first efforts

Stuff White People Like, retro edition

I found this while cruising around on James Lileks's blog. The first 2 minutes are especially mesmerizing. And a little pornographic. At least if toasters and floor waxing turn you on.

Speechless

Yesterday the U of I Board of Trustees approved our department's name change. After many years trapped in layers of bureaucracy, our proposal to drop the "speech" from Speech Communication made it through and now we will be called the Department of Communication. The change will not only put us in the company of the majority of doctoral programs in the field, but it also reflects broader changes in the discipline as a whole. We are about much more than speech, so it makes sense that our name reflects that.

But names are fleeting things. According to our departmental history, this will be the eleventh name for our department. They are, in order, beginning in 1886: Department of Rhetoric and Oratory; Course in Rhetoric and Oratory (1890); Department of Oral Rhetoric (1893); Department of Rhetoric and Oratory (again, 1898); Department of Public Speaking (1903); Division of Public Speaking, Department of English (1906); Department of Speech (1947); Department of Speech and Theatre (1960); Department of Speech (again, 1967); Department of Speech Communication (1973). Those familiar with the field might be able to discern specific moments in disciplinary history reflected in these names. It strikes me as I list these that this would make a great comprehensive exam question for  graduate students: Trace the key historical shifts in the discipline of communication by tracking the name changes of the department.

Although one might assume that a rhetorician would bemoan the loss of the moniker "speech," I have always been a bit more ecumenical. I began at the University of St. Thomas as a freshman major in Communication, Telecommunication, and Theater and graduated as a major in Communication. I began a master's degree in Speech Communication at the University of Maine and graduated with a master's degree in Communication and Journalism. And I got a Ph.D. in Communication Studies at Northwestern's School of Speech, which is now a School of Communication.

So let's just say I'm not too attached.

One of the reasons why the field moved away from the name "speech" (not to mention "oratory" or "rhetoric") is that it needed to recognize and account for the rise of mass communication, which includes most recently the profound shift to digital media. I think it's marvelously ironic that one of the most recent effects of that shift has been a rise in attention to...speech. As the Huffington Post, Oratorical Animal, and politico.com have noticed, oratory is having something of a renaissance thanks to sites like YouTube. Even though, as the cable pundits repeated over and over again last week, mouths agape, Obama's speech on race was thirty-seven minutes long, more than three million people watched the whole thing on YouTube. All of it. You Tube is the new fireside chat.

So thumbs up for speech. Or communication. Or whatever. It's all good.

Finally, a candidate willing to squash calumny!

This week is campaigns and elections week in my visual politics class. We're hanging out primarily in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but I will show them a few nineteenth century images, too. Get out your magnifying glass to see what else Farmer Garfield hopes to squelch, squash, or scythe.

Urdhva Prasarita Peepasana!

This year's winner of the St. Paul Pioneer Press Peep Diorama Contest. I'm also a big fan of the second-place winner's news value.

Oh, the bracketology!*

*for the NCN guys...

Obama's NCAA Bracket

The NYT reports that Obama has released his final four bracket (can Hillary's taxes be far behind?). In a typically Obamian bold move, he put Pitt in the Final Four. Nice.

(Thanks to V. for the tip!)

The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib

This week's New Yorker features a piece called "Exposure: The Woman Behind the Camera at Abu Ghraib" by Phillip Gourevitch and Errol Morris. Well worth checking out.

Holy week

No, I don't mean THAT Holy Week; it's tourney time! My pool is on again this year; drop me an email if you're interested in joining us.

As for advice, well, I have two pieces of it: watch out for Wisconsin, and don't put all your eggs in the Kansas basket. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Bill Self cannot coach in the tournament.

Beyond that, you're on your own. Good luck!

NCA(A)

As I write this my right hand is brushing up against the fur of a very large black and white cat, who is lying next to the laptop with his left paw outstretched so that it's resting on the keyboard; a feline gesture of possession. This same cat showed us yesterday afternoon just how much he cares about the drama and excitement of conference tournaments and Selection Sunday:

 

As for me, I'm spending my Spring Break this week on highly statistical matters. First, NCA: now that the reviews are in (thanks to you all), I am diving headlong into program planning mode, learning about z-scores and assembling the program for the Rhetorical and Communication Theory division. They don't give us a lot of time to do this, so I gotta get moving. Second, NCAA: gotta do my research, set up the pool (stay tuned on that if you're interested), and crunch the numbers there too. Along the way I need to squeeze in two manuscript reviews, work on an (embarrassingly) overdue book chapter, and cram in some hill-running so I can get ready to run this next month. Yikes!

Spring? Definitely. Break? Not so much. But with a cat on my lap(top) and a tiny dog at my feet, it's pretty darn okay.

Canine compulsions; first in an occasional series

Wren and Madison practicing canine compulsion #141: Be There for Cheese.