My mom is a retired newspaper reporter. She used to write obits when she was first starting out. I never heard of them being written by funeral directors. I’m sure Guin must be confusing obits with funeral notices.
I’ll ask him, but I’m almost positive he’s said he’s written obits.
He may say he’s written the Emancipation Proclamation, but if he’s a funeral director and he writes anything for a semi-reputable newspaper, it wasn’t an obit.
Like I said, I could be mistaken. I’ll ask.
And if the students were objecting to the professor expecting them to paint nudes, or study such paintings, then the professor would have an iron clad defense. But unless he can show a reason why providing their professor with nude photos of themselves is essential to the course, I can’t picture the school administration just giving him a pass on this.
Saying, “I wanted to make the students do something that made them feel uncomfortable sexually, so that they could overcome that discomfort,” isn’t much of a defense, given that deliberately making students feel uncomfortable sexually is sexual harrassment by pretty much any definition I’ve ever seen.
Furthermore, it’s a pretty pathetic justification anyway, because the students’ objection isn’t even that they’re not comfortable with their bodies – it’s that they’re not comfortable providing their professor with a naked photo of themselves. One can have a perfectly healthy body image and still not be inclined to give her professor a nude photo of herself. If the professor is trying to help the students overcome their discomfort with letting him view them naked, then I think whatever he’s teaching has gone well beyond the bounds of “art.”
Mea culpa.
I just looked at the local paper and what I meant by obits were indeed “classified death notices.” I didn’t realize that obits mean the longer articles that are sort of like a Reader’s Digest Ultra-Condensed life story, and the “So and So, beloved mother, died 2-28-06, survived by blah blah blah” are death notices. I always just assumed they were the same thing, and heard them referred to as such.
I appologize.
:o :smack:
We now return to your regularly scheduled topic.
from your link:
"News obituaries are prepared by our staff and are published at the editor’s discretion. To suggest a news obituary, call 412-263-1601.
Classified obituaries are only accepted from funeral directors and representatives of crematoriums and memorial societies, who may call 412-263-1371 from 9 a.m. to 5:00 p.m."
What they’re calling “classified obituaries” is, I think, a fancy way of saying “classified ad.” I was referring to the news obits, which are prepared by reporters, and which are obviously what I taught in my journalism class. They follow a different (usually more flexible) form than the classified ads that funeral directors pay to have run in the paper.
Sorry for the hijack.
The med students are muslims from Pakistan and Malaysia. They are returning home at the end of the course, and will work in their own countries where the system and the patients will accommodate them.
Mostly they’re happy enough examining the abdomen, limbs and face, it’s the breast/groin/scrotum exams they’re not too keen on, so they get a pass.
Like I said, they do have to show that they know how to do the relevant exam in an emergency and are tested the same way as everyone else, except they use models and in-detail verbal explanations, we just do it on patients without the in-depth questioning.
Nobody gets a pass on palpating the pregnant abdomen BTW, everyone has to use a real-life pregnant lady.
A specific example I can give you is that of a female student having a disk with photos of her nude self-portraits allegedly stolen by boys on her floor. It’s a pretty concrete example.
Wow, that never even crossed my mind. I will be thinking twice about what I decide to submit from now on.
Or what you leave lying around.
I think the artistic merits of this assignment have already been proven by this thread- there is fertile ground for art here, including questions like:
How do the power dynamics of art education affect art?
How does the idea of “the nude” change when it is yourself?
What are the power dynamics between artists and models? Is that different than the power dynamics between professors and students?
How does it feel to have a picture of you in your skivvies hanging in the art department? Does that change your feelings about your subjects?
How does a female artist deal with the fact that much of art history is about the objectification of the female body?
What parts of you are you uncomfortable about exposing? Why those ones and not others?
How is your mental image of yourself tied to physical representations of yourself?
Why is a photograph so different than a drawing?
How do sexuality and nudity intersect? Is it sexual when you are showering or putting on make-up?
How do you react when you have to do someting that makes you uncomfortable to get what you want?
There are a million ideas to explore here, all of which can be incorportated in to the final work, and all of which will make a person a better artist once explored. Compare this to, say, a standard life-drawing or free self-portrait assignment. Which is most likely to result in learning?
As for sexual harrassment, I don’t think there is anything that says that classroom content can’t be sexual. In my film classes we watched plenty of sexual movies, many of which were outright porn. Many students turned in projects that were outright porn. Sex has always been a part of the movie industry and in some cases it’s a driving force (like the widescale adoption of streaming video, for example) and any education that didn’t explore this would be lacking.
While these may e valid concepts to explore, the professor has chosen a completely inappropriate manner in which to introduce them. That is the problem under discussion.
The parallel you are trying to draw is not a valid one. The parallel example in a film class along the lines you describe would be: “I have paired you up at random with someone else from the class. You are to make a short film of the two of you having sexual relations with one another. This will play on a continuous loop on a screen ouside my office.”
The complete lack of propriety arises when the decision whether or not to express onesself in such an intimate manner is taken out of the students’ hands. Can you not see this?
Some people will poke holes in any process that brings sexuality into a classroom, and teachers must learn to live with this constant bluenosed intimidation. Can you not see this?
Oh come on. The assignment was “draw yourself in a swimsuit.” In the realm of reality wearing a swimsuit isn’t sexual behavior, much less sex with a stranger- it’s a fun weekend activity. No matter how many times you repeat “this dirty old man is collecting pictures of kid’s vulvas!” it won’t be true.
Um, no.
The assignment was, “Draw yourself nude, or with 1/3rd clothing if you like.” The way it was phrased implies that nudity is preferred, and that the 1/3 clothed option might be seen as a second-rate effort.
The fact that he wants “candid camera”-style nudes makes me suspect that he’s entertaining a voyeurism fetish at his students’ expense.
If I had pennies for everything a college professor implied, I’d have a few more dollars. If he does give a disproportionate grade to people who choose to do portray themselves clothes, then you have grounds for appeal and to seek discipline for the professor. But all I see right here is that he gave an assignment and offered another option for completing that assignment, which is something that every college professor in the history of college has done.
Seconded. The manner in which the topic is covered is of key importance. “Sexual harrassment at universities, and its psychological effects on students” would be an appropriate topic for a gender studies class, but if the professor’s teaching methods included hitting on the students, that wouldn’t be appropriate (even if it caused them to learn a lot about the subject).
It’s reasonable to expect a person taking a film class to anticipate that some of the films may contain sex scenes. It’s not reasonable to expect a person taking a “figure drawing” class to anticipate that she’ll be required to provide the professor with nude (or scantily clad) photos of herself.
You are persisting in making this “figure drawing” class into a class in technique. If it’s a course in a liberal arts school, the professor’s main interest may not be in imparting technique but in showing students how to think about crucial issues such as Even Sven detailed for you above. But if you want to make it into a purely technical course (which it may or may not be) then, yes, the professor is out of line. What I’m asking is, if it’s primarily about thinking about art, then is the professor out of line?
And asked for NUDE PHOTOS?
:dubious: