Notes on my reading list

Just so that none of the three persons who occasionally looks at this blog will think that I've lost my head or had a sudden change of political sensibility, let me explain why I've been reading Phyllis Schlafly, described by some as the grande dame of the Old Right. I have been reading her work as an exercise in spotting fallacious argumentation. I've also been reading a few of her books because I believe that one should know intimately the positions and arguments of those with whom one does not agree. I wish that I had an opportunity to make a documentary film about her that included interviews with her—something along the lines of Nahid Persson Sarvestani's The Queen and I (see more info here).

Implementing Title IX in College Athletics

I have heard a number of arguments recently that Title IX (yes, I know this is an old topic, but it’s still a hard one…) is evil and is harmful to male athletes. In the words of one frustrated male college golfer: “I could not receive an athletic scholarship last year because there was one more male than female on the golf teams. There had to be an equal number of males and females on scholarship even though with some members of the female golf team, their opportunity exceeded their ability.” Assuming (perhaps without any reason other than to make our discussion a little bit easier) that his judgment about the ladies’ abilities is fair and accurate, is his plight good anecdotal evidence against Title IX and its application in college sports?

It is unfortunate if Title IX is applied (or perhaps mis-applied) in the way that this young golfer describes. There is nothing in Title IX or in the prevailing interpretations that stipulates that there must be equal numbers of male or female students with athletic scholarships. If so, then it could easily be construed as privileging males: after all, there are more females than males enrolled in tertiary institutions in the US.

The interpretation of Title IX by the US Dept. of Education allows for several different, alternative and equally valid criteria to determine whether or not an institution is in compliance with the mandates of Title IX. The second of these states that an institution is compliant if their record demonstrates that they are “responsive to the developing interests and abilities of [women in sports]” (). The third states that an institution can comply by “meeting the interests and abilities of its female students even where there are disproportionately fewer females than males participating in sports” (ibid.). Clearly, there need not be an equal number of female and male athletes on athletic scholarships in order for an institution to be compliant with Title IX.

It is clear that the needs and interests of male athletes may be negatively impacted by an application of Title IX that ignores the possibility that compliance can be achieved even if there are more males than females participating. It’s also obvious that the achievements of female students may be hurt if women are denied dance, music, or theatre scholarships because no more of such scholarships can be given to women than to men. But when there’s so much room for interpretation—so much “gray area”—how can an institution protect itself, then, from challenges to its policies and decisions in granting athletics and other merit-based scholarships?

One way that has been attempted is to circulate questionnaires to determine the level of interest and experience in athletics (and possibly in other areas, such as the performing arts) on the part of men and women. The responses would then be used to determine if the athletics programs at an institution were appropriately proportional or responsive to the interest and abilities of the student population. There are pitfalls though: expressing interest in response to a questionnaire is a far cry from actually committing to and participating in time-consuming athletics or performing arts activities.

The mandates of Title IX remain difficult to implement. Where college sports are involved, institutions are vulnerable to costly litigation about their policies, and students and others are confused about what can be expected from institutions in response to Title IX. The values that underlie Title IX are sound and have served the US very well. The actual implementation of policies to ensure compliance with Title IX is a stickier question, though, and one that will not go away for the simple reason that policies and the decisions made in response to them are by nature limited, while the spirit of Title IX is expansion.

Running in Oslo

Well, Sunday evenings have turned out to be pretty relaxing, nice times to run. I ran last Sunday evening (20070624) from Blindern Studenterhjem (where I'm living) to Holmenkollbakken. According to my GPS mileage tracker, I travelled 8.25 miles (round trip), but it's not so far as the crow flies (I had to do some switchbacking to run up there, as it's up on a hill). Here are some pictures of Holmenkollbakken. It's a ski jump, in case that's not entirely clear from the pictures. The first is a picture in winter. The next is a picture in summer. (I'm sure that much wouldn't have been clear!) The next is a majestic view from the bottom, and the last is the view from top—ready to jump?






Then yesterday I ran to Sognsvann. (6.2 miles r/t on the GPS.) Beautiful. Silent forsts, well-maintained trail system, picturesque views of the lake... Wow. Very nice. Here are some pics.





Add to that the Norwegian folkdancing I did tonight, and if I'm not careful, I might actually lose those 15 pounds the doctor said I didn't need! :-)

More to come...

Den internasjonale sommerskole

I am in Oslo! Aside from a piece of luggage that didn't arrive when I did (but has arrived since), lots of rain since I got here, the neverending sticker-shock that one experiences in Oslo if one is not a local, and the timing of my glasses breaking over dinner a couple of nights ago, everything is grand. No, really. At the moment, the sun is shining, fresh air is wafting in the open window, I've just had a nice dinner in the cafeteria of Blindern Studenterhjem, and I'm about to dig into some more homework. Really, I'm having a good time. At any rate, I do not mind the rain, and the long hours of daylight are good for me. It does hurt that the Norwegian crown is so strong at the moment. The interest rates just went up earlier this week, and so now the already weak US dollar is worth only 5,84 Norwegian kroner. One single ticket on public transport is 30NOK, or 20NOK if one buys bundles of eight tickets. A 24 hour card is 60NOK. I am trying to walk--I need to anyhow, since I am trying to slanke meg litt (lose a bit of weight).

So, what am I doing in Oslo? I think most anyone who would be reading this knows that I am studying at the University of Oslo (Universitetet i Oslo). (See the first picture in this post, which is a picture of one of the buildings of the old campus between the Royal Palace and the Storting [Parliament] on Karl Johans Gate.) For any who are curious about what it is like to study at Den internasjonale sommerskole, here are some details. (If you are interested, let me know, and I will get more information to you--it is a really good experience.) I am studying Norwegian language (Trinn III), new Norwegian literature (nyere norsk litteratur), and Nynorsk. (Nynorsk is one of the two languages of Norway, the other being Bokmål, which is what I am studying in my regular Norwegian language class.) Classes are from 08.15 until 13.00 every day. My Norwegian class is in the morning from 08.15 until 11.00, and then Nynorsk OR nyere norsk literattur begins at 11.15 and goes until 13.00. I say one or the other because early in the session, the Nynorsk class occupies that slot, and then later on in the session, the Nynorsk class will end and the nyere norsk litteratur class will begin. Today is the end of the first week of the program, and there are five weeks to come.

The reading load for my classes is a little bit heavy, but I wouldn’t want it to be too light. It is a summer programme, but I still do want to learn a lot while I am here, and the programme is advertised as «intensive». A typical reading load for Norwegian language is about 12 pages of fairly dense text in our textbook, about the same number of pages of exercises, as well as 5-10 pages of extra materials distributed in class. That might not sound like much, but for language study, it is a lot to absorb. We are also encouraged to write an essay every day, and we are required to write a longer academic paper in Norwegian (if you are interested in reading the English version of mine, which is about object shift in Scandinavian languages, let me know and I will email it to you). We also have to lecture in class for about ten minutes on any appropriate topic. (I gave a brief introduction to Norwegian literary history from the Middle Ages to the 19th Century in my lecture, which I presented on Wednesday.) In addition to that, we have to read Ibsen’s Et Dukkehjem (A Doll's House). Fortunately, I've read that before, so that's not so challenging.

Nynorsk has a very interesting history, and from the standpoint of a linguist, it is really fascinating. Norwegian died out as a written language not long after the creation of the Kalmar Union, and it remained an unwritten language until the nineteenth century. To say that Norwegian was not written does not mean that there was no writing taking place in Norway. Of course, educated Norwegians could read and write Latin, and if they wanted to write in a language more like their own, they used Danish. From this blending of Norwegian language with Danish writing came Bokmål. At one time, the purer the Danish one wrote, the «better» one wrote. As the Norwegian nasjonalromantikk (that’s right: national romanticism) developed in the early 19th century, one of the chief concerns and points of disagreement was the lack of a written form of Norwegian. Henrik Wergeland (second picture in this post) wanted to develop a more Norwegian written language, and so he began to use distinctively Norwegian words and morphology and wrote in several dialects. Alas, he died at the young age of 37, but others were interested in the issue. The most outstanding was a linguist and writer by the name of Ivar Aasen (third picture in this post), who is remembered today as the father of Nynorsk. He travelled throughout rural Norway (where the Danish influence on the spoken language was much less than in the cities) to record various dialects (many of which were very isolated from one another and thus, distinctive) and then he applied his knowledge of Old Norse and some good historical linguistics to create a written language that is a sort of mean of the various surviving dialects of Norwegian. This newly-created written language he called New Norwegian, or Nynorsk. It has also been called Landsmål («country language») in the past.

While many were interested in developing a more distinctively Norwegian style of Danish writing, not everyone was convinced that an entirely new written language was a good idea. One example is Henrik Ibsen (fourth picture in this post, which is a younger picture than most you see of Ibsen, and which is closer to the age he was when he wrote Brand and Peer Gynt), whose language today looks very Danish indeed, but who received complaints from his editor in Copenhagen when he started using distinctive «Norwegianisms» in Brand and Peer Gynt.

So, my Nynorsk class is fascinating. I was already familiar with the history of the language, as my Mum recounted it to me several times as I was growing up. What I am learning most from the class is the social and cultural aspects of Nynorsk within Norwegian society. Nynorsk must be learnt by all Norwegian students (as well as Bokmål), but as the majority of Norwegians prefer Bokmål, Nynorsk is resented and detested by many Norwegian students facing exams. The vocabulary is somewhat different, the morphology is significantly different, and there are a few other grammatical differences. It doesn’t help that nobody really «speaks» Nynorsk. Those who use Nynorsk as a written language usually speak another dialect from their local place of origin. Nynorsk is also associated with liberal politics, and in the most recent edition of Syn og Segn, a cultural journal in Nynorsk, the question is asked where Nynorsk is an elite language. There is also an article comparing the social aspects of Nynorsk with those of Irish. Both are essentially rural in the distribution of those who prefer them. Both are closely associated with national identity. Both are protected by government policies that support their use in the media and which require school children to study them, etc. It’s also interesting to note that Nynorsk users, like Irish speakers, tend to be fiercely defensive of their language.

The class work includes preparation of a group presentation (my group is presenting on Ivar Aasen this coming Thursday) and between 20 and 70 pages of reading each day (IN NYNORSK). We also go on «field trips», such as a visit yesterday to the offices of Det norske samlaget, the publishing company that publishes Syn og Segn and which also publishes our professor’s books.

I am also trying to get a bit into my reading for nyere norsk litteratur, because there is a LOT of it! We have to select two works from a list of three full-size works (Nåde, by Liv Ullmann [a novel]; Kjærlighet, by Hanne Ørstavik [another novel]; and Dødsvariasjonar, by Jon Fosse [a full-length play; BTW, J Fosse writes only in Nynorsk and is published by Det norske samlaget]) as well as a number of journal articles, short stories, and poems. There are a lot of pages to cover, but that is why I came, after all.

I am really trying to focus myself intensely on the work at hand, and for this, I have already got quite a reputation as a (too?) serious student. Jestina would be proud of me!

And that brings me to my last and most important point. Jestina, Essie, and Yan. I get to talk to them daily (as well as to our goddaughter, Valène) by videoconferencing through iChat. (It is wonderful that we’re Mac users!) It is so hard to be able to see and talk to the fam but not be able to give them a hug. Oh, how I shall hug them when I get home in August!

Mormons and the ERA

So, I'm fascinated by the history of the Equal Rights Amendment in Utah. Utah is one of the states that did NOT ratify the ERA, which surprises me. The full text of the ERA is "Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification." (See http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/.) I can't understand how anyone could find that threatening. What that says is that the government and laws should act the same way toward all people, regardless of gender.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints joined Phyllis Schlafly in opposing the ERA, and as a member of the church, I wonder why. I don't understand what in the Equal Rights Amendment the church leadership found threatening. There is nothing that threatens women who choose to stay in the home (and who are financially able to), and there is nothing that promotes activities or movements the church finds reprehensible, such as homosexual behaviour, sexual promiscuity, and so forth. It would be a real stretch to claim that the ERA will make it impossible for the church to maintain its male-only priesthood, especially considering that women are a vital part of the ministry.

A friend has told me about Martha Sonntag Bradley's book "Pedestals and Podiums: Utah Women, Religious Authority, and Equal Rights." I plan to get a copy, but in the meantime, has anyone read it? What were your thoughts about the book or about the issue more broadly? If I wanted to research the topic further, whom would you suggest I talk to? After I've read it, I'll share my thoughts right here, so stay tuned... :-)

Any other books on this topic that I should add to my list?

Intro

My wife set up a blog (salonetity) and I figured maybe I should, too. I've been resisting too long in the face of inevitability.

We have two children, Yan and Essie. Yan (our boy) is almost nine months old, and Essie (our girl) will be two next month. She's talking in complete sentences, some of them surprisingly complex. Yan is not crawling on his knees yet. For some reason, he just pulls himself around by his arms. He can get up on his knees, and does so regularly, but then he just rocks to and fro without actually crawling. He's also quite freqently pulling himself up to a standing position. Essie, in addition to talking up a storm, loves running, jumping, dancing, and helping Yan get into mischief. She is mostly a very obedient girl, but she clearly has some attitude, which is very cute at this juncture and which I'm sure will terrorise her mother and me when she's older.

Our goddaughter, Valène, is also living with us right now. She's thirteen years old and just finished seventh grade. Even though she's sometimes an annoying teenager, we love her and we're glad she's here. :-) She may only be with us for a couple more months, or she may be here for about another year.

I'm getting ready to go to the University of Oslo for six weeks. I'll be leaving wife and kids behind this year. I'm a bit worried about that. I'm worried that they'll be okay, and I'm worried that I'll go crazy without them driving me mad... :-) I will be studying advanced Norwegian (Bokmål) language, introductory Nynorsk, and 'Nyere norsk litteratur' (New Norwegian lit), which is a survey of Norwegian literature from the last ten years or so. I'll be back home in the beginning of August.

There, that's a start. I'll try to post here regularly, so please check back every now and then. :-)