"How Did Jane Austen Make the 10 Pound Note?"

On Monday night, I went to a lovely talk by Dr. James Thompson from UNC Chapel Hill.  This talk made me realize that English-Literature is a good major for me.  Dr. Thompson gave an excellent lecture on Jane Austen.  He outlined her posthumous rise to fame and analyzed aspects of her writing.

Dr. Thompson used the term the "cult of Austen" to describe the mania surrounding fandom of these iconic books.  He spoke of the Jane Austen Society of North America, and their yearly conference which always sells out, complete with a room full of Jane Austen merchandise.  There is this unique love for Austen that inspires bumper stickers that assert, "I'd rather be reading Jane Austen". 

Austen's writing is unique for several reasons.  First, she was a "beneficiary of enlightenment thinking about psychology". Previously, it was generally believed that people didn't really develop.  Children are small people, and they grow up into big people.  There was no concept of adolescence or development.  Austen countered this widely-held belief by creating characters that were "additive".  Her characters develop and gain new self knowledge throughout her novels.  The Mr. Darcy who is introduced in the beginning of Pride and Prejudice is not the same as Mr. Darcy at the end of the story.

Second, Austen was an "innovator in literary devices".  On device that set Austen's writing apart is her use of "free and direct discourse".  This means that she has in her novels direct transcription of character's conscience.  Rather than saying, "she thought" or "she felt", Austen simply pours out the inner thoughts and feelings of characters.  This causes the effect of the intertwining of the narrator's voice and the character's voice.  This is especially evident in Jane Austen's masterpiece, Emma.  At some points in the novel it is nearly impossible to differentiate between the narrator's and Emma.  The reader can interpret whether the narrator is endorsing Emma, criticizing Emma, or whether Emma's thoughts are simply being transcribed. 

For these, and many other reasons, Austen's novels have stood the test of time, enduring through wars and across generations.  Austen will soon take her place on the 10 pound note, a reminder to the nation of Great Britain of her impeccable contributions to the British literary canon.  

Steve Wozniak

On October 3rd, I attended Elon University’s Fall Convocation.  Convocation itself was an amazing experience.  One-hundred-twenty-five alumni processed into the gym in the ‘Long Maroon Line,’ all wearing maroon robes and smiles that showed how proud they were to be back at their alma mater under the gazes of hundreds of current Elon faculty and staff.  The oldest of them was 103 years old, having graduated from Elon in 1932.  When President Lambert introduced him, he got a standing ovation from the crowd.  Seeing him there and the support that he, along with the rest of the alumni, got from the crowd made me feel so blessed to be a part of such a strong and long-lasting community here at Elon.

Right before Steve Wozniak spoke, we were told to take out our cell phones and hold them in the air.  Looking around at all of the iPhones that were being held up, I couldn’t help but think about how incredible it must be for Wozniak to look at the crowd and see how much of an impact he and Apple have made, even on such a small proportion of the population.  It was a powerful example, and a perfect segue into Wozniak’s speech.  When he began to speak, Wozniak commanded the room’s attention; just being in the presence of someone so smart and knowledgeable was almost mind-blowing.  His talk focused on his life and the trials and errors that it took to get Apple started.  From what he said, it is easy to see how Wozniak became so successful – he was a genius when it came to technology and was extremely passionate about it.  He would do anything to complete projects, and would not stop until he had the best possible product.  Even though he has done so many amazing things throughout his life so far, he was rather egotistical and it was obvious that he thinks highly of himself.  He wasn’t hesitant to say that he could outthink people and was the best in school

However, overall, I believe he conveyed some very important messages to Elon and its alumni.  He reminded us that it is important to build an element of fun into our work, or else we will not produce the best work possible and will not have fun while doing so.  Another point he stressed was the importance of believing in yourself and being comfortable with who you are.  Growing up, he had been an introvert and a bit of an outcast due to his “geekiness,” but he managed to find the good in this.  It forced him to “believe in [him]self and be very independent and trust [his] own thinking.”  This was an important skill to have and it built the foundation for his current success.  Overall, Fall Convocation was a good experience due to “The Woz” and his informative speech as well as the ‘Long Maroon Line’ of alumni present.

Resurrection Dance Company

Resurrection Dance Company Blog Post – Oct 17

Today I attended a performance by Resurrection Dance Company from Port Au Prince, Haiti.  It was a very moving performance.  Dance is such a beautiful outflow of the soul.  When people are dancing, it seems as though their souls are being poured out.  [It made me want to do music].  The performance consisted of three drums, background music, and three dancers.  The performers were all male.  The age range was pretty large, ranging from a young boy (of about age 9 or 10) to middle aged adult men.  The drummers were incredible.  The rhythm and motion that they created was astounding.  Wow. I love music.  They kept this solid beat throughout the evening.  For a solid hour, they beat ath those drums.  They created.  They were artful.  They are artists. Passion flowed out of their bodies and into the drums evidently. 

            Then, there were the dancers. Wow.  They were strong, quick and sleek.  They were like wild horses or gazelles.  They moved with alacrity and grace.  One in particular was chiseled like Michelangelo’s David.  He was brawny and strong, like a centaur. 

            The dancers and the drummer used song and dance to tell stories.  They told stories of poverty and abuse, of fishing and celebrations.  Emotion flowed out from their hearts, crept through their arteries and escaped gloriously through every pore of their bodies.  Dance exposes the heart.  It was beautiful.  Even in the sadness it was beautiful. 

            One of my favorite dances was about fishing.  The young boy, Didi, was the fish.  He wore blues, purples, greens, and yellows, with a sequined fish hat on.  He glided and danced around the carpeted floor of KOBC 101 (LaRose Theater).  He was a free bird.  Then fishermen came and engaged in a magnificent dance with him.  They used two simple rods to catch him.  He stood with one foot on each rod and was gracefully carried around the room. The simplicity of this dance was astounding.  They used relatively few items to convey a mighty message.

What to Call That Thing Hiding in Your Closet: Monsters and the Idea of Race

Arts and Humanities Event #2

A large creature emerges from the trees. Its body towers over the man standing nearby, but the most shocking thing about it is its missing head. Its eyes peer out from its shoulders and the mouth stretches across its chest. Is this creature human? If not, what should it be called? Many, especially those alive in medieval times, would call it a monster and categorize it as part of a monstrous race. But as Asa Simon Mittman, a professor of monster studies, suggested, race may not be the best way to categorize beings. Mittman’s research delved into the role of monster races in the medieval ages and what role the word “race” plays in culture.

The idea of race, Mittman declared, is as artificial as the monsters themselves. He gave numerous examples to support his discovery that there is no logical way to categorize groups as races. The “monsters” of medieval literature and art were incredibly human-like in their mannerisms and dress, so these things could not set them apart from humans. Race, he explained, is consequently a cultural and not a biological phenomenon. Simply claiming another being to be of another race sets them apart and may distort perceptions of them.

However, this may be what the creators of literature and art wanted. By calling the strange beings “monstrous races,” artists set them apart from the Anglo-Saxon culture and placed them as a comparison tool. Looking at the “monsters” from afar, humans were able to judge their culture against those of the “monstrous races” and seem normal in comparison. In this way, the literature and art about “monstrous races” was really rhetoric on how the Saxons saw themselves and how they wanted their culture to be perceived.

Mittman presented these ideas of culture and race with admirable exuberance. He seemed incredibly excited to share his research and his thoughts on race in cultural context. This excitement was a little too much for me at some points in the lecture because he spoke at such a speed that it was difficult to process the ideas and keep up with the speech. I also felt a little disconnected to Mittman because he kept his head down and read from his prepared speech. If he had looked out at the audience more, I think his excitement could have helped him connect with his listeners. I was also frequently thrown off by the recurrent use of a medieval dialect that I am not familiar with. While I listened to the strange words, I considered how this introduction of a foreign language might affect a presentation. On the one hand, I thought that it might estrange the audience a little because there would be moments where they could not connect and could not comprehend what was being said. On the other hand, I think it could help express the inherent difference between cultures. Ideas are also often best expressed in their original dialect because nuances don’t get lost in translation. I have also been thinking about a point that Mittman made near the end of his lecture. He mentioned that medieval writings about monsters were considered explanations, but they actually never really explained anything at all. This is a worry of mine; that I will write a lot of words, but actually say nothing of importance. I need to make sure that what I write connects me to my audience and has an effect on them. I will be keeping all of these thoughts and observations in mind as I continue working on a project that will most likely involve writing and presenting.

-Miranda Romano

Monster Art History Lecture

          This past Thursday, I attended an art history lecture titled, “Are the Monstrous ‘Races’? Representing Difference in Medieval Art” and it was presented by Asa Simon Mittman. This lecture revolved around the subject of monstrous beings and ethnicities and how they were perceived in the old days and its connection to how we perceive race today. Mittman based his lecture off of a few different definitions of race, each of which he analyzed and provided examples for. One of the definitions of race he provided defined it as being based on physiological differentiation like distinguishing hairstyles and/or clothes (Bartlett). Another defined race as being a structural relationship that is impermanent and unstable (Heng) and a third defined race as being physically discrete, inherited, and meaningful (Blackburn). He used these definitions to help emphasize his point that these beings tend to be so close to us that we have trouble finding the contrast. This therefore, led to his pondering of the question of whether these beings can even be described as monsters or a different race for that matter.

            Another point that Mittman emphasized revolved around the idea of the unknown. In the context of this presentation, the unknown is the East and this unknown is always on the move. It starts out as Persia, then moves to India, and then to East Africa. Mittman brings up the idea of orientalism and how this idea has a large role in this theme of the unknown and that the “West” always believes that they know everything and this mindset is what leads to issues such as genocide.

            What I took away from this lecture, is that by looking at Medieval art, you can understand how many views and opinions of the world have been shaped. By looking through the lens of monsters, it can be easy to understand how different beings are catalogued by their features almost instantly. It brings up the concept of what the “norm” in society is and how it was set in society in older times. Essentially these monsters are setting the standard for what people should base their judgements off of and this idea is very relatable to contemporary society.

            Overall, I would have to say that although I enjoyed the overall message of the lecture I had a very hard time following it. The way in which Mittman presented was as if he was reading a very long speech and he did so in a very quick manner with very little time devoted to pausing and discussing certain concepts. There were many times throughout the lecture that I felt lost or confused and there were many times that I wanted clarification of an important point that I feel I never got. It felt almost as if Mittman had a time limit he wanted to keep to and this caused him to rush through the presentation as a result, but the content was nonetheless very interesting and thought-provoking.

An Hour's Worth of Narration

An Hour’s Worth of Narration

           

            As a writer, I appreciate a good transition.  A good transition in my mind is something that goes from A to B with an “ab” in-between.  Transitions help move along stories smoothly so the audience can focus on the story as a whole as opposed to many juxtaposed chapter chunks.  In theater, transitions are used in a literary sense because of the structure of the show and a physical sense because of what happens onstage.  These physical transitions could be a shift in the lights (i.e. focusing one on side of the stage or a total blackout), a rearrangement of the set, or a “distraction” to the audience to disguise the stagehands setting up for the next scene.  Elon’s production of The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman chose to use historical and biographical context of the show and Hellman’s life to transition.  While I appreciate the risk they took with this, I do not think it benefitted the production.

            Hellman’s play had few set changes, but the ones that were there were long.  To hide the stagehands resetting for the next scene, director Kirby Wahl had the schoolgirls talk about how the scandal at the heart of the play was based off of Miss Pirie and Miss Woods’s scandal in Scotland in the early 1800s.  The schoolgirls also discussed the major political events around the time the play was written (i.e. Great Depression, banning of homosexuality onstage in New York) and Hellman’s background before and after writing the play.  Typically, these tidbits of useful information are found in the Director’s note inside of the program.  (Contrary to popular belief, yes, people read them.  Or, maybe it’s just me.)  I would have preferred them there, honestly, because the narration grew old on me after the first two transitions.  Yes, I understand that homosexuality was taboo when the play was first performed, yes, I understand that Hellman was accused of being a communist because of her writing, and yes I can therefore conclude that her subject matter which made her a famous voice of theater led to suspicions of her being a communist.  I was able to put two and two together before the next transition, and that disturbed my flow of the piece.

            Fortunately, the cast’s performances were top notch (especially Bonnie Flaherty’s interpretation of Rosalie) and I very much enjoyed watching the play itself.  I just felt like the director did not trust us to absorb the contextual circumstances of the play, so it was constantly drilled into the audience’s heads every transition.  While this did not make me deem the play totally unbearable, I would have enjoyed it more with different transitions.

Dancing in the Landscape

The weekend of parents weekend, I had the opportunity of participating in and attending the Elon Dance Company’s annual site specific dance concert, Dancing in the Landscape. This concert was held on a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon behind the Performing Arts Center and it was overall a really unique experience. It was unique in the sense that I have grown up dancing in studios or on stages where the audience is usually seated in front of you and the dancers are the sole focus. In this situation however, the audience is standing wherever the dancers are not. In other words, for this performance the audience could be either standing in the center of the grass watching the dancers move around them, or they could be standing on the patio watching the dancers in a more traditional manner.

Another interesting aspect of this performance is the fact that the dancers themselves are competing with nature for attention. In a traditional setting, as I mentioned before, the dancing is really the only thing to focus on. For this site specific performance, anything in the surrounding environment, small or big, like a duck in the pond or people just passing by, is another distraction that can easily draw the audience’s attention away from the dancing. Therefore, with this type of performance it is especially important to keep the audience very captivated and intrigued and I feel that this performance accomplished that for the most part.

I took part in the first piece of the performance and it was captivating in my opinion, because it was so different than the typical dance performance. It was a piece based on improvisation so only a framework of the dance was laid out ahead of time and most of the content was thought of by the dancers right on the spot. It also focused largely on highlighting the environment so the movement performed drew the audience’s focus to a different aspect of the environment each time. For example, at one point the dancers were performing in the planted shrubbery next to the Performing Arts building, and at another point they were performing on a bench in front of the lake so the audience was able to get a new perspective of the space while watching the dancers. By the end of the piece, after following the dancers around, the audience had made a full 360 degree rotation.

The third piece of the performance was more along the lines of traditional dance, yet it still had its quirks. This piece was composed of African dance inspired movements but the soundtrack was techno and thus created a very interesting atmosphere. The space was used very effectively as the dancers formed all sorts of geometric patterns and shapes and it was overall a very appealing dance.

The only aspect of this performance that bothered me was that the concepts behind the dances were more abstract than usual, and this in combination with the distracting environment I felt made it easier for the audience’s attention to be drawn away from the dancing. I felt that there were many times throughout the concert that I saw various audience members’ eyes wandering about or people murmuring to each other most likely because they were confused as to what was going on. Even as a participant I felt that the concepts needed to be introduced and explained more so that the audience could be more engaged and invested in the performance. Aside from this however, I feel this event was executed very well and was a perfect event for parents weekend. 

Collage

During Elon’s parents weekend, I had the opportunity to perform and attend each of the four “Collage” performances, an annual event for Elon University’s Music Theatre Department.  A sort of revue performance, the show consists of a diverse spectacle of numbers directed, choreographed, and even arranged by Elon students. 

From opening to closing, the show ranged from high energy dance numbers to more serious, meaningful ballads.  Because of the venue, Yeager Recital Hall, the show had an intimate feel due to the resonance of the hall and the interspersed performers within the audience.  Each class of Music Theatre majors had a piece of their own, which showcased the growth of the performers throughout their four years at Elon.  Although all class numbers were well done and impressive, the maturity of the latter years was apparent throughout the complexity and depth of the numbers. 

My only complaint would be the overwhelming nature of the “inside jokes” within numbers.  With the department of performers sitting in direct sight of the audience, distractions were presented when students in the audience would laugh or applaud at times that were perplexing for those who had not seen the show before.  As a performer, when fellow classmates improved or changed something from show to show, or when friends did exceptionally well, it was tempting to express my entertainment.  Seeing and speaking to audience members, I realized that this is distracting and pulls their attention from the show.  It is important to allow audiences to see a show for what it is, without help or distraction from other performers.  

As mentioned before, the range of numbers was diverse.  From character acting in “Take Back Your Mink”, to scatting in “Brotherhood of Man”, and to the relaxed Judy Garland/Barbra Streisand standard “Get Happy/Happy Days”, each number in collage showcased its performers in what seemed to be their most comfortable style.  Aside from the men’s number, which seemed slightly under-prepared comparitively, all pieces were strong in delivery and left audiences laughing, applauding, and even crying. 

It was apparent through the numbers, the senior speeches, and the finale, that there is a familial sense throughout the department.  The show radiated support and understanding throughout the classes from performer to performer.  It was an inspiring sight to see and refreshing to pick up on the deeper values that the show made apparent: love, support, and unity.  These are values that are more or less, few and far between in our daily lives.  It was an excellent reminder of how peers should treat peers, and how influential a supportive environment can be for a high-level of growth and development.  

The Children's Hour

On Friday, October 4^th I attended Elon University’s main stage production of “The Children’s Hour” written by Lillian Hellman and directed by Professor Kirby Wahl.  A work that first debuted in 1934, the play told the story of the fatal consequences of a string of lies initiated by an angry little girl fed up with the life at her all-girls boarding school.  Blaming her unhappiness on a mischievous accusation of a lesbian affair between her two female headmasters, the boarding school goes up in ruin, taking the relationships, livelihood, and futures of the teachers down with it.  Illegal on stage and off at the time, the mention of a lesbian affair, or any homosexual topics proved to be quite controversial.  Interestingly almost 80 years later, this topic is still in fiery debate.  With such a rich, and provocative plot line, there are a multitude of critical elements to maintain in modern productions like that of Elon’s in order to pay respect to Lillian Hellman’s original work. 

Unlike many other theatrical productions, Director Kirby Wahl chose to present this controversial material in a unique fashion, using narration to begin and end each act or scene.  The audience was given a serious presentation of the historical contexts and background behind the given material by an ensemble of schoolgirls.  The serious nature of the presentation allowed the narration to support the ensuing seriousness of the play, instead of distracting from the plot.  The schoolgirls were seen around the stage throughout the production watching the play with solemn, almost unchanging expressions, which focused the audience to the intended action on stage and served as a link between past and present.  The presentation of this play was unique and took a risk that seemed to support the audiences understanding of the important principals and morals that Lillian Hellman originally intended for this work.  It was informative and academic in structure, but just as emotionally enticing as the play itself without the narration.   The play did run very long due to the added narrations.  This aspect had an apparent effect on the audiences attention and interest, and if done again, would be a critical note to pay attention to. 

It was my opinion that the overall production of the play itself was successful.  The gravity of the controversy was very tangible throughout, and the actors who specifically played the characters of Mary Tilford, Amelia Tilford, Rosalie Wells, and Lily Mortar provided beyond excellent performances that portrayed raw emotion, truth, and strong objectives based in the historical contexts.  I felt that the two actors portraying the headmasters of the school, did not pull me as deeply into the story as the afore mentioned characters, however their performance was still extremely intriguing.  Touching on topics such as homosexuality, dishonesty, bullying, family responsibility, depression, and suicide, this work riveted audiences and in a sense, left them inspired to keep the reality onstage from ever happening in their own lives or their own world.  The production did not contain any personal bias, which also allowed the audience a vast freedom of thought on the controversial topics.  It told the story of human emotions and consequences, something that everyone could relate to even though the main themes may have been at the center of controversy.