En Memoria of Lost Ones at Virginia Tech

Much love and strength goes to the families of the 32 victims at Virginia Tech.

Rhetorical Memory @ UMassAmherst

The graduate program in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Massachusetts Amherst offers the following course on rhetorical memory. The course description provides a good overview of the history of memory within classical and contemporary scholarship:

The Rhetorical Art of Memory

"Memory, one of the five canons of rhetoric, was once heralded as the custodian of *all* the parts of rhetoric. In the last century, however, modernists reduced memory to mimetic recall and postmodernists treated authorized memory with suspicion. At the same time, memory has experienced a resurgence in rhetorical theory, minority discourse and literatures, and cultural research. This course examines rhetorical memory by grounding the concept in classical, medieval, and modern western rhetorical traditions (Eric Havelock, Francis Yates, Mary Carruthers; considering memory’s demise and consequent need in composition theory and pedagogy (John Frederick Reynolds, Sharon Crowley, Kathleen Welch); and exploring memorial narrative and historiography as vehicles for critical and creative social praxis (Toni Morrison, Victor Villanueva, Andrea Lunsford)."

My dissertation will certainly address the use of memory in minority discourse as well as in minority literatures. I don't think that the "resurgence" in rhetorical theory with regard to memory has been that strong or even "memorable". I will keep digging as to who pronounces this resurgence and how (most likely Villanueva).

Hasta la proxima...

Pedro Infante Vive!

Today, all of Mexico celebrates the 50th anniversary of the death of Mexican cinema icon Pedro Infante, who was immortalized in Chicano culture by Chicana writer Denise Chavez's novel Loving Pedro Infante.




A wonderful, entertaining novel! Read it now!




Check out the article about local honors to Infante by El Paso Times Reporter Ramon Renteria (the coolest journalist in all of El Chuco): "Collection, Festival to Honor Icon"

Beloved Memory

James McConkey--editor of The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology--eloquently pronounces the place of memory in Toni Morrison's critically acclaimed novel Beloved.

"Of her novels, Beloved is the one in which memory is so important it becomes, indeed, subject. Beloved, the title character, is created out of memory itself--the memory of a mother, escaped from slavery, who cannot forget the enormity of her own offense, the killing of her infant daughter. Such a murder is as inevitable as any in Greek tragedy: it is an act of love, the consequence of the institution of slavery itself, committed to prevent the baby from being taken from her into the death-in-life bondage. Is Beloved, the young woman who years later enters the mother's house and life, an apparition or an actual person?" (212)

(photo borrowed from Never Lost)

Toni Morrison on Memory

Just finished reading Toni Morrison's essay "Memory, Creation and Writing" as featured in The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology.

I want to share some quotes from her essay here:

"Memory is for me always fresh, in spite of the fact that the object being remembered is done and past" (213).

"Memory (the deliberate act of remembering) is a form of willed creation. It is not an effort to find out the way it really was--that is research. The point is to dwell on the way it appeared and why it appeared in that particular way" (213).

"Memory, then, no matter how small the piece remembered, demands my respect, my attention, and my trust" (214).

"I depend heavily on the ruse of memory (and in a way it does function as a creative writer's ruse) for two reasons. One, because it ignites some process of invention, and two, because I cannot trust the literature and the sociology of other people to help me know the truth of my own cultural sources. It also prevents my preoccupations from descending into sociology. Since the discussion of Black literature in critical terms is unfailingly sociology and almost never art crticism, it is important for me to shed those considerations from my work at the outset" (214).

"When we wake from a dream we want to remember all of it, although the fragment we are remembering may be, and very probably is, the most important piece in the dream" (216).



In the writing of Tar Baby, memory meant recollecting the told story. I refused to read a modern or Westernized version of the story, selecting out instead the pieces that were disurbing or simply memorable: fear, tar, the rabbit's outrage at a failing in traditional manners (the tar baby does not speak). Why was the tar baby formed, to what purpose, what was the farmer trying to protect, and why did he think the doll would be attractive to the rabbit--what did he know, and what was his big mistake? Why does the tar baby cooperate with the farmer, and do the things the farmer wishes to protect wish to be protected? What makes his job more important than the rabbit's, why does he believe that a briar patch is sufficient punishment, what does the briar patch represent to the rabbit, to the tar baby, and to the farmer?" (218).

Currently Listening To....

Quote of the Day

"Dreams are the eraser dust I blow off my page. They fade into the emptiness, another dark gray day. Dreams are only memories of the plans I had back then. Dreams are eraser dust and now I use a pen."

~ Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849)

HIST 5304 -- Community and Memory

Dr. Yolanda Chavez Leyva teaches the following grad course at UTEP:

HIST 5304 -- Community and Memory

Course Description

"Public history is a field that deals with the issues and methodologies surrounding the presentation of history to the general public through venues as diverse as popular publications, museum exhibits, documentaries, and archives. Because of its focus on the public, community and community-building are important issues to the public historian. This course will explore the inter-related issues of community and memory through a series of readings and participation in a community oral history project.

Among the questions we will consider this semester are: How can we use history to help build community? How do we define community? What role do communities play in promoting and preserving history? How do we, as individuals and communities, remember "our" history? Whose histories get remembered? What role do we, as historians, play in the remembrance of histories?"

Reading List:

1. David E. Kyvig and Myron A. Marty, Nearby History: Exploring the Past around You
(American Association for State and Local History Book Series)
2. Roger I. Simon, Between Hope and Despair: Pedagogy and the Remembrance of Historical
Trauma
3. Mike Wallace, Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American History
4. John E. Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century
5. Martha K. Norkunas, The Politics of Public Memory: Tourism, History, and Ethnicity in
Monterey, California (Suny Series in Oral and Public History)
6. Holly Beachley Brear, Inherit the Alamo: Myth and Ritual at an American Shrine
7. David Thelen and Roy Rosenzweig, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in
American Life
8. Robert Archibald, A Place to Remember: Using History to Build Community

Upcoming Book on Memory

This upcoming book on memory features my thesis mentor Yolanda Chavez Leyva, who teaches courses about Memory and Public History at the University of Texas El Paso.

Memories and Migrations: Mapping Boricua and Chicana Histories (Hardcover)

by Vicki L. Ruiz (Editor), John R. Chavez (Editor)




Book Description (from Amazon.com):

"Using region as a category of analysis, this pioneering collection explores the reciprocal relationship between Latinas and location. In highlighting the multiple ways in which Latinas grapple with their identity, the contributors significantly increase our understanding of how identity is created, negotiated, claimed, and remembered. This pathbreaking volume compares Latinas from a variety of backgrounds, moving the focus from Los Angeles, New York, and Santa Fe to Chicago, Tucson, and Philadelphia. Memories and Migrations embodies the constant negotiation and shaping of scholarship, which mirrors the fluidity of Latina migration, memory, and identity."

Contributions by:

Gabriela F. Arredondo, John R. Chávez, Marisela R. Chávez, Yolanda Chávez Leyva, María E. Montoya, Lydia R. Otero, Vicki L. Ruiz, Elizabeth Salas, Virginia Sánchez Korrol, and Carmen Teresa Whalen.

The book will be available on December 1, 2007.

Quote of the Day

“We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

~Martin Luther King Jr.

"Whatever Happened?" by The Strokes

("I'll throw you outta my house if you don't cut that hair!")

My current favorite song that insists on forgetting...

"Whatever Happened?"

by The Strokes (as featured in the Marie Antoinette soundtrack):

I want to be forgotten,

and I don't want to be reminded.

You say "please don't make this harder."

No, I won't yet.

I wanna be beside her.

She wanna be admired.

You say "please don't make this harder."

No, I won't yet.

Oh dear, is it really all true?

Did they offend us and they want it to sound new?

Top ten ideas for countdown shows...

Whose culture is this and does anybody know?

I wait and tell myself "life ain't chess,"

But no one comes in and yes, you're alone...

You don't miss me, I know.

Oh Tennessee, what did you write?

I come together in the middle of the night.

Oh that's an ending that I can't write, 'cause

I've got you to let me down.

I want to be forgotten,

and I don't want to be reminded.

You say "please don't make this harder."

No, I won't yet.

I want to be beside her.

She wanna be admired.

You say "please don't make this harder."

No, I won't yet...

A Must Read: "Remembering Rapture..."

Next week, I will be reading bell hooks and I can't help but recommend the following book to you all, which has re-energized me to blend the spiritual with what is written. There is no doubt that hooks has put "soul" back into writing.

En Memoria: Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

"When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon . . . My father, like Hemingway, was a gun nut and was very unhappy late in life. But he was proud of not committing suicide. And I'll do the same, so as not to set a bad example for my children."

~ Kurt Vonnegut (qtd. in 2005)

Ingenious writer and humorist Kurt Vonnegut entered immortality on Wednesday. His best known work is the controversial "Slaughterhouse Five," a novel which blended social commentary with science fiction.

Que en paz descanse/requiescat in pace

Summer Readings on Memory

On May 1, I will post all of the readings I completed this semester in order to prepare my dissertation proposal.

The following is the next set of readings that I have planned for Summer 2007:



“Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” Harriet Jacobs





“Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells” Ida B. Wells and Alfreda M. Duster




“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave: Written by Himself” Frederick Douglass




“The Souls of Black Folk” W.E.B. Dubois (re-read)




“Understanding African American Rhetoric: Classical Origins to Contemporary Innovations” R. L. Jackson II & Elaine B. Richardson, eds.



“Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez” Richard Rodriguez (re-read)



“The Greek Sophists” (Penguin Classics)



“Memory, History, Forgetting” Paul Ricoeur



“History and Memory” Jacques Le Goff

As you can see, I have not picked a large amount of readings. I have tried to keep the reading load low since Comp Exams are coming up in Fall 2007!

Eeeeeek!!!!

Wish me luck!

Quote of the Day

"The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time."

~Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Memory in Film: "Meet the Robinsons"

Disney Films recently released "Meet the Robinsons," an animated feature that features memory as a theme.



Check out the synopsis of the film and the film's website:

“Lewis is a brilliant inventor with a surprising number of clever inventions to his credit. His latest and most ambitious project is the Memory Scanner, a machine that will help him find his birth mother so they can become a family. But before he can find her, his invention is stolen by the dastardly Bowler Hat Guy and his diabolical hat and constant companion, Doris. Lewis has all but given up hope when a mysterious stranger named Wilbur Robinson whisks our bewildered hero away in a time machine and together they team up to track down Bowler Hat Guy in a showdown that ends with an unexpected and unbelievable twist of fate.”

Remembering "Lola, La Grande"

Currently listening (and weeping) to:

Lola "La Grande" Beltran (1932-1996)

Quote of the Day

"Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin."

~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

Never Forget the Art of Memory!

I'm currently researching any background and all that has been written about the poet Simonides, the inventor of the The Art of Memory.

Hasta la proxima....

Songs about Memory/Memoria

"Y todo lo que ya viví,
lo sigo cargando
Lo llevo muy dentro de mí
nunca lo he olvidado,
lo siento tan cerca de aquí,
lo llevo muy dentro de mí."

"Oleada," Julieta Venegas, Si (2003)

* * *



"I will remember you
Will you remember me?
Don't let your life pass you by
Weep not for the memories
Remember the good times that we had?
I let them slip away from us when things got bad
How clearly I first saw you smilin' in the sun
Wanna feel your warmth upon me, I wanna be the one
I will remember you
Will you remember me?
Don't let your life pass you by
Weep not for the memories
I'm so tired but I can't sleep
Standin' on the edge of something much too deep
It's funny how we feel so much but we cannot say a word
We are screaming inside, but we can't be heard
But I will remember you
Will you remember me?
Don't let your life pass you by
Weep not for the memories
I'm so afraid to love you, but more afraid to lose
Clinging to a past that doesn't let me choose
Once there was a darkness, deep and endless night
You gave me everything you had, oh you gave me light
And I will remember you
Will you remember me?
Don't let your life pass you by
Weep not for the memories
And I will remember you
Will you remember me?
Don't let your life pass you by
Weep not for the memories
Weep not for the memories"


"I Will Remember You" (1995), Sarah McLachlan

* * *


"Look at this photograph
Everytime I do it makes me laugh
How did our eyes get so red
And what the hell is on Joey's head
And this is where I grew up
I think the present owner fixed it up
I never knew we'd ever went without
The second floor is hard for sneakin' out
And this is where I went to school
Most of the time I had better things to do
Criminal records says I've broke in twice
I must have done it half a dozen times
I wonder if it's too late
Should I go back and try to graduate
Life's better now than it was back then
If I was them I wouldn't let me in
Oh oh oh oh god I....I
Every memory of looking out the back door
I have a photo album spread out on my bedroom floor
It's hard to say, time to say it
Goodbye, goodbye
Every memory of walking out the front door
I found the photo of the friend that I was looking for
It's hard to say, time to say it
Goodbye, goodbye
Remember the old arcade
Blew every dollar that we ever made
The cops seeing us hanging out
They said somebody went and burned it down
We used to listen to the radio
And sing along with every song we know
We said someday we'd find out how it feels
To sing to more than just the steering wheel
Kim's the first girl I kissed
I was so nervous that I nearly missed
She's had a couple of kids since then
I haven't seen her since god knows when
Oh oh oh oh god I...I
Every memory of looking out the back door
I have a photo album spread out on my bedroom floor
It's hard to say, time to say it
Goodbye, goodbye
Every memory of walking out the front door
I found the photo of the friend that I was looking for
It's hard to say, time to say it
Goodbye, goodbye
I miss that town
I miss the faces
You can't erase ityou can't replace it
I miss it now
I can't believe it
So hard to stay
So hard to leave it
If I could I relive those days
I know the one thing that would never change......
Every memory of looking out the back door
I have a photo album spread out on my bedroom floor
It's hard to say, time to say it
Goodbye, goodbye
Every memory of walking out the front door
I found the photo of the friend that I was looking for
Its hard to say, time to say it
Goodbye, goodbye
Look at this photograph
Everytime I do it makes me laugh
Everytime I do it makes me......"

"Photograph," Nickelback, The State (2000)

* * *



"Midnight
Not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory
She is smiling alone
In the lamplight
The withered leaves collect at my feet
And the wind begins to moan
Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile happy your days ( I can dream of the old days)
Life was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again
Every street lamp seems to beat
A fatalistic warning
Someone mutters and the street lamp gutters
And soon it will be morning
Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life
And I mustn’t give in
When the dawn comes
Tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin

Burnt out ends of smoky days
The still cold smell of morning
A street lamp dies ,another night is over
Another day is dawning
Touch me,
It is so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun
If you touch me,
You’ll understand what happiness is
Look, a new day has begun..."

"Memory" (1981), Barbara Streisand

"History, Memory and Memorials"

Recently, I attended a series lecture on memory and monuments at UTEP. (Actually, my notes are pending as to what was presented and discussed at the lecture series.) Anyway, after attending this lecture, I searched the Internet for some websites on memory and monuments which I now present to you in an effort to stress the importance of memory and monuments as a site for rhetorical analysis.

Here are some interesting websites:

"History, Memory and Memorials" -- http://www.wam.umd.edu/~bherek/holo/hmm.html

This website prsents Foucault's "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" as the "theoretical basis" for discussing history and memory.

"Memory, History and Memorials" -- http://www.facinghistory.org/campus/memorials.nsf/Home?OpenFrameSet

This website is fantastic! Check out the artice on civic memory.

"History and Memory in France and the United States" -- http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~mjdennis/courses/history_410_syllabus.htm

Raymond Birn & Matthew Dennis presented this course with some interesting reads. Check out their syllabus.

"Memory, Autobiography, History" -- http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/rmpa00.htm
John F. Kihlstrom's essay that deliberates about history, memory and the biographical self, which mentions the controversial autobiography by Rigoberta Menchu.

"Preserving Memory: A Study of Monuments and Memorials" -- http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1993/1/93.01.06.x.html
Yale scholar Bradley McCallum examines the AIDS Quilt and Vietnam Memorials

"Out of Memory!" -- http://library.thinkquest.org/C0110291/purposes/collective/memorials/index.php

A database of memorials around the world.

"The History of Memorials" -- http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/motchan/motchan11.html

"The Medieval Craft of Memory"

The following quote is an excerpt from the general introduction to "The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures" by Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski (Editors). I have chosen to feature it here because I am drawn to the way in which both authors articulate memory in relation to, of course, time but also space. These two factors are critical when examining memory. However, I also think that power relations, in Foucauldian sense, is important when thinking about time and space. Memory has a lot to do with power. In "re-collecting," one might be engaging in a "will to truth." Hmmm....I'll keep thinking about this....until next time. Enjoy the quote!

"In one common meaning of the word, 'memory' specifically connotes 'storage,' a treasure house both of experiences and of facts. We can think of our memories as being like valuables in a bank vault, just sitting in our brains, collecting dust and grime, perhaps (in a poorly made and tended vault) suffering depredations from rats and air polution, until oblivion overtakes them. This is a curious intellectual model, for it suggests that our memories are essentially passive impressions of experiences we have had that can be taken out whole and unchanged whenever we need them. The notion that in re-collecting we actually make (and remake) our memories is regarded as somehow shameful, an admission that memory, like art and poetry, can 'tell lies'".

"Yet it is also true that to make use of memores--indeed to know they are there in our minds at all--we must recall them to our active awareness, our knowing. Re-collection is not passive, but rather an activity involving human will and thought; it is often defined as a form of reasoning. One may conveniently think of this activity in spatial terms, as if memories have been storied in a variety of places and must be called together in a common place where we can become aware of them, where we can 'see' them again and know them in the present".

Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski, eds.

The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures

Quote of the Day

"Memory itself is an internal rumour."

~George Santayana, "The Life of Reason"

Quote of the Day: Napoleon Remembers Washington

"Washington is dead! This great man fought against Tyranny; he established the liberty of his country. His memory will always be dear to the French people, as it will be to all free men of the two worlds; and especially to French soldiers, who, like him and the American soldiers, have combated for liberty and equality."

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821)

Pimp My Mnemonic!

Check out this website on mnemonic devices! Amazing!

Mnemonic Device Eu

Mnemonic Room System

The following is a definition of "Mnemonic Room System" from (the infamous) Wikipedia:

"A mnemonic room system, or Roman room method, is a method of remembering items using a description of a room, based on creating an association between the item and the room. For example, if one wished to remember the items (dog, envelope, thirteen, wool, window), one could visualise a room, possibly one's own sitting room, and associate a particular item with a particular object/spot/position within the room: imagine a rainbow coloured dog sitting astride the dining table with a ludicrously long rainbow coloured tail snaking through all the chairs; imagine the walls covered in vivid paintings which all have envelopes as their subject in some way, every single painting; imagine a television with the shape of the digits 1 and 3 side by side, which is unlucky as it means nothing can be clearly seen the screen, only some voice somebody saying "unlucky for some" over and over again; imagine the dog is eating a bowl of blues spaghetti, which, upon closer inspection, appears to be blue wool; imagine the floor is a window through which only mud is visible, and it keeps cracking every time weight is put on it - a useless window in a silly place."

So, in sum, this mnemonic procedure allows one to use imagination as means to create memorable things or items in order for there to be a strong impression from which certain desirable information may be recalled from memory. Those Romans were ingenious!

Quote of the Day

"Nothing is so responsible for the good old days as a bad memory.

"

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945)