Hanmer Springs and Maori Workshops

A while ago I finally watched all of The Lord of the Rings movies for the first time since being in New Zealand. It was fun to see some of the scenery I've been to, and the mountains of course are gorgeous as usual.


I have been going to a few Māori workshops to improve my awareness and understanding of the bicultural aspect of New Zealand. I wish these were mandatory for everyone, both locals and visitors. I'm sure I now know more about some of nuances of the culture than New Zealanders. And -- did you know -- New Zealand had a Declaration of Independence!!! I can't believe it took two years for me to find this out. Before the famous Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, a number of Māori chiefs from the North Island signed a declaration calling themselves The United Tribes of New Zealand. I was so impressed. It also changes how you see the Treaty, and how unfortunate that Britain exploited their power as a colonizer. A video we watched at one of the workshops reminded us that the translator of the Treaty from English to Māori deliberately changed one of the words because he knew the Māori chiefs would not sign if he used the word for sovereignty. It reiterates the power of language.

My tutoring has been going pretty well. I think the second time around you get the rhythm of how much you can cover in a session and which activities work better. I have also had a few occasions to teach, and that has been a stressful but good experience. Unfortunately, I've come to the realization that I've been spending too much helping others with various things or trying to improve the state of things that I haven't been able to get my own stuff done, so I'm having to make the difficult decision to be more selfish with my time so that I can get my thesis done. After the semester is over, I really have to dedicate myself to writing. We'll see how successful I am at saying no!

We finally went to Hanmer Springs for a short vacation, which is a kind of resort with a bunch of hot pools that is about 90 minutes north of Christchurch, so it's considered a weekend getaway. There were quite a few people there, but winter is not exactly a great time to go, because as soon as one gets out of the water, the wind is freezing. The second day, it was raining so we had to leave our towels all the way at the entrance. I would much prefer to be dry and warm. And let's just say that the super hot pools can make your blood pressure drop so you have to be careful upon coming out for your body to readjust... The town is fairly small and within view of the mountains, which were beautiful in their snow-covered glory.

stock photo of the pools - I didn't want to worry about my camera getting wet

 

Proposals Accepted and International Antarctic Centre

Academic Proposals Accepted

I have some good academic news: I have been fortunate to have three proposals accepted in the last few weeks! I will explain how the process works for those not in academia. Usually, journal editors and conference organizers put out a "call for proposals" or "call for papers" (CFP) several months in advance of the publication or conference date. This CFP gives the specifications of what they are looking for and what they want submitted. The standard is to ask for a brief abstract and bio. The interested scholar then submits an abstract which addresses the topic and shows their particular analysis of it. This saves them from having to write a full-length paper which then might not get accepted. A blind peer-review panel (blind means they don't receive your name or bio attached to the abstract so they can be impartial) then reads all of the submissions and chooses which ones it wants to accept.

So, my best news is that I submitted an abstract for a special issue of a U.S. academic journal issue on science fiction and fantasy and was accepted! I also was given the comments from the blind peer-review panel and they were very positive and said my proposal was well-written and sounded very interesting. Now I have a few months to take the short abstract that I wrote and turn it into an actual, full-length article of academic quality good enough for publication. It will be reviewed again by the editors and if they have any corrections or changes they want made, I will have a chance to fix them and resubmit. Publishing is the name of the game in academia, especially nowadays with so much competition for jobs, so having my first proposal accepted is really exciting! And it is on my research topic too, which is even better.

Of the other two proposals accepted, one was for a feminist conference being held in Dunedin, New Zealand, at the end of the year. I will be presenting on the gender imbalance of Wikipedia editors (mostly high-school-age white males) and how various groups are trying to encourage other women to edit and contribute to Wikipedia through events like Storming Wikipedia. Considering how many of us use Wikipedia as a go-to reference, it is a pressing issue.

My other proposal was for an exclusive new-scholars conference for postgrads and early career researchers before the main Digital Humanities Conference we are going to in Sydney in a couple months. We aren't presenting papers, but we will be brainstorming before the conference on our digital humanities projects and what we want to work on together. It is designed to be an opportunity for a small group of us to network and share ideas and resources. It also comes with a small chunk of funding which will help cover my expenses getting to Australia. Double win!

Tutoring Adventures Continue

With only two tutoring weeks left, the number of students is dwindling fast. Assuming they wouldn't have read or finished Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, I prepared for more general discussion topics. This last week we discussed single-sex education and some of the essentialist arguments for it (girls and boys have different learning styles and needs). Single-sex education is a lot more common in NZ, coming from the British system, than I am used to, and one young man in each class had actually gone to a single-sex school. One liked it and the other didn't. The students had quite strong feelings against single-sex education, and I hope I helped them think a little more critically about education and the decisions they might face if they end up in charge of sending a child to school.

In my tutoring at the tutoring center, I had to be observed by one of my bosses to see how I was doing (all of my peers did too). I don't remember the last time I was observed in a job situation, and it was a bit uncomfortable. She said I did fine but still had some things that I could do better. You definitely are a lot more aware of what you are saying when someone is taking notes.

We also had additional training on the differences between the students at the Education campus and the main campus (the School of Education only recently merged with the University for budget reasons, but their student demographics are noticeably different), as well as the different philosophies. The Education lecturers emphasize the bicultural aspects of New Zealand and use Maori words quite often in their assignments and lectures. Apparently, the government has a goal of a bicultural, bilingual country by 2040. I think the South Island will have more difficulty reaching this goal since there are significantly fewer Maori present.

International Antarctic Centre

Since our buy-one-get-one-free coupon to the famous International Antarctic Centre was about to expire, we finally visited it. It had a lot of interactive things and quite interesting information on all of the research going on down there, as well as the harsh living conditions. I froze in the simulated Antarctic storm, enjoyed the penguin feeding, rode on a Hagglunds all-terrain vehicle up hills at 26 degrees and through water that went halfway up my door, watched some of the HD film of the beautiful landscapes, and got splashed a lot in the 4-D movie experience.

Giving and Gaining Knowledge

I have really been soaking up the knowledge recently at several lectures on campus:

The Canterbury Historical Society had one on economic history in the 20th century (also known as, What happened in the 1980s?!). It might not have interested me a decade ago, but being a worker and investor now makes me quite interested in the economy and how/why things work like they do.

The university and local writers' festival live-streamed the How To Be A Feminist panel from the Sydney Opera House, which included top women from Australia, Canada, and the U.S., including Germaine Greer. Then afterward was a local panel from Christchurch. The lecture hall was packed and had a broad range of ages. It was enlightening to see what the current trends and issues are in contemporary feminist activism.

The public What If lecture series had its first one of 2015 as What If All Women Everywhere Were Treated the Same As Men? given by a professor of law who is French but also now a New Zealand citizen. She mentioned the disappointment in finding that most New Zealanders she encountered weren't very interested in pursuing gender equality, like doing something about the gender pay gap.
Most of the information I already knew, but she gave a lot of updated statistics. On average, women in NZ spend 4 hours and 20 minutes doing unpaid work, while men spend 2 hours and 32 minutes. Only 15% of professors (highest level of academic teacher in their system) are women, begging the question of where are all of the women completing MAs and PhDs going. Top law firms in Auckland (biggest city in NZ) have 19% female partners. It takes 24 years on average for a woman to become a CEO, while it takes 15 years for a man.

The Critical Animal Studies series featured a Russian academic who presented on the Artist as Dog in Russia. There's a famous Russian artist -- Oleg Kulik -- who puts on a collar and chain and pretends to be a dog in various cities around the world, highlighting the lack of freedom for artists in Russia. She also talked about how the dog is portrayed in literature and Pavlov's treatment of dogs in his experiments.

The Canterbury Women's Club postgraduate networking group that I have been pushing to get underway had its first meeting and was quite well-attended. I enjoyed hearing what other people are researching, and the main speaker is doing cutting-edge research on bloodstain analysis in relation to forensic science. Apparently, the models out there only look at blood dripping downward and not all of the splatter that travels in arcs. She uses 3-D cameras and physics and also does educational outreach to encourage kids to see the practical applications of studying math and science in school.

We went to a poetry reading on campus. It has been a long time since I went to one of those, and it felt very hippie but was quite enjoyable. Hearing people perform their poetry makes it come alive so much more than reading it on a page.

Meanwhile, by the third week of tutorials my nervousness is almost dissipated which is a relief. We discussed The Time Machine and Heart of Darkness and it surprised me how these turn-of-the-century novels have a lot of similar issues and themes that people are wrestling with today (benefits and downsides of science and progress, racism, class-ism, sexism, ills of capitalism). I guess that's why they're considered literature and still worth reading. In my other one-on-one tutoring job, I am remembering how much I enjoy it and seeing the lightbulbs go on as I explain concepts and how to tackle assignments. So far, the students have been very appreciative of assistance.

In other news, I got around to booking accommodation for our upcoming North Island trip with a mix of hostels and Airbnb. You get so much more for your money with these places because you have access to free wi-fi and a kitchen. I'm not looking forward to meal-planning for two weeks this time, but it's necessary. We had the earthquake insurance inspectors here again to check something that wasn't covered in their last visit. Apparently they are having to make the decision whether to try to repair the house or rebuild. Our landowners said not to worry and that it wouldn't affect us, but of course with all the trouble it took to find housing here, I don’t really believe that. Last week we went for a walk in the "red zone" near us where the houses are all gone and nature is quickly reclaiming everything. It is a bit eerie, especially how fast plants take over.