Integral Education: The CIIS Blog

Integral Consciousness Symposium Honors CIIS Founders

By ZACK ROGOW, senior editor at CIIS. His writings include a recent book of poems, "My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers," from Kattywompus Press. 

On Friday, April 15, California Institute of Integral Studies sponsored its third annual Symposium on Integral Consciousness. This year’s event honored the founders of CIIS, Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri, who served as the Institute’s first two presidents.

The 2011 symposium featured many of the Institute’s faculty, students, and alums, presenting research and reflections on the current state of their disciplines. I didn’t get to every event, but here are a few of the highlights I did attend.

CIIS President Joseph L. Subbiondo kicked off the symposium with a talk on “The Need for Interreligious Dialogue in Higher Education.” He argued forcefully for the importance of religious pluralism in today’s world. Quoting numerous spiritual leaders from a variety of faiths, Subbiondo made a case that the United States is one of the most religiously diverse countries, and that higher education has a leading role to play in expanding understanding among different faiths, and spiritual literacy.

Don Hanlon Johnson, founder of the CIIS Somatic Psychology program, followed with a talk on “Embodied Spiritual Practices and Socially Transformative Service.” He spoke about the importance of finding common humanity with people of a variety of faiths and cultures through focusing on our shared experiences, lived through our bodies. Participants experienced this first-hand by greeting another person next to them with a warm touch of hands and a person-to-person exchange of information.

Jorge Ferrer of the CIIS East-West Psychology program provided a thought-provoking overview of the future of religion. He noted that religions were becoming more and more hybridized, learning from one another. He also showed how religions are rapidly changing in response to developments in society, from feminism to gay rights to the ecological crisis.

At a panel on "Goddesses in Conversation," Mara Keller, cofounder of the Women’s Spirituality program at CIIS, advocated for including feminine forms of deity in worship and ritual, recounting her own path to the goddess. Jim Ryan of the Asian and Comparative Studies program spoke about the Institute’s sri yantra symbol, describing how it actually represents a tantric union of the goddess Kali with her consort, as well as the intertwining of the sacred and mundane. He also chanted in Sanskrit the opening verses of a prayer with the thousand names of the goddess. Hilary Anderson, an early alum of CIIS who studied with the Institute’s founders, spoke about the spiritual lessons inherent in life, from the daily existence of couples to archetypes of the goddess.

There were dozens of other speakers at the conference. Many participants praised and thanked CIIS Archivist Bahman Shirazi, who organized the event. This was the third annual Symposium on Integral Consciousness, and as CIIS Library Director Lyse Dyckman said, “When something happens once, it’s innovation. When it happens twice, it’s a trend. When it happens a third time, it’s a tradition.”

More information on the 2011 and previous Symposia >>
 
The 2011 Symposium recordings are available through Conference Recording Services >>

Crossword Puzzles, Sudoku, and…Rubrics?

By PHILIP BROOKS, associate professor in the Integral Counseling Psychology program and a long-time member of the CIIS Integral Education Committee

I recently attended the second annual Expanding the Circle conference, an inspirational and informative national conference sponsored by CIIS and held at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, which focused on “creating an inclusive environment in higher education for LGBTQ students and studies.” In one of the concurrent sessions on assessment, "Measuring LGBTQ Student Success and the Role of Assessment in Academic and Student Affairs," I “came out” as a person who enjoys creating rubrics. Given the tenor of the conversation during that meeting, and the perceived level of interest in rubrics at CIIS, I believe this is a minority position.

For me, filling in the cells of a rubric matrix is a challenging brainteaser. It's fun to think about what exceptional performance and very poor performances looks like, and then wrestle with the spectrum of performances between the two. I offer the following row of cells on the hard to define, but clinically important dimension of presence, from a recent rubric that the Integral Counseling Psychology department created to use in our admissions process. (Presence is one of seven dimensions considered.)

Presence

Is engaged in the moment even if nervous. Is fully "alive" in the role play as therapist and client, Exhibits a non-defensive openness and personal clarity.

Mostly engaged. Performance anxiety may limit interview, but it is acknowledged. Makes "good enough" connection. Is able to show vulnerability.

Not fully "here" in interview, is in and out. May or may not acknowledge anxiety but can't transcend it. Shows a limited capacity for revealing self, insensitive to others.

Presents as disconnected or vague. May be reactive in interview, and be brittle when challenged. Seems unaware of self in the moment. Emotionally unavailable.

I can understand the resistance to rubrics, much as I can understand why people don't warmly embrace thinking in terms of mission, goals, and objectives. It seems to smack of a corporatization of The Academy, and a move toward the science of teaching and away from the art of this profession.

In actually working within this paradigm over the past seven years, my experience has been different. I've come around to sensing that it's fair to spell out what we expect students to gain from our classes, and it seems fair to then assess them based on transparent, understandable, and consistent variables.

Rubrics help students understand what is expected of them in relatively concrete ways. A well- constructed and well-utilized rubric gives a student or trainee a sense of where they are, and a reasonably defined sense of where improvement lies.

A major roadblock to the creation of clear and creative rubrics is that it takes time. It takes time to struggle with the nuances that differentiate fair performance from good performance, and it takes time to get feedback on the drafts, as well as consensus within the faculty as to the accuracy of the measures that are produced. I found the free website Rubistar to be particularly helpful. As a non-tech guy, I also found that Rubistar was easy to use (and they give examples).

Thus, if you want to generate a set of expectations for writing assignments which you can use and modify semester after semester, or if you want to specify levels of attainment of counseling skills, consider creating a rubric. The effort may help you clarify your thinking, provide more transparent measures of performance and/or growth, and help generate quantifiable data for assessment. I hope this was helpful for you, for me it’s a reminder to get back to work on those Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) that we have identified for our Final Integrative Seminar class.

Make Thought Visible: Revealing the Unconscious Through Visual Art

By TRICIA GRAME, visual artist and faculty member in the Department of Writing, Consciousness, and Creative Inquiry

Our imaginations are so expansive and fertile. Art constantly embodies our endless wonder, concerns and thoughts. Creating art is not always a replica of life, but rather a tool for insight which seems to choose our imagining. Art is a metaphor! Most artists agree that interpreting and understanding their work is not meant to be a controlled or a fixed experience. One's art can be filled with storytelling and rich, provocative information, yet may offer no concrete vehicle for its interpretation. The audience must then seek its own explanation or simply absorbs its sublimity. Thus, an internal dialogue will begin without the spoken word, and thoughts become visible.

In the last few years, words have become more integral in my paintings. The elasticity of the painted text and my ability to immediately paint symbols and images began to pour out of me. My questions, thoughts and opinions were turned into art forms. I love the way the words grab you, force you to see them, scream at you, and demand that you read them. I love the materiality of paint, script, and texture and how they can act as uncanny records of time. My work feels both aged and immediate, with obvious or subtle hints of words and thoughts surfacing just beneath the layers of paint. Sometimes my words appear to be buried within or a second thought. I feel like I am recording my thoughts as I try to understand the fragility of my Being. There really is no boundary: it is the paint, the symbols, and the written word that communicate my message.

The artist is granting permission to the viewer to enter her imagination, her journey. It is a deeply personal and intimate place. Whether the written language appears to shout or whisper, it still embodies delicate, essential thoughts, coming from deep inside, entangled and inseparable from all else that reveals itself onto the canvas. A painted word, like a symbol, can add certain emotions or different layers of meaning. This may reflect what Carl Jung described as the concept of active imagination, a kind of meditation in which the emotions are expressed as images, or entities, or stories. 

A successful work of art can consume you, encompass and at the same time jolt your senses, make you pause, stop breathing, capture your body and mind. Some people cannot let go, the art can possess and exhaust you.  Others may attempt to inquisitively snoop into the private language of the artist with a strong desire to understand the artist’s vernacular language, the mystery. The painted word is evidence of thinking that tends to reach beyond the borders of the canvas and expands conventional language. No doubt, people will read it differently and attempt to decode it. The combination of symbols and words are a subversive way for the viewer to become engaged both visually and conceptually. The viewer then starts to free-associate or to analyze the handwriting.  A dialogue between the unconscious and conscious will continue to supply the fuel for our creativity. 
 

In 1940, George Orwell wrote "New Words," an essay about the stages of creativity, the roles of the left and right brain. Art, with or without recognizable images, can be read like a language that can also reveal what has been going on in the mind of the artist. Art can objectify thought, so that it can be seen.

There is a hidden language in one's unconscious that can be revealed and released through the mystery of art and the creative process. Thus, it is not simply a matter of making original works of art, it is the discovery of linking the past to the future in a continuing cycle of growing self-awareness. My work is an exploration, a search for language, in order to express the story, through the soul of my creativity. It is a visual and textual autobiography documenting the power of art as a transformative vehicle. The language of the unconscious is revealed and released through the creative process, becoming tangible in the work of art. Together, the painted text and symbols document my experience of the transformative cycle between art and life.  

Integrative Health and the Health Care Law: An Interview with Dr. Meg Jordan

By BRYNN SAITO, program coordinator for the Department of Writing, Consciousness, and Creative Inquiry

“There’s an expanded consciousness operating, one that includes both health and self-care,” says Meg Jordan, department chair and professor of Integrative Health Studies at CIIS. Such consciousness is also affecting the nation’s health care policy, as evidenced by the five clauses directly addressing preventative and integrative health in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law in March of 2010.

Although Jordan is optimistic about the language of the law, she’s concerned about implementation. “They don’t have strategies yet, for implementing integrative health standards,” she says. Which is why CIIS is part of a summit of schools—including Harvard’s Institute of Lifestyle Medicine, the University of Minnesota, and Duke University—committed to devising concrete strategies for implementing holistic care, in line with new national standards.

“Health coaches are a key strategy for lifestyle turnaround,” Jordan says.  “The medical landscape is highly hierarchical and inaccessible, and a health coach can occupy the first line of partnership with a patient. It’s a de-stigmatized role. I may not feel comfortable talking to a doctor or a psychotherapist, but I can talk to a health coach.” 

Recently, the U.S. Surgeon General has tasked the four-school summit with devising a plan to create a national exam for health coach certification. But, as we’ve seen in recent months, the future of the health care law is uncertain. On February 2 the Republican-led effort to repeal the law ended in defeat, with a 47-51 vote in the U.S. Senate.  It’s now in the hands of the Supreme Court, and has become a hot political item in the run-up to the 2012 elections. 

Still, a fundamental question remains: What, in this country, is driving the resistance to universal health coverage? Jordan doesn't have an answer. But as a medical anthropologist who surveys health care systems across the world, she has noticed a pattern: “There are two countries that stand out with the best health outcomes and the greatest life longevity. And those also happen to be the two countries that have the smallest gap between the rich and the poor.” 

Health equity and wealth equity are related, Jordan says.  “When we take care of everyone, we all tend have a better health outcome.  When we take care of the top 1%, then we see everyone in the country suffer.”  Even those who can afford expensive, high-tech care are receiving it within a system filled with uninsured individuals with debilitating injuries, preventable diseases, and chronic illnesses.

But beyond all of the political debates and controversies, the real shift in health management, notes Jordan, must come from within. Optimum health requires self-care thinking. “It’s up to you, within a culture of support, to tap into your own holistic self-care practices," she says.

Jordan has witnessed substantial growth in the number of students receiving degrees at CIIS in Integrative Health Studies, with 98% of those graduating now employed in health and wellness professions. This gives her hope. Perhaps in the midst of all of the political wrangling about health care, the necessary attitude is one that promotes empowerment and sustains community.  “We’re going to be healthy,” says Jordan, “and it’s up to us.”  

Psychology and Psychoanalysis at the Nexus of Complexity

By LELAND VAN DEN DAELE, core faculty in the Clinical Psychology (PsyD) prgram

Cognitive neuroscience demonstrates the link between mind and brain. Change in thought, emotion, or perception is associated with activation of neural networks. Change induced in the brain through chemicals, neurotransmitters, lesions, or transmagnetic stimulation is coupled with change in thought, emotion, or perception. Mind and brain seem so different yet isomorphic. They seem different because they are viewed from different vantage points. Mind encompasses the domain of the subjective; and the brain, the domain of the objective. Mind is experienced as within and brain is perceived as without.

But the idea of any simple mechanistic connection between mind and brain is doomed to failure. This was demonstrated 50 years ago when the renowned neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield implanted electrodes during open brain surgery in the human cortex. Successive activation of the same electrode implanted in exactly the same place elicited different memories, hallucinations, or sensations. What occurred did not arise from any one-to-one connection between a neuron and a memory, but depended upon the total equilibrium condition of the brain. From his eloquent experiments, science learned that neural pathways are dynamic and shifting, subject to systemic rules and complexity.

Neither brain nor mind appears to obey any simple determinist calculus. This is glaringly obvious when an individual “mind” is contextualized by family, group, culture, and economy. That is, what individuals think, feel, or perceive is influenced by their proximate and distal social and economic environment as well as physical change within their bodies.

This view finds expression in the social-cultural synthesis of the Frankfort School of psychoanalysis. On the one hand, mind is embedded in the body; on the other hand, mind is embodied in broader social-economic networks. Psychology, as embodied in psychodynamic theory, requires openness to causality at all levels and a broad base of understanding of the biological, ecological, interpersonal, cultural, and economic factors that influence human behavior.

As an outgrowth of my interest in the biology of mind, I am a member of the International Society for Neuropsychoanalysis.  As a consequence of my appreciation for the Frankfort School and the role of the economy in influencing human conduct, every year for the last decade, I have penned an “Amateur’s Economic Forecast”. Read my Amateur Economic Forecast for 2011.

“What’s the connection?” you ask. Changes in the economy typically antecede large scale shifts in national aims and beliefs. The economy influences individual sense of security, hopefulness, and even causality. Like the behavior of neurological networks, how economic changes will play out over the next decade is unknown and unpredictable in any deterministic sense. But this does not mean that history does not play a role and that variations upon themes during analogous historical transitions may not appear. The disciplines of psychology and psychoanalysis are at the nexus of complexity.

Sketching My Learning

By CINDY SHEARER, program chair of the MFA in Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts and the MFA in Writing and Consciousness

Many thanks to Sarah Loomis, visual artist and MFA in Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts student, for inviting me to participate with her in the Sketchbook Project.

In the Sketchbook Project, artists purchase a blank Moleskine sketchbook  from Art House Coop and then agree to complete it by a certain date (this year, January 18). The project has only two rules—artists (1) must use the book and (2) can’t change its dimensions. The Brooklyn Art Library catalogs all completed sketchbooks (sent in on time). They are also placed in a touring exhibit.

I joined the project for fun—a chance to play. For me play is at the core of the creative process—and often provides a gentle way for artists to learn about themselves and the art-making process. It can provide an opportunity to ask, What if? But initially this project made me question myself and play did not come easily. Instead of asking what if, I got hung up in what is? What is a sketchbook?

In exploring what a sketchbook is, I also explored what the act of sketching means to me. As a text/image artist, I often write, make notes, or initiate work through use of materials (what if I use XX materials in a certain way?)—so I don’t often sketch. So the thin/lean pages of the sketchbook would be unfamiliar to me—and I was curious what it would be like to draw and use pencils or markers—new tools for me.

Right away, the sketchbook dampened my enthusiasm. The pages were too thin—and I didn’t like the way markers bled on the page. How could I evoke my images? How could I get the sense/feel of texture that is so much a part of my work?

My first learning was to make the sketchbook what I wanted it to be—rather than what I thought a sketchbook should be (it’s so interesting no matter our age or experience how easily we allow someone or something else to shape our work). To make the pages more manageable—I could work with them more as I wanted to—I glued two together. I could play with pencils and markers (even use watercolor over them), but I could also glue words or cut outs onto the page and the surface would hold them.

My second learning was to be playful instead of literal with the theme I choose (everyone gets a theme to work with). I choose “trading forever”—because I liked the combination of words—and the associations I quickly made to them. I let myself play—what does “trading forever” mean? I looked up both words and then realized that an image of things moving kept coming to me. So I let myself play with that.

My third learning was to be true to myself as artist and use what was around me. One thing would lead to another. I took a trip to Memphis and that trip gave me the chance to reflect on trading as a kind of motion or movement—just as travel is—so trading forever aligned with traveling forever and what that could mean/could tell one about place or identity.  Maps, images, found words, stenciled words appeared/materialized and I followed them.

This project also required me to listen and learn from the advice I often give students. When I didn’t like a page—and realized others would see it (my sketchbook on tour!), I wanted to tear it out. How could I let others see my bad work? I reminded myself a sketchbook is a sketchbook, a place to try things out, make mistakes and learn. Also, I reminded myself I didn’t have to worry about the entire sketchbook each time I sat down to create—all I needed to do was play with each page, let each one evolve and have its own identity.

The more I experimented (I used stencils for the first time) and drew from what made me comfortable (materials I like to use and feel confident with), I became more committed and did better work—and also had a lot more fun. Now, my sketchbook is in the mail, and I’m hoping Sarah will invite me to get a sketchbook again next year.

Experiential Education Can Be Perilous

By PHILIP BROOKS, associate professor in the Integral Counseling Psychology program and a long-time member of the CIIS Integral Education Committee

Did you know that peril and experiential share a common root? I found that per means "to lead across, to pass over” (through listening to David Van Nuys interview Aftab Omar). And whether you call it transformative education (their title), integral education, or experiential education, there is personal risk involved when we go across, or pass over to new ways of thinking and experiencing oneself, such as when one deeply engages in a "whole person" learning environment like CIIS.

On a recent Saturday we had a double session of our group dynamics class that was magical. Conflicts were aired in a spirit of truth and compassion, interpersonal risks were taken, and we often found ourselves (and especially I found myself) in a space of not knowing or understanding how resolution would occur, when we hadn’t yet crossed over, and were in the messy middle. However, the day ended with a depth of communion, mutual appreciation, and awe. I know that this experience, which for us came through a T-group format, is not unique to this group or to ICP or CIIS, but I do love those times when students/classes allow themselves to fall apart and come together in this way. (A T-Group in an interpersonal learning group in which students practice "telling the truth with compassion"--sharing their authentic emotional responses to each other and practicing receiving feedback.)

When we engage wholeheartedly in an educational experience, the chances are that we're going to become unsettled. Sometimes it’s a minor disturbance wherein we need to find some way to contain or soothe ourselves, and sometimes it's a much more major disturbance, in which we feel our whole world is turning upside down and inside out at the same time. In the ICP program, the T-group (Group Dynamics MCP 5604) provides an opportunity for people to embrace the tumult, inviting them to become someone new.

What happens for some is found in the overused but apt comparison of personal change to the metamorphosis undergone as the caterpillar becomes the butterfly. In particular, I'm thinking of the initial stage in which in essence, the caterpillar melts into a cellular "soup" in which only DNA strands remain intact. On the human level, if we truly open ourselves to transformation, it can be terrifying: familiar bearings are lost, known ways of self-soothing can vanish, and our relational world can feel chaotic.

Yes, the T-group “takes away,” but it also gives. When it's working well, group members create a challenging yet protective space, akin to the cocoon, where one can dissolve and where one can “pass over," can start to come together again. Just as we were shaped (for better or for worse) by the reflections of our caregiving environment as we were growing up, so we can draw on the mirroring offered by our groupmates to grow into a more resilient, more open, free, and less defensive self.

The main vehicle of change in the T-group, quite simply, is emotional honesty. Members are asked to acknowledge what is real for them in relation to others, be it boredom, jealousy, hurt feelings, anger, attraction...and to risk letting others know this. In this process, people get the opportunity to act differently than their norm, by openly sharing raw emotions and not being protective, vague, or not quite honest with their classmates. The recipient gets practice in hearing often uncomfortable feedback about the impact they have on others, and practice in registering and responding to this feedback in as open and non-reactive a manner as possible. Over time, with consistent practice, people come to what I consider a Buddhist like appreciation of the transitory nature of feelings - that they are not who we really are.
   
I’ll begin closing with a brief discussion of one more area where it’s possible to cross over/transform within the t-group experience. The area is diversity inquiry. Most incoming ICP students consider themselves “open, liberal, kind and thoughtful people," and they are. Most have had some training about diversity in their academic or work life. But fewer have been engaged in raw, open, and productive dialogue on issues of difference. I find many of us to be relatively unconscious in relation to issues of our privilege and of the subjective realities of others' race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, etc. For a person to hear directly what it's like for someone else (a person whom they believe to know and understand) to describe their subjective experience as a marginalized or oppressed person shakes up comfortable and familiar frames.

When genuinely engaging in these conversations, the inner “cellular soup” experience is often manifested outwardly. It's easy to feel like one is "all thumbs" when things get messy, as one attempts to speak sensitively, yet honestly. It’s particularly challenging to live the fundamental principle of ICP T-groups, which is “speak the truth with compassion." (Learn more by reading “Speaking from the Heart,” by Brant Cortright, Michael Kahn, and Judye Hess.)

In any one encounter, a person identified within the dominant culture may find themselves defensive, and reluctant to truly open to their own or others’ realities. The person in the marginalized position may be understandably reluctant to trust and reveal layers of protections which have served them in surviving an unconscious, or racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or able bodied, or…fill in the blank…environment. The risks are high, the rewards are uncertain, yet this work seems necessary if we want experiential, integrative education.

My final closing is to acknowledge and thank my most recent T-group class and all the previous groups who have borne with me as I’m learning this craft, and who have given me so much insight and inspiration. I love this work.

Integral Teaching Moment: Show and Tell in the 17th Grade

By MATTHEW C. BRONSON, associate professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the chair of the CIIS Integral Education Committee

We’ve talked for many years in our integral education meetings about how we as faculty can deepen learning and engage the multiple ways of knowing that are often left out of the typical “chalk and talk” classroom experience. In this regard I have rediscovered a classic technique, surely familiar to everyone from their elementary school days--show and tell.

My first implementation of show and tell was in a weekend intensive workshop, co-conducted with Shoshana Simons of the Expressive Arts Therapy program, on the theme of language and sexuality (a burgeoning and lively realm of inquiry currently). On Friday evening, after orienting the students to the purposes of the course and starting them on their individual inquiries, we asked them to look around their homes and personal spaces for objects that touched on some aspect of their sexual and romantic lives. Their assignment was to reflect on their own sexual identity socialization in light of the class material, and to bring these objects to class on Saturday, prepared to share with their classmates. We told them we would assemble their objects in an altar.

That same night, I started the altar by sharing three artifacts of my own. I began with a small lavender plastic figurine of Tinky Winky, the infamous Teletubbie with the triangle antenna on his head who was “outed” as gay by Christian Fundamentalists. Tinky Winky was a gift from a friend and immediately gained a place of honor on my personal altar at home.

I told the class that, for me, he represented the power of queerness to bring the dominant into an obviously irrational frenzy simply by the tiniest hint of refusing to conform to heteronomativity. I loved the irony that a television program for 2-year-olds was now being seriously presented as a means of recruiting homosexuals. This tiny little figure ignited a firestorm among Evangelicals, and yet, Tinky Winky continued to show up on the TV each week to “work” in his bucolic green meadow under a smiling sun unscathed by the controversy swirling around him.

I explained that Tinky was a model for me as a gay man in his perseverance and power, and even if he were only questioning--understandable given his missing genitalia--I would count him as a queer little brother and fellow sacred clown. 

You might imagine what I shared about a picture of my mother and father as two beautiful young people in love (my mother a virgin), embracing just after taking their vows (and years before their subsequent divorce when I was only two). A picture of me and a former Brazilian lover dressed as Carmen Miranda was fodder for reflection on gender as performance. I enjoyed showing up as a teacher and as a whole person with a history, and felt that this in and of itself was a kind of intervention in the business-as-usual of college teaching.

On Saturday morning we began with 12 students and two instructors in a small windowless room with the chairs arranged in a circle. One young woman brought a condom and shared what it had cost her to be prepared for safe sex. Many men she dated had been doubly surprised when she had whipped out a Trojan Magnum condom at the critical moment—first that she was apparently ready for sex, and second owing to the extra-large size of the prophylactic in question. This was enough to end the encounter in some instances. She spoke of the contradictions inherent in being socialized as a sexually active woman who was not supposed to want sex.

A young gay man brought a gold wedding band and explained how he had at one point intended to give it to his partner as part of a commitment ceremony. Then, gay weddings were legal in California for a while and there was the possibility of the band becoming a real wedding ring. Before the couple could consecrate the marriage, the law changed; he then broke up with his partner.

The man asked us to look at the ring: “It’s a wedding ring, it’s not a wedding ring, it’s a wedding ring. This is the story of my life as a gay man.” 

A woman in her 30s who had only recently committed to a relationship with a woman brought photos showing various aspects of her butch and femme personas. She shared her struggle as someone who was learning how to talk and behave like a “good lesbian.”

Each story and object shared had a tremendous impact on the group, and the effect of the ensemble was truly remarkable. We arranged the objects in a corner of the room and left them there for the duration of the workshop. We would dip into them from time to time for a new story, providing a thread of coherence throughout our time together. I found that the possibility of going deep was fully present for us as a group after the initial round of sharing. There were many additional benefits: people introduced themselves and bonded without the usual delay; there were many ready examples to draw from as we explicated the theoretical approaches in the class; the material presence of the objects reminded us of what we had been talking about and energetically charged the room with their storied presence.

I had a similar experience conducting the show and tell exercise with colleagues in CIIS’ Teaching and Learning Group. I asked them to bring objects that represented their personal relationship with teaching. We each presented our object, then observed the assembled altar, wrote about what we saw and heard, and debriefed as to what we had learned about teaching and learning. 

We witnessed: a family picture book with pages ripped out, a farmer doll, a pair of eyeglasses, a stone with the word “nothing” engraved in it--nothing is written in stone. My colleagues reported that it was particularly helpful to have been looking for the objects in the two weeks prior to the meeting. It caused them to think deeply about their work and sort through what was really important to them as teachers and learners.  They remarked afterwards on the moving quality of the stories and the glimpses into each other’s intimate worlds that would not otherwise have been afforded.

This activity could be adapted to a wide variety of audiences and purposes as a way of getting beyond superficial classroom routines. It has the potential to establish a more intimate rapport among members of any learning community and a more personal and critical engagement with virtually any academic content. To be fair, this is nothing other than show and tell in the 17th grade. 

Some of the best teaching still seems to come from the elementary level, in my experience. Our colleagues in kindergarten can remind those of us in higher education how to enroll the storied things of daily life as our co-teachers. 

Brown Bag Reading Series at CIIS

By BRYNN SAITO, program coordinator for the Department of Writing, Consciousness, and Creative Inquiry

Last Wednesday, nearly 40 members of the CIIS community gathered in the 4th floor staff lounge for the second installation of the Brown Bag Reading Series, which showcases the creative work of faculty and staff here at the institute.

Dorotea Reyna, director of development, and Sandra Pacheco, faculty member in the School of Undergraduate Studies, treated us to stories and poems about the resiliency born from traversing the borderlands of their many identities: mother, writer, daughter, Chicana, professor, poet. “The fact that both Dorotea and Sandra felt safe in our community to share their passions and intimate selves was a moving and inspiring moment for all of us,” said CIIS President Joseph Subbiondo. “This series is a tribute to CIIS.” 

Initiated by President Subbiondo, Zack Rogow, senior editor in the Communications Department, and Cindy Shearer, Program Chair of the MFA in Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts and the MFA in Writing and Consciousness, the Brown Bag Reading Series has been a wonderful way for our community to get to know one another, through the sharing of food and art. Zack Rogow, poet and translator, lyrically and skillfully opened the series in October with a lively reading of poems from his latest collection, "The Number Before Infinity." 

The Brown Bag Reading Series isn’t held at the best venue; there’s no sound system and lighting isn’t all that great. But the food is wonderful (thanks to catering by local Thai and Mediterranean restaurants—CIIS’ version of brown-bagging a lunch) and the work shared is intimate, brave, and moving. Full of food and good feeling, we return to our workdays and courses feeling a little more inspired. Art, at its best, reminds us of who we are—it touches something core in us, breaks us open. I feel fortunate to work at a place that values this quality, and I look forward the ways in which the arts continue to live here at CIIS.   

The Brown Bag Reading Series takes place twice a semester, in the 4th floor staff lounge from noon-1 pm. For more information on the series, email bsaito@ciis.edu.

An End to Bullying and Medical Hubris: Two Sad Reports, Cut from the Same Cloth

By Dr. Meg Jordan, PhD, RN, CWP, Global Medicine Hunter

It's with great sadness that I read the news this past week. The reports of Guatemalans intentionally infected with venereal disease by U.S. government health researchers in the mid-1940s disgusts all of us. I am grateful to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for publicly apologizing to the Guatemalan president and making amends. Who knows how much suffering this act of medical hubris (life-threatening testing on "brown skin people who live elsewhere") has caused? There is an undertone of Tuskegee running through this Guatemalan study, although stark differences occur.

For one thing, the 600-plus Guatemalans who were encouraged to sleep with infected prostitutes (and when that didn't infect some, had pathogens scratched into their skin) were supposedly treated, although no documentation about the success of that treatment is available. For all we know, STDs were passed on to spouses, other adults, and children while disability and premature death ensued.

The other act is of course one more in a dreadful series: another suicide of a young queer person who succumbed to relentless cyber-bullying and harassment. Speak out, act out, make a stance however and wherever you can against such acts of hatred and discrimination, subtle and obvious, of a similar nature. Fill the blogs and live by example to transform culture now.

Just as Maslow mapped out a hierarchy of needs, there is a similar hierarchy of well-being in which societies can flourish: First, safety, then tolerance, then acceptance, finally on to celebration of diversity.

As a medical anthropologist, I chronicle how societies transform themselves from bastions of brutality to beacons of social justice, once we teach ourselves and others how to thrive in an atmosphere of safety.  Next, we become accustomed to a safe environment, and grow to understand how tolerating what we don't understand, but tolerating it anyway, brings an added measure of  health.

However, tolerance is not ideal, it's dismissive and coated in superiority. Societies must move from tolerance to wider acceptance in order to further their own goals of mutual respect and shared progress.

Finally, a stage of moving from acceptance to celebration requires that we no longer simply tolerate or accept diversity, we highlight it as life-affirming, rich with interest, strength and excitement. These matured societies are also marked by a commitment to ensuring none of its members suffer from vast health or income disparities that drag down the society as a whole. 

Unfortunately, we have some stark examples in the U.S. just this past week that our society is nowhere near this level of acceptance or diversity. For that matter, I wonder if we've slid from past gains in previous decades where tolerance was the goal.

There is something heinous about elements in our society which fester cyber-bullying and harassment of children of difference, and also work to dismantle the Affordable Health Care Act, which finally removed the ability of insurance companies to deny children with pre-existing conditions.

These acts are cut from the same cloth: one of fear, laced with greed and reactionary, ignorant hatred.
But there is also a rising hue and cry among those who were formerly in a trance by the economic downturn, wondering where our own safe landing may occur among financial sharks and health care bullies.

There really is no safety for all of us if there is none for the weakest among us.

Stand together and shake off the icy chill that descends when we encounter these dreadful acts.

• Safeguard a child who shows signs of being "different."
• Voice your insistence that health care is a right.
• Make a stand against indifference of medical testing on people of color, people on distant shores, those assumed to be of less worth so that we can somehow use them as guinea pigs in unethical, inhumane manner. It still continues with vaccine testing and will continue by those with an eye on profits versus well-being of the whole, not the few.