A Litany for Survival, A requiem for Love

2020 ◽  
pp. 120-123
Author(s):  
derrika l. hunt
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Burial Ground ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Love Letter ◽  
A Site ◽  
The University ◽  
Deep Crisis ◽  
The Way

I wrote the message below as a love letter, a litany for survival, and a requiem for love. Perhaps it is a bricolage of words trying to imagine what it means to convene in the arc, what it means to honor black and sacred sites of revelation. And so I wrote this kaleidoscope of words to fellow graduate students and colleagues during a time of deep crisis. I wrote this because many of us were and still are hurting as we expected the university, a place I have always been told was a site of refuge, to tend to our wounds. Instead, the university, this place that has been constructed as a place of healing, exacerbated already gaping wounds. It was in this crisis that I came to realize that the university is not what I always thought it was, but we, black women, can, and always do turn destruction into something beautiful. Convening in the Ark for me in this context, at this moment means writing as an act of revelation. In that sense, the university is a burial ground of sorts in the way it resembles the holding cell, and all the ways it reproduces the logics of death. I conjure all the ways my foremothers have reclaimed, reimagined, reconfigured, remade this space. I remember all the ways we have turned a burial ground into a garden. Here is an homage to the legacy of growing, cultivating, and making in the site of destruction. Here is a reminder to myself and others that the project of the university was never to love us, it was never designed to be the place for us to find the care and hope we are yearning for. But with our bare hands, we make bloom otherwise.

Are University Students Who Are Taking Philosophy Courses Familiar with the Basic Tools for Argument?

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-220
Author(s):  
Simoni Iliadi ◽  
Kostas Theologou ◽  
Spyridon Stelios ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
University Students ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Logical Reasoning ◽  
Argument Evaluation ◽  
Basic Argument ◽  
The University ◽  
Reasoning And Argument ◽  
The Way

Philosophy courses help students develop logical reasoning and argument skills or so it is widely assumed. To test if this is actually the case, we examined university students’ familiarity with the basic tools for argument. Our findings, based on a sample of 651 students enrolled in philosophy courses at six Greek universities, indicate that students who have prior experience with philosophy are more familiar with the basic tools for argument, and that students who have taken philosophy courses at the university have stronger argument-recognition and argument-evaluation skills compared to university students with no prior experience with philosophy. Moreover, our findings suggest that students get more familiar with the basic tools for argument as their level of engagement with philosophy increases, and that they get significantly better at evaluating arguments when they become graduate students in philosophy. However, our findings also suggest that the majority of students in philosophy classrooms haven’t developed fluency in (at least some) basic argument-related concepts and skills. To remedy this, we argue that philosophy instructors need to re-think (a) the place that the teaching of argument has in philosophy courses, and (b) the way that they teach students about argument.

scholarly journals Equality at the Cemetery Gates: Study of an African American Burial Ground

2020 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
William Engelhart
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Burial Ground ◽  
Private Land ◽  
University Of Virginia ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Property Interest ◽  
The North ◽  
Enslaved African Americans ◽  
The University

In Charlottesville, Virginia, the University Cemetery serves as the final resting place of many of the most prominent community members of the University of Virginia. In 2011, the University planned an expansion. During archaeological research to this end, sixty-seven previously unidentified interments, in both adult and child-sized grave shafts, were discovered on the proposed site of expansion, to the northeast of the University Cemetery. Further archival research revealed that “at least two late nineteenth century references note that enslaved African Americans were buried north of but outside the enclosed University, in an adjacent wooded area.” In one, Col. Charles Christian Wertenbaker recalls: “in old times, the University servants were buried on the north side of the cemetery, just outside of the wall.” Current research suggests that at least as late as 1898 the area of land was recognized as historically utilized by the University of Virginia for “servant” burials. Since these discoveries, a commemoration ceremony has been held. Some beautification measures have been undertaken: a specially designed fence has been installed; some trees have been planted; and at both entrances an informational sign is posted explaining the significance of the plot. Still, this newly rediscovered sacred space stands in stark contrast to the marble tombs and gilded cenotaphs of the University Cemetery and adjacent Confederate monument. Typically, descendants of the dead reserve rights in a cemetery in the form of some kind of property interest. Mourners and the children of mourners may return from time to time to pay their respects and tend to the graves of their dearly departed. In general, this is a well-established right (though further investigation will reveal that it somewhat less clear than one might expect). However, slavery in America has frustrated many rights, and its long shadow continues to disrupt others. Because of the nature of this property interest, today in Charlottesville, the cemetery rights of the descendants of those slaves interred to the northeast of the University Cemetery are arguably extinguished, or at best unclear. The owner of the cemetery, the University of Virginia, has made no attempt to exclude or to sell the land, nor likely would they, but it is unclear that they could not should they so desire. There are likely other slave cemeteries, on public and private land, that find themselves in a similar situation: specifically, slave cemeteries and African American burial grounds that, because of systemic oppression and discrimination, are rendered unprotected and abandoned—descendants’ rights vanished into nothing. In exploration of this problem, this paper lays out the historical legal landscape of cemeteries, the special issues that arise in slave cemeteries generally, and the application of these doctrines to the African American burial ground in Charlottesville. Additionally, it presents a suggested legal treatment of this special type of property interest: namely, that there should be legislative reform that, in the case of abandoned slave cemeteries, creates both a public easement allowing access and broad statutory standing so that communities can work together to maintain these sacred sites and police against desecration. Further, the development of the rights of sepulture in American common law and the accompanying legal solicitude would allow judges to read this regime into existence, even in absence of formal legislative measures.

scholarly journals Teaching Titus Andronicus in Contemporary India

2019 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 89-90
Author(s):  
Anna Kurian
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Titus Andronicus ◽  
The University ◽  
The Way

Graduate students at the University of Hyderabad relate “the way women were narrated into and out of being” in this text to life in their own time and place.

Managing graduate unemployment: the case of education students in Cyprus

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-178
Author(s):  
Maria Eliophotou Menon ◽  
Anastasia Athanasoula-Reppa
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Young People ◽  
Education Students ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
Graduate Unemployment ◽  
The University ◽  
The Way

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the problems faced by unemployed and underemployed graduate students in a small European country. It focusses on the way young people adjust to unemployment and underemployment and on the specific strategies they use to enhance their employability. Various aspects of these strategies as they relate to student decision making and analysis are discussed. The role of new skills and competencies in managing graduate unemployment is examined. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative research was conducted with 15 graduate students of the Education Department of the University of Cyprus. In-depth interviews and focus-group interviews were used to collect data. Findings The results indicate that the main strategy used by respondents in order to enhance their prospects of employment is the acquisition of additional skills and competencies. A secondary strategy is the pursuit of employment opportunities abroad. Student decisions and perspectives appear to be optimistic, partially rational, placed within a short-term horizon and influenced by the belief in the investment value of education. Research limitations/implications The findings are qualitative and cannot be considered to be representative of the population. However, they allow an in-depth analysis of the way a group of students experiences and manages unemployment and underemployment. Originality/value The way young people deal with unemployment and underemployment has not been investigated in many studies, especially in relation to the degree to which graduates formulate specific strategies in order to manage the transition from the university to the world of work. Students’ and graduates’ perceptions regarding the association between skills and employment can provide the basis for more informed planning and policy making in higher education.

Refining Contrapuntal Pedagogy: Reflections on Teaching Warsan Shire’s “Home” and W.H. Auden’s “Refugee Blues” to First-Year Students

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Grogan
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Poetic Voice ◽  
Teaching Poetry ◽  
Approach To Teaching ◽  
The University ◽  
The Way

This article reports on and discusses the experience of a contrapuntal approach to teaching poetry, explored during 2016 and 2017 in a series of introductory poetry lectures in the English 1 course at the University of Johannesburg. Drawing together two poems—Warsan Shire’s “Home” and W.H. Auden’s “Refugee Blues”—in a week of teaching in each year provided an opportunity for a comparison that encouraged students’ observations on poetic voice, racial identity, transhistorical and transcultural human experience, trauma and empathy. It also provided an opportunity to reflect on teaching practice within the context of decoloniality and to acknowledge the need for ongoing change and review in relation to it. In describing the contrapuntal teaching and study of these poems, and the different methods employed in the respective years of teaching them, I tentatively suggest that canonical Western and contemporary postcolonial poems may reflect on each other in unique and transformative ways. I further posit that poets and poems that engage students may open the way into initially “less relevant” yet ultimately rewarding poems, while remaining important objects of study in themselves.

Learning the anthropology of development: the university as a site of knowledge construction and identity formation

Journal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanya Jakimow
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
Knowledge Construction ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
Classroom Teachers ◽  
Practical Skills ◽  
Student Reactions ◽  
A Site ◽  
The University ◽  
Anthropology Of Development

Recent work exploring student reactions to the anthropology of development highlights the importance of going beyond simply imparting practical skills, or alternatively delivering content that offers an unrelenting critique (Djohari 2011; Handler 2013). In this paper, I argue that by casting an anthropological eye on the classroom, teachers can provide a learning environment in which students transform into reflective ‘novice’ practitioners equipped for lifelong learning. This involves making explicit the processes of knowledge construction in the classroom, and by extension, the development field. It entails providing the resources through which students can become social beings in the development sector, with attention to expanding the possibilities for the formation of multiple identities. 

Book Reviews

2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 589-591
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Mechanism Design ◽  
Incentive Compatibility ◽  
Dominant Strategy ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Dynamic Mechanism Design ◽  
Temple University ◽  
The University ◽  
Robust Mechanism Design

Dimitrios Diamantaras of Temple University reviews “An Introduction to the Theory of Mechanism Design,” by Tilman Börgers. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Presents explanations of classic results in the theory of mechanism design and examines the frontiers of research in mechanism design in a text written for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of economics who have a good understanding of game theory. Discusses screening; examples of Bayesian mechanism design; examples of dominant strategy mechanisms; incentive compatibility; Bayesian mechanism design; dominant strategy mechanisms; nontransferable utility; informational interdependence; robust mechanism design; and dynamic mechanism design. Börgers is Samuel Zell Professor of the Economics of Risk at the University of Michigan.”

In Conversation on the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 369-383
Author(s):  
Rachel Clements ◽  
Sarah Frankcom
Keyword(s):  
Caryl Churchill ◽  
Cultural Organization ◽  
The University ◽  
Artistic Director ◽  
University Of Manchester ◽  
The Way ◽  
Death Of A Salesman

Sarah Frankcom worked at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester between 2000 and 2019, and was the venue’s first sole Artistic Director from 2014. In this interview conducted in summer 2019, she discusses her time at the theatre and what she has learned from leading a major cultural organization and working with it. She reflects on a number of her own productions at this institution, including Hamlet, The Skriker, Our Town, and Death of a Salesman, and discusses the way the theatre world has changed since the beginning of her career as she looks forward to being the director of LAMDA. Rachel Clements lectures on theatre at the University of Manchester. She has published on playwrights Caryl Churchill and Martin Crimp, among others, and has edited Methuen student editions of Lucy Prebble’s Enron and Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange. She is Book Reviews editor of NTQ.

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