Week 13: Writing My Way to Answers

I am not going to spend a lot of time on this post because I feel like every second counts. This past week was definitely the panic one.
Everything fell apart, nothing seemed connected. But what do they say about being in the hallway? Keep walking when you can't see the light at either end.

Still take breaks. Yesterday I had to put it away and not touch it. I was sick of everything about my thesis.

This morning, I picked up a section randomly and within five minutes made a bunch of connections. So.......More writing.

Hope everyone is well. I have been missing Thursdays.

week 12: Be Relentless About What is Missing....

Hard to see how it is all going to come together. In fact things feel like they are exploding apart. Kind of like cleaning out a closet. Everything looks much worse before it looks better. Getting rid of stuff. Moving stuff around. In general, assessing the usefulness of each piece. How does everything serve the argument and the through line?

I had been working with the idea that my theory about intuition was the main argument. I am beginning to feel that it is just part of the argument. More shall be revealed as this is a big work weekend for me.

I plan to be relentless about what is missing and flush out the ideas that seem vague and ungrounded.
One example, LS often refers to "the energy" of things. Very Vague and one of those "feminine" words that needs some attention. It has come up repeatedly as I am going through peripheral interviews. It ties in with her thoughts on unlocking a student's potential. I just spent some time on the interview I had with her son. He is so poetic and has these amazing things to say about his mother. But, after working with that interview it is clear to me that I have to spend some time with this concept, define it, place it in context and I think it will help with some of the things that have been hard to tie in.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Week 11: Momentum

Ok, this might actually come together. Steady progress. I have been working off of the the "intuition theory" from a few weeks ago and using it as an umbrella to link in stories. As was suggested, I am pulling out some different stories and finding nuggets that link them to my theory. And finally, something that has been really frustrating has started to move forward. I find that every time I sit and try to work with the chronological facts I get stuck. I can't move. The more I tried to muscle my way through chapters, the more I dreaded working on things. But the stories have been a door in. So I have chosen a couple of my favorite stories from each significant phase of Lynn's life and I am working at it that way. If I let the stories tell themselves, then the fun part is linking it to the theory.  So I guess what I am saying is that writing this week has been pleasurable. Crazy, but I continue to find freedom in theory. Go figure. Instead of my original 10 chapters, I have three main sections. This is working much better.
I am pulling some of the stories from people of significance in Lynn's life. These are the people I worked on for this week:The three teachers that carry on the legacy: for now I will just give them initials: LD, KK and DM.
I am also pulling from two other interviews: her SON and MS. Not ready to share yet.

My goal is to have a rough draft in place by the end of Thanksgiving week.

Week 10: 5am Religious Writing.... uuugh

This week has been particularly intense at my new job. The learning curve is high and almost everything has been unfamiliar. I am getting great comfort out of structured time to write in the morning. I know my morning hours are most efficient. I can get so much more done in that early morning time than hours spent in the daylight.  Every morning I get up at 5am so I can spend an hour writing before I go to work. 

I have let go of chapters for the moment and am working in three sections. I have identified three phases of development within the life of LS. I have been working religiously three documents but I am not yet ready to share. In these documents I am beginning to weave in the chronological information from the interviews I have summarized, theoretical themes and selective stories. I am also flushing out my Intro/ thesis/abstract. That will definitely be ready for next week, maybe before.

Also, this week I will have completed 10 articles for Dr. Nelson and will begin the task of putting them together for my thorough lit review.  

·      Intro/Thesis/Abstract

·      Early Years

·      Woodshedding: Adult beginners in Amsterdam, BAC (will explain & expand) begins to develop the festival circuit.

·      Golden years/ Dance Space: Becomes fully formed

·      Appendixes

Week 9: Grateful for the Bread Crumbs/ Infuriated by the Findings

Our meeting last week was so helpful. Thank you, Dr. Zamora for reading and reflecting back. Your clarity about the points of theory that were crystalizing gave me some real momentum.

Last week I inadvertently began to create a theory around intuition in terms of LS. Dr. Zamora mentioned the feminizing of language and we discussed how feminization thrusts language into the world of emotion, silently and relentlessly rendering the language of women powerless, childish and without rigor. (See feminist theory of Judith? Literature is political) This week I continued the task of articulating a theory of intuition that restores the rigor to a word that has woven its way through generations, across lineages and historically embraced both feminine and masculine power. My job this week is to go back and bolster with citings and clean up/ condense pedagogy work. Below is a link for a small part that I refined. Continuing on with that process. More to read next week.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xWBj729SJdbS9EmhiCiNkGtcXQh4oxTdY-5mCThNDIQ/edit?usp=sharing

I ended our session together reflecting back to my original intention to work on a thesis that integrated the work of Aristotle on crafting an argument using three-pronged approach of ethos, pathos and logos. I had been working on a theory that social media has thrust this generation, and when I say generation I mean more the multigenerational group of people that communicate and receive their news through social media simply liking the sentiments they agree with and thumbs down for those they disagree with. Occasionally engaging in a partisan political cock fight, one “friend” is unfriended and the battle for the biggest, baddest emotional firestorm is back on. While this is a rapid-fire way to share information and connect people globally, as a political science undergrad I was drawn repeatedly to the work of Aristotle and the importance of crafting an argument that integrated logos, logic. Not an argument lacking in emotion, but emotion as a vehicle for logos that provides the appropriate accentuation of the argument’s finer points and connection with those the aerator is trying to reach. In other words, the balance embodied by a “whole person.”

I think I will try to find a way to ground each section of the book in a different “school of rigor.”

For example, Religions of the East. And document how these thoughts were filing into the performing arts through downtown Manhattan in the 1970s. Particularly through world music, dance and yoga. Highlight when Iyengar came to NYC and Papa Ladji of West African drumming and dance. Grounding the “world” sentiments of intuition in the Performance study landscape. (see article #3). Bolster my performance theory roots: (McKenzie)

Next example: Psychology: Jung and his influence on the performing arts. "perception via the unconscious": using sense-perception only as a starting point, to bring forth ideas, images, possibilities, ways out of a blocked situation, by a process that is mostly unconscious.

Philosophers: In his book Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes refers to an intuition as a pre-existing knowledge gained through rational reasoning or discovering truth through contemplation. This definition is commonly referred to as rational intuition.^[22

·      L. Mursell, James. "The Function of Intuition in Descartes' Philosophy of Science". The Philosophical Review. 4. 28. USA: Duke University Press. pp. 391–401.

Education theory: educating the whole child

I was contemplating that the feminization of words empties out the logos secretly and silently through the bottom and leaves it rooted in emotion or pathos. I think the article I worked on this week for Dr. Nelson gets to the heart of the matter and it the key to putting it all together. I feel obligated to report that this reading has just left me loaded with rage. A rage that renders me inarticulate and speechless. I am working through it by just writing whatever comes to mind and am pushing through what feels like a very emotional and childish first draft. Big emotions=little words. Words of a child. Small in comparison to the emotion. This is the dynamic that oppression supports.

Questions to be addressed though my thesis and an examination of the life of LS:

So, what is it in the language of men that has been altered by feminized language? Do women need to change their language? Do we speak in a passive voice and have to engage in more active language? Or do we need to just say it louder have more help from one another amplifying it? Or do we just have to bring focus to what has already been there rendered silent and invisible?

This week’s reading was an example of bringing focus to that which has been there all along.

What are the words that Lynn uses that render her “feminine.”

All of these reflections unexpectedly dovetailed with an article I am working on for Dr. Nelson entitled, The Women in Jazz. The Ladies Step Out. At Last! A Look at the Female Side of Jazz Dance Development, written in July of 1992 by, Judy Austin, for the magazine Dance Teacher Now. The article is one of those bread crumbs you mentioned in class. Thank you, Judy Austin, you will be cited for your work. You left a stash of nourishment for generations to come. And grateful that the Performing Arts Library in NYC had scans of your article.

After introducing two amazing female pioneers in the dance world whom set the foundation for jazz dance to unfold, Austin highlights that in the 1940s it was virtually impossible for a woman to land the role of choreographer/ director for Broadway. Why? Because she wasn’t capable? No because she wasn’t allowed. Passive language for the hard, cold sexist truth. And women had no choice but to accept this truth and forge forward anyway. Women were not given the opportunity to choreograph on Broadway because they were not seen as equals. Agnes DeMille was an exception. She broke through the invisible wall and made it to Broadway choreographing Oklahoma in 1942 and Carousel in 1945.

Austin’s work brought to mind feminist scholar Judith Fetterley who examines the phenomenon of the invisible female through the lens of literature. In her book, The resisting reader: A feminist approach to American fiction, Fetterley claims that sexist ideology in literature is political, yet postures as apolitical. Fetterley believes that sexual politics are obscured behind a haze of “universals” which render the female invisible when only the male half of the story is told. She addresses the ways in which female readers have been trained to approach literature through a male lens in a way that maintains the patriarchal status quo[1]. Fetterley uses the concept of “immasculation,” to describe the idea that women have been forced to identify against themselves and instead identify with male characters or narrators. As a result, women have a dissociative experience as they are taught to identify against themselves.

Austin immediately sets things right beginning with life before Jack Cole and the women that made his revolution possible. She presents a fabulous historic lineage of the mothers of jazz dance. However, the implications of Austin’s work penetrate far beyond the presentation of female facts.  She establishes the female lineage as legitimate individuals not just instruments of the men. She quietly corrects the sequence of events, before the fathers there were the mothers.

The direction I am heading for next week:

I think I need an overarching performance studies theory in relationship to the Simonson Technique/ Dance Space and its impact on the downtown dance world. Integrating what I wrote about downtown, performance theory and filling out the dance space piece of the history. This is why I need to write about DSI.

Judith Fetterley’s work also applies and should be integrated into my overarching theory.

For next week:

This week I started to synthesize and filter some of the theory I have been creating into three phases of development within the life of LS. I have started three documents but I am not yet ready to share. Will get these together hopefully for next week. Also in these documents I am beginning to feed in chronological information from the interviews I have summarized:

·      Early Years

·      Woodshedding: Adult beginners in Amsterdam, BAC (will explain & expand) begins to develop the festival circuit.

·      Golden years/ Dance Space: Becomes fully formed

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[1] Fetterley, J. (1978). The resisting reader: A feminist approach to American fiction. London. Indiana University Press.