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November 15, 2005
Like Sands Through the Hourglass...
these are the days of our lives. Only the days are mixing together, and the time is coming up short. It is amazing that the reason we want to become scholars is our love of knowledge, but our journey requires some level of denial of the things we wish we could read the most. We need the acquisition of massive amounts of knowledge, but we want the “recreational reading”, or something like it. Today in class CGB told us that we need to take an hour a week to do some of those readings, or composing of bibliographies for our exams-something constructive that is not syllabi related. Now, I know that creating a bibliography ( especially for exams!) may not rock the foundation of the mundane, but believe me, when your time is filled with required readings, projects, grading, and the like, creating anything seems like decadent indulgence. The first thing I need to do is decide what areas I want my exams to be in. Since Latino/a Rhetoric is my baby, I think that perhaps an exam on critical race theory would be in order. I can imagine that the list for this exam will be quite long, since I am starting at ground zero, but there is something exciting about acquiring that level of expertise on the topic of your choice. The challenge for me will be in deciding which books I want to read, since time will again be of the essence…but I take pleasure in knowing that although I am but a sapling in the discipline I love, my roots are cemented enough for me to begin thinking about cultivating some very distinct branches. See, my level of creativity has already begun!
Posted by dvaldesd at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)
November 03, 2005
association
Media is a mystery to me; I don't watch a lot of television because I spend most of my time reading. Computers both fascinate and scare me because of my lack of knowledge. Music is a media I definitely understand because I feel a sort of kinship with the beats as they remind of certain embedded memories that only surface when provoked by sound. History. Now defined as "his-story. Why not her-story? This is the question that is going to broaden my horizons in the semester to come. Again, fear, trepidation of the unknown, and of course the desire to do the best that I can. The personal? Not nearly as melodious as the media aspect of my life, but certainly her-story. My story. My story? Where is the history that I have been looking for? I feel like I am coming closer to it as time goes on, but how close can I come to his-story without drowning her-story; what is the beat of my story, and how long will my story be a MY-stery?
Posted by dvaldesd at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)
November 01, 2005
On Rhetoric
In discussing my career goals with CGB today, I was expressing the difficulties in acquiring theoretical readings in Latino/a Rhetoric. As we discussed the ways in which I might enrich my research, we ran straight into the million dollar question: what, indeed, is the definition of rhetoric? And, with a plethora of definitions before me, how do I determine which definition is appropriate for my research? Well, this is the question isn't it? As expected, that question begs another, and another. What does Latino/a Rhetoric look like? How can it be articulated in a way that fairly (because I am apprehensive about using the word "appropriately") depicts the people of the Caribbean-more than that-the island of my heart? Then of course, there is the dilemma of naming. In his essay titled "Memoria", Villanueva gives a brief history of Puerto Ricans and explains that since our discovery from other people we have been bearing the names that have been imposed on us, and not any of our own social construction. He asserts that we came from the lower Antilles and were named Arawak/Taino by the Caribs, only to be renamed once Columbus arrived and decided that the rich port that he had landed upon should be called just that. The acquiring of this information tells me that my academic journey lies not only in the acquisition of knowledge in rhetoric, but in history as well. The history that I hope will lead to me forge a way into a conversation that as of yet has not been undertaken. My other career goal is to create a journal that will be for all of us that are underrepresented in our field; those of us that want to be included in the scholarship we love; those of us that want to tell our stories, our pidgins, and the events that have always been in our memoria.
Posted by dvaldesd at 06:51 PM | Comments (0)