Friday, March 15, 2024
Wednesday, February 7, 2024
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Friday, December 22, 2023
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
Friday, November 10, 2023
Tuesday, October 17, 2023
Friday, October 13, 2023
Congratulations to Kennii Ekundayo, 2nd Year MALAS Graduate Student, and Recipient of the Rosario J. Patti Memorial Endowed Scholarship for the Humanities
We are very excited to share that our graduate student, Kennii Ekundayo, has been selected for the Rosario J. Patti Memorial Endowed Scholarship for the Humanities. This funding amounts to $2,850 and will be helpful toward settling current academic financial commitments. Kennii shares her first reaction to the award: "I believe that the Rosario J. Patti Memorial Endowed Scholarship's decision to support students in the humanities comes at a time when education, especially within the humanities, has suffered so much backlash resulting in students -- even alums -- beginning to question the importance of this discipline. As a result, this is not only a timely gift but is also reinvigorating. Thank you for all the encouragement, support, and mentorship!"Kennii with author Mark Dery after
a lecture here in early 2023.
Tuesday, October 10, 2023
Tuesday, October 3, 2023
How to be a Successful MALAS Graduate Student and MAYBE Have a Shot at a TAship!!!!
Let me tell you about the path I chose to take…
Almost every incoming freshman is required to take a developmental writing course at SDSU. That typically is RWS 100 one semester, followed by RWS 200 the next. Many of these classes are taught by graduate student Teaching Assistants (TAs). The TAs are limited to a class size of 25. When you consider the amount of incoming freshmen at SDSU in any given year (approximately 3,700), you’ll understand why there is a need for so many TAs to teach these required classes. Each TA is assigned a class of no more than 25 students.
So, how do you become a TA? There is an application process! But before we get to that…
There is also a required class, RWS 609, Theory and Practice of Teaching Composition, in which you must enroll before you will be offered TA contract. You can enroll in this class during the same timeframe that you intend to apply for a TA position (for the next semester). That is to say, you don’t have to take the class and wait until the following semester to apply – which would result in you waiting for nearly a whole year (although if that’s what you want to do, you can). To clarify what I am saying, let me share the application deadlines from this year:
Here’s the catch: taking the class does not necessarily guarantee that you will be brought on as a TA, so it is a gamble in that you will have potentially “wasted” 3 units, and the money to pay for those 3 units. Bear that in mind, but do not let it discourage you.
- · An application form
- · Transcripts
- · Three current letters of recommendation that will be sent directly to the DRWS office.
- · A statement of purpose
- · A writing sample of about five pages of expository prose
If you do have any questions at all, or would like some assistance in preparing your application, I will happily make myself available to you. Just get in touch with me via ozzie.monge@gmail.com and we’ll go from there. Good luck!
Wednesday, September 27, 2023
MALAS Programming is Taking Off: “Legalize Positivity”: Comics, the Prison Industrial Complex, and HIV/AIDS Education
“Legalize Positivity”: Comics, the Prison Industrial Complex, and HIV/AIDS Education
Clio Reese Sady and Inés Ixierda
Bread and Roses Speakers Series on “Abolition Feminism”
Thursday, September 28 4-5:30pm Arts and Letters 104
Clio Reese Sady (AKA Thatcher) is a cartoonist and former tattoo artist living on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land in San Francisco, California.
Inés Ixierda is a queer Mestisx interdisciplinary visual artist and media maker in Oakland, California, unceded Ohlone Territory.
Wednesday, August 2, 2023
Late Added MALAS Buddhism Class,
- PHIL 555 / Empirical Perspectives of Buddhism
- Class# (Schedule#): 12745
- Meetings: Tuesday/Thursday 11:00-12:15
- Instructor: Dr. Sandra A. Wawrytko (wawrytko@sdsu.edu)
Description:
An exploration of twenty-five hundred years of Buddhist scholarship and practice in relation to contemporary empirical perspectives, including comparative analyses of epistemological methodology, the conundrum of consciousness, and contemplative science.
How real is the reality we perceive and conceive?
Philosopher and neuroscientist Joshua Greene speaks of “Supervenience” to explain our shifting perceptions of reality: “Imagine a picture on a computer screen of a dog sitting in a rowboat. It can be described as a picture of a dog, but at a different level it can be described as an arrangement of pixels and colors. The relationship between the two levels is asymmetric. The same image can be displayed at different sizes with different pixels. The high-level properties (dogness) supervene the low-level properties (pixels).”
Buddhist epistemology describes these cognitive shifts in terms of the Twofold Truth—we fixate on the picture of the dog, the tip of the iceberg of reality or provisional truth, because it is most obvious to us, unaware of the pixels’ complexity, the deep reality or transcendental truth. Neuroscientists study a corresponding shift between two attentional networks in the brain—task-driven dorsal attention and stimulus-driven ventral attention, yielding egocentric and allocentric awareness respectively.
Chair, graduate adviser, Philosophy DepartmentSan Diego State UniversitySan Diego, CA 92104-6044