Class Procedures and Reminders
Week 3 Reading. If you have not done any Week 3 reading yet, today is the day! In Myth-Folklore you will be choosing from Biblical or Classical stories, and in Indian Epics you will be starting the Ramayana. Hopefully you're getting a sense of what it means to "read like a writer" so that your notes will be able to help you tell your own version of a story this week, based on the new reading.
Project stack. Today I'll start reading and replying to the projects that people turned in over the long weekend. You can check the stack at any time to make sure I got your assignment, and I'll keep you posted on my progress each day here in the announcements. If you turned in something on Friday or Saturday, I'll have comments for you today for sure.
As part of the #ScholarStrike which is taking place today and tomorrow, I am not posting the regular announcements. I'm just an instructor without tenure, only a year-to-year contract, so I cannot go on strike... but in solidarity with those who are able to strike, I have prepared some items to share about racism and white supremacy as they relate to both of these classes.
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I shared this article in the announcements last week, and I wanted to share it again; it's a great way to reflect on the whiteness of mythology, and to also think about the worlds of mythology beyond whiteness: ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Imagines a World Free of Whiteness.
Consider also the incredible impact of the movie Black Panther, which has been very much on people's minds as they mourn and remember the great Chadwick Boseman. Here's an interview with director Ryan Coogler about the importance of that film as a work of imagination and anti-racism:
And in relation to the Indian Epics class, here are some thoughts from Devdutt Pattanaik on white appropriations of Indian traditions: Mythology of White Hindus. In particular, he argues that white scholarship tries to standardize the creative multiplicity of Indian traditions, something he also talks about in this TED video: India is not chaotic.
These two classes — Mythology and Folklore, and Indian Epics — are both part of OU's General Education curriculum, which has been divided into Western and Non-Western categories. After years of both student and faculty protest (I wrote about that here: Gen. Ed. Humanities at OU), OU is finally changing the labels. Unfortunately, though, the new labels —Western and World — continue the use of the term "Western" as a codeword for "white," marking out white culture as central and superior (if it were really about geography, Africa is just as geographically western as Europe is).
OU also continues to embrace the label "Sooner," which glorifies the occupation of Native land. Lena Tenney wrote a piece for the OUDaily about the anti-indigenous reaction to the "boomer sooner" resolution back in 2016. More recently, though, there has been some positive change — Campus organizations' decisions to change names — while more and more racist mascots are being replaced. Here's a beautiful video about that: Proud to Be.
The use of Native American names and symbols for mascots is one form of cultural appropriation, and there is also scholarly cultural appropriation (as Devdutt Pattanaik discusses above). As you do your reading and writing for these classes, I hope you will think about cultural appropriation, and also about what it means to engage in respectful and responsible ways with different cultures. You can learn more about that here: Cultural Appropriation for the Worried Writer by Jeannette Ng.
In order to provide you with free reading materials for these classes, I have relied mostly on public domain materials published before 1923, and that means they reflect deeply racist practices. For example, many of the 19th-century collectors of mythology and folklore did not even credit their sources; the white writers put their own names on the books that they published, and the names of the real artists, the true storytellers, were forever lost. Here's a video with some powerful thoughts from Grace Lin about what it means to both accept and reject these racist books from the past: What to do when you realize classic books from your childhood are racist.
So, I hope you will take some time now and throughout the semester to think about some of these important issues, and also to ponder the question of racism and white supremacy in the Gen. Ed. curriculum here at OU.
To learn more about the #ScholarStrike, visit their website; they will be sharing materials at their site throughout the strike. Tomorrow I will share some materials about policing, specifically the policing of education with big data, ed tech surveillance and AI, all of which is being done without our consent; more on that tomorrow.
Find out more at the Scholar Strike website.
