Background artist/illustrator Mira Prajapati would tell you that two- and three-dimensional animation revolves around a story. A story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. With relatable characters, an engaging setting, and a challenge to overcome. You need technique, of course. (I call it visual poetry.) An understanding of structures (bodies; the natural world). Of weight and volume, balance and composition. Of the 12 Principles of Animation (including Anticipation, Squash and Stretch, and Staging).... Continue reading

Guest-curated by Inass Yassin, the Palestinian Museum’s exhibition, A People by the Sea: Narratives of the Palestinian Coast, documents the history of the Palestinian coast. The exhibition spans two hundred years, from the mid-eighteenth century to 1948. It features archival images, videos, historical artifacts from Palestinians’ daily life, interactive stations, maps, oral history testimonies, historical documents, and works of art. Artists include Manar Zuabi, Bashar Khalaf, Dima Srouji, Shareef Sarhan, Essa Grayeb, Amir Zuabi, and... Continue reading

We begin to wind down our class. At the start, I didn't know what to expect. I wasn’t nervous as much as I was skeptical. I wasn’t afraid to change gears if I had to. I did wonder, though, Did my bike have more than one gear? Turns out it... Continue reading

I have a broad arts background. Adjunct professor. Museum educator, curator, and director. Art historian and critic. Educational designer. And there's for-profit, too. Yahoo! Analyst. Tech Writer. Script Analyst. Morgan Stanley Financial Advisor. I've run a law firm. A fiduciary firm. And a public relations firm. These experiences inform the... Continue reading

Last night I watched an Al Jazeera documentary about the Japanese condition of hikikomori. It made me think of bell hooks and Terry Eagleton. Hikikomori turns adolescents and young adults into modern day hermits. Its central feature is a desire to remain confined to their home. These digital hermits spend... Continue reading

I now see the value of first reading Teaching to Transgress before we came to An Urgency of Teachers. bell hooks’ journey is a private one (noted here). Her book reads as a memoir of her coming to theory as she made her way in the world of academia and... Continue reading

Critical pedagogy is as a philosophy and education approach slippery enough to find its way into almost every conversation. And so this book includes tangents towards digital humanities, education technology, digital writing, social justice, plagiarism and academic integrity, instructional design, and more. It is in the slipperiness of critical digital... Continue reading

bell hooks cites Terry Eagleton’s observation that children make the best theorists. Her citation warranted a visit to Eagleton’s essay, The Significance of Theory. I like this essay for four reasons. 1. Eagleton writes that children take nothing for granted. Consider all their Why this and not that? questions. Brecht... Continue reading

At the height of capitalist consumerism, American imperialism and the Civil Rights movement, it was becoming more and more difficult to conceal the fact that those areas of disinterested human enquiry known as academic institutions were in fact locked directly into the structures of technological dominance, military violence and ideological... Continue reading

This past summer, I worked on the educational design of New Student Orientation. Our sudden veer to a 100% digital environment in the middle of Spring term challenged us. Remotely, we created a remote experience. It was a triumph of technology. Forced to work from home, everyone and everything came... Continue reading

What lies at the heart of these literacies also forms the primary concern of critical digital pedagogy: that is, agency The agency to know, understand, and thereby be able to act upon, create, or resist one’s reality. For the student, this can mean anything from knowing how and why to... Continue reading

I had several expectations when I took this class. I wanted to revisit theory. I wanted to apply it to critical pedagogy. I wanted to share experiences with a like-minded community. And I wanted to revise my teaching philosophy statement. So far, the class fulfilled my expectations. I worked through... Continue reading

"We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time." —from Little Gidding by T.S. Eliot bell hooks warns how computers could become more important than people. In my post You Say... Continue reading

At a summer arts program in Skowhegan, bell hooks reflected on her journey as a teacher. Her journey echoes and reinforces my own. She talks about her teachers. Teachers who nurtured and guided her. Who taught her how to experience joy in learning. How to conceive of the classroom as... Continue reading

"My models were the people who stepped outside of the conventional mind and who could actually stop my mind and completely open it up and free it, even for a moment, from a conventional, habitual way of looking at things...If you are really preparing for groundlessness, preparing for the reality... Continue reading

In prior posts, I discussed the stagecraft of bell hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy. The way a professor leaves the podium. Moves around the classroom. Engages students on a physical as well as an intellectual level. This takes the professor off her throne. It shows she’s not a dictator intent on domination... Continue reading

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I liked this chapter because it gave me words to express bell hooks’ pedagogical endgame. She embraces the democratic ideal of education for everyone. But it’s the solution - Coming to voice - that resonates with me. It encompasses everything she proposes, in this chapter and throughout the book. She... Continue reading

"Only by coming to terms with my own past, my own background, and seeing that in the context of the world at large, have I begun to find my true voice and to understand that, since it is my own voice, that no pre-cut niche exists for it; that part... Continue reading

hooks wrote this essay inspired by Adrienne Rich’s poem, The Burning of Paper Instead of Children. Rich describes her frustration with language that can’t describe oppression. It broaches a discussion on the imperialist nature of Standard English. This is a powerful and poetic rumination. It shows how Standard English dominated... Continue reading

I was in danger of verbalizing my moral impulses out of existence. --Daniel Berrigan, on trial in Baltimore 1. My neighbor, a scientist and art-collector, telephones me in a state of violent emotion. He tells me that my son and his, aged eleven and twelve, have on the last day... Continue reading

I appreciate bells hooks’ monumental mission to reconceptualize engaged pedagogy. I understand what she wants to do and how she plans to do it. I wonder, though, are these ideas practical? Her colleague Ron Scapp doubts it. As he writes, the institution will exhaust us simply because there is no... Continue reading

I suggested in a prior post that we could compare liberatory pedagogy to theatre. The comparison becomes more clear in this chapter. Professors can cross the boundaries that divide them from their students with dialogue. Dialogue drives theatre. Professors don't want to makes themselves vulnerable to their students. And vice... Continue reading

bell hooks structures this chapter as a discussion with her colleague Ron Scapp. This structure creates a critical space. (I had wondered what that meant.) This forum enables the free and frank exchange of ideas. Her reconceptualization of engaged pedagogy resonates with me. Cultural studies must combine theory and practice.... Continue reading

"When I enter the classroom at the beginning of the semester the weight is on me to establish that our purpose is to be, for however brief a time, a community of learners together. It positions me as a learner". bells hooks, Building a Teaching Community, Teaching to Transgress: Education... Continue reading