And it begins…

So, this Fall I will be starting graduate school at UMass-Amherst! I will be studying toward a Master’s and then hopefully on toward a Ph.D. in Communication, focusing on cultural studies (especially cultural criticism and social criticism), rhetoric, performance studies, and narrative theories of social interaction.

Whew… I have no doubt that those wordy words will change again as I begin learning more about what they mean But, for now, I am deeply excited by two major aspects of what I am about to do: narrative theory and cultural criticism.

First, cultural criticism: When my friends (especially those practical folks from my soon-to-be-past engineering career) hear my plans to become a professor in the arcane arts of social science, they think that I am about to disappear into the elitist world of academia, to become an ivory-tower-dwelling professorial type who occasionally delivers dry lectures filled with wordy definitions. Such as, I guess, “narrative theories of social interaction”.

And that, in itself, is a cultural criticism of the world of academia - and a powerful one to boot, coming from the masses! I think my friends are on to something: academics do not seem to really engage in the dirty work of everyday living, instead retreating to their towers and analyzing society from afar. At least, that’s the perception of academia held by my friends.

However, there’s a growing movement afoot in academia, led by “radical” professors who research beyond merely surface-level studies to much deeper critiques of societies. There is nothing ivory-tower-esque or romantic about scholars who have lost their lives in their fight against injustice worldwide.

And there are several “ivory-tower” professors who actively do that kind of brave criticism, not from the shelter of towers but in everyday life. They do not just point out flaws but also point the way to concrete solutions, often solutions that are radical paradigm shifts away from how society currently operates. My interests in cultural studies are precisely along those “radical” lines: I do not want to merely study society and people, I want to actively point out fundamental flaws in modern societies that lead to patterns of oppression and dehumanization of our very lives.

While here in “civilized” democratic society we continue to be fixated by consumerism and by TV shows that glorify materialism to the extent that even sexual relations are commodified and dehumanized, innocent people die daily around the world to support our gluttonous orgies of power.

Second: Narrative theory. I have long held the view that we, as people, fundamentally view life in terms of stories - whether we consciously think about it that way or not. This view has influenced almost everything about how I live - including how I see faith and spirituality and the Bible. This view has thus put me in direct opposition to those who would see otherwise, that we live fundamentally according to rules and regulations and logical true-false statements. For example, my view of the Bible as a series of intensely messy human stories pits me directly against those who see it as a “fax from heaven”, infallible and straight from God’s printer. I have had numerous run-ins with church authorities based on differences that I see as resolvable but others have seen as insurmountable chasms because they fall in the “gray area” between their true-false ways of thinking.

So, it was deeply satisfying to run into the following description of “narrative theory” on Wikipedia Click here.

More to come as the summer progresses!