Wow, what a week of decision making. I’d been offered a Visiting Professor position in Creative Writing at University of Hawaii for Fall 2010, and it was a sweet offer. While I totally appreciate the generous offer, I’ve just formally turned it down. Still, I did seriously consider it, though not sure how I would have pulled it off, given my full time work schedule here.
But as it happens, opportunities always manage to present themselves at opportune (!) times, and now it looks like I will get to teach the Filipino American Literature class in Philippine Studies at USF, which I have been wanting badly to teach. So teaching Filipino American Arts, and Filipino American Literature, in a Philippine Studies program, in a university in San Francisco. Job made for me.
This semester — very good students, very good engagement of material. Yesterday, we finished discussing Marlon Fuentes’s Bontoc Eulogy, a mockumetary about the human beings of the Philippine Reservation at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. We discussed evidence and testimony, oral tradition and storytelling (my question here was about where the testimonies of the displayed Filipinos are, whether these stories exist mainly in oral tradition), human stories and memory versus information in history books and the points of view the latter represent. After this, local filmmaker Nara Denning came to speak, after we’d watched her short film, Madalien the Small. Very on point, strong, and animated discussion about the film, about aesthetics, the cinépoem, writing, and filmmaking process, about collaboration and art scene/community.
Yeah, that’s a lot. I also worked a full work week. My brain is tired, and so this weekend, I’m chillin.
Happy V Day (and lunar new year), Barb. I screamed a mental “Rraarrrghhh” between the words “Hawaii” and “turned it down.” But I understand the decision. (I think.) Are these things we generally aren’t willing to do post-35 and beyond (an age/stability thing)? Is there a place for acting on the magic of wanderlust? Actually, I think it’s wise (or maybe just hopeful, but hope is wise) to know that everything around orbits and this, or something similar, offers itself up again eventually or else it shouldn’t have at all. Okay. I’m comfortable with your decision now…ha ha ha!
I like the stripped layout of the blog, BTW.
Ha, Debbie! I don’t think it’s an age thing as much as a stability thing. I also had to remind myself that what is most important to me is not the field of Creative Writing, but forwarding the serious study of Filipino American arts/lit, esp. in a Phil. Studies program, to primarily young Fil Am’s, esp. in the Bay.
Awesome, Barbara Jane! Teaching at UH would probably been great (I mean, hanging with Ruth Mabanglo and Teresita Ramos, very cool) but this sounds so much cooler. :) Congrats!
I’ll have to see if I can find a copy Bontoc Eulogy. There were quite a few events up here reflecting on the anniversary of the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition 1909 in Seattle and I wonder how much was similar.