May 27, 2005

有關教學效能的一個領悟


In a previous blog entry I expressed slight frustration with the design of my seminar on television culture. Most of the courses I teach are relatively small. My biggest class has 45 people in it; my smallest, 2 students.

How does one teach a course with only two students in it? Is small beautiful? If so, what kind of beauty is it? Or, is it a sign of mis-calculation and misrecognition? I find myself questioning my teaching methods for my television seminar a lot, usually thinking that there is something wrong with the course if I could only draw two or three individuals to the subject.

Yes, I understand that "new media" is always more exciting than the "once new" media. Lately, interesting analyses on television have come mostly out of the English departments. This seems to pronounce television as a dying art in journalism and mass communication.

But an illuminating thought occurred to me this week as I held various conversations with the graduate students in my program. Several students have developed interesting MA thesis topics after taking the cozy and "for the early bird" seminar on television culture. Their focus usually indicates engagement with the experience of the course.

Isn't this what teaching effectivity is about too? It's not about how popular the course is or how big the class should be. Seeing students cultivate and carry out their own research interest may very well be a way to think about teaching effectivity.

Of course, the "effect" is not immediate. But as far as I am concerned, the wait is worth it!

Posted by terebikuni at 天空部落 │21:21:32 │ 回應(0) │ 引用(0) │Teaching

May 26, 2005

Shall We Dance


First of all, Richard Gere has not changed since Pretty Woman. And that's really scary.

Secondly, he does not convince me as an ordinary worn-out worker. And it has a lot to do with how good looking he still is after all these years.

Third, J.Lo's rendition of the uptight Polina is forced. It seems odd to see American heroines in contemporary films being so pensive and passive. While she definitely has a trained body for movement, the control she exercises expresses a relationship to her hip hop moves rather than to Polina's ballroom experience.

So my problem with the film is simply the impossibility to suspend my disbelief and intertextual knowledge of the two gorgeous stars.

Oh yeah, and the fact that the film only works in the Japanese social and cultural context. Evidence 1: There is no explanation why Polina is suddenly leaving for England. For those people who watch plenty of Japanese TV dramas, this would make perfect sense. Somebody is always leaving for a foreign country. No explanation necessary. But this progression has no tradition in the American cinema.

What a terrible transplantion of a cultural narrative!

Posted by terebikuni at 天空部落 │00:02:07 │ 回應(0) │ 引用(0) │Reviews

May 25, 2005

Between mobility and immobility


Margaret Morse's writing on the ontological connection between the freeway, the mall, and television has stimulated an interesting discussion in my seminar on TV. According to Morse, they are derealized environments. Spatially they are neither-here-nor-there; temporally they are neither-now-nor-then. They all produce the experience of distraction.

I could certainly recall my freeway experience back when I had my white Honda Civic in the US. During the several cross-country trips I've had, I always quite literally fell out of my driver's seat whenever I stopped for gas. The vehicle had stopped but my body was still moving forward. The ground always felt closer than expected--which gave me the illusion that I was driving some kind of a sports car. The touch of hot air or windchill on my probably dehydrated skin always made a real reminder that I was no longer in the protection of a sterile/stereo nonspace.

Personally, I am not a big fan of malls. But I've also had my share of wondering around in the various malls in Rockville, MD, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Iowa City. Yes, there are malls in Iowa City, although the metaphor of "flow"--a quality Raymond Williams pointed out of television applies more fittingly in the shopping mecca of America, LA. This feeling of continuation is enhanced by its embeddedness in the city's famous and infamous freeway circuits.

To appreciate the connection Morse draws, it's important to know that Morse is referring to television in the home setting, particularly the experience of watching television in a postwar American domestic space. The image of the arm-chair traveller is evoked here. Television answers to the desire to be present in the comfort zone and to be mobile in the wild wild world.

In the Taiwanese context, this articulation takes more than a stretch of imagination. I am not interested in a straight comparison. But I would point out that perhaps the romantic association of mobility which Americans cherish and actively pursue--which is what made the comparison between television viewing and traveling possible to begin with--is inflected by a different cultural and historical motive.

It's hard to deny that the Taiwanese people are mobile and worldly. Sociologist Wang Horng-luen has even commented on the "hyper-mobility" of Taiwanese, as seen most evidently among the elite intellectual and middle classes. Nevertheless, the pull to get settled is felt in, for example, the pursuit of "safe and secure" careers like teachers and government employees.

Besides the traditional emphsis on family, I couldn't help but wonder if the "temporary state" of Taiwan also induces home-building, or making oneself at home. In this case, the differential appeal of mobility is striking. Just as traveling in American has less of a romantic appeal to the African-American than to white Americans, the romanticism of mobility may filter through yet other contexts in Taiwan.

Posted by terebikuni at 天空部落 │22:48:15 │ 回應(0) │ 引用(0) │TV
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