Brilliant Bruce Retirement Bash

I spent the last few days in Champaign, Illinois partaking in what I will refer to as the Brilliant Bruce Retirement Bash.  This was a gathering of diverse individuals with a common reference point--Bertram (Chip) Bruce.  The actual day of the celebration was Saturday, September 25, 2010. 


There were 12 papers/offerings/poems.  They ranged from Patrick Berry's (English  Dept, University of Illinois) discussion of teaching and learning about writing in prisons to Lisa Boullion Diaz's (Extension, University of Illinois) description of the work Chip did in the Chicago neighborhoods.  Kevin Leander (Vanderbilt University) used "Chipscope" a take off on the inquiry work on chicks for which Chip is known.  Allan Collins (Northwestern University), a long time colleague of Chip's back to the days at Bolt, Baranak, and Newman, shared some research on the processes of experts.




There were eloquent tributes from Ching-Chiu Lin (Teacher Education Office, University of British Columbia)  in Vancouver (connecting by Skype), Leo Casey of the National College of Ireland--who had flown in for the event and talked of Chip's work as a Fulbright Scholar in Dublin, and Geoffrey Bokwer from the University of Pittsburgh.

My talk was titled "Bruce's Magnificent Quartet: Inquiry, Community, Technology, and Literacy--Implications for Renewing Qualitative Research in the 21st century."   A pretty heft title for a paper that is still in evolution.  I appreciated the opportunity to think more with what has been evolving in my mind about the historical reasons for technology resistance in anthropology and sociology.  I feel like I have taken another step forward in my arguments about technology and aesthetics. 

As would be in keeping with any discussion of Chip Bruce, the name "John Dewey" kept arising in different contexts.  There is always so much more one can learn about Dewey!  



There will be a volume coming out of these papers and others written by people who could not attend.  It will  be exciting to see the different links that surround and intersect through this amazing individual--Chip Bruce.  I can only offer my thanks for the opportunity to be part of his scholarly journey.  

Pender Hill, Parker Palmer, Mark Johnson, and Dewey!

Image via WikipediaRecently I attended a wonderful wedding of two young friends that happened to be next door to the Quaker Retreat Center, Pender Hill, outside of Philadelphia.  While I was unfamiliar with that name...I was familiar with the name Parker Palmer, who had spent many years there as student, teacher, and Dean.

Since the encounter with Pender Hill, I have been thinking more about Parker Palmer's work, which has always resonated with me. 

I have also been reading a marvelous book by Mark Johnson--The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding--in which he comes back to Dewey's notion of the body-mind in fruitful and provocative ways.  

So this morning Parker Palmer had and out of body experience with Mark Johnson and John Dewey--in my mind as I thought about the struggle individuals and groups have with interactions.  Struggle is the problematic (a la Dewey).  We always have situations that are unbalanced, poorly understood, present an issue that needs to be explored, inquired about--that's what Dewey's notion of situation has embedded in it.  I was thinking about the issues of interactions as issues of power.  This led me to the notion of balance (of power...power with) vs power that is out of balance (power over or power under; victimizer vs victimized).  When one seeks power with, you are working from a position of confidence and capacity...you are power-ful.  When one seeks power over or under, you are working from a position of fear.  Power-ful is balanced, integrated, connected, calm.  Power-less is unbalanced, disintegrating, dis-connected and fearful.

This brought me back to Mark Johnson and Dewey as I thought about the ways these stances are embodied and how our feelings or reactions provide us with important information about the ways others around us are engaged in negotiating power.  I am so likely to think that I should discount physical information about how I am reacting or how I FEEL others are reacting, and yet this information is critical to understanding the structure and meaning of the power issues in an interaction. 



I've set myself the personal task of learning more about Parker Palmer's Circles of Caring work as it applies to higher education.  This seems like such a good fit with the notion of diversity in the workplace...in the largest sense of that term.

Thank you to all my distant teachers!