NAI at Dickens!

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A memoir of images in our Flickr album! 

The NAI-Foshay contingency, NAI educators Jacqueline Barrios and Paul David Story, with Kenia Coyoy (NAI Alumni), Kimberly Mejia and Mauricio Garcia (NAI Alumni and winners of this year's NAI-DP Scholarship Contest) just returned from the Dickens Universe 2016,  a week long conference at UC Santa Cruz.  Needless to say, the students were riveting and  team was well received by the scholars, university faculty and general public—over 200 participants— in one of the largest, and oldest, humanities multi-campus research consortiums in the world.  

Focusing on Dombey & Son,  this year's program featured printed excerpts of only 4 individuals’ papers on the novel. These individuals were the NAI scholars and Foshay HS winners of the DP-NAI HS scholarship competition. Student papers incited conversations, found their way among possible topics for seminars, had organic tie-ins to conference talks. 

The titles of this year's winning papers are as follows:

Mauricio Garcia  

Ebb and Flow: Water, Loss and the Human in Dickens' Dombey and Son

focusing on the motif of water in the novel as a critique of modernity by foregrounding human loss 

(Will be attending Harvard University)

 Kimberly Mejia 

(Un)Happy Homes: Disrupting the Domestic in Dickens’ Dombey and Son

examining the possibilities of change presented in the unstable home space

(Will be attending USC)

Amber Johnston 

Mobile Properties: Feminizing Movement in Dombey and Son

examining how reversals in mobility reflect changing gender norms

(Will be attending USC)

Georgia Delgado 

Saving the Father:  Empathy, Critique and the Victorian Patriarchy in Dickens’ Dombey and Son

examining the ways Dombey’s characterization invites readerly sympathy and institutional critique

(Will be attending USC)

Some stories and the beginnings of a manifesto?

A graduate student expressed how the quality and clarity of each sentence of student writing impressed her and in some ways, exceeded the quality of the writing produced by the scholars of the university. 

A faculty member expressed how she uses the NAI documentary to motivate her own college students to tackle lengthy novels, citing how the video silenced any complaints and thus supported her in cultivating rigorous aims for her students. 

Participants gave feedback about NAI scholars’ performance discussion, reporting that NAI scholars’ level of engagement and receptivity to study exceeded the typical undergraduate performance

The NAI presentation/conversations uniquely brought “magic” to the Dickens Universe participants’ experience of the conference, as emotional connection to the NAI scholar’s learning brings immediate relevant, authentic and affective engagement for all participants at all levels of scholarship. 

The DP-NAI partnership is a fruitful “staging ground” for conversations around, and a “laboratory” for actions to address, the shrinking “pipeline” of young people interested in  and passionate about the humanities. Many scholars are in fact already thinking about that pipeline, and are imagining ways  their scholarship engages, directly or not, the need to more make "openings" in the field.   NAI scholars burgeoning interest in, and growing exposure to the humanities directly confronts the conflict between scholarship and  public engagement, and serves as a unique, unprecedented model for how the object of study, be it the Victorian novel or any other focus of academic research,  can reach the underrepresented student that NAI’s work daily touches.  

In other words, the NAI scholar not only heightens the rigor of the academic discourse, but imparts singularity and deepens implications for learning.  Their presence in spaces of higher education not only literalizes the possibilities of college access (their very attendance symbolizes the reality of first generation achievement) but renders the abstract values of diversity, inclusion and humanism tangible, embodied, relational, and thus, inspirational. 

Notable Buzz

NAI’s partnership with the Dickens Project was launched three years ago after the unprecedented win of two students of the then nation-wide essay contest. The press and the mini-documentary of their unique study of nineteenth century novels highlighted NAI and Foshay and earned NAI students a tailor-made partnership with the Dickens Project through the NAI program.  The writing of these essays is only one part of the innovative multi-modal, interdisciplinary approach to the teaching of literature that NAI spearheads through collaboration with various partners in universities and the public humanities, as exemplified by the founding of the USC NAI Theater Workshop, where students deepen their academic study by producing full-scale performing arts adaptations  of canonical works of literature (now in its 6th year). Their most recent work, Twelfth Night, was featured at the USC press. These fruitful endeavors  are the context for this year’s campaign to  prepare NAI seniors to study George Eliot’s Middlemarch, the novel of study for the upcoming Dickens Universe. Their unit will form the crux of exciting new collaborations with university faculty and professional artists, with an eye towards a culminating production featuring live theatrical adaptations of the novel for the community. 

Now...Middlemarch 2017!

Our team is grateful for your interest in our work connecting the Dickens Universe and the first generation scholars in the USC Neighborhood Academic Initiative program (NAI), and the wider implications of our partnership for diversity, inclusion and the future of the humanities as a whole.

In light of the this year’s book announcement , we are gearing up to take action for Middlemarch in 2017!  Please contact the USC NAI or the Dickens Project to get involved as we imagine and energize the ways this outreach can impact more of at the Dickens Universe and beyond.  

It's hard to choose a highlight because every part of the week was a highlight in it's own. So instead of a highlight, I instead choose a cluster of experiences that resonated with me. They all concerned the merging of different subjects: literature, psychology, and programming. Literature and psychology could be second cousins but programming and literature don't seem to have anything in common. At this year's Dickens' Universe, however, two lectures showed me a new way to look at literature from a programming perspective.

The first was a lecture entitled "Digital Dombey" given by Professor Pete Capuano that demonstrated how programming can open up new avenues for literary analysis. This lecture made me very excited because I myself have coded using R, a well known statistic programming language. What further fascinated me was the way he took a quantitative method and used it to support a qualitative analysis. As a person who likes data (and the oftentimes tedious ways of mining it) the lecture left me bursting with new ideas about how to apply other programming languages to literature.

The second lecture almost (almost!) topped "Digital Dombey" and that's because it was based on something I personally love to do- code websites. The lecture, "Synchronic Serial Reading", was not really a lecture but more of a demonstration about a different way to read Dickens (and other Victorian novels). Professor Robyn Warhol displayed a website that had been made to keep track of other novels being published at the same time as, say, Dombey and Son. Aside from the fact that they were using a different platform to analyze Dickens (the web! the internet! code!), what really stuck with me was how even the act of curating such a website allowed them to experience the book in a new way.

In an attempt to keep this reflection from veering into a jumbled mess I'll move on to my third experience. During one of the many moments of mingling, I met Alethia, a graduate student from UCLA, who studies children's literature. As soon as she mentioned that fact, I remembered the classes I've taken in developmental psychology and how play is something essential to development. Alethia and I discussed how literature is a form of play and what implications being exposed to literature at a young age might have on development. In essence, we talked about something any lover of literature can attest to- how literature can change us, make us think critically, allow us to see from a different perspective. And in the case of the USC NAI Theater Workshop, how literature can offer an outlet for the students and their community.

I can't help but already be excited for the next Dickens Universe. This was only my second year, but I already feel invested. The friendships I've made, the new ideas I've encountered, and the general happiness I've felt encourage me to not think of this trip as a one time thing. I hope to be back again in Santa Cruz- not only because the weather is amazing and there are cute deer around, but also because I don't want my experience at the Dickens Universe to be finite. Books inevitably end but there will always be another book, another story, ready to be opened and experienced. Here's to next year's story!

Media Advisory: 
Bringing Down the House (of Dombey)!: Dickens Day & Night Comes to South LA!

Los Angeles, May 31, 2016

Photos by Belinda Coronado & Jaileane Aguilar
More Photos at House of Dombey Photo Album or see our slideshow!  

Mauricio as Dombey, Kimberly as Edith. Center, Angela as Mrs. Skewton and Antonio as "Withers"

Fashion Show Models of House of Dombey (in the "Manager" outfits)

Mauricio Garcia (17) wed Kimberly Mejia (17) for their AP English Literature final.  The nuptials (theatrical) cinched their A, given their leading roles in House of Dombey, a performance-art showcase based on Charles Dickens’s novel, Dombey and Son.  As Mr. Dombey and Edith Granger, Garcia, Mejia and their peers told the novel’s story (the doomed marriage of a Victorian patriarch and his redemption  through the love of his daughter) in an evening of scenes, literary themed fashion shows and art projects. The showcase culminated Foshay’s annual Dickens Day & Night where seniors invited their campus and community to their “final examination”: teaching eight graders about the notion of the domestic sphere  with origami art, asking eleventh graders to create a chalk “track” to symbolize mobility-themed quotes, inciting multiple guests to challenge gender norms for ideal “husbands and wives” by proposing the qualities of an ideal “partner.”  Seniors also served cups of Earl Grey and English Breakfast to over two hundred visitors at a Grand Victorian Tea, where guests’ service included personalized doilies inscribed with Victorian slang (Skilamalink – shady or dubious; “Sling a slobber” – “To kiss) and excerpts from Victorian etiquette books (“Ladies do not expect visitors before two, nor after five”).  A glittering collaborative mural invited visitors to respond  one of the novel’s resonant questions: What is money? A live twitter feed brought brought Dickensian learning to the world wide web, while a roving podcast-er recorded as many Foshay students and staff reading sentences from the first chapter of the novel for their blog.  All seniors also created mixed-media sculptures, reassembling miniature chairs to represent characters, quotes or themes, and some of the most creative ones (artfully distressed, a seat of thumbtacks, a hybrid train-chair) were snapped up guest bidders. Student projects continually referenced chairs and doilies to highlight the novel’s genre. As an example of domestic fiction, these reconstructed symbols  provoked guests to think through simple household objects and reimagine the messages encoded within them.  The evening showcase featured four fashion shows which incorporated student stilters and “bricolage” outfits, students satirizing the concept of  “marriage market” by staging an auction of vibrantly imagined “animals” in original face paint and formal wear; dramatized materialism in frozen tableaus of moneyed and disaffected aristocracy, contrasted competing models of femininity: “angel of the house” brides facing off with their creatively-shod  and black bouquet wielding “new woman”counterparts.  An army of “managers” representing the novel’s villain, James Carker (played by Jose Sandoval, 17), alternately marched and convulsed while sporting elaborate hyperbolized boutinooers representing his repressed ambitions.  A cast of students brought Dickens’ famously eccentric characters to life, from the conniving Major Bagstock (played by Ashley Navarro, 16) to the aging but determined flirt, Cleopatra Skewton (played by Angela Juarez, 17).  Student musicians composed music and arranged versions of eclectic songs from Mendelssohn’s Wedding March to Pink Floyd’s Money.   It was a remixed, recycled and revolutionary twenty-first century take on, well, reading a novel.  As a senior said, I never thought a final, well, learning, could be this much fun.”

Adrian and Georgia at the "Domesticity" station: The Chair Exhibit and Origami!

“I wonder what Dickens would make of your clever 21st century take on his story if he was sitting in the Foshay Grand Theatre as I was on the night of May 24th 2016? I think he would wowed as I was by the weaving in and out of dance, costume, music, and selections of dialogue that brought essence of his novel to life. I found the whole production thrilling. It went by so fast and I didn’t want it to end. Choreography…drove the point home of how wealth and power can corrupt human beings. The vacuous and mean expressions….the carnival-like way they pranced pathetically…I couldn’t resist bidding and winning two fantastically decorated chairs!” Read this wonderfully detailed review from one of our honored guests….Your production will live on in my memory for a long time. It left much to ponder about the universal implications of the story….so true today as it was when Dickens wrote it.”  Read the rest of the wonderfully detailed review about the show and individual actors by one of our lovely guests.

Anika as the Peacock in the "Marriage Market"

“….After all this I now see a different side of things and the real message Dickens was trying to get across. Initially I had thought the novel was a conservative, but now I see the radical side of it, whether it’s from the scenes performed for the show or the different takes my classmates used to design their chairs….I enjoyed the experience…I never thought a final, well, learning, could be this much fun.” Student Reflection 

View footage of the show!

Contact:
Jacqueline Jean Barrios

jacquelinebarrios@me.com

Foshay Learning Center

Neighborhood Academic Initiative

This project was supported by an Exploring the Arts grant. 

Previous media on our work on Dickens and the  Dickens Project:  Los Angeles Times,  NPR , Dickens Project-NAI Mini Documentary 

Flyer Design by Belinda Coronado, Senior, AP English 

Foshay Learning Center AP English seniors, in collaboration with the USC NAI Theater Workshop, invite you to the House of Dombey on May 24 2016: a night of theater, fashion & art based on Charles Dickens’s novel, Dombey and Son and directed by Jacqueline Jean Barrios and Paul David Story.  The show will culminate our annual Dickens Day to be held at Foshay’s campus. 

Dombey and Son:

Charles Dickens’ 1848 novel presents the story of Mr. Paul Dombey, Sr., a wealthy Victorian patriarch whose only son and heir, Paul Jr., dies in early childhood. The novel condemns Mr. Dombey for his active hatred and rejection of his daughter, Florence, whose survival he bitterly resents. His journey of deterioration and ultimate redemption enables the work to comment on the rise of industry, the changing roles of women and the profound importance of the domestic space. 

Dickens Day and Night:

Join us for tea! Meet the scholars and discuss the novel’s topic and characters: mobility, gender and domesticity through student designed interactive talks. View our “Chair Project” Art Exhibit and contribute to our blog launch: 830-1130AM at the Miami Room, Foshay Learning Center.

House of Dombey, our evening showcase, will feature live theatrical performances of scenes from the novel, live music and fashion shows inspired by the novel. 

Acknowledgements:

Exploring the Arts A 501c3 nonprofit founded in 1999 by American singer Tony Bennett and his wife Susan Benedetto, a former public school teacher, the mission of Exploring the Arts (ETA) is to transform the lives of young people through arts education.  Through the ETA Arts Access Grant, students received arts education from our teaching artists: Paul David Story and Naom Barrett. 

USC NAI Theater Workshop  under the direction of Jacqueline Barrios and Paul David Story, aims to grow south LA students’ study of literature through the performing arts.  The workshop seeks to go beyond the limits of a traditional classroom to inspire a love of literature and learning.  

Dickens Project Founded in 1981 and headquartered at UC Santa Cruz, the Dickens Project is a research consortium of faculty and graduate students from major American and international universities. Member institutions include the University of Southern California, all the UC campuses, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, and NYU, among others. 

Read about our Dombey and Son intensive in partnership with the Dickens Project.

Students during the Dombey and Son Intensive in LA!