Hello, how are you doing? Welcome to all the new people. I haven’t quite figured out how you got here, but it’s great to see you, and I hope that we can introduce ourselves properly. I’m sure you know your way around, but if you want to know more about me, read some of the more popular posts, or drop me a line, then please do.
If you haven’t got time to read, then I’ve recorded myself reading the post and you can click the button up top or, wherever it is in your substack app and have a listen. I’ve been doing this for a few weeks and decided just to add it without music or other sounds. It is sort of naked, but let’s see how it goes.
It’s been a good week; the weather is beautiful, the sun crystal bright with blue skies, and the temperature has dipped just enough to take the humidity out of the air. I love this time of year.
Most of it was spent in class teaching, but at other times I’ve been watching my kids play footy and even going for a few walks, enjoying the cool evenings.
Stephan
Teaching & Learning
I’m getting ready to head to Doha in a week to teach at our Qatar campus and meet the students I’ve been working with remotely. This is an immersive filmmaking course; essentially, we are using phones and 360˙ cameras to tell stories about language, culture, and identity. Students have been working through ideas and thinking about people and places that would make interesting subjects. Again, just as in Pittsburgh, it isn’t the technical part of this course that is challenging; it is finding the courage required to leave the bubble of the university and explore your surroundings.
In Pittsburgh, students have free bus travel, which is an enormous privilege that local people don’t get, but it’s often the case that their immediate world does not extend beyond their home, classroom, gym, and maybe occasionally downtown or a local coffee shop. In their defense, students are busy and might not have much time to travel around and explore, but there is a deeper issue here about how much college students connect with the community around them.
I happen to think that it is essential for students to learn about where they happen to be, the history of their university, and the place where it is located. Making connections outside the campus community is essential; meeting people and listening to them connects you to a place. The projects that students are doing in Pittsburgh or Doha are designed to encourage exploration and hopefully provide an opportunity to break bread with people who may be your neighbors or who live and work in the town or city where you are studying. Students who do well on the course are those that perhaps took a chance to introduce themselves or sought out people to talk with. It’s something that I think is important, vital in fact, to learning.
Life Lessons
This week I received emails, DM’s, and Tweets reacting to my colleague Dr. Uju Anya’s tweet, wishing an “excruciating death” upon the Queen, who later that day passed away. There is more context on why she sent the tweet here. When Jeff Bazos took time to condemn what she had written, coming down from his cloud bunker, a full-scale twitter-war erupted between those shocked and horrified, and numerous people sending messages of support, defending Uju’s freedom to speak and sharing their own thoughts about colonialism, and the crown’s role in enabling such terrible acts of war and genocide. There were reactions too within my department, and we met privately to share our thoughts and discuss the online reaction. Again, there was a great deal of support and understanding between a caring group of people.
I’ll be honest and say that I did find the tweet shocking, especially that day, having spoken with friends and relatives in the UK, where the mood was somber and reverent, there was a disconnect between the two worlds. Twitter erupted with vitriol and nastiness; it is truly horrible and depressing to read such racism and misogyny aimed at Uju. Then I felt the institution fudged its response. Other users quickly pointed out the connection between Amazon’s recent donation and CMU’s unwillingness to support one of its professors, even, some said throw her under the bus.
During the week, in lessons, I invited discussion with my students, and there were questions and comments representing a range of views and insights. Some were students who shared experiences of the effects of colonialism in their native countries, others who wanted to show firm support for Uju, and others who simply wanted to understand and learn more. It was really interesting, and I also spoke about the cultural significance of the royal family in the UK and elsewhere. For instance, we discussed French colonialism, its effects throughout the world, and the lasting legacy of slavery and war. We talked about how language can be a tool of oppression, where it can be a way of imposing one culture over another.
I doubt whether much of this discussion would have occurred without Uju’s tweet, and as the week has worn on, the debate continued, with other sentiments being expressed around other issues of the monarchy. For instance, having remembered an interview between the actor Michael Sheen and journalist Owen Jones, I clipped the part where they discuss the title of Prince of Wales, which was taken from the Welsh in 1282, and given to the firstborn son of the King or Queen of England, as a mark of England’s supremacy over the Welsh. I stuck it on TikTok, and the comments unanimously supported Sheen’s request that the title be returned to the people of Wales.
All this makes me think that it’s not too late to try to heal the wounds of the past, that these things matter very much to people, and that history is such significant in peoples’ understanding of identity. But as I watch Charles III sign the decree, with the ceremony all around and minions quickly moving pens and fussing over protocol; depressingly, there is such a lack of awareness and empathy that it seems willful and intentional, and now I think that it will take a revolution to bring change.
One final thing, I saw a tweet this week from Dr. Hannah Barham-Brown, a disability & LGBTQ+ activist whose account is a must-read, reassuring people that feelings of sadness and suddenly being overwhelmed with grief at this time when a famous person dies are quite normal. In particular, many people who lost family during the pandemic are thinking about their loved ones. This is a moment where there is much more going on than we might think; private moments with the need for comfort and support.
I think there is so much more that I can say, and I know that these views may not be well-received in some places; it’s all that I have for now, and I may return to add a bit more. Oh, I would add that I’m not down with hospital appointments being canceled and funeral parlors being closed on Monday; this is completely insane.
Lost and Found
Jean-Luc Godard decided to close his life and say a final adieu this week, someone who probably inspired me more than anyone to want to be a filmmaker. I don’t think I’ve even seen a quarter of his oeuvres, so prolific was he, and how rarely there was an opportunity to attend a screening or catch a movie on tv. His films of the ’60s and ’70s will always stand out, especially Bande à Part and Alphaville. I thought A Bout de Souffle was immense, watching again and again on VHS until it was worn and crackly.
There is an immediacy, seriousness, and playfulness in Godard’s film; I like the idea that he’s the John Lennon to Truffaut’s Paul McCartney, and although he became more misanthropic in later life, and his move to video challenging and alienating, there was always a love of the image and a desire to lace your drink with meaning.
Thank you
Okay, a few things to do this morning, so I’ll cut it short. I’m typing, and family is heading out the door, so I’ll pour another cup of coffee, get on with emails, and prepare my lessons.
These lantern flies are everywhere, they’re an invasive species, and the general public has been encouraged to squish them on sight. They have no natural predators, so the numbers are increasing, and they chew wood sap and create a brown sticky goo that kills trees and plants.
Okay, it looks like I’m running out of things to tell you. I hope you all have a lovely weekend, take care of yourselves, and be kind to each other.
*note - I've since edited the post to include a link to an interview that Uju gave to The Cut, which provides more context around what she wrote.