As much as everyone in academia tosses about the grand idea that graduate students should be doing ‘original work’ and ‘finding their voices as scholars,’ dreams of being an academic renegade are quickly shot down. In order to ascend to the pantheon of senior art history scholars who publish about “the history of string” or present papers that sound like modernist poetry, the lowly grad student must first demonstrate an ability to confuse mere mortals. For my department, this means writing really, really long papers that use phrases like “transgressive materiality” and “abjection-based subjectivity.” These are strange academic hoops to leap through, an acrobatic feat necessary to prove to established scholars that you understand confusing ideas well enough to confuse other people with them. It’s relentless, really.

Still, I am excited to try my hand at this long-and-original-scholarship thing. I have a topic and idea that I’m passionate about. I’m eager to prove that this barely-known Japanese American artist has something relevant to say about current issues. I’m tickled that I arrived at the crux of my thesis through theological considerations which led to some solid research questions. I’m ready to write:

The thesis I am proposing suggests that Lynne Yamamoto’s ‘Chiyo’ pieces are more complex than the binaries of gender and race established by the existing scholarship. While Yamamoto creates installations with highly specific references to an unfamiliar history, she simultaneously allows for an intuitive response from viewers through her use of the abject. I will argue that Yamamoto’s work thus participates in two major theoretical conversations of American art in the nineties: the emphatic creation of personal identity through autobiography and the dissolving of identity through abjection. The ‘Chiyo’ pieces embody a tension between these positions, and new scholarship is necessary to explore the rich interplay between two seemingly opposed strategies.

Academic hoops, here I come.

Today, I was ‘oriented’ to my new position as Teaching Assistant. Yes, I, Elissa Weichbrodt, am about to be partially entrusted with the minds and grades of WashU freshmen whose parents are paying extraordinary amounts of money for their child to attend a top twenty school.

I’ll be TAing for our so-called “Intro to Western,” that strange beast of a survey class that covers everything in the west from cave paintings to last week in a semester. Yep, a single semester. Depending on the faith you do or do not place in radiocarbon dating, this means that we are covering 32,007 years of art in about twelve weeks.

As a scholar-in-training of contemporary art and theory, I find it hilarious to note the similarity between the cave paintings that we begin with:

And the paintings we end with:

I realize that thinking this is funny rather than proof that culture has died simply underlines the fact that I am, indeed, a hopeless nerd. And that formal teleology is silly. Also that I’m a hopeless nerd.

Really, this may only be funny to me, but I kind of want it on a t-shirt or something:

For background, see lolcats which, oddly enough, led to TheLOLgians and PhiLOLsophers. All this reinspiration via Josiah.

I don’t think I’ve ever done this before in my life but, well, allow me to quote the Beastie Boys:

Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten
From the Battery to the top of Manhattan
Asian, Middle-Eastern and Latin
Black, White, New York you make it happen.

Picky readers may point out the lack of antecedent for the pronoun “it.” This supposed grammatical failure actually serves as the location for rendering intelligible what the text does not itself think but nevertheless allows to be thought. In this case, “it” refers to the extraordinary happiness experienced by my eyes.

I only saw a touch of what a first time visitor is ‘supposed’ to see in New York, but my eyes were pleased to see my pile of research multiply, startled by Eric Fischl’s mosaic in Penn Station, refreshed by the mix of ethnicities, surprised by the orange trumpet vines crawling up Astoria apartments, tickled to see a subway mariachi band, delighted to see one of my favorite up and coming artists, excited to meet an art world rising star, and darn pleased to look at a lot of good art.

Thanks, New York. And thank you, too, Beastie Boys.

Towards the end of the semester, discussion in my 1930s class rabbit-trailed to more contemporary debates that left me uneasy and rather at odds with the practical outworkings of contemporary theories on race. At it’s pithiest incarnation, the question was such: should the white, adoptive parents of a Guatemalan child raise that child to know Spanish? The implications may run deeper than you think.

If you teach a dark-haired, almond-eyed child to speak Guatemalan even though she is living in a Caucasian community, what are you saying about race? Do we assume that, simply because of biology, the girl will have some sort of affinity for the language? If she will never live in Guatemala, is it inauthentic to teach her to like Chiles Rellenos when her adoptive parents just eat steak and potatoes? If you teach her Spanish and culture, are you simply caving to the folks who will profile her by appearance and assume that she must speak another tongue? Are you giving in to racism?
Currently, critical race theory is the defacto position of most academics. It posits that race is purely a social construction that people “perform.” In other words, there are no inherent character vices or strengths that accompany the DNA that makes someone’s skin yellow or hair curly. African Americans are not naturally energetic. Japanese Americans are not naturally conscientious. Caucasians are not naturally adventurous. Instead, any shared characteristics in groups of people who share biological race are the results of social conditioning. I mimic those around me. I act “white” — as I have seen it performed — when I want to be perceived as “white.” I act “Japanese-American” when I am expected to do so.

The attraction of this theory is, of course, that it firmly repudiates the dangerous xenophobic and racist logic of, say, the Third Reich. Where I get stuck, however, is in its actual practice.

We are all culture-bound image-bearers. At first consideration, I suppose that statement could fit nicely with critical race theory. Yet, I wonder if part of recognizing our tie to culture is to acknowledge and confront, rather than theoretically deny, the ways that race has shaped our current relationships. I think it’s worth it for a Guatemalan girl — even one raised in Missouri — to know how cultural, historical perceptions of race play into the ‘need’ for her to be adopted in the first place. It’s worth explaining to her why people might speak slowly and loudly to her and why some day she’ll have trouble finding makeup that matches her skin tone. Can you really raise kids without race?

The cumulative products of my first year of grad school can reasonably be compared to a bag of Chex Mix (the sweet ‘n’ salty caramel variety, to be precise). There are shorter, sweeter papers on an early twentieth century French poet and Baroque paintings of women painting. My paper on nineteenth century Native Hawaiian resistance through landscape painting is chock full of clustery goodness. The paper on Dorothea Lange’s photographs of the internment — and the agency of her subjects in actively limiting her choices as a documentarian — is a pretzel and the paper on Eva Leitolf’s post-wall photographs of marginal violence in middle class neighborhoods is surely a bagel chip. And the seminar-paper-turned-thesis-topic on Lynne Yamamoto? Caramel popcorn, I hope.

As written products, the papers are hardly spectacular. I was told I write “elegantly,” but I think that my mini collection of cool ballet flats may have influenced the professor’s word choice. What excites me, though, is that I’ve found the rhythm of making writing work for me. In the one-two whammy of Advanced Writing and Modern Literary Criticism — both with my favorite, lovable grump, Dr. Wildeman — I began to understand the attraction of writing to learn. My paper-writing has grown increasingly messy since then.

It starts with a couple of files heedlessly named things like “leitolf paper ideas.doc” and “leitolf ideas 2.doc.” Close descriptions of the images in question, mixed with spurts of inspired, ellipse cushioned musings, trickle down the page. I am loathe to delete anything, even when it becomes clear that the paper will not be going down this or that promising path. By the time “leitolf paper draft 2.doc” becomes a reality, I’ve cycled through several theses, despaired over ever writing an introduction, and started throwing in bold text notes like “Benjamin should go here” or “I think Bhabba says this.” Dr. Wildeman’s injunction to always write what you know first and then frame it in scholarship still strikes me as somewhat profound and eminently useful for preserving your own voice. Somewhere in there I may even cut up twenty pages worth of ideas and rearrange them on the living room rug.
In writing and reorganizing and self-contradicting I figure out what I wanted to say in the first place. And while I’ve finally learned to delimit a seminar paper and just turn the durn thing in, I’m nerd-ishly excited about the opportunity to go back and revise it later. For a lowercase type-a personality like myself, the ability to see graded papers as ‘idea investments’ rather than completed, self-contained products is a significant shift.

Also, let’s be frank. Thinking about seminar papers as Chex Mix rather than, say, perfectly crafted, enduring artworks helps relieve some of the pressure — real and imagined — that accompanies this academic moment. Is it a problem that grad school is teaching me to lower my expectations?

My first year’s end lacked definition and instead blurred into a rush of opportunities, aches, and other life business. Still, in an unexpected grad school perk, I did get to meet Ansel Adams’ son. Can that go on my CV?

The Art Historian is a funny bird. Something of a rare species, no one is entirely sure what exactly it is that an Art Historian does during and after the schooling process. Art Historians themselves are not always sure. In a sprawling discipline that prides itself on its interdisciplinarity, such ambivalence can often render conversation difficult, or at least unpredictable.

Paradoxically, both the cause and the escape of such uncomfortable exchanges a can be traced to a single source: a German Name.
The Germans, it seems, have studied pretty much everything. They’re also pretty good about writing down everything they’ve studied. Better still, they disagree all the time with each other, which means more thinking and more writing. Whole forests have been felled to accomodate the machinations of the German Mind. Germans also seem to float fairly freely between disciplines, doing exotic things like talk about photography, memory, and national identity all in one essay. German Names have a tendency to pop up when you least expect them. You’ll be talking about 1930s abstraction and then, out of nowhere, Brecht shows up. In the middle of Baroque poetic portraiture, Benjamin makes an appearance. Adorno drops in on discussions of jazz music. If you’re not careful, Arendt will pop up in the middle of a banal landscape painting.

Operating in their special world of elaborate cross-pollinations, Art Historians like German Names. They make us feel like we belong to disciplines like History and Literature that normal people know about. I’m fairly certain that if I ever get my PhD, I will be handed a small, pocket-size encyclopedia of German Names that I will henceforth be expected to utilize in case a conversation is accidentally becoming too accessible.

On the other hand, no one, really, has read all the German Names. And it is this sheer volume that will extricate you from the most dire of academically-overwrought conversations. “Oh,” you could say, “I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the writings of Warheimsteiner.* He may be of help to you since he considers the aesthetic power of small woodland creatures and the socio-environmental implications thereof.” And then, as the Art Historian rifles through her mental file of German Names, you can excuse yourself for a much-needed refill of the wine glass.

That said, taking Noel’s last name for my own may have been the greatest professional move of my life. Perhaps one day I, too, can be a German Name.

* Lebenmier, Kaufenkop, Hammsteil, Schuebenhauer, etc. may also be substituted.

This knowledge bite is dedicated to R. David Macey, in the hope that it will someday feature in an epic poem.

Yesterday I learned that cheese — yes, cheese — was a medieval metaphor for conception.

Consider: liquids join together to form a solid after a period of waiting. The result could be Gouda… or a kid.

It remains to be seen if some medieval nuns, enamored as they were with the idea of being spiritually wed to Christ, saw their convent’s (economically prosperous) cheese-making as the equivalent of birthing spiritual children.

There’s a funny component of grad school that seems awfully like kindergarten: sharing. Twenty years ago, as you clutched your new box of 256 colored crayons in your hands, a kind adult would look down at you from lofty heights and intone, reproachfully, “Now, are you going to share?” Alternate-but-amiable courses of action were, in reality, non-existent. Survival meant sharing.

Graduate work, at least in the humanities, seems to operate under the same fundamental assumption. We have been deluged with e-mails from my department, exhorting each and every one of us to share. Submitting scholarly work to conferences is, of course, part of the academic life. But there is a certain urgency layered on top of these calls for papers that I was not expecting. If, heaven forbid, no one from our small department applies to an especially prestigious conference, a bizarre inferiority complex manifests itself. In the professors’ minds, the logic seems to proceed thusly:

I think we’re a good department.
Good departments apply to good conferences.
We didn’t apply to this good conference.
Therefore, we are not a good department.

Heavens! Should such a situation arise, we are sent terse e-mails, asking, “Can anyone tell me why no one has applied to this symposium?” The implication: Aren’t you going to share?

Well, good news for all: kindergarten worked, and I am sharing.

Dear Elissa,

I am writing to inform you that you have been selected to participate in the Seventeenth Annual Indiana University Art History Graduate Student Symposium on Saturday, March 24th….

Please send me an email conirming your participation in the symposium no later than Friday, February 23rd. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions.

Best,

—-

Huzzah!