I recently saw a posting for a workshop on hip hop pedagogy at my university, which I unfortunately won’t be able to attend. I’m not familiar with hip hop pedagogy—which is why I’m disappointed I can’t make it—but I like the idea of connecting hip hop as an expressive political force with education and social…
Doing more than just “getting by” in 2019
It’s the end of January and the beginning of the semester. This is a month late in writing, but I feel like the vibe of it still rings true as classes start up and hopes for learning and growth gain root for students and teachers. These days, I’m thinking about the way in which people…
“Tell us what to think”: the Florida shooting and media’s subtle shushings
I watch PBS Newshour sometimes when I’m waiting for DemocracyNow! to come on in the mornings. The reporting on PBS is well-intentioned though influenced by corporate and wealthy sponsors in order to make up harsher and harsher cuts in government support over the years. It’s a decent source of information, a more polished, slightly more toothless…
Trunk or Treat: silly, spontaneous community in a cemetery
Yesterday I was walking in my neighborhood along a path that includes a beautiful cemetery with winding paths and lovely bent old trees. A cheerful orange-and-black clad woman greeted me from her seat at a welcome table as I walked up to the gates. “What’s happening today?” I asked, as kids in Spiderman and gorilla…
“Time Enough at Last”: screens and the elusive book
I’ve been watching episodes of “The Twilight Zone,” an old black-and-white TV series that ran from 1959 to 1964 and told weird, sometimes futuristic, often Kafkaesque tales that made the viewer twist uncomfortably or stare rapt in suspended horror at the screen. Unknown, mostly White male actors, limited and mundane sets (by today’s standards), oddly-rhythmed…
Educators as political participants, sanctuary as co-authored activity toward radical hope: Politico article about CUNY professors and our syllabi
On Wednesday, Politico published an article about the opening statement I and other professors use on their syllabi at City College, Hunter College, and other CUNY campuses in New York. The statement, which I adopted in January 2017 and have included for all of my classes since, reads: As an educator, I fully support the…
Is this the Matrix?: Reality in the era of bots
NPR’s Tom Ashbrook hosts a show called On Point, which covers a multitude of topics ranging from schooling to online dating to genetics to The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Available as a podcast, On Point featured a story on August 9th about bots, which I listened to in curiosity and dismay, and not as…
Speech, whistleblowing/leaking, and silence: languaging as a political force
Today’s news in many ways is not remarkable, in the sense that we’ve been submerged in a swampy mess of falsehoods and fictions that choke off our view of the world around us (see my recent post about Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, which asserts that our definition of reality is served up to us, hot and…
The radical unknowing of hope
I am reading Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, a postmodern text from the 1980s about the simulation of the real which has replaced our conceptions of reality. It largely works as a critique of the media as a means by which we “recognize” the reality of our world as consumers, a reality which is in fact…
Hip hop dance as rupture, aesthetic rising
I’ve been obsessed with hip hop videos since 2014, when I discovered Tricia Miranda, LA-based choreographer for stars including Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Missy Elliott. I took one hip hop dance class in Boston and can barely shake it in salsa or bachata outings (#cudjatellimwhite), but that doesn’t seem to matter when I tune in on the newest…
