Tuesday, February 22, 2011
An American Confucian: The Saint Bernard
An American Confucian: The Saint Bernard: "Simon possesses one quality that is rather unusual for most Americans: he speaks six languages, three of which are not European. Granted, ..."
Sunday, February 20, 2011
UCLA ALC: Asian Languages and Cultures
There are few things as daunting as entering graduate school for a Ph.D. Unlike professional schools, difficult though they be, you are not entering with 50 to 100 other students, many of whom will become your friends for life.
No.
You are entering with a class of, say 1-10 other students, all of whom possess these qualities:
1) They are probably pretty smart
2) They are nervous about that fact, so
3) They are anxious to prove it as soon as possible to practically everyone else, who are mostly students who have been there longer than the newly admitted students, which
4) Compounds their anxiety, and
5) None of them shares a specific field, which creates more anxiety to,
6) Carve out an extra-spectacular (it never is) intellectual niche because
7) New students don't have the luxury of knowing that they and a100 of their fellow students will be doing exactly the same thing for the next 2-3 years and that they can always rely on fellow students for notes and other things if they screw around and miss a class.
Humanities Ph.D.'s are also different from Science and Math Ph.D.'s because they don't get to rely on experiments and empirical data to either validate or invalidate their research.
Instead, Humanities doctoral students get to rely on their peers, who are by definition anxious, envious, and jealous, and their advisors (see previous description of student peers) and, additionally, their advisors are always centering their classes on subjects that they themselves are investigating but require additional insights to fill out the book. Professors are not above stealing their students insights for their own books and then giving them (maybe) a little acknowledgement at the back of the book.
But few departments embody cultural colonialism. Now, some people who think they are smart but after all, only possess a Bachelor's and a professional degree (those are far easier) have observed, "Wow, I've never heard a department called that before!" as if they are the last word on what is and is not a valid definition of an academic department.
These people are uninformed, ignorant, and know nothing. They should be avoided at all costs.
What's really interesting is that the ALC department at UCLA does seem to qualify for a lot of what may be legitimately considered intellectual colonialism. What can that mean? Well, for one, almost all of the content-based professors are white. And yes, they profess to know best what the condition of the respective Asian cultures covered in the department are. They find no irony in this condition. None.
Indeed, one professor who taught an introductory to cultural criticism course scoffed when he said that some of them, including Edward Said, didn't really understand what Joseph Conrad meant when he wrote Heart of Darkness.
That's not actually true. Said did know what Conrad was trying to do. But Conrad's intent still does not preclude a colonialist and imperialist narrative. For someone who is supposed to be smart, this seems to be a remarkably ignorant statement by a UCLA ALC professor.
What's more disturbing is that practically the only teachers, it's unclear if they are even professors but perhaps merely instructors (UCLA doesn't do the dreaded "adjunct") who are Asian foreign nationals are the language instructors.
That's right. There may be two, or perhaps three Asian nationals in the department who actually teach content. The rest are second-class citizens who do the grunt work of teaching languages.
Wow.
And the lack of self-awareness especially in this day and age of legitimate cultural criticism within this department is glaring and also rather shocking.
Perhaps rather than bragging that they are the premiere Asian Languages and Cultures department, they should do something about actually acquiring some true cultural and intellectual legitimacy by hiring Asian Americans who know a little bit about what it truly is to study this field that professes to "know" Asian cultures and their languages in the midst of a very Euro-American setting.
No.
You are entering with a class of, say 1-10 other students, all of whom possess these qualities:
1) They are probably pretty smart
2) They are nervous about that fact, so
3) They are anxious to prove it as soon as possible to practically everyone else, who are mostly students who have been there longer than the newly admitted students, which
4) Compounds their anxiety, and
5) None of them shares a specific field, which creates more anxiety to,
6) Carve out an extra-spectacular (it never is) intellectual niche because
7) New students don't have the luxury of knowing that they and a100 of their fellow students will be doing exactly the same thing for the next 2-3 years and that they can always rely on fellow students for notes and other things if they screw around and miss a class.
Humanities Ph.D.'s are also different from Science and Math Ph.D.'s because they don't get to rely on experiments and empirical data to either validate or invalidate their research.
Instead, Humanities doctoral students get to rely on their peers, who are by definition anxious, envious, and jealous, and their advisors (see previous description of student peers) and, additionally, their advisors are always centering their classes on subjects that they themselves are investigating but require additional insights to fill out the book. Professors are not above stealing their students insights for their own books and then giving them (maybe) a little acknowledgement at the back of the book.
But few departments embody cultural colonialism. Now, some people who think they are smart but after all, only possess a Bachelor's and a professional degree (those are far easier) have observed, "Wow, I've never heard a department called that before!" as if they are the last word on what is and is not a valid definition of an academic department.
These people are uninformed, ignorant, and know nothing. They should be avoided at all costs.
What's really interesting is that the ALC department at UCLA does seem to qualify for a lot of what may be legitimately considered intellectual colonialism. What can that mean? Well, for one, almost all of the content-based professors are white. And yes, they profess to know best what the condition of the respective Asian cultures covered in the department are. They find no irony in this condition. None.Indeed, one professor who taught an introductory to cultural criticism course scoffed when he said that some of them, including Edward Said, didn't really understand what Joseph Conrad meant when he wrote Heart of Darkness.
That's not actually true. Said did know what Conrad was trying to do. But Conrad's intent still does not preclude a colonialist and imperialist narrative. For someone who is supposed to be smart, this seems to be a remarkably ignorant statement by a UCLA ALC professor.
What's more disturbing is that practically the only teachers, it's unclear if they are even professors but perhaps merely instructors (UCLA doesn't do the dreaded "adjunct") who are Asian foreign nationals are the language instructors.
That's right. There may be two, or perhaps three Asian nationals in the department who actually teach content. The rest are second-class citizens who do the grunt work of teaching languages.
Wow.
And the lack of self-awareness especially in this day and age of legitimate cultural criticism within this department is glaring and also rather shocking.
Perhaps rather than bragging that they are the premiere Asian Languages and Cultures department, they should do something about actually acquiring some true cultural and intellectual legitimacy by hiring Asian Americans who know a little bit about what it truly is to study this field that professes to "know" Asian cultures and their languages in the midst of a very Euro-American setting.
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