Hello all!

Sorry for being such a bad TealArt-ist of late. I guess I have a few things of interest to tell you all about.

First off I’m starting a summer research project of my own. I’m doing some work with cyberself-representation among gay men on a couple of websites. I’m working from posted profiles, which makes the whole “participant” issue much less complicated. It does mean that I’ll eventually need third party rateors to ensure some measure of validity, but I’m still working out the kinks and doing the pilot part of the study. It’s pretty darn cool. I’ve got a little bit more data to collect (for the pilot), then I have to fix the questions a bit, figure out how to make it work in the statistics program, and then throw together a rough lit review I think. Shiney.

I also listened to a lot of fandom related pod-casting today whilst driving back from East Tennessee, which has left me really inspired. What was I doing in East Tennessee you ask? another post for another time! And what is fandom you ask? Fandom is the ‘verse (as it were) that fans of a particular segment of popular culture develop, that includes fan fiction and art, RPGs, and fan communing. It’s a noun that encompasses all fan related activities, but fandom also frequently is more specific and refers to a specific segment. There is celebrity fandom, Trek fandoms (segmented more or less per series, believe it or not), lots of Harry Potter fandom, House M.D. fandom, etc. You name it, it’s out there. And I think as a cultural phenomena, it’s damn cool, and though more tangentially the community that springs up around fandom is defiantly a big interest of mine as a social scientist. One thing I can write for TA in the upcoming months is some background on fan stuff. Hell I might even find links like a good blogger. Who knows. But anyway. Moving on; having properly defined fandom, I think it’s time for a paragraph break.

Good. Ok. So all of this podcast listening and fandom, has inspired me to do a couple of things. First, I want to start my own fandom. This seems like a huge undertaking, and perhaps it is, but I think it would be cool, to develop something (and by develop something I mean use the ‘verse that I developed for Circle Games (the novel I wrote during junior year,) and make it public domain, and rework parts of the book to see if I could get people into writing for it. While I will have to do a little work to rewrite some parts and post them online for the world to see, I think I want to try it out as a pod-cast, and see how that works. This is still in development clearly, but I think it’s exciting. Clearly it requires thought, but…. Yeah. Stay tuned. Moving on.

Secondly, and a little bit related to Circle Games. By the way, I’m still carrying the binder around with me, every time I move even, 3 years later. Despite this, it’s become abundantly clear that I’m not going to revise it. Parts of it are good, and as a whole I like the work (hence the above project,) but I don’t think it’s really worth going through page by page and revising the whole thing to create a 2nd draft of the manuscript (hence the above project.) And the second novel project (which I figure I’m only 1/5 of the way done with, at 20,000 words,) upon retrospection I appear to have been attempting to tell a story without any leading characters so no wonder it fell flat. So having come to that conclusion, I think we’re due for a paragraph break.

My strike of inspiration, which seems to have “unstuckified” my writing process after two years, is to not, attempt to flagelate deceased equines and finnish outstanding projects as I thought they needed to be finished when I was 17, but rather, re-imagine them as I think they should be told today. Currently my notes include: meshing the environments, making the motivations a little less outlandish, narrating the stor(ies) backwards, demilitarizing the story/‘vers, omitting the awkward straight relationship (this is what you get when you write a story as your coming out), combining the villains, taking out the space opera feel, and making the setting seem more claustrophobic and somewhat darker.

In my head, the re-imagination would be set 150-300 years and a relative dark age/isolation period after the end of Another Round (the second failed project), but that’s just for my sanity. Also it helps if I’m turing this ‘verse into a public domain fandom, if I can situate/develop an master timeline. My tentative title for this project it Square Pegs, Again, another play on the circle motif, which I always rather liked. But in any case, it’s nice to be at least thinking about fiction again in this way.

Well I think I’m just about done with this post. More later. I promise.

Hey folks,

I recognize that my posting here has been somewhat spotty, but true to form, my winter-break plans to boost posting and activity fell through as usual. I’m not that upset, to be honest. It happens.

It’s really strange to see how much this website has changed over the last x-number of years that it’s been around. I hope at the very least that I’ve become more coherent and well thought out.

Having finished my second (and junior) year of college, and watched so many of my friends graduate, I suppose there are a few reflections to be made regarding college (including key events from this semester), my personal progress as displayed on TealArt, and my plans for this summer and next year (including graduate school and life, or whatever follows).

I’m too close to finishing to seriously contemplate transferring from college, but I think I totally would. I’ve become more displeased with the psychology program (including the curriculum). I’m closest/most comfortable with the faculty that are, in most cases, furthest from my actual interests. The faculty in my area(s) have very applied interests (that are in some cases violently opposed to my interests), I suppose it has not helped that there will be only one semester of the six that I’m at this school where all the professors will be teaching “normal loads” (sabbaticals, study abroad programs, etc.)

To make matters worse, most of my peers are generally uninterested in going on with psychology (its a popular undergrad major), or they’re interested in clinical/social work possibilities, or they want to do neuroscience (the best option of the three), but very few are interested in being social scientists, which is strange. Anyway. Enough complaining. For a while there I was really interested in branching out in major ways, and in the last few weeks/months I’ve become more interested in psychology and the possibilities therein, and at the same time I’ve become a bit more disillusioned and bitter about my department and potentially field as well.

This renewed interest in psychology has been stirred by more exposure to the cognitive science area of the field, which I had previously stayed away from because the links between cognition and brain (and genetic/biological essentialism/determinism) were/are off-putting, but I think there is room to ask really interesting questions without capitulating to corrupt epistemologies.

I had one of those semesters which I think just “worked” and fit together nicely, despite the insane load (no, for real this time, I’m not doing it again). I took Social Psychology and Personality Theory, and there is clearly a lot of overlap between those fields, even to the extent that I got certain lectures more than once. I passed notes and texts between all of the classes and projects that I worked. Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde quotes (from my special project) ended up in my psychology of women notes/margins/papers, I passed material between Psychology of Women and the Gender Studies class. I quoted a B.F. Skinner article (from personality class) for my Gender Bending final, and mentioned Cognitive dissonance (from social psych) a few times during class. So it all worked out really well, and I’m pretty happy about that. I’m worried about two of the psych grades, I sort of depressed by it, but it might turn out better than I fear it will at this point. We’ll see how it works out.

Editor’s Note: Why yes, I do realize that I’m writing this completely out of order.

In addition to the already understood goals of generating income, decompressing, and getting ready to apply to graduate school, I have a couple of projects for this summer that I’m rather excited about. One major thing on my plate is that I’m working on setting up a special project for myself next semester (which is basically to do research that I’m thinking of in terms of designing a course on post-structuralism and psychology that would make contact with many of my interests regarding narratives, methodologies, social/feminist theory, and psychology), so I have a lot of reading to get through (that I really want to work on. In a connected note, I agreed to be reading buddies with a friend this summer to get through Derrida’s On Grammatology. All of these are built around the project of increasing my reading speed/efficacy a bit, because I feel like that needs to happen. I also have a paper from a class that I really like and intend to rewrite and make it publishable.

I remember that 3 years ago now, I was stressing my ass off over a 4,000 word (max) paper about, masculinity. The subject, particularly my handling of it, is slightly embarrassing now (though as I think about it, in a couple of specific ways, I was almost on track). In the last month, I’ve written twice that, and more. (Admittedly not on a single project, but that’s close). I think I’m a much better writer today than I was three years ago, but I’m still not pleased with much of my writing (and for I suppose many of the same reasons that I was displeased by it, 3 years ago). As I think about it, though, when my writing is motivated by something more than “demonstrating knowledge and synthetic ability” I’m more pleased with it (can you tell I’m still bitter about something.) So go figure.

That’s enough for now. Enjoy!

From the Psychology of Women Resource List by a Ph.D and emerita prof. (as a response to a question about obsessive attachment, which from the context seems to be the “emotion” which underlies stalking and what not.) > I am not sure what behavior constitutes “obsessive attachment”, but it sounds like stalking which can be physically tracking someone or repeated phone calls and other forms of pursuit. In California this is a crime, not a mental illness. Victims are told to document every occurrence in order to make their case and perpetrators should be told that it is criminal behavior.

I’m curious as to how “crimes” particularly ones that only “exist” in certain locales, therefore preludes classification as a “mental illness.” Clearly it’s both “criminal” and “illness.” Woot, overactive either/or logic in wildly inappropriate settings, by people who should know better.

Cheers, Sam

Collecting stories to build a World Trade Center memorial BL Ochman has alerted me to this excellent initiative. The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation is collecting stories about 9/11. I guess we all remember what we were doing when this tragic event unfolded.

The story-base will be significant and I can see how it will be an effective memorial. With such a rich resource it would be a shame to see its potential unfulfilled. Here are a couple of ways it could be enhanced. People should be encouraged to interact with the stories by being able to comment on them and perhaps tagging and rating each story according to its impact on the reader. The group intelligence would arise from these interactions and provide assistance for new users seeking stories that matter to them."

(Via Anecdote.)

I’m really intrigued by storytelling in general, and while the Trade Center is so totally not the cultural moment that I’m interested in exploring, I think what this project proposes is really interesting. If memorial can take forms like the Berlin Holocaust memorial (see blog post which discusses it here,) then why can’t memorial take an intellectual space like story base? And isn’t that really cool, as a concept?

Just a thought…

Overheard Last night… > A: BigImportant University has two Ph.D programs: one in English and one in Literature.

R: What’s the difference?

A: The website says, that the professors in the English program are interested in literature, and the people in the literature program… aren’t as much.

Sigh.

It’s funny. But it’s also true. The Literature is more theoretical and in with the “cultural studies” paradigm. So it makes sense, but it leads to funny statements like that.

Sigh.

Carry on.

I have this habit of writing weird shit down, in random files.

This little gem, slightly embellished (but not that much), has been sitting at the bottom of a reading course proposal for a few weeks. I thought you might enjoy.

“and then one day I, accidentally told the pizza man I loved him”

cheers, sam

William Safire, discusses narratives, in his article concerning the 2004 presidential election.

A Softer World a photo/comic, is narrative in the most basic sense.

Novels, plays, short stories are narrative. Mostly. But I have doubts about Rolling the R’s, by R. Zamora Linmark, and Debie: An Epic, by Lisa Robertson may or may not be. And while we’re at it question this too. But I wouldn’t want you to run too far down this path, because there’s limited utility in running in that direction.

I sat down with myself and forced out a definition (really an operationalization, if you must) of Queer, which I think is much harder to pin down. Narratives are a method of using language. Statements which convey a progression of time, and I’d argue depend on some sort of profound change, either in it’s content (the subjects and objects at play) or on the creator, conveyer, or audience.

Having said that, the key issue here I suppose is not, “what is narrative?” but “why study narrative?”

You’d think that would be easier to answer, and that I’d be able to weave a little story about how I was drawn to this, and why I’m putting so much energy into this wacky interdisciplinary endeavor which frankly runs counter to most of the trends in the social sciences (or psychology, which is what my major is in).

I’m interested in narratives because it seems to be a (marginally) viable way of doing social science research that doesn’t completely dehumanize the subject, without sacrificing all but the most superficial claims to validity (a la case studies, which are great tools for imparting knowledge, but rather lousy at producing it.) Because studying narratives, gives worth and meaning to a multitude of different voices and that seems like a useful way to use one’s energy.

That’s not complete, but I hope it’s a good start.

Cheers,

Ok, so I’ve spent three semesters saying “behaviorism sucks” essentially, because, I was (wrongly) under the impression that it ignored phenomenological concerns like, you know, cognition. Behaviorism has the animal/empericism problems, which I still object too, but I think as a theoretical outlook/explaintory framework, it’s not as corrupt as I thought it was.

I’ve also been disgruntled by cognitivism, for much the same reasons, that it reduces the impact of experience, and seems to assume that cognitive patterns, because they’re in our brains, are the result of essential or innate characteristics, and not themselves, conditioned

I think cognition is critically important to psychology, as is recognizing the importance of, if not exactly the impact of situations on behavior, then the development/contexts that produce (condition) the individual.

I’ve been saying for--well, weeks--that (noted queer theorist) Judith Butler, has a bunch of really great ideas that I rather appreciate about how gender and sexuality happen, in the Foucaultian tradition, but then attempts to explain the mechanisms behind these theories with a psychoanalytic framework, which strikes me as an always already failing proposition.

She’s not the only post-structuralist who does this, and I find this troubling. In order to accept psychoanalysis you basically have to accept a likely inaccurate view of non/un-concious, and what is ultimately a structuralist understanding of human development. No matter how you shake that up, it still rests on those tenants, and I’m not convinced that Kristeva did a particularly good job of escaping that. (Not that I have anywhere enough unused brain cells to get her).

But anyway, There you have it. I could offer a conclusion synthesizing my exact position on the social/cognative/behavioral playing field, but that’s not ultimately useful, and sufice it to say, I feel like I have a much better grounding. The downside is that I have to look at a lot of different grad programs now.

School has been busy, after this next week, I think things will be much nicer. I promise to report more.

Cheers, sam