3.6.17 Brief notes on a creativity symposium

On September 29th, 2007, the University of New Mexico Graduate and Professional Student Association presented what was publicly billed as a ‘Creativity Symposium,’ but which, on arrival, turned out to be a Research and Creative Expression Symposium—which is a somewhat different thing. I attended expecting talks on creativity; in fact, the symposium was a catch-all for generally any graduate student in the humanities to discuss (or mumble about) their research, planned research, or to read short papers.

I arrived in time to catch two of the time blocks, the first entitled Topics in Learning and the second, Glimpsing Realities through Art. Three students made short presentations in the first, four in the second.

Tita Burger, PhD candidate in the Department of American Studies presented a talk called Realizing Critical Regionalism: A Case Study in the Southwest Borderlands. Burger spoke amiably about such things as Convergent Disciplinary Studies, American Exceptionalism and Critical Regionalism. The focus of the research she was engaged in, or proposed to engage in, was entirely lost on me.

Ivan A. Lopez, a Masters candidate in the School of Public Management spoke on a model he is developing for understanding retention and dropout rates in higher education. Though one might criticise the scope of the model, and the testability of his hypotheses, one could at any rate, follow the gist of his thoughts—something not entirely consistent among his fellow speakers.

Diane Thomas presented a talk entitled The Role of Action Research in Art Curriculum at the High School. Her talk was an interesting description of the practicalities and iterative process by which she discovered that students of art—even of digital, computer-based arts, do not regard the medium as the message, and prefer the opportunity to make art meaningful, no matter the medium. (Who knew?)

First up in the second session, was Katherine Alexander, a Masters student in the English department, with Virgil’s Aeneid and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice: Models for Berlioz’s Les Troyens. Alexander spoke briefly of the relationship between the Aeneid and Les Troyens—a fairly uncontroversial notion, I suspect, though it is not my subject. She gave the audience (of three or four) a hand-out and mentioned a relationship of the former two works with the Shakespeare—a link I was unable to grasp in the brief moment allotted for discussion. Finally, Alexander—a former music student—played an inaudible recording of an excerpt from the opera on tiny laptop speakers. She rhapsodized on the beauty of the music, though the relevance was unclear to me.

Next Jeremy Lehnen, a PhD candidate from the Department of Latin American Studies read a paper entitled Sex, Silence and Social Disintegration: Batalla en el cielo, about the Mexican feature film by Carlos Reygadas of that subtitle (Or in English, Battle in Heaven) about a kidnapper. His reading was somewhat stilted and the gist of the paper was difficult to follow; I am unable to report the thesis of the paper, though I did catch the word simulacra—proving the paper to a work of erudition, of course.

PhD candidate from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Maria Nieves de Abajo Bajo, read a paper, the translated title of which is Spanish woman writers at the end of the millennium: Crisis and transformation in female protagonists. She read the paper with much animation, but unfortunately in Spanish—I cannot, therefore comment.

Finally, English Department PhD candidate Ketievia Segovia read her paper, Into the Woods: An Exploration of Myth and Ritual in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In it she discusses the influence on the story of both Christian and Celtic attitudes and mythologies. Hers was, in my opinion, the most interesting presentation of the day, if for no other reason than by virtue of possessing an actual point, presented with reasoned argument and clear examples.

2007.10.9