When I started watching/listening to Miller’s presentation, I was really just listening to it while multitasking online. It wasn’t going to be any different than when I have tv on in the background while doing work… only, I was drawn into his presentation. I needed to see the images. (or maybe it was the music that drew me in). I wasn’t surprised at the decline of English majors (or French or German), but what surprised me a little was the one student’s struggle to articulate why he was an English major. It could be that I am just so used to having to articulate what I am doing and why, that it seems second nature. Why are our students majoring in English? Literature? French? German? When the end of the world is coming?
He posed these three words at one point (maybe part 3).
Hope: the idea that the humanities can offer a secular basis for hope.
Creative: how to teach students to be creative? How to teach them to use their imagination?
Beauty: I don’t think I can think of an instance where I have talked about something being beautiful in the classroom. Have you?
He went on the discuss beauty as having to do with pointlessness. The power of beauty wanting you to do something (going to see beautiful buildings). And, how do you make things beautiful?
Can we connect Miller’s 3 terms, hope, creativity, and beauty with emerging technology? Can we instill hope for a better future with technology? Can we teach students to be creative with technology? Can things be beautiful with technology? And, can technology be a way to share that beauty. I think so. I think technology is a perfect instance where we can bring Miller’s three terms/concepts together and make humanities not seem so gloomy.
He ends with the goal of humanities is to find a way on how to build on the ruins. Can we use technology to do so? Can technology be the rebirth of the humanities? Should it be?
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3 comments:
I had a similar reaction to Miller's presentation. I am still wondering about beauty--especially vis-a-vis his first images. There was beauty inherent in the images--a troubling beauty.
I am not sure what this has to do with composition--which I admit can be (conceived of) as a discipline devoid of beauty.
I found myself wondering how the theme of beauty might fly in a comp class. It could, I'm sure with some (shall I say it?) creativity on the part of instructors. But again, what have hope and creativity and beauty to do with comp? I'd like to think they have much to do with it, but then again I love ambibguity and would love to have an office (sort of) in the Center for Ambiguity Studies. Comp, does, I think belong there.
I appreciated that Yancey, in her academic "article" included the aesthetic "We have a moment." Do we, though? Do we have a moment for this kind of inclusion in out pedagogy--or do we risk being a "humanity"? Where is the place for studying the students' writing for aesthetics? The comment I got most on my movie was not that I had a compelling question, but that the presentation was poignant and that it was well-compsed aesthetically. I wondered if I'd missed the mark--the point of it all--but in a sense, I knew I'd stumbled onto somehing that is indeed composition--and indeed sophisticated--and dare I say this??? It was exciting, engaging, enticing, exhilarating to breathe more of the aestetic into my own scholarly (sort of) writing.
I'm experiencing a lot of dissonance lately--a good kind. Not doubt, not discipline doubt or self doubt, but rather that kind of dissonance that reminds me that I am indeed growing, that it is good with my soul.
I wonder if i must be getting something wrong, in a scholarly sort of way..........
Barbara the Humanist
I also was quite struck by Miller's presentation...i thought i would be able to sit through it and it wouldnt affect me--well it did!! i just got done posting a post about what i thought (i doubt it makes a lot of sense, eh...) anyway, at the end of your post you ask if technology might be a (the?) way to build on the ruins and i think the effect of MIller's presentation on us is a good answer to that question. I def. think technology will play a role in the Humanity major trying to "change the world." This multimodal presentation affected us and made me want to write about it in the blog...that has to be saying something, right?
The idea of beauty made me think of Edward Tufte's book, _Beautiful Evidence_. In his introduction, Tufte writes: "A colleague of Galileo, Federico Cesi, wrote that Galileo's 38 hand-drawn images of sunspots 'delight both by the wonder of the spectacle and the accuracy of expression.' That is beautiful evidence." Tufte then explains that his book is about "how seeing turns into showing" (Introduction). This involves a more nuanced understanding of what it means to see, to observe and then use what we observe/saw as explanations (Tufte, Introduction).
I think Tufte's use of "beautiful" can be translated into the field of rhet/comp: it asks us to look at things from different angles and ask questions that skirt tradition. We can integrate ideas from fields like art, design, music, or other fields not necessarily in our traditional canon. Just to begin, we should try out these different lenses simply to exercise our ways of looking and knowing.
The fact that many of us were taken aback by the suggestion to integrate beauty in to the composition classroom should encourage us to question our ways of teaching and writing. Why isn't beauty a traditional rhetorical concept? Just something to think about.
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