Beyond Words: City Tech’s Annie Seaton Pioneers New Directions In Teaching English Literature

Brooklyn, NY - The emergence of New Media -- methods of communicating in the digital world including blogs and the internet -- has sparked the birth of a new breed of English professor, for whom the written word is just the beginning.

Citizen journalism, racial identity, poetry, jazz, fiction, film, psychology, conceptual art, dub music, feminism, aesthetics, politics, law -- New York City College of Technology (City Tech) English Professor Annie Seaton has explored them all, synthesizing these and more in her work, in explorations ranging from Shakespeare to digital media.
Dr. Seaton urges students to start blogs and use online resources for her spring 2008 course, “Topics in Literature,” which focuses this semester on “Race and Vision.” It examines visual constructions of race, such as blackness and Jewishness, via literature, literary theory, psychoanalysis and film. She will reach a wider audience on May 3 at the College, when she and colleague Dr. Aaron Barlow present the first-ever conference specifically on “Race and New Media,” funded by City Tech, co-sponsored by Blackplanet.com, and open to the public.

Despite the seeming irrelevance of racial identity in cyberspace, where people can be anonymous or construct various identities, Seaton says, “Cyberspace is no more colorblind than any other space.”

Both professors view New Media as an opportunity for community building, social networking and exploring whether race works differently there than in “old media” such as network news. The City Tech conference will include a panel on “Virtual Racism” and will focus on how video games, blogs, chat rooms, other New Media forms, and digital or virtual spaces create or reflect ideas of race.

“There’s no better time to do this,” declares Seaton, who is using Facebook to help organize the conference. “Presidential candidates are using New Media in their campaigns, discussing issues of race and politics -- it’s the American topic right now.”

She is excited about the participation of minority-run BlackPlanet.com, the fifth highest trafficked networking site, according to Wikipedia. Launched in 1999 by Brooklyn-born Omar Wasow, with 16.5 million members it is the leading website for African Americans. Wasow will be the keynote speaker at the City Tech conference.

Beyond New Media, Seaton is involved in developing a curriculum for a proposed technical writing major. She sees City Tech, with its strengths in entertainment technology and design, as a natural place for New Media studies. “The College’s diverse student body gives students the very diversity that schools like Harvard spend a lot of money to obtain. This is truly a form of cultural capital.”

In any media, Seaton applies the lens of racial identity to forge new insights into the work of figures as diverse as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frantz Fanon, Leni Riefenstahl and Jacques Lacan.

“City Tech students are amazing,” she explains. “My own readings of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, the legal theorist Patricia Williams, Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison, among others, have been vitalized by the insights of my students. They often far exceed what I have asked of them, and I am pretty demanding!”

Currently, Seaton, an award-winning poet and fiction writer, is working on a book proposal, tentatively titled American Scenes: Reading Lacan and Freud in Black and White, supported by a City University of New York (CUNY) Faculty Fellow Publication Program grant. With Barlow, she is writing “Web Journalism: A New Form of Citizenship,” a chapter on race and New Media, as the basis of a book-length, co-authored Seaton/Barlow project.

Perhaps her most unusual work is a Professional Staff Congress-CUNY grant-funded multimedia art project, “The Perfect Machine.” Seaton describes it as “a conceptual art project of inter-disciplinary discovery. It’s about sexuality, power, the link between human and non-human, control of human life and breeding. Human ‘machines’ always wanted more control than their masters intended, both inside and outside of literary works. I use sculpture, text, image and New Media to create an iconography of the black body as a “Perfect Machine.” Seaton will present a preview at the May 3 conference.

 

Monroe College Ribbon Cutting Of Ustin Hall – King Graduate School Of Business

Monroe College President Stephen J. Jerome, along with elected officials, college administration, faculty, and staff, and community leaders, cut the ribbon on Ustin Hall (YOU-sten), a spectacular 32,000 square-foot building that is the new Bronx campus home to the King Graduate School of Business and the Monroe School of Business.

“For 75 years Monroe College has been dedicated to the success of its students,” President Jerome said. “The opening of Ustin Hall reinforces that commitment by providing a state-of-the-art facility for graduate and undergraduate business students. As a result, we’re improving our students’ ability to succeed in the rapidly changing global economy.”

The School of Business will be operating a Center for Entreprenurial Excellence from Ustin Hall and the new building will also house the award-winning Monroe College SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) team. Also, the fast-growing and highly-successful King Graduate School of Business that awarded its first Master’s degrees in the spring of 2007, will be introducing finance and health care concentrations in the fall.

Located at 2375 Jerome Avenue on the corner of 184th Street, Ustin Hall is the sixth building on the college’s Bronx campus. It has been named in honor of Joan Ustin, the Chair of the college’s Board of Trustees, who has been affiliated with Monroe for more than 20 years. Ms. Ustin’s career typifies much of what Monroe represents. After helping implement a major community-based urban revitalization program, Ms. Ustin established her own consulting firm that directed the training and development function for major New York banks.

“It’s quite an honor to be recognized in this manner,” said Ms. Ustin. “But what’s most important is that Monroe graduate and undergraduate business students use every aspect of this wonderful facility and realize their potential.”

Ustin Hall contains twenty classrooms, student and faculty lounges, a café, offices, and space for group meetings and lectures with seating for approximately 100 people. One of the most striking highlights of the interior is a sweeping staircase across the lobby from the main entrance. Finishes and furnishings bring a subtle elegance to the facility that promotes academic activity. The exterior resembles the campuses’ other structures with a brick façade highlighted by stone.

One important aspect of Ustin Hall is the solar technology on its rooftop. The 50-KW solar panel system will provide an estimated 57,000 KW hours of electricity. Also, the system’s racking installation device will also help conserve energy. Made of R-10 insulation material, it will reduce the building’s heating and cooling needs. From a global perspective, this means a reduction of about 100,000 lbs of CO2 not being emitted into the environment. That translates into about five acres of trees being planted annually, not driving 75,000 miles on a car, or recycling 950,000 soda cans every year.

Ustin Hall was designed by architect Michael Just, AIA and interior finishes were developed by the architect and members of the college administration.

“This is the best way to celebrate Monroe’s 75th Anniversary,” said President Jerome. “With Ustin Hall we’ve improved educational opportunities for our present students and at the same time, we’ve laid the foundation for the future.”
 

LaGuardia Community College Offers Job Training And Computer Literacy Program

LaGuardia Community College is offering a free six-week job readiness and computer literacy program for displaced homemakers who are interested in entering the workforce.

Class begins on May 12. Through the college’s Home to Work Center for Displaced Homemakers, students will attend job readiness workshops and receive computer and vocational training that will prepare them for sustainable employment.

Students attending the six-week session will take classes Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Classes will be held in the college’s Center III building at 29-10 Thomson Avenue, Long Island City.

To qualify, individuals must be displaced homemakers, including those who are separated, divorced, widowed, or single parents. Also eligible are those who have unemployed spouses or partners, have been taking care of disabled family members, or have experienced a loss of family income.

Registration is taking place in room C-344 on April 29 and May 1 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The Home to Work Center is a full-service career facility that offers free services for this special population. The center provides a host of services that range from job readiness skills and vocational training to specialized workshops and seminars that deal with topics including financial literacy and time management. The center also offers individual and group career counseling, as well as support services and referrals.

Clients seeking to learn a vocational skill can take courses in computer literacy. Also offered is referrals to occupational skills courses in a variety of fields, for example, allied health, food services, and hospitality at LaGuardia Community College or elsewhere in the community.