Studiesology

In the wake of the Naomi Riley fiasco (original post, college misery with more on the issue), I've noticed the occasional blog commenter on other blogs saying something that I have seen before but never paid much time to. Indeed, it seems to me that I am seeing it more often, though that could just be confirmation bias. What I'm seeing are comments like this:

I have always thought that any discipline requiring "Studies" in its name isn't a discipline.

I find that an odd position. Logically, it falls apart when confronted with some basic facts, like the meaning of -(o)logy. Biology, Immunology, Virology, Archaeology, Zoology, Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, Geology, Toxicology, Theology, etc. All of those have -(o)logy in them and are serious disciplines. Okay, maybe not theology (I kid), but having -(o)logy in a discipline's name certainly doesn't lessen the discipline. -(o)logy means science or study of. Perhaps it's the Greek origins of the word. If only African-American Studies, Cultural Studies, Women's Studies, etc. were properly made into word chimeras. Then we could have Negrology, Cultrology, and Gynology. Except those don't sound so nice. Perhaps gussying things up in Greek or Latin dress doesn't result in an inherently superior name. The issue with Naomi Riley and those who see "Studies" as an indicator of a weak discipline does not lie in the view of "Studies" disciplines. The issue lies in their intellectual rigor. Those who deride "Studies" as above tend not to actually examine the scholarship. It is far more efficient to deride them for being Humanities rather than STEM or as focusing on what are seen trivialities. Naomi Riley shows similar skill in critical thinking in her post. Rather than attempt to engage with the dissertations on a meaningful level, Riley shows that all one needs to do to understand a discipline (and how silly it is) is to read silly dissertation titles. If the title sounds silly or contrary to privileged orthodoxy, then clearly the whole discipline is worthless. Let's have some biology dissertations and run them through what someone who knows nothing of biology might say in reaction to them: "Systematics and ecology of benthic salt marsh algae at Ipswich, Massachusetts" -- Algae? What do we need to study that for?" "Explorations in Protein Expression and Attempted Purification of the CBI Cannabinoid Receptor" -- Sounds like pro-pot nonsense. "Do Human Sex Pheromones Exist?" -- What's a pheromone? And why are you talking about sex, you depraved ivory tower intellectual? "The Importance of Dynein in the Fashioning of Left-Right Asymmetry in the African Clawed frog, Xenopus laevis" -- Clawed frog? Are frogs where the X-Men are going to come from? What do you know? It's very possible to take a serious discipline's work and make it sound silly if you don't actually take the time to engage with it. Titles are enough. Riley's approach of mockery without information betrays her. She is either incapable of deep rational thought or she finds shallow "analysis" to be a more worthwhile pursuit. She is either blind to privilege as she dismisses the scholarship that oftentimes confronts it head on, or she aims to hold onto her privilege at the expense of the disadvantaged, hoping that attacking the scholarship will mask her prejudice. No matter what it turns out she was thinking as she wrote her piece, it does not reflect well upon her. However, commenters like the one quoted above may find themselves comforted by shallow and small-minded attacks on the Humanities and on cultural studies in particular. I only hope the numbers of such people are small.

A week later -- Graduation, Poetry, and Coin Pictures

This is going to be a bit longer of a post, with many pictures. In part this is to make up for disappearing for a week. I'm still no good at this blogging thing. It's also because I got some pictures of my UK proof sets done and I'd like to share them. I also bring news of graduation and what the hell I've been doing for the past week anyway.

 I'll save the coins for last, since they'll be the longest section.

 On graduation: I graduate again this Friday with my third BA (Spanish). I won't get to walk again because I already did last semester, so I just have to content myself with the fact that I managed to do three BA degrees in five years. With graduation comes summer, which this year means moving.

 Last time I posted I had just returned from a visit to my graduate school and signed a lease for the fall. My fiancee was happy and my mother and I relieved, so everything was good. I will have the 11th through 20th of May off from work this month to do some major work on the moving front. We have a lot of packing, moving of stuff down to the farm, moving of large items to the trailer for transport this July, and other things to do. I also have to help my brother move into his new place, and you can bet I'll extract my pound of flesh from him for that.

 On Poetry: I basically spent the last week working on my final project for my Contemporary Spanish Literature class. I wrote two poems, modelling surrealism under the Franco regime and surrealism in the new millennium, then wrote a short analysis of how my poems draw their essence from those specific movements. Let me tell you that, because I have previous experience in this matter, writing poetry in a non-native language is really hard. But when you figure it out, it becomes amazing. And now that I've made the attempt at writing surrealist poetry in Spanish, I have a new appreciation for the style. I also have a new way of thinking about surrealism, and that is that the surreal is "metaphor made not only real but literal." Groundbreaking, I know. But I now have a way of thinking about surreal literature that makes sense to me.

Finally, coins. I got loads of pictures of my UK proof sets. Next post I'll share a couple of my individual coins including the 1900 silver sixpence that will be residing in my bride's shoe at the wedding.

The 1970 proof set was actually put together and struck after Decimal Day and the official change to decimal currency in the UK. It contains the last examples of the classic £sd currency.

The obverse side of the last predecimal coins.

The reverse side of the last predecimal coins.

February 15, 1971 marked Decimal Day, the switch to decimal currency for the UK. Rather than have the old 1 pound = 20 shillings = 240 pence (and the various other oddities, such as the crown being five shillings, a guinea twenty-one shillings, etc.), Britain embraced common sense and defined the pound in terms of 100 new pence.

The obverse side of the new decimal currency. The five and ten pence coins were identical in size and composition to the one and two shilling coins, respectively, and carried the same value during the transition.

The reverse of the new decimal coins. The "New" on the reverse remained on every coin until 1981. 1982 saw the creation of the 20 pence coin and the replacement of "New" with the denomination.

The 1973 set includes text commemorating the formation (and British membership) in the European Economic Community, the precursor to the European Union. The 50p coin has a special reverse for the occasion.

The obverse side of the set. Note the coloration of the 2p coin.

The reverse side of the set. I like the reverse on the 50p coin.

A close up shot of the 2p coin. This sort of toning happens to brass coins sometimes if exposed to water damage. The set probably got some water spilled on it in the past and over the years the coin has discolored. I kind of like it, since it looks like a bimetallic coin.

The 1977 set commemorates the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. The Royal Mint reintroduced a commemorative One Crown coin (25p) for the occasion. Due to the coin's excessive size for its face value, Crown coins after 1990 have a valuation of £5 rather than 25p.

The obverse of the set. The Crown has a special obverse of the Queen on horseback in honor of her Silver Jubilee.

The reverse of the 1977 set.

This is the 1988 set case. It's the first UK proof set I purchased.

I love the frosty look of the portrait side in this set. The quality of the strikes is really there.

The reverse of the 1988 set doesn't dissappoint either.

A place to call Home

This has been a very eventful, very stressful weekend. I was nearly unable to register for classes because of a miscommunication between my department and the registrar, my mother fell in a sinkhole, most of the property management companies here are not open on weekends, and everything seemed to just fall apart. My mother, an army wife with nearly twenty moves under her belt, said that this was the most difficult time she's ever had trying to find a place to live. We did find a place, however. By the time this is posted it will be Monday, so yesterday afternoon we were driving around on the west end of town. About a mile and a half from my building we discovered an apartment complex and chanced a call. The landlady was shopping and was able to get a call in to a PhD student in Spanish who lives in the complex to see if he'd be okay with a very quick showing. Within an hour we were touring the complex and checking out the room. Thirty minutes later we were filling out a lease agreement and learning that come August we will be living directly across from the PhD student who showed us his apartment. The complex does not allow undergraduate residents, will allow us to have our cat, and gives my partner an extremely good feeling. We have a place. This trip just became so worth it.

Time to live in

I'll be in PhD University Town to find a place to live for the fall this weekend. My mother flew up to help us and so it'll be her and the fiancee's first time visiting where I'll be studying for the PhD.

Here's hoping the weekend goes well.

I promise to get those coin pictures up soon, along with the coins that should be arriving by mail to me this weekend.

What I got at the coin show.

I'll update this with pictures later. This is a quick hit for now.

I got a 1949 Franklin half dollar in fairly good condition. After getting the price marked down for buying it with something else, I paid just over melt value for this one.

I got with it an 1853 silver three cent piece. I've always liked the odd denominations, like half-cents, two cents, three cents, and twenty cents. This is my first time getting one of those odd denominations and I'm very glad that it looks as good as it does.

I got 1980 and 1981 proof sets, finishing off my set of proof sets which include Susan B. Anthony dollars. I love the Susie B. and have just put in an order for one of the 1999 proof coins to round out my proof collection of them.

Lastly, and I think it's probably the neatest purchase of the day, I got a 1988 Royal Mint proof set. From what I've found of sales of the set online I paid a decent price for it. All the online sales I could find were listed in British pounds, around 22-24 pounds, and I paid $24. Not bad.

Now to another day at work. Hopefully I can kick my mind into poetic gear while I'm there.

Surrealism and Coins

Quick post today.

I'm going to a small coin expo today. Hopefully there's someone there to grade coins, because I'm interested in getting my fiancee's Cheerios Dollar and my 1921-D Morgan dollar graded. The Cheerios Dollar is in the original packaging, but I don't know what kind of grade to expect on it. The Morgan looks like it's around AU-55 or so.

Afterwards I'm going to get back to work on writing some surrealist poetry in Spanish for my final project of the semester. I'm using Vicente Aleixandre as my model. That's the idea, anyway. We'll see how it goes.

Super Saiyans, Super Aryans

One of the things I've been doing more and more now that the semester is winding down is pleasure reading. I bought and read the entirety of Kirkman's The Walking Dead last weekend, began reading How Few Remain and Starship Troopers, and recently read what I could find of a manga called The Legend of Koizumi.

The picture accompanying this post, minus the faux-motivational poster touches, is from the manga.

It's one of those uniquely Japanese kinds of stories, like Hetalia: Axis Powers or Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, in that the premise is rather ridiculous and the execution both revels in and dramatizes the ridiculosity of the situation.

To give enough background to work with, The Legend of Koizumi is a manga in which international disputes are settled by world leaders playing Mahjong. Former Prime Minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi, is the hero of the story and he plays against such Mahjong powerhouses as George W. Bush, George H.W. "Papa" Bush, Vladimir Putin, Pope Benedict XVI, and Adolf Hitler.

You might be wondering about the inclusion of Hitler. As it turns out, the Nazis relocated to the Moon after World War II. They established the Fourth Reich and Hitler got to work on improving his Mahjong level. It is during the events of the story that the Fourth Reich determines to invade the Earth, and they set up a Mahjong tournament against the greatest world leaders for this purpose.

The manga had already begun making light references to Dragon Ball Z by this point, including scanners worn over the eye which could determine an individual's Mahjong level, but the third round of the tournament includes a reference that is both a clear and affectionate parody of a major plot element in Dragon Ball Z and also a line of criticism against said element. Hitler, battling against Pope Benedict XVI, transforms into the "Legendary Super Aryan" -- that is, his hair turns gold and stands up on end in a somewhat ridiculous manner.

Compare, if you will, the Super Saiyans Son Goku and Vegeta with the Super Aryans Adolf Hitler and Tristan Goebbels.

There are, of course, obvious similarities between the characters from DBZ and those from The Legend of Koizumi. The hair stands on end, changes to blond, and the transformation grants the commensurate increase in fighting strength.

The Super Aryans are clear enough parodies of the original Super Saiyans. The idea of the Super Aryans is to couple an increase in power with the traits of the Aryan Übermensch. Putting these traits on the villain allows for the villain to display overwhelming strength gained through persevering against the might of the protagonist, a direct inversion of the formula used in DBZ.

It is very likely that the creators of The Legend of Koizumi wanted to poke fun at the Super Saiyan design. In DBZ, the field of protagonists whittles down to those of Saiyan ancestry, ending each major story arc with a pure-blooded Saiyan responsible for saving the world (or universe). The only time where a protagonist who is not a pure-blooded Saiyan saves the world, it is Gohan, who is half-Saiyan and is only able to do so as a direct result of his father's sacrifice (his father being Son Goku, a pure-blooded Saiyan).

And as the manga and show progress their storylines, the Saiyan protagonists spend more and more time in their Super Saiyan forms. They are more aggressive in this form, more powerful, and importantly, homogenized. No matter their normal eye or hair color, becoming a Super Saiyan means blue-green eyes and blond hair.

That the good guys of the DBZ narrative should be the sort of aggressive, strong, racially pure and homogeneous group that the Nazi party aspired for the people of Germany to be is probably exactly why the concept is mapped back onto the Nazis in The Legend of Koizumi. The idea itself is silly, and the only way to fit the Nazis into the tone of the story is to make them silly by bringing them to equivalence with the Saiyans. I can't rightly say if the Saiyans as they are presented pose a problem with their similarity to certain aspects of Nazi myth and iconography, but I appreciate how The Legend of Koizumi has sparked my mind into thinking about it.