Placing the Academy: Essays on Landscape, Work, and Identity

316 Pages·2007·1.3 MB·English

by  Jennifer Sinor

Placing
the
Academy
e s s a y s o n l a n d s c a p e,
w o r k , a n d i d e n t i t y
Edited by
Jennifer Sinor & Rona Kaufman
Placing the Academy

Placing the Academy
Essays on Landscape, Work,
and Identity
Edited by
Jennifer Sinor and Rona Kaufman
Utah State University Press
Logan, Utah
Copyright © 2007 Utah State University Press
All rights reserved
Utah State University Press
Logan, UT 84322-7800
ISBN-13: 978-0-87421-657-8 ISBN: 978-0-87421-549-6 (e-book)
ISBN-10: 0-87421-657-5
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free, recycled paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Placing the academy : essays on landscape, work, and identity / edited by Jennifer
Sinor and Rona Kaufman.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-87421-657-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. College teaching--Philosophy. 2. College teachers--United States. 3. Identity
(Psychology) 4. Place
(Philosophy) 5. Creative writing. I. Sinor, Jennifer, 1969- II. Kaufman, Rona,
1970-
LB2331.P57 2007
378.1’2--dc22
2006038145
For Michael, For Tim,
my bedrock who keeps me rooted
J. S. R. K.
Table of Contents
I. Introduction 1
1. Writing Place
Jennifer Sinor 3
II. Here 25
2. Six Kinds of Rain: Searching for a Place in the
Academy
Kathleen Dean Moore and Erin E. Moore 27
3. The Work the Landscape Calls Us To
Michael Sowder 39
4. Valley Language
Diana Garcia 52
5. What I Learned from the Campus Plumber
Charles Bergman 65
6. M-I-Crooked Letter-Crooked Letter
Katherine Fischer 83
7. On Frogs, Poems, and Teaching at a Rural
Community College
Seán W. Henne 98
III. There 107
8. Levittown Breeds Anarchists! Film at 11
Kathryn T. Flannery 109
9. Living in a Transformed Desert
Mitsuye Yamada 125
10. A More Fortunate Destiny
Jayne Brim Box 139
vi
11. Imagined Vietnams
Charles Waugh 152
IV. Everywhere 166
12. Teaching on Stolen Ground
Deborah A. Miranda 169
13. The Blind Teaching the Blind: The Academic as
Naturalist, or Not
Robert Michael Pyle 188
14. Where Are You From?
Lee Torda 202
V. In Between 215
15. Going Away to Think
Scott Slovic 217
16. Fronteriza Consciousness: The Site and Language of
the Academy and of Life
Norma Elia Cantú 233
17. Bones of Summer
Mary Clearman Blew 243
18. Singing, Speaking, and Seeing a World
Janice M. Gould 254
19. Making Places Work: Felt Sense, Identity, and
Teaching
Jeffrey M. Buchanan 269
VI. Coda 285
20. Running in Place: The Personal at Work, in Motion,
on Campus, and in the Neighborhood
Rona Kaufman 287
Contributors 303
vii

I
Introduction