Something about me you might not have known:
You are Barbidou! You love the natural world. You
enjoy getting out of the city with an armful of
kitties and/or puppies.
(The Barbapa books were my childhood favorite...
Which Barbapapa Personality are you?)
Libby pointed out this lovely little animation, starring Strindberg and helium. I can't describe how giggly it made me. Decay! Decay!
Put it on your calendar now: March for Freedom of Choice on April 25, 2004. Hope to see you all there.
Thanks for the heads up, Libby.
Christian Staas at Die Zeit writes about "defending the past" online. Staas reviews the online debate recently brought to life (again) by the Hohmann controversy:
Im Mittelpunkt stehen...fast immer Vergleiche: So gehen wir Deutsche mit unserer Vergangenheit um, so die Amerikaner; hier waren die Deutschen Täter, hier sind es die Israelis, waren es die Polen oder Tschechen. Es ist müßig, zu erklären, woran solche Vergleiche kränken. Tatsache ist, dass sie auf nationale Denkmuster zurückwirken, durch die sie überhaupt erst sichtbar werden. Dahinter kommt, meist unausgesprochen, der Wunsch nach „Normalität“ zum Vorschein... Historikerstreit, Goldhagen und Martin Walsers Friedenspreis-Rede von 1998 – alles ist drin, alles reichlich verdünnt und alles durcheinander. Dem Ganzen fehlt lediglich der rhetorische Feinschliff. Polemik und Rechthaberei gibt es dafür mehr als genug.In these discussions, Staas sees evidence of an erosion of consensus surrounding one of the most important ideas of the postwar West (his "Germany" is understood to be the Federal Republic):
Wer hingegen darauf beharrt, dass der Holocaust der zentrale Bezugspunkt eines selbstkritischen deutschen Selbstverständnisses bleiben muss, sieht sich rasch mit dem Vorwurf konfrontiert, er argumentiere auf der Grundlage eines rassistischen Volksbegriffs. Was jahrzehntelang als intellektueller Grundkonsens der Bundesrepublik galt, ist in den Online-Foren kaum noch konsensfähig. Die meisten wittern hinter der Überzeugung, es gebe eine spezifisch deutsche Verantwortung im Umgang mit dem Nationalsozialismus, eine moralisch verwerfliche Vorverurteilung, die alle Deutschen von Geburt an schuldig spricht.
So: to what extent do these speakers ("wahrscheinlich überdurchschnittlich informiert, in der Regel männlich, zwischen 25 und 40 Jahre alt") represent the rest of German public opinion?
for an English translation (corrections welcomed),
Comparisons are nearly always at the center [of these discussions]: this is how we Germans deal with our past, the Americans do it this way; the Germans were perpetrators in this case, in this one it's the Israelis, or [in the past] the Poles or the Czechs. It's futile to try to explain why these comparisons are insulting. The fact is that they are retroactively tied to the same national thought patterns through which they became visible in the first place. Then the (generally unspoken) desire for "normality" comes to the fore...Historikerstreit, Goldhagen, and Martin Walser's Peace prize speech from 1998 – everything's included, considerably diluted, and all mixed up. The only thing missing is a rhetorical edge. But there's already plenty of polemics and dogmatism.
...
But anyone who insists that the Holocaust must remain the central point of reference for a self-critical German self-image finds himself quickly accused of arguing on the basis of a racist national definition. What for decades was considered the foundation of intellectual consensus of the Federal Republic is barely able to garner agreement in the online fora. Most rage against the suggestion that there is a specific German responsibility towards National Socialism, [which they see as] a morally reprehensible presumptive condemnation that declares all Germans, from birth on, to be guilty.
Artnotes brings the covergence of the real world and the world of advertising to our attention with this screenshot. There must be other instances of this kind of accidental expansion of meaning all over the place on the web. How awful that these two happened to combine:
Stuart Rojstaczer at the Post writes that he no longer gives C's in his classes, for reasons best represented by him in the essay—go have a look. Here I just have to say that Texas did very poorly on his Grade Inflation survey; apparently in the last decade our mean GPAs have risen a quarter of a point, with no (reliable) corresponding rise in the quality of students.
And yet I don't know of anyone in my department (perhaps there are secret lurkers) who would shy away from giving a student a C, a D, or an F if she deserved it. Perhaps this has to do with teaching a survey, again, rather than an upper-level course. I can't imagine giving someone a B who wasn't doing B-level work, under which I might roughly group things like being able to illustrate major concepts using details from an image (both in class participation and on tests).
We make the system we're working in, and Rojstaczer's argument just sounds lazy or even cowardly to me:
Parents and students want high grades. Given that students are consumers of an educational product for which they pay dearly, I am expected to cater to their desires not just to be educated well but to receive a positive reward for their enrollment. So I don't give C's anymore, and neither do most of my colleagues. And I can easily imagine a time when I'll say the same thing about B's.
Really. Am I just a delusional grad instructor with no clue about the economics of higher ed? Maybe there's some irony in there that I'm reading over.
[As a side note I feel like saying that the students who get low grades in my classes know far in advance of that slip arriving in the mail that their grades are low. No surprises. And if they know this early enough, they have time to drop the class—which might explain why I rarely deal with people who are disgruntled about grades.]
Update: Ok, having slept on it I've decided that for the full-time instructors (tenured and seeking tenure) in my department, giving a wider range of grades, including failing grades, has more pitfalls than it does for me. I'm sure that they're less likely to fail people than I am. I think, for the time being, I'll enjoy the freedom I have.
The Little Professor offers a view of grading (and grade inflation) that closely resembles my own. It seems to come down to having expectations that fit your students.
I'm now teaching the same class I did last semester and for the first time I'm able to make some comparisons. What I'm learning is that I won't always be able to teach material with the same attention or enthusiasm I've done in previous cases. Who could be utterly consistent from one semester to the next, without becoming repetetive and dull? But the more important lesson seems to be that I also can't expect that my students will learn the same from semester to semester. (Things would change, I'd hope, if I were teaching some of the same students in an upper-level class.)
It's that time in the semester: we're all thinking about grading. Have a look at the discussion of Grade Inflation at Invisible Adjunct.
I must point out the reader, probably being cited by everyone who reads the blog, who quoted a colleague: "I teach for free; they pay me to do the grading."
Most of the time I feel the same: I really enjoy teaching, for lots of reasons. But I wonder how I'll feel about it when I'm full-time somewhere and more depends on how my students do than just my own feelings of accomplishment or defeat.
(Notice how I use "when" and not "if" in that sentence.)
Just read this essay at the Chronicle on the various difficulties of evaluating student work. Syncs up very nicely with my class’s schedule, as today I have an extra credit assignment coming due and will receive projects and papers on Friday. Faced with a huge stack of work to evaluate, I always feel overwhelmed. But there's still this tiny grain of excitement there, buried underneath the anxiety and annoyance: how did they do on those exam rewrites? What did they choose to work on for their projects? Will I see any Doric temples made of playdough?
The Chronicle essayist discusses grading essays specifically, and this is something I struggle with often. Not just because writing skills are not what we all wish they were, not just because many students show up to college poorly prepared by their high school experience. In my department, nearly everyone gives essay-based exams. Some include a few fill-ins or short answers, but the majority of people teaching surveys use essays. This includes me, although increasingly I find myself questioning the benefits of the essay format. First it’s the time constraint: what is reasonable to demand of a class in 50 minutes? How well-developed can a 12 minute essay be? Given that these are questions based on a comparison of two images, should I expect synthesis, or be happy when they just provide the facts I’m asking for?
Papers I grade on style and coherence, and expect that the student can make and support a thesis, that her comparisons will demonstrate some creative thought. Generally students do better when given more time, and most see this assignment (which is their third of four grades—the other three being in-class tests) as a chance to boost their average. In the past most have invested an appropriate amount of effort in the assignment.
The reason I'm bringing all this up, though, is that I've been trying to decide whether the in-class essay format as it is clung to by many in our department is useful. I have no doubts that essays, in general, are the best way to evaluate a student’s progress. It’s the time aspect that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with. I wonder what other possibilities there might be: assigning several shorter papers in which students have to trace a particular theme through different images or buildings? The department—and possibly the university—conceives of the survey as a lecture course, and the implication is that there shouldn’t be too much of an emphasis on writing. We’re meant to lecture in these surveys, but I’m never satisfied with the lecture-only format. If I thought I could organize this class so that there was time for in-class group activity, for example, I would. What to do?
As I'm preparing my first upper-division class for next semester, I'm thinking about incorporating a blog into the class. I had been considering using journals (in lieu of reaction papers) and now it seems like blogging might be better because it opens things up to discussion. At the same time, it seems like a more private journal is still important for people who feel less secure with the readings. Could I require both?
I know that people do this all the time, now I just have to start looking around for models. I'd be grateful for any feedback people can offer.
Hmm...Got this through the vifu list this morning: Utrecht's Cyber Feminist games. I guess I was hoping for something more wonky and academic, but they're just regular, minimal, cute pixely games with a few bits of nominally feminist subject matter. Oh well, they're not bad, exactly. Certainly nicely made if nothing else. And what was I expecting, that they were going to quiz me on Irigaray?
I just finished teaching Early Christian art in my survey, so Ionart's post today about a recent discovery in Arles came at a great time. What a find; why did I choose to become a "Modernist" again? And lucky for me, with my unpolished French, Ionarts translates the original text. (I suppose I should be doing that, too, when I post German things.)
W's going to London, and thankfully will be met by public protest. In the meantime, I'm enjoying this gentle spoof from the Telegraph . Wotcha Princess Anne...
Update: Making the rounds is this British site which is coordinating spontaneous protests against Bush:
Truly the most noble of uses of the mobile phone and all its tech friends.
Der Spiegel's response to Michael Moore's latest book is That's stupid, white man! The author is tired of lazy German leftists using Moore as an easy medium for US-bashing. and wonders why Chomsky and Sontag haven't found the same broad resonance among a German audience. The answer, he says, is
Weil sie nachhaltige Kopfarbeit leisten. Moore bedient den bequemen Bauch und weiter oben allenfalls noch das Zwerchfell. Das ist manchmal tragisch und oft bedenklich, weil er viele richtige Ansätze hat, um sich dann eitel zu verfaseln und zu verrennen. Er entlässt seine Gegner und die Attackierten damit aus der Pflicht, sich mit Argumenten zu beschäftigen: That's stupid, white man.
I agree. But when Mehrzweckbeutel brought this up in a recent post, I had the distinct impression that the poster didn't understand why we (here in the US) have need of pedantic formulations like Moore's. If he can continue to focus attention on the things that are wrong and fixable in the US, if he can "convert" a few listeners with the obvious formulations and shoddy argumentations he sometimes employs, well FINE. We need the support, and honestly it's not as if simplistic argumentation isn't being used by the Bad Guys.
The US left is not like the German left, though; and I understand the disappointment when people start accepting everything Moore says without a critique.
Anyone?
In the context of a recent H-German discussion on German memory, the editors bring in the Hohmann crisis in a comment:
The hundreds of posts in the Forum section of the CDU home page that express approval of Hohmann's remarks and weariness of Germans' being seen as a "Taetervolk" offer one disturbing glimpse of public opinion. Clearly, there is a substantial group of Germans who feel vaguely disadvantaged by what they imagine is the opinion of people outside of Germany about Germans. Here, at least, history's attempt to discipline memory seems not to work.
Interestingly, when I looked at the CDU forum today, there seemed to be an overwhelming support for the decision to throw Hohmann out, and remorse or embarassment over Merkel's hesitation to come down hard on the issue.
Which is not to say that there ISN'T widespread support within the party for ideas like Hohmann's, because there's also a lot of discussion of "Meinungsfreiheit," freedom of opinion.
Don't get me started on that one.
Although I've already been thinking about it, reading Michelle Goldberg's article at Salon about the Right's slow erosion of abortion rights left me pretty shaken:
Even as Bush placates moderates by saying that the country isn't yet ready for a total abortion ban, he's doing his best to prepare for that eventuality. And except for committed pro-choice activists, American women aren't mounting much of a defense. Roe vs. Wade might stand a while longer, but it's being hollowed out, termite style. Another Bush term augurs its eventual collapse.
What are we going to do about this? (Who else has been relaxing in the post college-activism slump? How do I get myself out of it?)
At the Frankfurter Rundschau, an excellent essay on the status of GDR history and The Historians, by Lindenberger and Sabrow (both at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Studien in Potsdam):
Von der Öffentlichkeit kaum bemerkt, ist in den letzten Jahren die Renaissance der Totalitarismustheorie in Agonie übergegangen. Sie hat forschungspraktisch nicht gehalten, was sie geschichtspolitisch versprach. Die DDR erweist sich als umso komplizierter, je gründlicher sich die Forschung auf die konkreten historischen Grundlagen ihrer vierzigjährigen Existenz einlässt, anstatt nach Bestätigungen geschichtsphilosophischer Glaubenssätze zu suchen. Weniger die klaren Konturen totaler Herrschaft als vielmehr Aporien, Antinomien und Paradoxien prägten die Entwicklung dieses Staates. Je nachdem, unter welchem Blickwinkel sie betrachtet wird, ändert sie ihre Gestalt. Sie verkörpert zusammen mit ihrem westdeutschen Zwilling den Fortgang deutscher Nationalgeschichte in der Zeit der staatlichen Teilung, aber sie steht auch für die Preisgabe nationaler Eigenständigkeit auf dem Weg der Integration in den Ostblock. Sie präsentiert sich vom Anfang her betrachtet als die Inszenierung eines radikalen Neuanfangs und sozialistischen Gesellschaftsexperiments, das schließlich an widrigen Umständen scheiterte, und sie zeigt sich von ihrem Ende her gesehen als fortschreitender Verfall einer im Ansatz realitätsblinden Utopie, als "Untergang auf Raten", wie schon 1993 ein Buchtitel verkündete.
via OSTBLOG (thanks, would've hated to miss this one!)
From the Frankfurter Rundschau, this report about the development of the Tacheles area in Mitte. Normally "New Urbanism" seems like a good thing, but this just sucks the soul out of the whole neighborhood and makes it yet another bland (yet pricey) place.
Here's the English page at the City of Berlin's city planning pages. If you can spare the bandwidth, I recommend watching the video they've provided. (Interestingly, it seems that the model is made of paper and cardboard, rather than with CAD, unless that's just the aesthetic.)
Also, here's an award the architects, Duany Plater-Zyberk, won for their design. [It's about halfway down the page, and by clicking on the picture you can have a closer look; click the link next to it and you'll get the project description.]
Here's the
Guardian's
report on the story (from the AP):
BERLIN (AP) - Germany's main conservative party ended two weeks of wavering and yielded to mounting outrage over an anti-Semitism scandal Monday, saying it would seek the expulsion of a lawmaker who compared Jews with Nazis.
...
The announcement was a reversal for the Christian Democrats, who had said earlier they would not move against Hohmann and defended his right to speak out. It came after the scandal brought down one of Germany's top generals and set off worries about the country's reputation abroad. Jewish leaders and politicians from all the mainstream parties had increasingly called for Hohmann's removal.
continue reading...
Apparently the Christian Democrats have finally come to the conclusion that it's a good idea to kick Hohmann out of the party. How about that.
Here's what the Sueddeutsche Zeitung says:
Berlin – Nach heftigen Diskussionen und angesichts des wachsenden öffentlichen und internen Drucks hat sich die CDU-Spitze am Montag doch zum Ausschluss des Bundestagsabgeordneten Martin Hohmann entschlossen. Der Vorstand der Unions-Fraktion beantragte am Montag den Ausschluss des osthessischen Parlamentariers, der sich antisemitisch geäußert hatte. Der hessische Ministerpräsident und CDU-Landeschef Roland Koch machte sein Versprechen an die Bundesvorsitzende Angela Merkel wahr und kündigte an, ein Parteiausschlussverfahren gegen Hohmann in Gang zu bringen.
more here...
Always late to the ball, I recently came across Invisible Adjunct, an incredibly smart blog on academia. For those of us planning to or worrying about taking up a career as a professional academic, the discussions here are as stimulating as they are terrifying. All of you (you know who you are, there aren't that many of you reading this blog!), click the link now! Really!
Here are a few contributions to the Hohmann controversy:
Frankfurter Rundschau 1
Frankfurter Rundschau 2
Süddeutsche Zeitung
TAZ
via Perlentaucher
Really scary news from Salon.com:
On Oct. 21, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill that could require university international studies departments to show more support for American foreign policy or risk their federal funding. Its approval followed hearings this summer in which members of Congress listened to testimony about the pernicious influence of the late Edward Said in Middle Eastern studies departments, described as enclaves of debased anti-Americanism.
I'm slowly trying to familiarize myself with a current art debate in DC. It's been a while since I followed the news there, but ionarts discusses an interesting debate over the Corcoran's J. Seward Johnson, Jr. show. I'd sort of like to see this for myself: is it art or pedagogy? The larger question is, what are the responsibilities of the state-funded museum?
Expatica ran this today on the same story.
[And nullserver.de has some similar info, linked below in a comment, including the letter from the general who's lost his job over his support of Hohmann. Thanks!]
This German MP (story at the BBC) recently made the news for a speech he delivered in which he made certain claims about the historical guilt of the Germans. I don't want to get into it too much here, but while reading the text of the speech at Mehrzweckbeutel my jaw dropped lower and lower. Just one of his many remarkably ugly tactics is to justify Nazi crimes by comparing them to revolutionary bolshevist Jews in the 20s. I can't fully express my disgust until I read some more about how this story is unfolding.
Luckily,Mehrzweckbeutel posted a copy of the speech, which has since been removed from the local CDU website...
[but is apparently to be found in multiple places online]
Libby brought the Economist's city guides to my attention—since I've been thinking about Berlin lately, I'm posting a link to their Berlin Guide. Seems like a great thing for a first trip (hint, hint): especially the little inset with news and changing features. That's pretty smart.
I should point out, though, that their recs for dining and sleeping are SUPER pricey and mostly limited to ho-hum areas of central Berlin. Funkier stuff is to be found for less money in further-flung places.
[Well huh. Andrew points out in a comment that our Berlin Guide has a link to this guide. I guess I missed it...Still, it's a great resource.]
Once again, our friend Tiny...
...diesmal ganz groß.
Till at bilderbook has excellent pictures of Berlin. I especially loved the panoramas of P'berg, which includes the fringe zones of Rosenthaler Platz and the Volkspark am Weinberg, our old haunt. We miss it terribly.
I suspect everyone has already seen this, but since Andrew brought it to my attention again I have to post it:
At home with the Führer is the story of Simon Waldman's struggle to keep a copy of a 1938 Homes and Gardens magazine posted on his blog. Waldman had run across a gushing pictorial feature on Hitler's mountain home, a bit of an embarassment for the publisher's current incarnation. As a result, Waldman got into copyright infringement trouble and worse.
Seems to be resolved now. Waldman was just trying to raise awareness of the ambivalent (at best) understanding of Hitler abroad on the eve of the darkest period of German history.
If you don't want to read Waldman's account, have a look at the original feature from 1938, now hosted by the Guardian.
In last week's elections in Brandenburg, the PDS (and the SPD) suffered big losses. Die Zeit describes the shrinking representation of the PDS:
Das Protokoll vermerkt: „Beifall der Abg. Dr. Gesine Lötzsch, fraktionslos“. Petra Pau und Gesine Lötzsch, das ist alles, was von der PDS im Parlament übrig geblieben ist. Die Berlinerinnen holten bei der Bundestagswahl 2002 jeweils ein Direktmandat in den Bezirken Hellersdorf-Marzahn und Hohenschönhausen-Lichtenberg. Weil es für ein drittes nicht reichte, schrumpfte die PDS von einer Fraktion mit 37 Abgeordneten und 120 Mitarbeitern zur „Zwei-Frauen-AG“. Die „Reduzierung der Fraktionen im 15.Deutschen Bundestag“ sei auch ein Stück Integration des Ostens, sagte Wolfgang Thierse, als er die neue Legislaturperiode eröffnete. Seine Genugtuung über den Absturz der PDS war kaum zu überhören. Immerhin hatte ihn vier Jahre zuvor ausgerechnet Petra Pau im Bezirk Prenzlauer Berg überraschend geschlagen. Längst vergangene Zeiten.
All our troubles can be traced to Shrub's hat.
(I just really liked that graphic.)
Bernd Ulrich at die Zeit tries to understand the recent popularization of the past in Germany. Is Wortmann's Das Wunder von Bern, like Sonnenallee and Goodbye Lenin, evidence that Germans (chiefly West Germans) are finally "growing up" in their attitudes towards history? [There's more to it than that.]
Heute haben die meisten lebenden Deutschen sich persönlich nichts mehr vorzuwerfen, und sie finden auch kaum noch jemanden, dem man persönlich etwas vorwerfen könnte. Darum stünde so oder so die Verwandlung von persönlicher Schuld in politisch-historische Verantwortung an. Ein heikler Prozess, in dem das Gefühl für das Grauen und für die Gefährdung verloren gehen kann. Nun kommt, historisch zufällig, noch etwas Zweites hinzu: Da die Ökonomie labil wird, suchen die Deutschen neue Identitätsanker, nicht zuletzt in der Historie. Daraus ergibt sich leicht eine Tendenz zur Verkitschung, Verharmlosung, Verflachung. Geschichte, wo man gerne hingeht.
Just for fun: here's how Google translated a larger exerpt, including that same paragraph:
The Germans were with one another reconciled never as as today, and which is, in order to come on the dangers, naturally also delicately. That today still another revisionism did not threaten à la Ernst Nolte or also only before daring courage of trembling Neonationalismus à la Martin Walser. Nobody would come on the idea to explain the Gulag to the Prius from Auschwitz to or to charge the German complicity with German suffering or to explain also only Versailles as the actual place of birth of the Second World War. No, this reconciliation does not need displacing. The danger sees 21 at the beginning. Century differently out: Today most living Germans have to accuse themselves personally nothing more, and they find also hardly still someone, to which one could accuse personally something. Therefore in such a way or so the conversion of personal debt into political-historical responsibility would stand on. A delicate process, in which the feeling for the grey and for the endangerment can be lost. Now, historically coincidentally, still somewhat second is added: Since the economics becomes unstable, the Germans look for new identity anchor, not least in history. From it easily a tendency results to the Verkitschung, minimization, flattening. History, where one goes gladly.
Tony posted a comment with a link to his blog, in which he describes a recent trip to Berlin and parts east. It's a well-observed narrative, and I always like to see how other people understand the process of German division and unification. Hmm. Maybe I'll also get to have coffee with Tom next time I'm in town?