dispatches from the dean
It’s no secret: Austin and the surrounding area is changing. And if ACC is to continuing meeting the needs of our community, so too must we grow and evolve. One way the college is currently rising to the challenge is by implementing its first Bachelor’s degree program, expected to begin Fall 2018. Continue reading “Announcing…ACC’s first Bachelor’s Program!”
Some of you know that I am a classically-trained organist. What does that mean? Well, mostly it means that I know what all the knobs, pedals, and switches on an instrument like this are for.
I play for at Christ Lutheran Church, just up the road in Georgetown, where I’ve been principal organist for over thirty years. Thanks to a generous bequest, we’re replacing our aging organ with a new Viscount, like the one pictured above.
First things first: Where do you start when you go shopping for an organ? In the next several installments of this series, I’ll tell the whole story—mainly because I’ve had so much fun with this process. Along the way, maybe you’ll pick up a few interesting details about life in the world of organs. Continue reading “How to buy an organ, part 1”
Today is the traditional birthday of philosophy, May 28, 585 BCE. It’s a great story, so I’ll tell a version of how philosophy was born.
The ACC Honors program provides an opportunity for motivated students to fulfill core syllabus requirements with specialized topics in the humanities, sciences, and the arts. While the program has been in place for a number of years, new classes are being added to the roster with increasing frequency. Implemented in Spring 2015 and satisfying the English 1302 credit, Queer Writings sits among more recent offerings in the Honors catalogue, but has quickly become one of the most popular.
Created by ACC English professor Louisa Spaventa, Queer Writings gives students an opportunity to synthesize fiction, theory, and essays with concepts relevant to social justice and the LGBTQ community; the syllabus includes authors such as Emma Donoghue, David Leavitt, Willa Cather, Langston Hughes, Dorothy Allison, Alison Bechdel, Oscar Wilde, E.M. Forster, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Virginia Woolf, Gloria Anzaldua, and Jeannette Winterson. Local authors are also frequent visitors to the class. In addition to discussing literature, students also examine cinematic texts like Velvet Goldmine and Transparent. Community involvement is an essential component of the course, and includes a field trip UT Gender and Sexuality Center to learn about the center’s social programs and the university’s academic resources. Students are required to attend at least one community arts event (such as a drag show, OUTsider Festival, or an author’s performance at a bookstore). And for the final class of the semester, everyone engages in gender performance – coming to school “doing gender” in a different way.
Additionally, for two years, Louisa has produced “A Night of Queer Performance.” Open to the public, the occasion features writers, visual artists and drag creatives from the local community and beyond. It is her hope to make this showcase an annual offering.
Louisa was kind enough to answer a few questions for our readers who may be on the fence on whether or not to take the class (Spoiler Alert: You should).
The goals and needs of students are not similar, so I hope they all leave with different tools and possibilities.
Anything else you’d like to share about the class?
This is the most rewarding thing I have done as an educator. I will take credit for proposing the course and setting it up each semester, but it’s the students who make the class flourish. Their love of literature, their desire to grow, and their evolution as people impacts me personally. It is not hyperbole to say these Queer Writings students are my hope for the future.
“As a student of Austin Community College for over five years, I can’t begin to express how important Spaventa’s Queer Writings class was to my education. It provided insight into a subject very important to me personally, and opened my mind and heart to the world of literature the LGBTQ+ community can provide for both those within it and for supporters who want to understand and learn from these crucial voices.” -Allison
“Queer Writings has played a crucial role in my college education. Professor Spaventa provided insight and guidance as we read the relevant, powerful works of LGBTQ+ authors, and her classroom created a space for open discussion, agreements and disagreements, personal growth, friendship, and community I have yet to find anywhere else.” -Avery
With Fall 2018 registration under way, there is still time to sign up for this exciting course. (Note: it is not necessary to identify as LGBTQ+ to enroll). For more information, please contact lspavent@austincc.edu or the visit the Honors Program website.
When I was a naïve novitiate psychotherapist, I had the good fortune of a psych hospital’s support to attend professional conventions, partly to learn, and partly to represent the hospital. I remember my first psychoanalytic convention: I was thrilled to sit in the presence of famous psychoanalysts, soaking up their wisdom. I was at just such a convention when I had my first shot of Universal Solvent, neat.
I’m curious about what you’re curious about, and that’s the point of Curiosities. More or less.
There are questions, and there are answers. The trick is to find matching pairs.
More Curiosities coming soon.
On April 6, LAHC partnered with the Department of Foreign Language to host International Night at Highland Campus. The event was designed to showcase the variety of programs under the ACC Global Studies umbrella, network with our Austin-area community partners, and celebrate our community with a rich variety of cultural performances – including belly dance, singers from the UT Italian Opera, and Ballet Folklórico, to name just a few!
Among the many performers who were kind enough to share their culture and craft with our students was balalaika player Sergey Vashchenko. Continue reading “The Russian Balalaika comes to ACC”
I recently read “Part-time students receive attention” on the TCCTA site. I want to share this article with you if you haven’t seen it, and I’d like your indulgence to raise two issues, for reflection.
First, we’ve all heard the claim that full-time students tend to graduate. Reactions to this range from a broad yawn to injunctions to sign everyone up for a full-time load the next available opportunity. Of course, we are not merely interested but also committed to student progression and completion, but I see taking comfort in this dictum to be a bit one-dimensional. After all, my Inner Philosopher urges me to say, the causality might run the other way: Graduating may cause you to take 30 hours a year.
I wrote this a while ago for another blog, but — in this season of conflict that we call the last week of the term — I thought I’d share it with you.
“We’re having a conflict, and we need help resolving it.”
This familiar sentiment often brings people in to see therapists and counselors, (and even philosophers!), and most people start off seeking conflict resolution. Let’s think about this notion of conflict resolution.
First, some preparatory observations. Suppose I ask you, What is the absence of conflict? Is it peace? Harmony? Equanimity of mind? While there’s some truth to responses in this vein, if you look a little harder at conflict, you might begin to suspect that the absence of conflict is . . . death.
Last week, I had the good fortune to attend an end-of-the-term dinner with Fahim Idais and forty or so of his Arabic students. The company was great, and the food was magnificent — we practically took over the Phoenician Resto Café. Other than the baba ganoush, one of the highlights of the evening was that I got a crash course in Arabic greetings when Fahim had all the students go around the table and introduce themselves. How’s this:
مرحباً
اسمي ماثيو
I’m proud of our Arabic program, and of the department of foreign languages that supports and sustains it. Not many community colleges can boast about offering so many languages. The central image for our recent International Festival features most of them: Russian, Spanish, Japanese, French, Chinese, German, Italian, and Korean. ACC also teaches ASL and Latin. And English. 😉
Did you know we offer Arabic I through IV? We have an AA in Arabic, too.
Why do we teach Arabic at ACC?
Because people first started talking about the concept of zero in Arabic.
Because it’s one of six official languages of the United Nations.
Because it was a major artery of culture in the Middle Ages.
Because Arabic is spoken by 313 million people today.
Because Aristotle’s works were preserved in Arabic.
Because it’s the lingua franca of the Arab world.
Because it’s the language of the Qur’an.
Because Arabic grammar is sweet.
Because ACC is happening.
Because it’s there.
Why not?
As dean, I get to experience pretty amazing things, but this time, it wasn’t just a dean thing. Rather, I was invited to this party, by one of the Arabic students. Let me put it like this:
أنا والد لويزا
Thanks, Luiza!
And thanks to you, Fahim, for everything you do for our students!
