div2-portfolio

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Kim Tschang-Yeul   

Korean, b. 1929 

WATER DROP, 1975 

Oil on linen   9 x 7 ¾ in. | 23 x 19.7 cm.

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Nice ass, sorry about the mental illness

Thank you king

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French Speaking Assignment: the prompt was to record myself telling a friend about a past event that I saw in the news. 

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Elementary French | FREN-102-01

All Classes

Spring 2020 with Anouk Alquier

Course Description: Students will develop their speaking, understanding, reading and writing skills in French. The multimedia approach will provide students with an immersive environment where they will engage actively with the language and culture.

Grade Received: B (4 credits)

Relevant Coursework: 

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Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism | CST-349

All Classes

Spring 2020 with Iyko Day

Course Description: "Race is the modality in which class is lived," wrote the late cultural theorist Stuart Hall. This course takes Hall's axiom as a starting point for considering the racial, gendered, and sexualized character of capitalist domination. Throughout the course students will explore both the political economy and the cultural imaginary of racial capitalism. One question we will grapple with is the following: if capital itself is as imperceptible and objectively real as gravity, what are the common tropes we use to apprehend its circulation? Is it the stock market ticker tape, the shipping container, or the industrial wasteland? Drawing on writers and artists of color from around the world, we will consider ways they offer cognitive maps of the gendered and sexualized contours of racial capitalism. Authors may include Octavia Butler, Chang-rae Lee, Leslie Marmon Silko, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and Ruth Ozeki. Visual artists may include Xu Bing, Otobong Nkanga, Allan deSouza, Rodney McMillian, Mark Bradford, Takahiro Iwasaki, Anicka Yi, and Candace Lin.

Grade Received: A (4 credits)

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Self Eval: Teaching Assistant for Diving Thr. The Page

Course Description

My position as a teacher's assistant was challenging and stimulating to many lesser used parts of my brain, particularly when it came to facilitation abilities. I have always reverted to contributing to large groups through being a member, rather than trying to direct the flow of conversation, and prior to this had never held a position that required me to take part in this kind of classroom engagement. I was really excited and nervous in starting this because it was so new to me. I struggled somewhat to keep up with the readings, along with some of the students, but tried to make sure I had read more than half of what was assigned at times when I wasn't able to complete everything, and of the readings I was not able to complete I set aside time to read them after the fact. Regardless of these attempts though, I do think that not always keeping up with the readings was a hinderance to my ability to participate in class, and somewhat contributed to the lack of flowing conversation that was often a barrier to progress in the classroom. I was often frustrated with the slowness of our class discussions in the first phase of the course where we discussed readings, and in reaction to the lack of participation I saw, did not feel confident articulating my thoughts. I can recognize now that, similar to what I said before, my lack of participation probably encouraged the larger class culture of internalization/self-conciousness/discomfort with sharing/discomfort with holding the vulnerability of others. In terms of what I wish I had done better, this reluctance to speak was one of my biggest regrets and personal drawbacks. I felt most confident and comfortable speaking in the hour-long debriefing with my professor on class progress, issues run into in the previous weeks, and what we planned to focus on in the coming one's. During the pre-workshop phase, I felt much of my effect on the class came from a combination of observing students in class, reading their submissions, assigning readings in response to themes in their work, and the debriefings with my professor. I became more comfortable engaging more directly with the students, just as I think they became more comfortable engaging with each other, once the workshop phase of the course began. I'd been in two creative writing workshops prior to, so some of this comfort came from experience, as well as being in a smaller group of people. I tried to strike a balance between articulating what worked and what didn't work in their pieces, and noticed that this sent a clear signal to the rest of the group to focus on making similar comments, as opposed to sharing what they did or didn't like. This was where I got to know the student's the best; I felt most comfortable revealing myself to them and most able make known my appreciation for them doing the same. I still struggled to settle into a leadership position, but I felt able to exercise what knowledge I did have, to acknowledge what I was struggling to execute, and to push myself to face my uncertainty and address my issues in new ways. Overall I was confronted head on with significant issues I have always faced in higher education with vulnerability through communication with my peers, conflicts and barriers within the classroom that arise from this, and how to approach their resolution. In the future I hope to use my experiences from this semester as foundation to push myself further, and resist excuses I might make against sharing myself and being attuned to my peers needs.

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Instructor Eval: Teaching Assistant for Diving Thr. The Page

Course Description

Was course completed satisfactorily? Yes

Narrative Description of Student Performance

Benin Gardner is an exceptionally thoughtful, creative, and hardworking student. She brought all these skills, and more, to her role as a teaching assistant, helping to lift this course and its many participants through the high waters of our challenging semester.  I am certain that without her care and attention, we would not have succeeded in providing a learning experience that was both challenging and inspiring— one that acknowledged the difficulties of this time by encouraging students to pay closer attention to one another through their work.  The sense of community that developed across the span of the course—the attention to our social fabric—was something that Benin was particularly intent on cultivating and supporting.  She did this through a number of different facets, providing comments on student work, selecting readings to share, and facilitating class discussions and small group workshops. She helped to plan and structure class time, and met with me to debrief and discuss both individual students’ progress, and that of the class as a whole.  In addition, she provided a thematic breakdown of the readings, and extensive notes on each student’s performance in the course; these resources were greatly appreciated.

In her self-evaluation she provided a frank and astute reflection on what she learned as a teaching assistant for the course: “I still struggled to settle into a leadership position, but I felt able to exercise what knowledge I did have, to acknowledge what I was struggling to execute, and to push myself to face my uncertainty and address my issues in new ways. Overall I was confronted head on with significant issues I have always faced in higher education with vulnerability through communication with my peers, conflicts and barriers within the classroom that arise from this, and how to approach their resolution. In the future I hope to use my experiences from this semester as foundation to push myself further, and resist excuses I might make against sharing myself and being attuned to my peers’ needs.”

Benin grew a lot this semester in regard to her awareness of herself in relation to others; I’m certain this awareness will inform her Division III.  I am grateful for the work she did with me; my only regret is that we did not focus on some of Benin’s own writing in this course, as that would have provided another lens through which we, as a class, might connect.

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Teaching Assistant Position | TA-IA-6

Self Eval | Instructor Eval | All Classes

Spring 2020 with thúy lê’ (TAing for Diving Through the Page: A Creative Writing Workshop)

Course Description: "One does not look through writing on to reality - as, through a clean or dirty windowpane. Words are never, transparent. They create their own space, the space of, experience, not that of existence..." -John Berger. This, class will be a combination of an excavation of experience, and a deep-sea dive beyond. Through a broad selection of, readings--James Baldwin, Emily Dickinson, Lucille Clifton,, Julie Otsuka, and others--we will carefully consider the many ways in which a piece of writing creates its own space, one a reader can fully enter, and the ways in which truth is harnessed and released through that space. Through guided, exercises, participants will aim to cultivate the clarity of, their writing voice and apply this clarity toward the, creation, on the page, of spaces marked by both the, ambiguity of experience and the radical promise of, imagination.

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Instructor Eval: Intermediate Studio Art Installation (2020F)

Course Description

Was course completed satisfactorily? Yes

Narrative Description of Student Performance

This course explored a broad range of studio strategies, processes, and materials. Students undertook research strategies particular to their interests and processes, collaborative and independent installation projects, and completed a reflective essay at the end of the semester.  

Neen Gardner did brilliant work this semester and was an essential member of the class community, helping to develop a collective environment of learning and sharing. Neen’s contributions elevated the discussions of readings and screenings. She consistently demonstrated an impressive dedication to unpacking texts and applying them in original ways to her own interests and work.  This semester, Neen worked with found and created projected image, assemblage, performance, found objects, sewing, and more.

As part of the class expectations, Neen worked in a group to present on Jane Bennets Vibrant Matter. Neen’s group worked hard on unpacking the text, and engaged the class impressively.  

From the first prompt to the last, Neen was interested in land and place, bodies, mailed letters, and complex understandings of relationality and identity. Neen reshaped objects in the world with the same grace and precision seen in her essays. For example,  she turned a handmade Chinese textile jacket made by her mother into a cowboy jacket by attaching shredded envelopes and letters as fringe along the sleeves. Neen linked these letters to historical black movement and Movements in the American West as well as Glissants discussion of the West Indies, the railroad, and Neen's Chinese ancestors.

Neen stepped into the frame of her work to powerfully embody historical objects, in performances and poems. Her precise lens on LA was both macro and micro, past, present, and future.

Neen’s written work and installations were consistently  among the most thought provoking and original in the class. Neen’s responses to small prompts were surprising, delightful, and  thoughtful. Her final essay essay, An Installation on Black and Chinese Cowboy’s in the American West, was clear, complex, and provocative.

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Self Eval: Intermediate Studio Art Projects (2020F)

Course Description

This course was the first art class I had ever taken at Hampshire. Installation is such a broad subject/medium that I was pretty nervous going into this class as to where I would find my footing. I pushed myself though, to participate verbally in class discussion at least once per each meeting, in order to deal with some of this uncertainty and insecurity. I always found the readings extremely interesting and pertinent across a multitude of disciplines, which made it easy for me to come to class with ideas I wanted to point out/bring up. I took extensive notes for almost every readings, though some weeks I did slack off a bit, and skim. I don't feel that this was a tendency that I leaned into though, and feel that my progress and momentum in the course was consistent throughout; I always had something new to think about. This class was an extremely helpful tinker space for me to realize some of my desires for my Div III and what I want it to look like, and the subjects I want it to revolve around. When the pandemic came, my drive was certainly disrupted significantly, but I still arrived at new knowledge and questions through the explorations I did with photographic projection, dance, and costume. I wish that I had spoken up more in the course, because I remember there being many times I had ideas I wanted to draw attention to from readings that didn't end up getting focused on at all. This class taught me a lot about my own perception of what I can and can't do because it was, when I first entered, something so unfamiliar to me, that I now feel much more confident about in my navigation of, enough to indefinitely bring that navigation into my thesis project(s). I surprised myself in many ways over the course of this class, and feel that I handled my uncertainlty much better than I have in the past, and was able to apply what I learned from previous failures/mistakes to do better. 

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Intermediate Studio Art Projects: Installation and Experimental Form | IA-0259

Self Eval | Instructor Eval | All Classes

Spring 2020 with Serena Aurora-Himmelfarb

Course Description: This studio arts course will explore a broad range of studio strategies, processes, and materials. Guided, student-led projects will be presented in student-driven critiques. Students will undertake research strategies particular to their interests and processes, and will be expected to reflect on this research in written responses. Slide lectures will introduce the class to contemporary and historical artists and art movements across cultural perspectives. From the dollhouse to the forest, soft sculpture to performative objects, this course embraces an expanded definition of the arts.

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Advanced Repertory | DAN-309

All Classes

Fall 2019 with Xan and Alex Burley (Smith College)

Course Description: This course offers an in-depth exploration of aesthetic and interpretive issues in dance performance. Through experiments with improvisation, musical phrasing, partnering, personal imagery and other modes of developing and embodying movement material, dancers explore ways in which a choreographer’s vision is formed, altered, adapted and finally presented in performance. In its four-credit version, this course also requires additional readings and research into broader issues of historical context, genre and technical style. Course work may be developed through existing repertory or through the creation of new work(s).

Grade Received: A (4 credits)

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Woolf, Auden, and Modernism | ENGL-328-01

All Classes

Fall 2019 with Nigel Alderman (Mt. Holyoke)

Course Description: This course will chart the development of Modernism in poetry and prose by examining the careers of two of the most important writers in the first half of the twentieth-century: the novelist, Virginia Woolf and the poet, W. H. Auden. We will focus on the way both writers initially seek to wrestle into representation new content within the frame of pre-existing forms and, by so doing, discover that these forms are inadequate or buckle under the strain and need to be revised, renewed, and transformed.

Grade Received: A- (4 credits)

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Poetry Writing | ENGL-204-01

All Classes

Fall 2019 with Samuel Ace (Mt. Holyoke)

Course Descriptions: In this introductory course, students will read widely in contemporary poetry. Through prompts and project-based inquiry, both within the workshop and in take-home assignments, students will have the opportunity to produce and share writing based on the conceptual frameworks explored in the class

Grade Received: A (4 credits)

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Intermediate Ballet | DANCE-222-01

All Classes

Fall 2019 with Rose Flachs (Mt. Holyoke)

Course Description: This course is designed for the intermediate-level dancer. It will include a logical and efficient development of exercises culminating with varied allegro combinations. The class will provide the student the opportunity to acquire endurance and learn artistic expression. The importance of musicality within the technique will be a fundamental aspect of the class.

Grade Received: B (2 credits)

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Div II Retrospective Paper

Google Doc

Div I as a whole was a relatively lonely year - though I embarked on plenty of academic journey’s that were deeply rewarding without the GPA anxiety that colored my high school years, and made several close friends, I felt alone and without a strong community at Hampshire. I entered my Div II with a desire to pin down my academic interests in preparation for a definite career and domestic life which I imagined that I was supposed to desire and work towards somewhat because of this disconnection. I decided to operate with an uncreative focus on my future, as opposed to on building the futures I imagine for myself and my communities because I didn’t truly feel a part of one. I was interested in the arrival, as opposed to the process. I left behind a long summer of time spent alone, running around my home town of Los Angeles on various buses and trains, to see some of my favorite bands play. I worked the door at a few DIY music shows around the city, as I was interning for a small LA music collective called Smash Club that I discovered on Instagram. I wrote and produced a short album called All My Friends which I published on Bandcamp and SoundCloud at the very tail end of the summer. A lot of the drive I had to engage in all these different projects came from an intense dissatisfaction with my mental state. I wanted to be busy, and more than that to be busy doing the things that my idealism and social anxiety normally would have prevented me from even trying. My expectations of reality had been permanently shattered by some traumas I went through during the Spring semester - the assumptive world I existed in was all of a sudden very new and endlessly terrifying. I felt that the only thing that I could do was act on the desire/hope/drive/trust that remained in me, that this was the only way forward. 

I was excited about arriving back to campus after being so socially isolated in LA and ended up pouring a lot of my creative energy and propensity for risk-taking into my social life. I was content not to scrutinize my academics partially because of how early I was into what I knew would be a two-year process, and because I thought it was alright for my priorities to be elsewhere while I took the introductory classes that I intended to shape the start of my Div. I wasn’t clear on what areas of study would best guide me towards the subject(s) of my Div III, so the classes I took were all guesses in the direction of interests I already had and wanted to expand upon to reach clarity. I planned on exploring the presence of poetry in children's educational lives, how to introduce more writing programs for lower-class black and brown children who might not regularly interact with poetry in their classes, and investigating the ways that poetry can serve as a tool in mending traumas experienced in childhood (and onward). I took five classes, the most I had taken in one semester up to that point. I hoped that these classes would help me begin to map and specify my driving goals and questions about the intersections of race, childhood, and trauma. 

Creating Families with Marlene Fried and Pamela Stone, though I’d intended it to inform the Childhood Studies aspect of my Div II, ended up being much more a reproductive justice studies class. I struggled with it because of the number of students and the style of our class time - as the course went on it became increasingly based in sharing personal information that was pertinent to the content (international adoption, queer parenting, etc…), which was not a sharing style that I felt excited about participating in. The Black Feminist Archive was an amazingly valuable space to me just in the fact that it convened over twenty black people of my same age range into one space for 3 hours every Monday - it was dominated by those people, and we were in turn the subject of its scholarship. Being exposed to that contextualized my place as a black person at Hampshire and in the world, affirming that I shared experiences with some, and that I didn’t with others, and asked me to examine some of my privileges and proximities to whiteness with new scrutiny that had never seemed so essential before. The theories that this class and Zahra Caldwells class exposed me to were immensely foundational for the directions my thoughts on black femmehood/womanhood would continue to go in the future - particularly the notes on the perceived excessiveness of the black body, Zahra Caldwell’s definition of black female cool, and the aesthetic of black female cool as it is/has been co-opted by white folks. The Black Feminist Archive also challenged me with the task of contributing to a group presentation on the black body by using archival research and creating my own finding aids. I went to the Smith College archives and found documents that offered insight into the lives of two black women, mainly through words written about them. These classes were invaluable to me, but my learning was also impeded somewhat by my disagreement with the professor's modes of facilitation, and assigning work.

Iaido and Dancing Modern were the only classes that I was able to enjoy, as I didn’t feel blindsided by some aspect of the class I wasn’t prepared for - they both accurately matched the class description, and continued that way for the entire semester. They were also both physically motivated classes, Iaido being a sect of Japanese martial arts involving a dulled katana called an iaito. They both served as grounding points in my day and helped me return to some semblance of safety in and curiosity about my body which I had felt very disconnected from and in some ways scared of for some time. I had not danced since my junior year of high school after I very unceremoniously quit my ballet studio, partially due to its bankruptcy and partially due to the general unkindness of its directors. This return to dance was full of surprises in how much enjoyment I got out of it, and also in that it became a way for me to tap into the Hampshire community by getting more involved with campus dance life. I auditioned for several Div III pieces and composition works that would be choreographed by students and joined the rehearsal process for three, which put me into contact with several other dancers (two of whom I’m still close friends with and plan to collaborate with this year). That semester was the first time I felt tapped into the larger Hampshire community, and that my academics were not compartmentalized away from my social life - they all started to bleed together and clued me into the essentiality of cultivating joyfulness in and across all areas of my life. I got involved in the music scene on campus as well, forming a two-piece band with a close friend after we listened to each other's Bandcamp discographies, and we played several shows at Hampshire, as well as venues on the West coast over Winter break.  

I learned that I wanted to write and dance, and that both would have significant places in my Div III, from the classes I took in the next two semesters during the Spring and Fall of 2019. My Fall 2018 schedule was without any literary studies or childhood studies courses, so I took two poetry courses (mostly analytic, though The BreakBeat Poets was partially generative), a modern dance course, and a childhood studies course at Smith. I began a pattern of taking at least four classes every semester, and taking more than half of them off-campus, which pushed me to further expand my assumptive world and connect me with the Five College Area, just as the variety of classes I took in Fall of 2018 had expanded my connection to Hampshire. In high school, I had always dealt with anxiety about my ability to perform well, and would deliberately stay home from school to avoid this feeling. The way many of my high school classes were structured allowed very little room for critical engagement, and it was rare that I ever felt fulfilled by assignments and projects because of it. Once it began to sink in for me that I had control over what classes I took, and that the primary way’s my performance would be judged would be through my critical engagement (i.e. in-class participation and essay writing), I felt excited by academics, not paralyzed by them. 

This was also the semester defined by the college’s financial crisis. In my friend groups, there was looming dissatisfaction, cynicism, and fear about the turn of events Hampshire seemed to be heading towards. The professors in the off-campus classes I was taking always had plenty of worried questions to ask me. The omnipresence of this concern allowed me to shake some of my self-imposed anxieties loose. The individual and campus-wide scrambling that became so quotidien during this semester destabilized my perception of the university structure, something that previously had been so inaccessible and immaterial that I placed my faith in it without thinking. This deeply flawed system laid bare, combined with my inchoate mental framework of excitement in the face of challenge carved out space for me to unravel the limitations I had previously placed upon how I imagined myself in the present and future due to restrictive academic policies and practices I’d internalized in high school. Spring 2019 was a turning point in that I began to forgo the future I imagined I should want or should work toward. The classes I took were initially intended to propel me into a deeper understanding of my goals with children's literature and childhood studies, and by the end, that understanding became that those goals were coming from the high school guidance counselor in my head encouraging me to settle on a career as soon as possible. The topics explored by the classes I chose did interest me, and I believe I needed to follow those threads to discover the possibilities of how much farther I could take them. This was a wonderful trade-off in that as I drifted away from the interests that initially drew me to the courses, each one transformed me in terms of how I viewed it. 

Instead of each class supplementing some invisible requirement or standard that I needed to satisfy, they made themselves clear to me as entirely unpredictable sources of specific knowledge, providing me with numerous lenses to look at the world through. This realization of subjectivity in academia greatly decreased my anxiety around choosing a career. Instead of orienting my class taking, and participation around what a class might do for me, I began to see each class as a small community that it was my responsibility to learn how to cultivate. The Stories Children Tell pushed me past my self-consciousness in subjects I didn’t feel as confident in, as it was a 300 level psychology course. I was able to create a story study, coded each story for things like locus of control or presence of multiple perspectives, and wrote a lab report analyzing the findings. I also wrote a fifteen-page paper on narratives created to assuage cognitive dissonance, using the history of child sexual abuse by clergy in the Catholic Church as a case study. I developed new confidence for speaking consistently in class in The BreakBeat Poets and began writing again after a long hiatus largely due to the writing assignments we had. Contemporary 3/4 at Amherst College further developed my engagement with the Five College Dance community, putting me into contact with two other black dancers who I performed alongside in both of their self-choreographed works, and introducing me to the Five College Repertory auditions in March which I attended with several Hampshire friends. The band I was in continued to grow in size, and we played more shows that semester in the WMass area, although the number of members and incessant emphasis on performance over song production began to stir up tensions.  

Reading Contemporary Poetry with Matthew Donovan at Smith, Poetry Writing with Sam Ace at Mt. Holyoke, and my independent study with Hampshire Professor thuy le were all courses that challenged me enormously in my writing and reading practice. In each, my professors put me and other students into contact with several accomplished poets doing readings and Q&A’s in the Five College Area. Attending these were mandatory parts of the class - sometimes the artists would actually come in and speak with us directly. I had spent the summer in Amherst with friends, and these artist talks that were so sited specific, taking me to different areas of Amherst and NoHo, felt like an extension of the exploring I began doing in the Pioneer Valley by bus and on foot in the Spring of my second year. The band broke up at the semester’s start, and so I had a lot more free time on my hands. It was a busy semester, the velocity of which was carried over from the previous one. I continued pushing my limits, heightening my class and work-load. I was losing sight of what my concentration was and getting more invested in the individual worlds of my classes. In the end, this was a positive thing. The developments I made while dancing and writing in parallel projects that did not intersect felt immensely truthful and were swift in cutting deep at my obsessions and concerns. It became clear that a work where these mediums did intersect could be majorly effective. Boat’s Leaving, a repertory piece I had been cast in and had rehearsals for twice a week, was a work about a group of people on a journey together, and on the way trying and failing over and over to protect each other from suffering. My independent study brought me to a better understanding of how my writing has failed to address the subjects I’ve intended it to; I learned about what I struggle with in writing, what has been missing. I had intended for the class to focus on intersections between black and Chinese cultural identities, and though I do feel like my subject matter addressed this, thuy’s guidance dove me headfirst into a more broad contemplation on what my true desires were for my writing. What are my concerns? What is it that I see in the world that I want to change? How does the writing build towards this change? How can the language, down to the specificity of my word choice, reflect those desires? What are the links and divides between the personal and the collective? How is it a black feminist act to divulge personal information about queerness, sex, family, love, grief, and the blurring of perpetrator/victim dichotomy to an audience of strangers? These were some of the most interesting questions asked by authors that thuy assigned me to read, such as Simone White, Anne Carson, and Sun Yung Shin. I completed two chapbooks in my two poetry classes that semester considering these questions - Phosphoromancy and Sun Through A Skylight Under Snow - some poems from which I hope to edit and include in my Div III. 

My class with Nigel Alderman at Mount Holyoke on Modernism also sparked a connection for me between writing about marginalized identities and capitalism that illuminated the path to my Div III. A particular essay by Woolf called Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Brown got me thinking about writing as a practice of simultaneously rendering reality as it is and changing it. Taking Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism with Iyko Day at MoHo the following semester was the perfect answer to those thoughts for how it answered and expanded my questions about capitalism, race, queerness, and spatial existence. I had been trying to write about those subjects but struggled to make work that held the complexities between them in an honest way. The course illuminated many of these unknown realms, gave me clearer language to wield when speaking about them, and specified the historical sites where my interests overlap. It also introduced me to the concept of anti-relationality, a facet of capitalism that alienates people from each other, and from themselves. This concept cropped up in my TA’ing position as well. Being the first facilitating position I’d ever officially held, it stirred up a lot of anxiety about my ability to be a leader, and hold the vulnerability of students, in addition to the fact that it was a course I’d not taken before. I often struggled to push myself past my perceived limitations. The class group itself was also difficult to work with. I found that thuy almost always had to take the lead in discussions, and that participation was hard to excite and sustain. Many of the students were planted firmly in their chosen literary form, and I struggled to brainstorm effective ways to get them out of their comfort zones. Despite these roadblocks, identifying these anxieties has made it easier for me to now identify when I am repeating the behaviors that exacerbate them. The class content - considering writing as a space making practice that creates new lenses to see reality through - also contributed to developments I made that began to crystallize my Div III ideas. 

I can’t recall exactly how my interest in cowboy aesthetic, cowboy drag, and its racial implications developed. Some of it was present in my subconscious from seeing my Chinese grandfather in cowboy boots, Stetson hats, and silk vests in old footage, and recalling him teaching me to play “Range of the Buffalo” on guitar. What I know is that taking Intermediate Installation with Serena Aurora-Himmelfarb and Aesthetics of Racial Cap. at the same time sparked something in my brain and brought me to a fascination with the mobility politics of the American West as they impose themselves upon the Black, Asian, and Indigenous people who have historically lived there. Installation class broadened my understanding of art and coaxed dance back out of me as a valuable, essential method of researching whereas the previous semester I had been trying to define my Div III as solely literary. After naming these interests, Serena sent me work by an LA-based Chinese artist (who I hope to soon have a conversation with) Stephanie Mei Huang, a painter and installation artist doing work using “cowboy drag” to render the simultaneously belonging and unbelonging of Chinese consciousness in the American West. The class also familiarized me with the concept of assemblage, a combination of things/ideas/items/parts which through their individual pathways moves the entire organism as one entity. This idea comforted me when it came to the number of concepts I was drawing on in writing, performance art, dance, and installation. It freed me creatively and encouraged me to develop a hybridized project, that drew in many disciplines, forms, and methodologies - a feat fit for a Hampshire student. 

For our assemblage prompt, I drew together a pile of letters and envelopes I’d collected over the years and sewed them to the back of a Chinese textile jacket my mother made when she was around my age in the shape of a classic Western fringe jacket. I workshopped a short performance piece where I unhinged myself from a wall in the art barn while wearing the jacket, leaned against the wall statically, and then two-stepped around my classmates while singing “Cattle Call” by Eddy Arnold. This jacket is still a convergence site for many of the ideas I am weaving into my Div III. It holds mobility on a personal and collective level - the mobility of the railroad and of my Chinese ancestors who built it, the mobility of black ancestors escaped from slavery, the mobility of letters from California to Hampshire and vice versa, the free mobility of white settlers of the West in comparison to the criminalized mobility of black and Native American people, and how I negotiated my mobility in the summer of 2018 on trains and buses in Los Angeles. 

The pandemic cut these classes in half, switching them over to Zoom and totally disrupting the trajectory I’d been on in each. I lost a lot of motivation and momentum going from in-person to screen-locked but still managed to produce a video dance installation that was exciting and interesting for me, both for how it held the progress and discoveries I had made and for the future dance video installations it beckoned me to begin daydreaming about. In turn, the pandemic and historical uprisings for black lives implored me to think on a collective and personal level about concepts my classes introduced me to - particularly relationality, interdependency, and rendering consciousness in the wake of our historical contexts, changed permanently by the events of Spring and Summer. I am coming out of my Div II and into my final year thinking broadly about race, movement and mobility, consciousness rendering and changing, and the tension between the personal and the collective. I still struggle against many of the isolative behaviors I have identified in myself these past few years, but my acknowledgment of them has transformed the way I move through the world and treat the people around me. I continue to learn and grow and strive now to stick to my values by doing something when the actions of another or myself do not align with my values. I intend for my Div III project to be an actionable step towards this project of accountability, by illuminating the unseen - the erased histories of black and brown people in the American West, the love for my blackness and my black community which I resented suppressed in myself for far too long, and the simultaneous racial grief and melancholia that lionizing my proximity to whiteness. I hope to offer new information about pathways towards black and yellow solidarities, trouble the personal/collective dichotomy, and interrogate the propensity of historical narratives and nostalgia’s like that of the Western cowboy, for good and evil. 

[div2-portfolio]

Contemporary Dance Modern 3/4 | THDA-117H

All Classes

Spring 2019 with Lucille Jun (Amherst College)

Course Description: This intermediate-level movement practice class is designed for students with previous movement experience who wish to deepen their work as dance artists through the continued development of physical and performance-related skills. Infusing somatic inquiry and improvisational exploration alongside building specific alignment/coordination connections in movement organization, this class is an ongoing experiment with a vast terrain of practices that energize and attune ourselves, both individually and together, to the interconnected wholeness of our moving form and being. We transcribe this physical research into the embodiment of increasingly complex and dynamic movement phrases, eventually dancing this material within expansive performance propositions and scores. Our intention is to practice moving with clarity, freedom, adaptability, and artistry, excavating a personal presence and unique movement expression in the moment of performance.

Grade Received: A (2 credits)