To Work

A performer at the L.A. bicycle coalition pary in the park last weekend. Nice cloudy sunset.


I've now had each of my three courses for the fall term here at UCLA, which consist of a geography class called "philosophy of geographical inquiry," a history of science class called "political economy and science," and a film class called "documentary video production." I think they will each be rewarding and worthwhile. In addition I'm attending two collquia per week, one in cultural geography and one in anthropology, called "mind, medicine, and culture." These colloquia do not require much time, just a couple hours a week and a little prep reading. The geography program here has a more rigidly defined set of requirements than Wisconsin that all the graduate students share. From what I can tell this is because there are fewer students than Wisconsin and the interests of the students are more closely aligned. UCLA geography has been bending itself toward the British model of creating a school that emphasizes one aspect of an academic discipline, in this case cultural geography. While the collection of professors here represent the breadth of interests in geography, there appear to be fewer odd ball combinations of interests as I observed at Wisconsin, like the urban social geography of educational institutions in Singapore and the quantitative analysis of changes in the Mississippi River in Iowa.

Because of this more rigid and more tightly monitored program, I have been a little bit on guard about the doc video class becuase it is what I feared would be the hardest to justify to a committee of geography professors who might wonder how a film course can possibly contribute to completing a textual dissertation in geography. I don't know the answer to this for sure yet, other than I am committed to using the medium in some way to express geographical ideas, a proposition that could potentially bring the coolness of geography out of its closeted existence in America and into the lives of more people. To ease this worry I was extremely pleased with the first assignment in the doc vid class. We are to make a 2 minute edited video sketch of a place, attempting to evoke an emotional response from viewers through images so they feel as if they know the place. It couldn't have fit more perfect with the interests of geographers, and I was even able to talk about some ideas for the sketch with professor Michael Curry today, assuaging my concerns completely. We agreed that the sketched place should be one that is thick with routine, like a kitchen or a car. You hardly notice you're in these places until something goes awry, like the car seat is pushed back, or the untesil drawer is switched with another one. To me describing what a place is like must involve how people interact with it, or how people interact with each other in that place. Curry aggrees and gives the example of a novel (title coming...) that is known for taking place in a cafe, but never describes the cafe at all -- it is known only through the dialogue of the people that frequent the place.



A place in Chinatown near the bicycle party. Nice name. I had three $1 entrees, one of which was pig ears. They were gross.