title: Getting research students started: a tale of two courses

authors: Witten, Ian H.

abstract: As graduate programs in Computer Science grow and mature and undergraduate populations stabilize, an increasing proportion of our resources is being devoted to the training of researchers in the field. Many inefficiencies are evident in our graduate programs. These include undesirably long average times to thesis completion, students' poor work habits and general lack of professionalism, and the unnecessary duplication of having supervisors introduce their students individually to the basics of research. Solving these problems requires specifically targeted education to get students started in their graduate research and introduce them to the skills and tools needed to complete it efficiently and effectively. We have used two different approaches in our respective departments. One is a (half-) credit course on research skills; the other a one-week intensive non-credit "survival course" at the beginning of the year. The advantage of the former is the opportunity to cover material in depth and for students to practice their skills; the latter is much less demanding on students and is easier to fit into an existing graduate program.

text: Getting research students started: a tale of two courses As graduate programs in Computer Science grow and mature and undergraduate populations stabilize, an increasing proportion of our resources is being devoted to the training of researchers in the field. Many inefficiencies are evident in our graduate programs. These include undesirably long average times to thesis completion, students' poor work habits and general lack of professionalism, and the unnecessary duplication of having supervisors introduce their students individually to the basics of research. Solving these problems requires specifically targeted education to get students started in their graduate research and introduce them to the skills and tools needed to complete it efficiently and effectively. We have used two different approaches in our respective departments. One is a (half-) credit course on research skills; the other a one-week intensive non-credit "survival course" at the beginning of the year. The advantage of the former is the opportunity to cover material in depth and for students to practice their skills; the latter is much less demanding on students and is easier to fit into an existing graduate program.

year: 1992

title: The staging of affect and the “Elsewhens” of documentary space

authors: Fleming, Daniel

subjects: documentary

abstract: A quarter of a century ago, the English critic and writer John Berger said, “The true stories of our time have to be able to reconcile a pile of clothes in a drawer with world historical upheavals.”¹ This seems like an ideal prescription for documentary but, given our times of intensified globalization and the reorganization of “world historical upheavals” around a particular global narrative, the practical challenge behind Berger’s word “reconcile” seems even more daunting than it did in 1985. In particular, the “pile of clothes in a drawer,” the lived spaces of the everyday, the intimate, the personal, the forgotten, the material things tinged with memory, seem even more at risk of consignment to the category of the inconsequential. Certain durable public exceptions, like the piled and tangled frames and cracked lenses of the Auschwich-­‐Berkenau spectacles, have achieved an iconic status as personal markers of world historical trauma (thus celebrities being invited to donate pairs of old spectacles to a 2008 exhibit in Liverpool, England, marking National Holocaust Day²) but, if anything, this has raised the bar on just whose “pile of clothes in a drawer” might connect with the “true stories of our time” that Berger envisaged. The recent opening of so many old drawers to the burgeoning “family history” genre (e.g. television’s Who Do You Think You Are?) tends not to facilitate this connection so much as to shift the “pile of clothes in a drawer” into another, tidier space; one equally privatized and disconnected from larger contexts and frames of meaning, except where those get represented as a kind of generalized dramatic backdrop.³

text: The staging of affect and the “Elsewhens” of documentary space A quarter of a century ago, the English critic and writer John Berger said, “The true stories of our time have to be able to reconcile a pile of clothes in a drawer with world historical upheavals.”¹ This seems like an ideal prescription for documentary but, given our times of intensified globalization and the reorganization of “world historical upheavals” around a particular global narrative, the practical challenge behind Berger’s word “reconcile” seems even more daunting than it did in 1985. In particular, the “pile of clothes in a drawer,” the lived spaces of the everyday, the intimate, the personal, the forgotten, the material things tinged with memory, seem even more at risk of consignment to the category of the inconsequential. Certain durable public exceptions, like the piled and tangled frames and cracked lenses of the Auschwich-­‐Berkenau spectacles, have achieved an iconic status as personal markers of world historical trauma (thus celebrities being invited to donate pairs of old spectacles to a 2008 exhibit in Liverpool, England, marking National Holocaust Day²) but, if anything, this has raised the bar on just whose “pile of clothes in a drawer” might connect with the “true stories of our time” that Berger envisaged. The recent opening of so many old drawers to the burgeoning “family history” genre (e.g. television’s Who Do You Think You Are?) tends not to facilitate this connection so much as to shift the “pile of clothes in a drawer” into another, tidier space; one equally privatized and disconnected from larger contexts and frames of meaning, except where those get represented as a kind of generalized dramatic backdrop.³

year: 2011

title: Images of Pakeha-Māori: A Study of the Representation of Pakeha-Māori by Historians of New Zealand From Arthur Thomson (1859) to James Belich (1996)

authors: Bentley, Trevor William

subjects: Pakeha-Maori

abstract: This thesis investigates how Pakeha-Māori have been represented in New Zealand non-fiction writing during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The chronological and textual boundaries range from Arthur Thomson's seminal history The Story of New Zealand (1859) to James Belich's Making Peoples (1996). It examines the discursive inventions and reinventions of Pakeha-Māori from the stereotypical images of the Victorian era to modern times when the contact zone has become a subject of critical investigation and a sign of changing intellectual dynamics in New Zealand and elsewhere.

This thesis is about the history of attitudes to culture-crossers in New Zealand, the use of the term 'Pakeha-Māori', and the images that underlie the thinking of Britons and Pakeha about them. It explores the motives and backgrounds of specific authors and the ways in which they frame New Zealand history. It elucidates the ambiguous and contradictory perspectives of Pakeha-Māori in the literature and analyses its impact on changing public perceptions about them. The study critiques the literature with emphasis on theoretically informed research, historical analysis, and literary insights. Discussion is confined to published texts, with the aim of exploring the multiplicity of Pakeha-Māori images and the processes that gave rise to them.

This study is essentially an investigation into how and why historians and other scholars try to draw boundaries between cultures in order to create a satisfactory metanarrative or myth of the 'settlement' of New Zealand and thus to forge a sense of New Zealandness. The cultural and racial categories of 'Māori' and 'Pakeha' are very unstable, however, and a consideration of the 'in-between' or 'culture-crossing' category of 'Pakeha-Māori' can reveal the way in which 'Māori' and 'Pakeha' and a sense of New Zealand and New Zealanders have been constructed. More particularly, consideration of representations of those culture-crossers or race-crossers called Pakeha-Māori can reveal the hopes and fears of Pakeha writers regarding Pakeha, Māori and New Zealand and how Pakeha-Māori have frequently been a barometer or litmus test of public perceptions of relations between Māori and Pakeha in different historical periods.

text: Images of Pakeha-Māori: A Study of the Representation of Pakeha-Māori by Historians of New Zealand From Arthur Thomson (1859) to James Belich (1996) This thesis investigates how Pakeha-Māori have been represented in New Zealand non-fiction writing during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The chronological and textual boundaries range from Arthur Thomson's seminal history The Story of New Zealand (1859) to James Belich's Making Peoples (1996). It examines the discursive inventions and reinventions of Pakeha-Māori from the stereotypical images of the Victorian era to modern times when the contact zone has become a subject of critical investigation and a sign of changing intellectual dynamics in New Zealand and elsewhere.

This thesis is about the history of attitudes to culture-crossers in New Zealand, the use of the term 'Pakeha-Māori', and the images that underlie the thinking of Britons and Pakeha about them. It explores the motives and backgrounds of specific authors and the ways in which they frame New Zealand history. It elucidates the ambiguous and contradictory perspectives of Pakeha-Māori in the literature and analyses its impact on changing public perceptions about them. The study critiques the literature with emphasis on theoretically informed research, historical analysis, and literary insights. Discussion is confined to published texts, with the aim of exploring the multiplicity of Pakeha-Māori images and the processes that gave rise to them.

This study is essentially an investigation into how and why historians and other scholars try to draw boundaries between cultures in order to create a satisfactory metanarrative or myth of the 'settlement' of New Zealand and thus to forge a sense of New Zealandness. The cultural and racial categories of 'Māori' and 'Pakeha' are very unstable, however, and a consideration of the 'in-between' or 'culture-crossing' category of 'Pakeha-Māori' can reveal the way in which 'Māori' and 'Pakeha' and a sense of New Zealand and New Zealanders have been constructed. More particularly, consideration of representations of those culture-crossers or race-crossers called Pakeha-Māori can reveal the hopes and fears of Pakeha writers regarding Pakeha, Māori and New Zealand and how Pakeha-Māori have frequently been a barometer or litmus test of public perceptions of relations between Māori and Pakeha in different historical periods.

year: 2007