California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: May 18, 2000
Faculty on the Site.

Our submission to the Justice Studies Association Conference in Albany in June 2000 has been accepted. Pat and I came in contact with the Association through Dennis Sullivan, editor of the Contemporary Justice Review in Toronto at a peacemaking session of the American Society of Criminology in November 1999.

We would like to have a draft of the paper available on the site by late March or early April. This would enable participants of the conference to share in our conception of Love 1A as a non-violent response to the structural violence of the educational institution, and permit them to look at our actual data.

In keeping with our theoretical perspective, we should also like to invite our students to participate in the construction of the paper and its resulting articles. Jeanne is generally at her computer on Monday and Friday, and in her office on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

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We missed our projected deadline, because of WSSA meetings and San Diego Field Trip, but now we're determined to get this piece up. Send in your thoughts as soon as possible. We'll try to include them. jeanne, May 18, 2000.

Issues and Data

Climate of Learning

The climate of learning was a favorite expression of Earl V. Pullias, in the early seventies at the USC Department of Educational Philosophy. He meant by "climate of learning" the spirit of the traditional liberal arts education in which one read widely and then engaged in academic discourse on the text. Earl V. Pullias was the one who ultimately impressed upon me the value of reading ten texts over the "study" of one.

This "gentleman scholar" concept becomes ever more difficult as we find ourselves collectively on a fast track, with little discretionary time for deelving into many texts. But the concept does identify a need that should still be considered in the compacted time of the 21st century. In Love 1A, we have attempted to provide some of this climate of learning by annotations on texts that we have known. It is hoped that these annotations will give you a taste of what is out there, and that you will be able then to choose wisely with the discretionary time you can find.

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The data:

We have been collecting your e-mail responses to these efforts. Two students from UWP had this to say on February 17, 2000:

jeanne,
we're students from takata's corrections course. we just read over the exercise for structural violence. we found the reading material to be suitable, and the exercise was very unique to get the message across. the exercise also provided good information to expand on from the reading. our only advice would be to make more exercises.
thanks,
jaimee porter and dory thompson

That advice reminds us of what happens whenever we find useful solutions, like "Chicken Soup for the Soul." More, please. That was what MIT found with Project Athena, a ten million dollar project. And that is what we are finding with Love1A.

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Process Texts

A process text is a ongoing text that is written by all of us, in the interstitial moments of our fast track lives. A process text also is one that provides valid intertextual comment, contributed often by those who have little discretionary time for academic discourse, like students and teachers. We believe that such texts have an important place in creating intrinsic motivation for scholarship in the broader society, for the academy has become intensely exclusive. Learning should not follow that pattern.

Nicholas J. Fox speaks of the important intertextual role of his field notes, that did not fit into the prescribed format for his dissertation. He recognizes that to exlcude these notes, because they were part of the learning product, not of the performance product, is to create a certain paucity in our intertextual readings. There is a tendency to cite only "cleaned up, published texts." You might want to look at his article, Intertextuality and the Writing of Social Research. You might also want to look at Dassler's critique of his article, which I think misperceives the whole point Fox was trying to make: that many texts are left out of our readings because they don't fit into the neat publication pattern. A little like the painter's masterpiece that doesn't get shown because it just doesn't seem to fit into the overall exhibit.

Anger and Academic Discourse

I am generally suspicious of anyone who makes statements like Dassler's: "I confess that, with few exceptions, reading anything POMO makes me angry - angry because reading an incomprehensible text is a waste of my time, angry because contempt for the reader is evident in the POMO style, and angry because POMOs claim that their gibberish represents a higher order of knowledge. As a result, I try not to read POMO." (Formal citation to be added)

I know that the academic style can be tedious. But I also believe that we should read in good faith. I learned a lot from Nicholas J. Fox's article on intertextuality. I even think I know what intertextuality means. I could be wrong, but I do not believe that anger has a valid place in academic discourse. I sympathize with Dassler's need to express his anger, but I think it is transference of some sort. How much happier I would be if Dassler tried to find and clarify some of the ideas in this piece on postmodernism. I am distressed when academics say things like "We disagree so fundamentally that we cannot even talk about it," and I have heard it many times in many academy settings. If we cannot communicate with one another effectively, who can? Isn't that our job??? Perhaps even more to the point, I remember Fox's idea of the importance of non-publishable or published texts, but all I remember of Dassler's ideas is the anger. I believe that academics have a responsibility to communicate with everyone. jeanne

More to come soon . . .February 18, 2000.