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.

As I read Francesca Petronio’s thesis Raised on TV: A Queer Teen’s Guide to Syndicated Sexualities in light of the readings for this week and the interplay between form and content, I found myself wishing it played a little more with format. The introduction describes it as “a play on the by-now retrograde concept of a TV Guide”, but other than a more conversational tone (“these kids just love to clap,” she remarks in a discussion of a satirically queer-positive community in Faking It) it hews pretty close to a traditional academic thesis. The introduction is followed by chapters on the three television shows she’s chosen as her focus, interspersed with captioned screencaps. There’s a title page, an acknowledgments section, etc., exactly as you would expect from any other graduate thesis.

I can’t help but wonder what the thesis might be able to say through juxtaposition and visuals were it to mimic a TV Guide in other ways. Petronio uses a three-pronged Media Content Analysis approach that she attributes to Caitlin Campisini, examining her subjects in regard to the political economy of the networks creating them, the content of the shows themselves, and the reaction of news media and online fandom. But she works through those linearly, and all in the same manner: summarizing, with citations, then analyzing. What might it look like to place news headlines or (screencapped or otherwise captured) twitter threads about queer content in these shows across from the summaries of the event, mimicking advertisements in a retro TV guide? What would it do to Petronio’s analysis if it were read in the linear-yet-simultaneous way that Nick Sousanis highlights in his talk on dissertations and academic work in comics form? How would that change the decisions she made about what to place with what on which page or two-page spread?

Or, to break out of the TV Guide conceit, what would the same dissertation look like in video form? The screencaps in Petronio’s thesis are attempting to show understated or subtextual chemistry, a kind of casual queerness outside of specific or “known” indicators. But the very stillness of her images is pinning that down to a specific moment, ready to be made into a new, knowable sign. Presenting the same work in video format could preserve the original fluidity of motion, emotion, and interaction, and through it, the fluidity of identity that Petronio is examining and advocating for.

I analyzed “Beyond the Vale: Visualizing Slavery in Craven County, North Carolina” by Marissa Kinsey. Ms. Kinsey, using historical data on the enslaved population of the county during the antebellum period, created pie charts, bar graphs, and other charts that illustrated and compared various facets of slave-life in the county at the time of the 1860 Census.

            The form of the project impacts the audience it serves in very meaningful and specific ways. The visual representations, by displaying in a visual manner stark contrasts, lay bare the brutality that was chattel slavery. In a bar graph that depicts the numbers of slaves owned per slave master vs. the number of dwellings provided, the blue bars depicting the number of slaves dwarfs the red bars that depict the number of dwellings provided, allowing viewers to imagine the type of cramped and unlivable types of living situations many slaves had to endure. In a bar graph depicting the number of slaves owned by each slave-owner, we see visually that 4 slave-owners owned more slaves than about 18 other slave-owners combined, emphasizing the fact that humans were viewed as mere property to be purchased to the most affluent purchaser. Another web-chart shows the interconnectedness of slaveholding families with not only each other, but of non-slaveholding families through intermarriage, showing perhaps visual proof of how widespread support for the peculiar institution was maintained.

            What these visual representations do for the meaning of the project is provide a foundation, a visceral one at that, for the empirical truths of slave life in the county at that particular time. Ms. Kinsey sought to provide a more balanced view of the truth about slave life in the county with the use of hard data to balance out the biased local narratives that have historically received primacy. Though hard data enables Ms. Kinsey’s bar graphs and pie charts to exist, they provide the reader with not only the truth about slave life but also a new emotional understanding of its prominence and inhumanity.

In Andrew Robinson’s “Writing Systems”, he suggests that it does not seem likely that writing evolved from the counting system of clay ‘tokens’ (which served as an extension of human memory already in the late 4^th millennium BC) – despite of the fact that many hold the belief that writing grew out of the counting system; rather, the emergence of writing was accompanied by the ‘tokens [1]. 

Jerry Eugene Pournelle’s cost-benefit analysis of writing, as recorded by Kirschenbaum in the first history of word processing, not only evokes the primeval conditions that give rise to writing but also suggests the new definition of writing in a digital age [2]. To Pournelle writing equals to, in his own words, “the business of making a living” [2]. What his motto “writing is hard work” reflects is not the divinity of the writing process but “the actual labor of being an author”, the idea that “anyone can learn to do it” and the idea that one’s writing is one’s work.

Even though modern technologies, such as microcomputer or the word processor, free human beings from the tedious aspect of editing and rewriting, the real relationship between writing and society still does not change that much; it is only the awareness of the divine (but not necessarily religious) origin of writing is lost. To twist a bit what William Blake wrote to his reader in the preface to the first chapter of his longest illuminated book Jerusalem, “[Human civilizations] are destroy’d or flourish, in proportion as their Poetry, Painting, and Music are destroy’d or flourish. The Primeval State of Man was Wisdom, Art, and Science” [3]. 

Reference

[1]       M. F. Suarez and H. R. Woudhuysen, Eds., The book: a global history, First edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
[2]       M. G. Kirschenbaum, Track changes: a literary history of word processing. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016.
[3]       “To the Public. Selections from ‘Jerusalem’. William Blake. 1908. The Poetical Works.” [Online]. Available: https://www.bartleby.com/235/304.html. [Accessed: 25-Feb-2020].

Since I first began writing during the computer age, I don’t have a felt sense of the difference in composing work on a typewriter. However, I do remember learning keyboarding in elementary school, and how liberating an experience writing and editing on a computer was. As a child, I struggled with spelling, and poor handwriting. I felt less judged handing in typed up papers that were identical looking to my classmates. Once my typing speed improved, I also experienced that typing could more quickly transfer my thought process on the page than handwriting (I never learned to adequately write in shorthand). On a computer, I could also transfer incongruous thoughts as they bubbled up and organize them later on. In this way, I relate to poet Kamau Brathewait’s statement, “The computer is getting as close as you can to the spoken word” (Kirschenbaum, 199). Typing quickly while in a creative, inspired mindset feels similar (although not as un-mediated an experience) to picking up a musical instrument and communicating some non-verbal feeling or affect. However, when writing more structured essays, word processing technology can create problems. 

Lately, I worry that  my writing is becoming increasingly fragmented as a result of overwriting individual sentences. I sometimes labor over individual words or sections so much (typing and re-typing), that I interrupt the flow of the piece as a whole. Maybe there’s some truth to the fear that word processing software encourages “overwriting” (a concern that, according to Kirschenbaum, was common in the early years of computer technology). The problem is compounded by the fact that writers today work on computers with numerous web connected applications and research tools at their fingertips. These can be helpful, but I’ve found sometimes these tools overwhelm me with data and with other writer’s voices. Automated text editors like Grammarly further complicate the process and increase one’s anxiety as a writer (i.e. There’s an objectively “correct”  way to write that’s and technologically vetted). 

To escape this data-overload, I often find myself printing out sections of a manuscript, organizing pages spatially, and even cutting up paragraphs and moving them around physically on the desk. Maybe I do this to regain some tactile feeling of my writing – so it’s not all in my computer/mind.