This I find a very stange endeavor: an Indian university for all those Indians living abroad.
The Indian government estimates there are 20 million people of Indian origin across the world whose combined wealth of $1-trillion is almost 20 percent higher than India’s gross domestic product.
What exactly would be the incentive for a someone not living in India to return to Delhi? And why wouldn’t they be able to go to already existing universities? Perhaps I’m unaware of the financial issues involved, but it seems to be this is a way for India to reclaim some of that “brain drain” that began in earnest during the Cold War and has been slowing to a trickle since the technological revolution in India.
May 26th, 2008
8:26 am
film
Great news from Cannes:
Turkey’s Nuri Bilge Ceylan won Cannes’ Best Director prize on Sunday for his searing family drama “Three Monkeys”.
Climates was lacking the nuance of Distant for me, so I’m very much looking forward to seeing this new one soon.
A very touching quote from Sabah: ” “I dedicate this award to my lonely and beautiful country, which I love passionately.” And a response from my wife: “A little like Pamuk… loving a country that doesn’t love him back.”
May 20th, 2008
6:43 pm
film
Interesting news from Pedro Almodovar: he’ll be focusing more in his next film Broken Embraces on male actors. Not that I mind his focus on women, but it would great to see him plunge his magnifying glass into the fears, desires, and needs of men. Of course, I usually think of his films as more concerned with sexuality rather than gender. I’m just happy that:
Broken Embraces … starring Penélope Cruz …
Abdul-Ahad’s recent series from Iraq is moving and deeply saddening. In this clip, he raises a question that I haven’t seen covered elsewhere. The real loss in Iraq, he says, will be when this generation of children grow up, since these children will have grown up with sectarian violence, killing, and massive displacement due to war and uncertainty.
The correspondence is deeply sentimental, but the perspective is one that is seldom seen.
I came across an older, very well-written essay by Robert Con Davis-Undiano who teaches at Univ. of Oklahoma commenting on the “large-scale return to the essay” in academia. It synthesizes very well the history of this ancient (quite literally) debate between writing that aims to “make concrete change” and writing that challenges assumptions of what we know by being basically… difficult to read. The contemporary bookends for this debate, Michael Berube and Judith Butler, come to mind. He covers the debate exceptionally well, refusing to abide by the good writing versus bad writing argument and ends by defending the renewed emphasis on readability and accessibility while fundamentally defending the value of any academic to write to a specific audience with specific language.
One of the surprising revelations was his reminder of Adorno’s reluctance, if not outright dismissal, that scholars should write for popular audience. I wonder how someone like Said would’ve read Adorno.
One of the reasons for the continuation of the debate, primarily within academia as I see it, is that the “general public” (and this is of course a sketchy category to begin with) is imagined to “not care” about academic knowledge. Davis-Undiano responds: “There is a need for a heightened recognition of academic achievements, better public relations on behalf of the academy, and many professors—in addition to other professionals in the culture—will continue to step forward successfully as public intellectuals.”
Another great observation is that “there is more to becoming a public intellectual than clear writing. As things stand, many of the venues for commercial publishing would be questionable choices for tenure consideration, and career activities unconnected to tenure would pose a significant job risk. Mark Bauerlein notes, too, that literature professors were not actually trained to write essays about social issues and big-picture concerns. If literature professors and humanists were going to write literate and influential “essays,” mediate what Theodore Ziolkowski calls “the public discussion of cultural and ethical issues,” and act as cultural lights and leaders, graduate education would have to change.”
I couldn’t agree more. With the insistence of universities to think about “new media” in teaching and writing, graduate education must adjust to teach not only how to read in today’s technologically-diverse culture, but how to read in such an environment.
Reference
Davis-Undiano, Robert Con. “Preface: No Scholar Left Behind in the Future of Academic Writing” Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 16.4 (2005). 16 May. 2008
February 1st, 2008
9:25 am
media
NPR ran a story this morning on Adams photograph of the VC “guerilla” (why not soldier?) being shot. I was struck by Adams’ sincerity about the photojournalists’ role.
“Photographs, you know, they’re half-truths … that’s only one side….” Adams said. “He was fighting our war, not their war, our war, and … all the blame is on this guy.”
Loan [the shooter] moved to the United States after fleeing South Vietnam in 1975. Shortly before Loan’s death in 1998, Adams said he spoke with the former officer. “He was very sick, you know, he had cancer for a while,” Adams said. “And I talked to him on the phone and I wanted to try to do something, explaining everything and how the photograph destroyed his life and he just wanted to try to forget it. He said, ‘Let it go.’ And I just didn’t want him to go out this way.”
It seems Adams is left more with a sense of guilt than Loan who was likely acting as any soldier might, perhaps because Adams’ own country was integral to this war or perhaps because he could not manage to think away the contradiction of a superb photograph of unspeakable horror.
The photograph was celebrated at the time, but I doubt any such one would make the rounds in today’s Iraq, which is not to say, of course, that it these unspeakable horrors do not continue to happen.
In Gin before Breakfast, W. Dale Nelson takes on a topic that is more often the subject of anecdote than scholarly study. In the book’s subtitle, Nelson offers a more precise description of his subject: “the dilemma of the poet in the newsroom.” This underlying theme of the book suggests a central myth that has occupied the fields of both journalism and literature for many years–the myth that literary creativity and the business of informing the public while making a profit rarely come together, and when they do, the result is either amateurish or incomprehensible. If Nelson’s goal is to challenge this myth, he accomplishes that goal even if he often resorts to anecdote himself while making his claims.
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