A delightful African American woman with a sly smile and twinkling eyes, Prof. Ebron shared all sorts of insights, particularly when it comes to writing ethnographic studies.

I’ll mention a few highlights of the talk — from memory. This may be a little telegraphic, but at least some interesting points should come through.

She first became interested in writing when she saw an ad on the back of a magazine for a correspondence course on writing when she was a little girl. She sent in the coupon, but since she was very young, they wrote back to wait until she grew up a bit.

Her book Performing Africa investigates the “griots” or “jolies” of the Gambia and Senegal regions of Western Africa. These people are stroytellers, historians, singers, songwriters, gossips, matchmakers, community leaders . . . In short, very powerful, dynamic people who are very concerned about their reputations and power. Consequently, she was very concerned about what they would think about what she was saying about them. She wrote, as she put it, with all of these people in her head, with their voices constantly in her ears. She felt watched — which made the writing a slow process. Writers who feel responsible to communities often feel this — especially ethnographers who intend to show their work to the communities they investigate. This could be tough, and it could even cause a writer to get paralyzed. Still, Prof. Ebron slugged through it, slowly working out each section.

When I mentioned that she wrote with style — her writing was vivid, her descriptions palpable, and there was often a narrative flow — she shared a secret: “I went to some creative writing workshops. ” Academic writers are not supposed to be “ creative, ” at least not in the sense that they are writing fiction. But ethnography calls for description and narrative and characters — many of the elements of fiction. So, the skills involved in “creative” writing are very much a part of what is supposed to be “social science. ” This was a great relief: finally, academic writing (or at least some of it) can involve style and grace.

I also mentioned that her ending or conclusion to Performing Africa seemed unusual. In the conclusion she outlined the book and described what she did, the sort of thing that’s often done in an introduction. She said she was just following the old injunction of “tell people what you’re going to say, say it, and then tell them what you’ve just said.”

Part of her creative writing bent was a practice that she’s engaged in over many years. She gets up in the morning and writes three or so pages of “Morning Writing.” This consists of anything that comes to mind, written by hand, sometimes illegible or garbled, other times caustic or angry or mournful — whatever. The point is that she clears her “system” every morning and she’s constantly putting herself in the writing mode. She has stacks of notebooks of these “Morning Writings.” She has them in storage. One of these days they may be useful for something — but for now they are useful for keeping her writing chops in shape.

Whenever Prof. Ebron writes a draft of an essay or book she does the first draft by hand. Like many others, she likes the way her writing (and thinking) slows down when hand-writing. But she also knows that when she sees it on the computer screen the text looks too perfect, too published-like, and that induces bouts of perfectionism. And, as we all know, perfectionism leads to paralysis.

When she does get stuck, she practices the cello. She’s just learning, so it’s much harder than writing. So, after hacking away at the strings for a while she returns to writing — and at that point it all seems much easier!

When she gets overwhelmed with many other writing assignments, such as writing letters of recommendations, and fears that she will abandon her own work, she sets an eggtimer for, say, 45 minutes to force herself to write — or even just to sit and stare at her manuscript — until the bell goes off. Bing! Time’s up, and she’s free to move on to the mundane things of life.

Hilton Obenzinger

I would consider the preparation for the honors thesis presentations a true breakthrough in the writing process. Having completed a draft and feeling less than satisfied with the way my ideas had found their way into Microsoft Word, my next step was to prepare my thesis presentation slides, which required me to return to the text and distill the most important ideas into something that I could communicate in 10 minutes. It also reminded me of the importance of catering to your audience, something that I always knew that I should be doing but a priority that became occluded by the urgency of actually needing to finish the draft. The presentation was a chance to pay particular attention to how you are going to convey and persuade an audience to at least respect the value of your research if they do not agree with your argument. Constructing the presentation made the writing visual, it made it oral, and it made the typed words seem more malleable than they were before, allowing me to go back and put down my thoughts how they should be.

With its tropical climate and strong African cultural influences, many imagine Brazil to be a ‘racial paradise ’ — a nation that has extinguished racial and ethnic tensions by successfully fusing diverse racial and ethnic identities.
Brazil is not the racial democracy. Disparities in educational attainment rates among whites and nonwhites are overwhelming. Educational opportunity constitutes a means of social advancement and means of capital; to address these inequities the global community must support Afro-Brazilians in their efforts to gain more adequate educational resources.

In 2004, I traveled to Rio de Janeiro as a Stanford Haas Center Urban Summer Fellow. Working with Mediadors da Paz (Mediators of Peace), a government conflict-resolution program, I visited public schools in the North, East, and West regions of the city — far from the white homes, and tourist-ridden beaches and boutiques of Copacabana and Ipanema.

Teachers were overworked and under-compensated. The parents I met had little education; yet, their graciousness revealed wisdom gained from struggle. The students were bright and perceptive to the shortcomings of their school facilities. Most, if not all, of the parents and students I met were Black.

I was overwhelmed by the inadequacies of the majority Afro-Brazilian schools. I had awakened to the myth of the Brazilian ‘racial democracy, ’ and it resonated deeply. How many of the students I met in Brazil would graduate from college and become professionals? When I returned to the United States, I found an answer – though Black Brazilians constitute 45 percent of the population, only two percent would receive university degrees.

The status of Afro-Latinos is often overlooked. Like the United States, Latin America used the labor of thousands of slaves. Their histories and run parallel to African descendents in North America; unfortunately, their gains in terms of civil rights still are still disparaging. The UN Conference in Durban, South Africa was a great effort to address racial discrimination in our global community. We must continue to address racial and ethnic inequalities by lending our support to the efforts of Afro-Brazilian activists in leaders.

Given Brazil ‘s interest in solidifying their image and role as a regional and international power, they are in tune and susceptible to the critique of their international partners. International government bodies must pressure and challenge Brazil to delve into the fallacies of its racial democracy, and find truth. We must support Afro-Brazilians in their efforts to secure increased diversity programming and educational resources, and affirm the voices of those struggling to address what is a major civil rights crisis.

When people ask us why we spend so much time and effort working in, thinking about, and advocating for Honduras, the answer seems obvious. We remember the smiling eyes of a Honduran toddler first visiting a doctor, the happiness and celebration of a village after the construction of a potable water system, looks of relief on the faces of family members surrounding a cured patient, and the personal bonds among new friends, standing out on the canvas of hardship that permeates Honduras. One memory, like millions of other factors, can easily justify our involvement in everything from volunteer clinics in Honduras to showing up to the office on Monday mornings, excited to begin another week. In non-profit organizations, as in all assembled groups working toward a common goal, individual motivation is essential to overall success. By understanding why people choose to immerse themselves in Honduras working toward particular humanitarian goals, group leaders can more effectively recruit and retain volunteers, which is essential for organizations to help more people in greater ways across further areas of Honduras.

According to the Harvard Business Review, workforce motivation is key to the success of all groups, whether a corporate office or a non-profit clinic. “Only through [understanding] motivation can managers help their employees generate the excellent performance that enables companies to boost profitability.” While organizations working toward health goals in Honduras are not looking to bolster their quarterly profit, they are striving to implement as broadly as possible highly effective programs that will create the most positive impact. As the key to achieving their lofty goals, organizations must recruit and retain an effective, well-trained corps of volunteers, which is possible only through the effective motivation of such people.

Those who choose to spend their time in Honduras are motivated by distinct factors, which can be categorized. For some, the promise of developing and honing new skills serves as the driving force for involvement, while for others, religious reasons prompt dedication of personal time and resources. Others are inspired by the bonds that form between themselves and the clients served by organizations, while another group attributes their involvement to personal appeals from friends that are already involved in such organizations. A few recognize the opportunities that organizations present to travel to remote areas and experience a foreign lifestyle, with still others pointing to more obvious benefits, such as compensation or recognition by a university admissions committee. Regardless of the factors, motivation plays a key role in staffing non-profit organizations and achieving group goals.

Directors must remember that their organizations not only contribute to the world by providing a service to those in need, but they also provide an irreplaceable environment to those that spend their time volunteering. They provide factors, from religious experiences to a glimpse into the eyes of a Honduran child, which motivate, drive, and provide meaning to the lives of countless volunteers around the world. Understanding these desires, an essential task for directors, can enable the organization to better highlight their unique service niche, inspire new volunteers to participate, and stimulate existing volunteers, thereby striving toward the goal of painting over the blank canvas of hardship in Honduras.

This first one is called 10 Years Later, A Look at the Effects of Welfare Reform for Alaska Natives, and it's by Neepa Acharya.

She writes on contemporary and avant-garde poetry and poetics, as well as on intermedia and the visual arts. Her many books include The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage, The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant-Guerre, and the Language of Rupture, and Wittgenstein’s Ladder. One of her most recent books is her cultural memoir The Vienna Paradox, and she spoke about how she wrote it during out talk.

We spoke about a lot of different aspects of writing – and if you were at the talk and want to add something, please send it. But I was intrigued with The Vienna Paradox in particular.

Marjorie was born in Vienna in 1931, and she recounts her life before fleeing the Nazis and coming to America, as well as her early life in the Bronx. But the book is not only the story of her life, it’s a cultural history of pre-War Vienna, of the society of High Culture, especially the assimilated Jews, who made the city a Mecca for intellectuals and artists — and many of whom were related to Marjorie or had some connection to her family. Freud, Wittgenstein, her grandfather Richard Schuller, a high government official throughout successive Austrian governments until forced to flee. And she speaks of the exile community revolving around The Ethical Culture Society and other sites in New York. This is a story of people who lived a life intoxicated with High Culture.

It’s a fascinating memoir. But when she was first asked to write a memoir she was reluctant. She wrote literary criticism and not narrative. But then it dawned on her that she could write a memoir as a collage. “I always write about collage in poetry, ” she said. “So why don’t I do one mysel? ” And what an interesting technique she devises.

The basic chronological line remains — her birth, early schooling, coming to America, adjustments in the Bronx — but she weaves in observations and stories about the intellectual life swirling on around her or before she was born. The fate of Arnold Schoenberg and his papers and scores — in exile in Los Angeles and then returned to Austria — appears, for example, alongside items of her own life.

The style is not disjointed, the way one might expect a collage. But it is somewhat dreamlike, alternating between the personal and the historical. Any reader can see this when reading the book, how it moves back and forth between different realms. But hearing Marjorie describe this process as collage was enlightening. How many other accounts can be done piecing together the small and the large, the personal and the public, the sensual and the intellectual, all circling around each other?

Hilton Obenzinger

My relationship with micro-reels began during my Sophomore year. A young and naïve history major, I worked for a professor in UCLA who needed a Stanford undergraduate to browse reels of nineteenth century Brazilian economic journals on campus. He sent me lists of specific tables and charts he needed from the journals, and I was super duper excited to begin my research. Well, let’s just say the fun only last so long. . .

When I began my own research, I was more prepared, and re-invigorated. I was looking for cool stuf — neat journals and newspapers from the Afro-Brazilian movement. I had learned the quirks of the machines. I had mastered the set-up, zoom, and scrolling features . . . Well, not entirely.

With micro-reels there are always unforeseen excitements and follies — losing yourself in the reel, changing lenses because the print is too small, and realizing — once you found the perfect article — that you do not have money on your Stanford ID card to scan and print the damn image. And, no matter how exciting your project, micro-reels can become tedious and boring. Plus, it just gets dizzying.

Don’t get me wrong, I love it. I mean browsing materials from hundreds of years ago is exciting. All facetiousness aside, it’s awesome. And, just today, I realized that you can scan the images to a computer and save them as tif or jpg. files. I know — amazing.

But, at the end of the day, no matter how cool you feel scrolling those reels, your eyes will get tired, your reel may get stuck, and you may just get damn bored. So, create a cool Real Reel Re-Mix. Grab that music player, and plug in those headphones. You will thank me for it.

Steven Tagle attended the event and sent in these observations and comments. Steven is a film-maker and writer, majoring in English and Psychology, and he’s planning to do an honors project in Feminist Studies.

I want to give myself the best possible opportunities to work on the thesis between now and May, to feel that I put my best effort in. With my new being-revised-in-progress calendar, I plan to have an entire rough draft by April 15, so that I can spend a full month revising. This quarter has given me some confidence that all of that will be possible. After pounds of paper in Xeroxes, many books bought with my summer stipend and more checked out from the library, I feel both armed and prepared to finish this task. Although I am still struggling through the end of Chapter 2, I know that I have written a lot.

And it has been a really formative, intimate experience — I have learned to depend on myself, and to allow myself the indulgence of time to really explore the options about why I’m writing. A project of this scope gives a very deep view of a personal academic project that I never could have gotten from classes. And now, classes offer me a chance to reflect on how far I’ve come. I remember when a 5-page or 10-page paper for a class was a very big deal.

It’s funny — I look up from my futon and see my Beckett bookshelf — I’ve been looking at my shelf of Beckett books every day for probably about six months. It’s funny for me to think about the thesis ending. It’s funny to think of all the things I’ve read, of all the things I always meant to read, and of all the things I’ll never touch, and how this research has changed me. How I’ve changed myself through the process of research, and of writing. It’s been like aerobics for the brain. It’s so hard for me to adequately express what this thesis represents for me. While I was uncertain about my plans for next fall, it represented any and all of my projects for the future over which I had some control — but the pressure quickly got too intense. A friend of mine said the other day, “It’s just a paper. ” And while he was right, and when I work myself into a frenzy over it, I should remember that, but when I sit back and reflect on the progress I’ve made, and what I want to do next, it is so much more than a paper. It is an experiment, the biggest challenge to me as a thinker and as a writer at this moment in time. It is a capstone experience that I can really feel I have spent my undergraduate career working towards. Now I just need to get a bit more sleep and calm the anxiety, and I’ll be all set.

As someone accustomed to writing position papers for professors, I have adopted a tried-and-true method of writing that has served me rather well. This method lets the evidence speak for itself, minimizing the presence of my own voice. However, now that I am writing an honors thesis, I find myself wanting to speak more.

Professor Karl and Professor McLennan’s writing rules touch upon aspects of writing that I almost never think about. This is probably because their rules pertain to how they write rather than how they present. The writing rule that I adhere to is distinct from theirs, largely in that mine is procedural. Let me call it the Diver’s Method. When it comes to writing a research paper, I plunge right into the material, hoping to swim back up into rational coherent thought. These steps are designed to escape writer’s block, that hesitation a diver feels right before she springs into the air. I am never at a lack of words because I am literally flailing in a sea of them. Having conducted my research, with only a general topic area in mind, I usually write down all the significant arguments that various authors have made (in sentence form), separate them into various themes, and further separate them into arguments. Then, I bring order to the incoherent mess that will form the meat of my paper. By first ordering sentences within arguments into logical progression, arguments within themes, and then themes within the topic, I have written the bulk of a paper without using any of my own thoughts.

At this point in time, I have largely weakened the prospects of writer’s block because I merely have to make sense of the information that I have assembled. Only at the end, when I include a unifying thesis and cognitive transitions do I insert my own voice into the original mess. How can I increasingly incorporate my own voice into analytical writing? Will I have to abandon my favorite rule for a more top-down approach that involves establishing my thesis and then establishing the facts? If that is the case, will I be able to speak as effectively as the scholars that I so often cite? These are all questions that I am in the midst of tackling.

Faculty are experienced researchers and writers, and they share their attitudes and techniques during “How I Write” conversations with Hilton Obenzinger. Here are two sets of rules or guidelines drawn from conversations that students may find useful in their own work.

Prof Terry Karl, Political Science

Gildred Professor in Latin American Studies and Senior Fellow at the Institute for International Studies

My first rule I call the Fidel Castro rule, and the reason I call it that is because I learned it watching him give a speech on a very, very complicated political issue. There were thousands and thousands of people listening to him, and I realized there were all sorts of people—people from the University of Havana who I happened to be with and a peasant who had looked like he came from a rural area just outside of Havana, an elderly man who had not been educated prior to the Cuban Revolution. I was looking at this wide range of people and I realized that Fidel Castro was able somehow to explain extremely complicated political phenomena that we teach courses on, and everybody in that particular space, from this range of people, understood. I never forgot that lesson, and I say to myself that it’s the “Fidel Castro How I Write” rule. And that means that we ought to be able to take in our writing and talking the most complicated things and make them understandable to all kinds of people. . . So if my writing is too complicated or I’m not expressing myself as clearly as possible, I actually think that’s my problem and not my reader’s problem . . .

My second rule is what I call the “Murder She Wrote How I Write” rule, it could be the “Law and Order How I Write” rule too, and that is, at least academic writing is not a mystery, the people who are reading what you’re saying are not supposed to wait until the end to get the surprise ending. In fact, you’re supposed to be telling them what you’re going to tell them and then giving them all kinds of signposts along the way, to say “Please come with me. I want to take you with me on this journey which happens to be whatever it is I am writing. That is actually a very difficult task, and that means I struggle most with the introductions. That is to me the roadmap of what’s coming, and once I understand the roadmap it’s easier for me to take pieces of the road. I tend to figure out the roadmap as I’m halfway down the road, which means I have to go back and change the roadmap.

Rev. Scotty McLennan, Dean for Religious Life

Up in front of me is a sheet that I put together for myself on writer’s attitude, with little personal inspirational quips, and a picture next to it—this first book I wrote which had a metaphor of climbing the spiritual mountain—of this gorgeous Himalayan mountain. So I needed those to inspire me. . . .

So they’re probably rather platitudinous, but the first one is “Live and breathe my passion.”

And the second is “Imagine I am talking to someone in my office” (because I do a lot of counseling and one-to-one work with people in my office). And I always, although I probably should be listening to the people as they speak to me, it seems I always have plenty to say in that context, so say it now on paper!

Third, I say, “Write poetry: make every word count.” And for me one of the greatest authors in terms of beauty of his writing is F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I think of The Great Gatsby, for example. It’s just this beautifully constructed piece of work. So I say here to myself “Think Fitzgerald. ”

Fourth is “Get out on the edge: take risks as you write. ”

Fifth, for me, I say, “This is the life of the spirit we are talking about here, ” and therefore I feel I need to stay in touch with that spirit and hopefully be inspiring to others.

Sixth, “Think about the audience: students and other searchers”—this was for this book Finding Your Religion— “students and other searchers on retreat, trying to change their lives. ” So, to fix the audience in mind as I’m writing.

Seventh, “Sing God’s Glory.”

Eighth, “You bore, you die.” [laughter]

And ninth, “Write from the top of my head, and the bottom of my heart.”