credential degrees. Since she makes use of many numbers in the text, I thought she applied these tables well to support the most important aspects of her argument. However, I thought she could have used diagrams and graphic representations to highlight these numbers more effectively. In the final chapter, the thesis introduces a model for a NY-statewide program of partnerships between state prisons and public as well as state universities that provide fully developed college degree programs in every state prison, which is crucial to her argument. Using a Google map that shows the locations of state prisons and CUNY/SUNY campuses, the author emphasizes and visualizes the geographical feasibility of these partnerships, which supports her model. Finally, for the program model, she makes use of a graphic representation of the main components that underline the needed collaboration of the state prison and the state’s public university systems as well as emphasize the valuable outcomes for incarcerated people and the system overall. By combining text with images and icons, the figure gives a simple and easy to understand overview of how this program would and should work, and effectively visualizes her whole argument. Thus, I think the format of this thesis makes its content very accessible to the audiences it serves.

Academia operates according to a set of hidden rules which uphold unexamined assumptions of academic power. One of these rules can be seen in the standardized and predictable structure of the academic thesis. The hidden power of standardization is its capacity to create a value hierarchy – a way of discerning good from bad, useful from useless. Nick Sousanis (2015) examines adherence to the academic standard of linear text as a “flatness” which contributes to the “narrowing of sight and a contraction of possibilities.” Rethinking the form of the thesis may create new avenues to tell stories differently and to transform academic thought into a wider dialogue with society.

I had a lot of questions while reading “Raised on TV: A Queer Teen’s Guide to Syndicated Personalities”. First of all, who is this written for, and why? Further, given the content of the paper (queer personalities) was it a missed opportunity not to queer the form of the paper as well as the content? Queer theory is a form of critical theory within the academy – one that functions as a praxis of resistance against widely upheld knowledge and norms. Would it be safe to say that one form of praxis could be to overturn the standardized format of the academic thesis? That is, to reimagine the identity of the academic paper outside of the normative standards which have been placed upon it?

What would ‘queering’ the academic format look and what purpose would it serve? Perhaps it would be a playful restructuring of the essay to mimic the flow of a TV show. Or maybe it could incorporate audio and visual to corroborate the content which is describing TV. Maybe it could have eschewed the typed, narrative linear format altogether and be written as a zine, combining handwritten text, images, drawings, sketches and uncensored thoughts.

What if a thesis looked like this? 

Queering the form as well as the content can serve to remove academic inquiry from being an elitist and inaccessible form of knowledge. By enforcing play, personality and difference we have an opportunity to invite a wider array of thinkers and perhaps transform academic impact into real social impact too.

****

References:

• Eriksson, Emma Karin. “Summer’s Up.” Radical Domesticity (3), 2014.
• Sousanis, Nick. “Behind the Scenes of a Dissertation in Comics Form.” Digital Humanities, vol. 9, no. 4, 2015, http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/4/000234/000234.html.