[iDC] Praxis-based Ph.D.s

[Margaret Morse]

Dear IDCs,
Being almost brand new to this list, you may be used to the quality 
of posts and the often passionate presentation of ideas, but I think 
it is worth noting.  I am impressed; I have already learned a lot 
from this discussion.   Thanks to Mary Anne for jumping in 
wholeheartedly and for all the subsequent comments from people I know 
and those whom I might meet someday. 

If I understand correctly, Danny Butt's most recent post suggests 
that Mary Anne and I might unwittingly  undermining the value of the 
Ph.D. through our practice-Ph.D. based programs or perhaps cause 
babies to be thrown out with bath water--meaning, perhaps, that the 
consequences of our naive and risky actions could be the end of the 
M.F.A.  

Danny writes:
This tension is constitutive of the artist/museum relationship as 
well of course, but I think there is a different kind of political 
problematic at work for people such as Margaret and Mary Anne when 
initiating creative-practice PhD programmes. From my point of view, 
the practice-based PhD will inevitably contribute to the corrosion of 
various mechanisms of disciplinary authority embodied in the 
dissertation. We would then expect a push-back effect from 
disciplines that are threatened by these developments  and I think it 
would be good if, collectively, we were able to speculate on some of 
the effects of this political struggle on the institutional power of 
art departments located within research universities. To bring 
practice into the research game will bring with it certain levels of 
managerial oversight andaccountabilities to institutional bodies 
outside the art environment, and I have to remain agnostic about the 
overall benefits from such risky moves, even as I suggest that some 
experimentation with these is necessary. Perhaps we will eventually 
look back with fondness to the idea of the MFA as the terminal degree 
for the artist/educator?

In that last paragraph I'm thinking through a potential homology with 
Spivak's account in "Death of a Discipline" of the institutional 
trajectory of cultural studies in relation to comparative literature 
and area studies. It's an account I find compelling in its 
articulation of how difficult the baby/bathwater dynamics are with 
interdisciplinary work, and how full of unintended consequences the 
short-term pressures for institutional change can be.

The position of arts (visual, digital, musical, etc.) departments 
vis-a-vis other departments in the university has been bottom of the 
barrel until recently, in my experience.  After all, the arts weren't 
invited into the university until a few decades ago (anyone who knows 
this history can be more precise than I).  I speculate  that, if 
anything, the advent of a visual and then a digital culture have 
enhanced the value of the arts in the university context because they 
seem to be nearer to the innovative areas of the economy.  (The 
vulnerability of state funding makes stakes in the economy an issue 
at my university.)  I also speculate that the advent of digital 
culture has also made the move toward parity of art praxis to other 
fields with Ph.D's possible.   It is the humanities that are looking 
around wondering where to go next.  The arts are still just a speck 
compared to engineering and biosciences, but even there the arts, 
especially digital, are in a position to collaborate, in a way that 
is different than E.A.T. in the 1960's and the like, but nonetheless 
exciting to pursue.  I doubt if Mary Anne and I are causal factors in 
putting the arts into risky business--much larger longtime shifts are 
at work.  Utterly new art forms have emerged that are closely allied 
with other social and cultural shifts.  It is an exciting time and to 
imply that the university would inevitably be a spoiler of the arts 
is a vast generalization, just as the retribution of the guardians of 
Ph.D. exchange value against the arts seems a stretch.  Can you 
please offer more concrete examples or specifics of what you have in 
mind? 

Here I am going to introduce one of the main features of the Film and 
Digital Media Ph.D. proposal at UC Santa Cruz.  The whole proposal is 
posted as a pdf on the Dean of the Arts site under Initiatives:
http://arts.ucsc.edu/dean/   (You can look at other departments such 
as the Digital Arts/New Media MFA listed in the headers too if you 
like.) Note that this August 6, 2006 version is not the most recent 
one.

What Danny considers the "risky" part re the practice-based Ph.D. is 
copied below.  I might add that Larry Andrews (video and installation 
artist) and I wrote this section together in a very short amount of 
time in response to a request for clarification.  We stand behind it, 
but don't think it is an exemplary statement.

Excerpt from the PROPOSAL FOR A PROGRAM OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN FILM 
AND DIGITAL MEDIA FOR THE PH.D. DEGREE
.....
2.3. Program of Study
a. Specific fields of emphasis:
The doctoral program in Film and Digital Media prepares students to be
scholars and professionals who can situate their work within a larger
historical framework of cultural and technological change, looking at the
interrelationships of various visual media from the late 19th century through
the present. The program is not divided into paths or specific fields of
emphasis.
As well as training students in the intellectual histories of their field and
working with them to facilitate new theoretical and critical interventions, we
also expose students to fundamental and advanced aspects of media
technologies that will illuminate their understanding of media production
and reception. Knowledge of praxis will not only enrich students' critical
research and writing and provide them new modes of expression and
argumentation, but it can also provide a field of expertise for future
employment.
b. How the mix of theory and practice is conceived and how it will be
implemented within the program of study:
Assistant Professor Gustafson, who was recruited to a "hybrid" position
embracing theory and practice, has stated that one of the central concerns of
her research is a "focus on questions of methodology: what it means to
produce across the boundaries between 'theory" and 'practice.' One could
argue that 'theory' and 'practice' are more related than we ever really
acknowledge. Historically critical practices have always been informed by
creative practices and creative practices have always been shaped by critical
ones. The connections between theory and practice are not new. What is new,
perhaps, is the acknowledgement that these terms of distinction, of
difference, have had a profound impact on our definitions of what it means to
produce creative or critical work and on what that work might look like or
sound like."
It is not the goal of the program to define the mixture between theory and
practice for its students, rather it is to provide an environment where the
mixture emerges out of the research needs of the students. Three kinds of
approaches to the interplay of theory and practice outlined here suggest
different paths students may take in their course of studies and research:

1. The artist practitioner illuminates the intentions of his/her own work
theoretically; or, the writer illuminates theoretical ideas 
creatively. That is,
one emphasis is supplementary to the other.
To some extent, every artist is called upon to produce written theoretical and
contextual material to support the reception of creative work; artists who
teach will similarly engage with students theoretically and critically in
writing and critique.

A deeper degree of engagement of production with theory is exemplified in
the film production tradition within the avant-garde from Eisenstein and
Vertov, through to Deren and Brakhage, in which the artist produces theory
to illuminate cinematic concerns. The theories of these filmmakers can be
understood as an interpretation of the films they produced and this can be
seen as one form of the theory/practice equation that the Ph.D. program
seeks to foster and nurture. This tradition of supplemental theoretical writing
has continued in relation to evolving forms of media art from video and
closed-circuit installation (e.g. Dan Graham and Bill Viola) on to artists who
practice in new media forms from the early internet and virtual reality to
database, telematic and web art and other contemporary formats.

In critical studies, practical knowledge enables and supports theoretical work
to varying degrees. The writer/theorist/critic may use knowledge of praxis
in media to supplement scholarly research, teaching, public lectures and in
publication in which the end result might be a classical thesis in print
supplemented by a new media format such as a web site or DVD.
Increasingly, scholars in every area of media studies are called upon to use
digital media techniques to create montage sequences or databases that
develop an idea or interpretation. Even minimal knowledge of media
production practices also provides a more solid foundation for scholarship,
not only by limiting errors of fact or interpretation in areas of praxis from
film-making to programming, but also by inspiring new knowledge
production, for instance, symbiotically, through participant observation or by
means of ethnographic interviews with artists. Melinda Barlow's writing on
the installation artist Mary Lucier would be exemplary of this approach.
Another example might be historical research on silent cinema practiced by
departmental faculty member Shelley Stamp, in that it closely examines
documents that allow production and exhibition practices to be
reconstructed.  Ph.D. students in the program will have the opportunity to
acquire both the theoretical and practical knowledge valuable for success
as artists, scholars and teachers.

2. The artist is also a writer; the theorist is also an artist.
A second approach to the idea, would be not to look at writings as an
intermediate step towards the eventual realization of a film or other artwork,
or as a support for scholarly research and teaching but to look at writing and
filmmaking as but two means of pursuing the very same end, both being a
form of philosophical inquiry. Examples of artist/writers include Jean Luc
Godard, and other French New wave filmmakers, Judith Barry, Jordan
Crandall and John Caldwell, as well as members of the department faculty
such Irene Gustafson, who publishes theoretical essays as well as makes
experimental and documentary films; and, Amelie Hastie, a writer who has
also produced a creative multi-media project sponsored by the ejournal
Vortex. In this model students produce distinct written and media based
projects.  This model of mixing theory and practice is easiest to 
justify since it
meets the traditional requirements of both a classical dissertation as well as
the culmination of a creative project.  The volume of both the project or/and
thesis would be assessed to determine if it constitutes the appropriate and
feasible size of the dissertation.

3. The artist theorizes in the form of a creative production. The writer
reflects on praxis in writing that embodies media formats and practices.
There is a third approach which is possibly the most difficult for the student
to successfully conceive and therefore it will most like be a rare path taken,
but it is one which the Ph.D. program is nevertheless committed to
supporting. From a production perspective, there are many contemporary
and historical examples of artists who make works that can be viewed as
producing knowledge. In this third approach, films are not conceived as
examples of some aesthetic theory put into practice, but ones that are
themselves the very medium of intellectual exchange, wherein a film is made
in response to another film or text allowing us to see filmmaking as a form of
debate. Another mode in this vein could be films that contain all the
arguments necessary and clearly articulated so that a text isn't required to
fully comprehend the theoretical ideas being wrestled with.  More discursive
media genres lend themselves most easily to this end, including the film
essay as practiced by Chris Marker or works in the documentary movements
of the 1930's on (Bunuel, Lorentz) or ethnographic films by Rouch and others,
as well as the television serials of Dennis Potter or video art by Steve Fagin.
Digital art such as database and social participatory media art practiced by
faculty members Sharon Daniel and Warren Sack would also be in that
discursive vein. (Both Daniel and Sack also publish articles that amplify and
expand their web-based art works.) New and digital media makes the formal
integration of theory and praxis more feasible, though the poetics of such
integration remain challenging nonetheless.

 From a critical studies perspective it is possible to imagine, for instance, a
database art piece published on DVD or the web that is also a fully realized
thesis. A more difficult project would be to embody the logic and practices of
a creative medium in writing published as a traditional dissertation in print,
though it is not inconceivable.  Such a thesis is likely to intersect 
with poetry,
and might contain many illustrations, or even video clips, and/or hyper-text.

c. How the curriculum is designed to introduce and support the interplay
between the theory and praxis throughout a student's progress through the
program:
During the first year of study in Film200B/C a two-quarter course, students
will be introduced to the methodologies of developing, and the questions that
surround a theory praxis approach. This will occur while the student
simultaneously strengthens the areas they feel inadequate to effectively
speak, in theory or practice, with the appropriate elective classes, 
pertinent to
their area of focus.

During the second year, the student will focus on selecting classes from the
FDM elective series numbered 210 -230. Of the 18 classes currently in this
series approximately 1/3 embrace a strong mix of theory/practice and in
these classes students will be charged with producing both and thinking
about the relationship between the two, The remainder of the classes in this
series fall on either side of the equation.

The third year will be spent developing a thesis topic in close consultation
with Faculty advisors and the Film 290 series classes. A student's advisors
over the program's duration will include both critical studies and production
faculty depending on the research and the qualifying exam and thesis
committees will reflect a balance between critical studies and production
faculty appropriate to the student's research topic.

How the mix of theory and practice might influence the choice of thesis topics
is demonstrated by means of a list of sample dissertation topics that embody
the diverse range of possibilities a student might undertake. This 
list includes
the possibility that a media production that is itself a realization of a
theoretical thesis may serve as a thesis format option for a fraction 
of students
in film studies. A student may decide to create an expressive digital media
format for a fully formed thesis and its scholarly apparatus.
List of sample dissertation topics:
1. A historical, biographical, critical and/or theoretical examination of a
specific artist, work, movement or genre with specific consideration given
to creative and production practices. Example: Video Collectives in the
late 1960's: An Examination of Group Authorship and Creative Strategies
in Three Collectives

2. Media archeological research on a pre-cinematic apparatus such as
chronophotography, that is accompanied by a creative database
production that explores the historical and contemporary implications of
chronophotography as a medium: Time and the Trace

3. A creative project that addresses, critiques and embodies stereoscopy
as a cultural form

d. Plan:
The department does not admit students solely for the purpose of obtaining a
master's degree. All applicants are admitted to a single Ph.D. program. A
preliminary exam, comprised of a cumulative review of all coursework plus
an oral exam, is held at the end of the second year, and functions as the MA
exam. The three possible outcomes of the exam are fail; pass; and pass with
permission to proceed with the Ph.D. A student who fails the exam may retake
the exam once. The decision on permission to proceed will take into
account the exam result and input from the faculty whose courses the student
has completed. Those who pass without permission to proceed will receive
the degree of MA. These students must also meet the campus requirement of
B or higher in their course work and complete the units requirements of 72
units.

Students who are successful at this exam and granted permission to proceed
may then enter the third year of study for the Ph.D. The capstone
requirement will be fulfilled with a dissertation (see 2.5 below) and
coursework during the third year will be focused on developing this project.

e. Unit requirements:
Doctor of Philosophy: A minimum of 108 units of study in course work at
UCSC will be required for the Ph.D. degree. Doctoral students will be in
residence for a minimum of six quarters. When in residence, students will
take a minimum of twelve units per quarter. Up to 10 transfer credits may be
granted from another institution if approved by the faculty.

f. Required and recommended courses:
Doctor of Philosophy: In their first year, doctoral students will be 
required to
take the three foundational courses listed below and the 2-unit colloquium
series sequence. They must then take two FDM graduate elective courses in
the second year (for a total of five courses; three core and two electives). In
addition, most students will take FILM 204A-B-C, a two-unit colloquium
every quarter. In the third year, students take the three graduate courses in
Film and Digital Media, 295 (Directed Reading), 292 (Seminar in Thesis Area)
and 297 (Independent Study and Research, leading to Thesis Proposal). A
student will thus take at least 8 Film and Digital Media graduate courses over
the degree, for a total of 40 credits plus 12 units of the colloquium 
series. The
remaining elective courses may be selected from Film and Digital Media or
from other graduate programs subject to the approval of the student's
graduate advisor. It is expected that students will carefully choose which
courses to take, in consultation with their graduate advisor, so as to ensure a
program of study that is intellectually rigorous and that reflects 
the student's
eventual goals and aspirations.

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