What Our Work is For:
The Perils and Possibilities of Arts-Based Research
Julie Platt
2.2
"For the last few evenings, my night table has been occupied by an extraordinary rhetorical study of language, identity, history, and memory. That study is Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s 1982 book-length work Dictee. Originally published just a few days before Cha was inexplicably murdered in New York City, Dictee examines the rhetorical imprint of the Japanese occupation of Korea and Manchuria through the histories of the revolutionary Yu Guan Soon, of Cha’s mother, and of Cha herself. Cha employs Western myth and Catholic mysticism as a few of her lenses, and in her search for story examines a multitude of texts: personal letters, official documents, handwritten notes, photographs, images, calligraphy, transcribed dialogues. Cha presents her hypotheses and findings holistically, weaving in the narrative threads of her own positionality and leaving the resulting representations of her research replete with the inscriptive traces of her methods. Dictee is both risky and resonant; its impact on the intellect and the emotions is palpable, and it persists in the reader’s memory in a way that many research studies do not." Click here to continue reading.
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On the Pleasures of Hazlitt
William Bradley
2.2
First of all, what’s not to love about an essay called “On the Pleasure of Hating?” As far as awesome titles go, this one’s only approached by Phillip Lopate’s “Against Joie de Vivre.” As a reader, when you see a title like that, all you can really do is blink, raise your eyebrows quizzically, then shrug and say, “Well, okay. I’m listening.” It’s like if someone said to you, “You know what I hate? Orgasms.” You’re pretty sure you’ll disagree with this person, but you’re dying to hear the reasoning behind such an outrageous position.Click here to continue reading.
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"Thirteen Canada Geese": On the Video Essay
Jie Liu
2.2
"Digital technology has profoundly changed the way people communicate. In my view, this not only makes it possible for the video essay to become an influential form in the future, especially for the young generation, but also introduces new modes of composing an essay. “I can think of no better way to take on the problems of being alive right now than to write this way, with a pen in one hand and a lens in the other,” says John Bresland in “On the Origin of the Video Essay.” Click here to continue reading.
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Memoir as Sympathy: Our Desire to be Understood
Stacy Murison
2.2
"Until a few years ago, memoir was all I could write, but none of it seemed meaningful. I often centered myself as hero, struggling against the forces of evil, all of which (I believed) were specifically bent on placing impediments on my path to truth, justice, and overall excellence. I wasn’t asking anything from anyone else except to realize just how heroic I was. Although memoir can be its own act of truth-telling and heroism, the injustices I wrote of now seem petty. We have all tried, at some point in our lives, to explain ourselves to others. We have all had those moments of trying to reveal something about ourselves to someone else, only to have it backfire and make us retreat back to our comfortable, great-misunderstanding shell, refusing to poke our heads out for quite a while. We are misunderstood, again. No one gets us. That is all. Fin." Click here to continue reading.
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