The Reader

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

Curious of the love scenes between a fifteen year-old kid and a woman more than twice his age, I watched Academy award-nominated “The Reader” at Vivo on Tuesday afternoon.

The passionate scenes were, to say the least, arresting. They definitely add up to my repertoire of images of intimacy and human touch. What struck me more than the unconventional love affair between the 15 year-old Michael Berg and 30 plus year-old Hannah Schmitz, though, was the film’s portrayal of oral interpretation (oral reading) as “a re-creative art” and of literacy both as an instrument of liberation and oppression especially of the non-literate (or of those still operating in the realm of oral cultures).

Listening to the 15 year-old Michael read stories from great literature out loud to Hannah (as part of their lovemaking ritual) brought to mind memories of one of the courses I taught back in the UP. I taught Oral Interpretation for two semesters in Los Banos and if I were to teach that course again, I would include the film in my list of required audio-visual texts.

Oral interpretation – the study of literature via performance – features the text and makes use of body, voice, and other accoutrements to suggest the life of prose or poetry as understood by the reader after a careful study of the literary piece. Unlike that of acting or impersonating, oral interpretation’s primary goal is for the piece of literature to come alive from the printed page; the performer is merely a vessel through which listeners get a taste of literature as performed – as it should be, that is. (More sophisticated speech departments have renamed this area “performance studies” which has generated a number of advanced theories on text and performance.)

The film’s take on oral interpretation gets more riveting when an older Michael records his oral reading/ interpretation of great – more like “canonical” – literature on tape: from Homer’s epic “Odyssey” to Anton Chekov’s “The Lady with the Little Dog.” He sends these tapes to Hannah in her cell in Germany, who at this time was serving life sentence for war crimes during the Nazi regime.

Ralph Fiennes’ Michael, definitely crispier in his renditions of literary masterpieces, suggests that the performer is a living text. What can be gleaned from the older Michael is a more experienced performer whose life intertwined with the life of the literature he reads out loud re-creates art in a much more mature and more informed fashion compared to how he read them orally when he was a kid with raging hormones.

Then there’s the part on literacy. Hannah Schmitz’s character – ably portrayed by Kate Winslet – is an illiterate tram conductor who later in the film is revealed to have worked as one of the guards for a Nazi satellite. She is later tried and sentenced for life for an act she accepts with full responsibility but for which evidence available to Michael’s character (this time as a law student witnessing the trial) proves otherwise. In this gripping story, Hannah would rather choose to be punished incommensurate to her participation in the war than to experience the shame of being discovered illiterate.

The depiction of Hannah’s debilitating illiteracy has its ups though – at least to me as a viewer. Her appreciation of a book read aloud – of the spoken word – seems rare and distinct from how most of today’s and even the previous generations would find, say, Homer’s “Odyssey” interpreted orally. Thanks to Kate Winslet, Hannah’s character as a non-literate woman but whose mind operates in an oral culture comes very much alive to me.

In his classic book “Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word” (1982), Walter Ong characterizes thought and expression in the primary oral culture as “additive rather than subordinative”; “aggregative rather than analytic” (reliance on formula); “redundant or copious”; “conservative or traditionalist” (premium on old wise men); “close to the human lifeworld” (little concern with abstraction); “agonistically toned”; “empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced”; “homeostatic”; and “situational rather than abstract.” Some of these features are evident in Winslet’s characterization of Hannah. Her empathetic reaction towards every story becomes startling because it is something most people trained in written and printed (chirographic and typographic) cultures would not express. For instance, her utter embarrassment at hearing the words from DH Lawrence’s controversial “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” manifests in some way her mental model’s closeness to the human life world. Hannah is also portrayed by Winslet as agonistically toned – argumentative and aggressive – especially in the courtroom scene where Hannah responds to the judge’s questions on her participation in the Nazi regime.

One of Ong’s important insights about the oral mind is that it is most capable of listening intently and appreciatively to every sound it hears; it can also create patterns – mnemonics – to preserve what it deems worth preserving in memory. Hannah, it seemed, held on to the sound of great literature to remember what is beautiful about human nature and the world in order to erase from her memory the horrors of the past. Interestingly, it is the electronic medium (represented by the recorder and the cassette tapes bearing Michael’s recorded oral readings) that ushers her entry into the written/ chirographic world.

Much as I would like to be celebratory about the beauty of the oral mind, it remains a fact that in a world once dominated by the printed word, and now, by the electronic media, the wisdom of orality as demonstrated by non-literate peoples will always be relegated to the sidelines. While the film is outright about its take on (il)literacy – that there is no other way but to promote literacy to liberate the human mind – it also brings to the fore what literacy can do to marginalize or even to disable people.

A text-centric culture relies on, and therefore submits fully to, the primacy of the documented written or printed word. At the time Hannah was on trial, the written documents – a published account of Jewish oppression from a mother and a daughter who survived the Holocaust and a report attested to by Hannah and the other defendants – were supreme. They were the warrants and the back-ups that supported the link between data and claim, between stories of eyewitnesses and the accusations for which the defendants were tried. They constituted a part of the history of the Holocaust and the war.

While there is a lot to celebrate about literacy, it cannot be denied that it can also obliterate that which can be expressed in ways other than writing or print. To some extent, it simplifies the complexity of what has been. It shuns information and insight from that which is unavailable to the silent reader. Admirably, “The Reader” – communicated through a medium that uses visual text and the spoken, written and printed words – subtly poses this problem to its viewers for them to ponder and to think about.

Snippets of UPLB History: The Humanities (Part 3)

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES
(Last of three parts)


by Edelwina Cu-Legaspi


Earlier, in 1953, the English courses were revised to give the students as much as was possible and profitable in the few English courses they had to attend. Accordingly, English 1a and 1b, both three-unit courses, gave way to English 1 (two units), English 2 (two units), and English 3 (three units), thereby affording the English instructor additional hours in which to try to develop communication skills, disseminate information, stimulate independent thinking, and mold character. After finishing these three subjects, the honors curriculum students were required to take English 10 (Scientific Reporting); those in the general curriculum, English 4 (Literature in English); and those in agricultural education, English 11 (Public Speaking). To most members of the staff, English 4 has been the most “fulfilling” subject. One of the few courses in the College that are less concerned with technical skills, it seeks to bring out the individual who can live and work healthily and happily with himself and with others.

The extracurricular work of the Department of Languages has increased even though it no longer proofreads for the Philippine Agriculturist. Its members still read for English theses and other manuscripts of students and faculty members. Some are members of college standing committees, others are resource persons on communication skills for the Community Development Training Center . A few are advisers of student organizations and the College organ, Aggie Green and Gold.  Others direct student plays and sit as moderators and judges in student forums and contests. Half a dozen serve during registrations in various capacities. The foreign students who come to the College inadequately prepared to take up work in English attend special tutorial classes held by Languages instructors. For the Department of Agricultural Education, the Language staff edited and proofread high school teaching materials prepared by the Department in collaboration with the Bureau of Public Schools. In addition to this, a couple of English instructors are detailed every now and then to handle high school classes, reversing the situation in the earlier days when the Department of Languages had borrowed from other departments to reinforce its staff.  One instructor handles Philippine Institutions 1, a newly instituted course, while the Department of Agricultural Education searched for a qualified staff to teach it.  Another conducts research for the Philippine Historical Association of which he is a charter member and gives language examinations for prospective candidates for advanced degrees. Another member has been supervisor of the Maquiling School for years. 

The Department is not wanting in “lighter” work either. On various social occasions members of the staff have contributed a number or two to programs; the ladies serve on the Loyalty Day luncheon committee.  In December, 1958, the Department presented Sam and Bella Spewack’s amoral-sentimental comedy My Three Angels, the proceeds from which went into the purchase of badly needed stage curtains for the Baker Hall. To give residents their fill of classical music, the Department formed the Art Appreciation Club which meets every month. In the funding campaign of the College for the Golden Jubilee celebrations, the Languages staff spearheaded the drive by holding a Mardi Gras night which netted a neat amount.

Although the Department has concentrated on the practical use of English to agricultural students all these years, it has not lost sight of three of the major goals of all language arts instruction: “wholesome personal development, growing intellectual curiosity and the capacity for critical thinking, and deeper understanding of the reasons for faith in and allegiance to the basic values of a democratic society."

It is every Languages Instructor's hope to achieve these goals in any subject he handles now and will handle in the future. At the time of the writing of this report, materials for the proposed Speech Clinic, a Rockefeller gift, have started trickling in.  Plans are afoot to include a humanities course in the contemplated revised curriculum. When all these plans materialize, indeed, the Department of Languages, like Bacon, will have taken unto itself a vast province.

Source: Philippine Agriculturist, Volume XLIII, Number 1, June 1959.

Snippets of UPLB History: The Humanities (Part 2)

Below is the second part of the article written by Professor Edelwina C. Legaspi published in the special issue of the Philippine Agriculturist (Volume XLIII, Number 1, June 1959) in honor of the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture’s golden jubilee.

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES
(Second of three parts)

by Edelwina Cu-Legaspi

When the Americans returned, it was only natural to expect the reestablishment of English as a separate department. But the heavy toll that the Japanese occupation had taken on the members of the pre-war Department made reorganization a most difficult task. Thus, when the College re-opened on July 26, 1945, three English courses for 95 students were offered under the Department of Languages headed by Dean Uichanco in an acting capacity.  Miss Aurora L. Samonte of the Department of Agricultural Educational was assigned to teach English 1a and 1b; later she became the acting head of the Department and acting librarian of the College. English 1b, a completion course for those whose classes had been disrupted by the Pacific war and the battle for liberation, was handled by Mrs. Guadalupe Fores-Guazon, also of the Department of Agricultural Education. Dr. Gerardo O. Ocfemia, head of the Department of Plant Pathology, was detailed to teach English 10, a thesis-writing course for seniors. English 1 and 10 both aimed at training students in “such written and spoken discourse as will be of practical value to agriculturists in the Philippine Islands.”

 

In June, 1946, English A and B, preparatory courses divided into two-semester work for students who had had only six years of elementary schooling, were introduced. The Department also taught English 1a and 1b (English Composition), English 5 (World Literature), English 10 (Scientific Reporting), English 11 (Public Speaking), English 101 (The Short Story), German and Spanish.  Four faculty members handled these classes; of this number three were detailed from other departments, two from the Department of Agricultural Education and one from the Department of Soils.

 

There was a change of hands in the school year 1948-49. Miss Samonte, a most valuable worker, resigned.  Mrs. Marcela I. Sevilla, instructor at the UP Rural High School, was made in-charge of the Department on January 1, 1949. Professors Nicolas Galvez of Soils, Melanio Gapud of Agricultural Education, and Jose Blando of the College of Forestry were drafted to teach some courses. A couple of years later Miss Nelly Dunglao, just back from abroad, joined the Department staff.

 

In 1952 two additional instructors were appointed. In July of the same year Miss Nelly Dunglao was designated acting head, relieving Mrs. Sevilla as in charge of the Department. During this period the copy editor of the Philippine Agriculturist and the head of the Department of Soils were on detail in the Department.

 

Four instructors, two for English and two for Spanish, joined the staff in 1953. One of the Spanish instructors at once took the initiative of organizing the Circulo Hispanista, an association of the students enrolled in Spanish.

 

Five more came in 1954. When the College enrollment trebled far beyond expectations in 1955, the curriculum and the faculty likewise expanded. The Department acquired the services of nine new members. Miss Dunglao, who became head of the Department in November, 1955, resigned on July 31, 1957, leaving the Department of Languages with a teaching force of nineteen, this included the writer who was appointed head on August 1, 1957, an office clerk, and four student assistants. But even with these the Department still had to count on the services of “borrowed talents.” Dr. Galvez continued to handle the German courses which were attended mostly by graduate students. With the passage of the Magalona bill and later the Rizal law, more courses in Spanish had to be offered.

 

The Department of Languages has travelled a long way since its founding. Of its 19 staff members today, only four have no advanced credits; five have master’s degrees (four from abroad, one from the U.P.). Now housed in a building all its own, the old Agronomy, the Department is quite a contrast to the late Miss Yule’s English office at the Old College Building with its “one straight-backed chair and a deal table with a small drawer.” The interior which underwent a facelifting in the summer of 1958 was painted in varying shades of blue.

 

Before it inherited the old Agronomy building in June, 1954, the Department never stayed put in one place. After the liberation the Languages office was where a little space could be spared. Consequently, before it found its permanent home, the Department had “squatted” in the Departments of Agricultural Education, Agricultural Engineering, Entomology, and Agricultural Economics. For some time, therefore, the students were treated to the sight of Languages instructors scurrying from building to building, lugging along books, notebooks, papers, chalks, and even loose blackboards.

 

It is easy to see that the early post-liberation conditions left much to be desired. The Department especially felt keenly the lack of instructional materials. Just starting to get rehabilitated itself, the library was not much of help. The English teachers, thus handicapped, very often had only their own resources to draw from.  They made up for their youth and lack of experience with their knowledge of the subject matter, diligence, resourcefulness, interest, and personality.  In time they realized that there was no substitute for a well-trained teacher genuinely enthusiastic about his elected calling.

Snippets of UPLB History: The Humanities (Part 1)

Happy Centennial, UPLB! As a way of celebrating LB's 100th year, I wish to highlight snippets of UPLB history in this site.

Below is the first of three parts of an article published almost half a century ago in the Philippine Agriculturist (now the Philippine Agricultural Scientist, an Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) journal based in UP Los Banos). Written by UP Professor Emeritus Edelwina Cu-Legaspi, then assistant professor of the UP College of Agriculture, this piece of work gives the reader a glimpse into the early years of what is now the UPLB Department of Humanities, a degree-granting unit that offers both master’s and undergraduate programs and arguably the cradle of liberal arts in a campus largely known for its trailblazing research in the areas of agriculture, biotechnology, engineering, and the environment. The article was published along with other articles on the various units of the UP College of Agriculture in the special issue of the Philippine Agriculturist (Volume XLIII, Number 1, June 1959) in honor of the College’s golden jubilee.

 

 

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES[1]

 

by Edelwina Cu-Legaspi[2]

 

The Department of Languages, which used to be known as the Department of English from its beginnings to the outbreak of the Pacific war, was never formally established. One is inclined to think that it must have earned its title of “department” in the catalogue only after the English work in and out of the classroom had made itself as an entity, not a fraction.[3]  “English Department” first appeared in the masthead of the Philippine Agriculturist in 1919 when Dr. Sam Trelease, a college plant physiologist, was editor, and Miss Yule, who was to become the first head of the Department, was assistant editor.

 

It is noteworthy, though, that despite the lack of recognition of the Department as such, English was among the subjects taught when the College first opened in June, 1909. Among other things, the pioneering students fed their imagination on Longfellow’s Evangeline and Irving’s Alhambra in the home of Mrs. Carrie Stein Ledyard, instructor in modern languages.  Mrs. Ledyard taught German and French as well. In her absence, Artemas Day, a biologist, pitched in.

 

For some time the English subjects offered were of preparatory nature, more or less identical with, if not a continuation of, those given in the public high schools.  The first course on the collegiate level was an elective, English 3, instituted under Mrs. Dorothy Rundles. To this subject, Dean Copeland consigned students he deemed defective in English.

 

In the early years of the College the English Department, aside from teaching English, edited for English, theses and other manuscripts, and copied and proofread for the Philippine Agriculturist. Although there was rarely more than one instructor at a time in those days, the Department could teach and read for English, and still serve as a first-aid station for Filipino faculty members and students not taking English courses but whose knowledge of the language could stand improvement.

 

As a result of the years of “restrained struggle” on Miss Yule’s part, English was made a required subject first in the six-year and later in the four-year curriculum. With revisions and readjustments, three consecutive courses were soon added. One of these courses aimed at giving students “a little training in the translation of science into ordinary speech.” A second dealt with principles of argument, business correspondence, and scientific reporting. A third was a survey course in world literature to help the students partake of “the precious lifeblood of the masters of the spirits.”

 

The Department did its share in enriching the cultural life of the students. Miss E. Gertrude Madison initiated the College Sing. A student pioneer who is now a retired professor of animal husbandry fondly recalls the evenings when he and his classmates, gathered around the lively Miss Madison, would sing all their cares away. These sessions brought out many a talent which came in handy during College programs. Miss Margaret Wilson popularized the Mimics, dumb simulative performances designed to give the student a taste of drama. This literary vehicle helped in spreading new agricultural ideas in rural communities and in training students to direct simple literary plays. It is only fitting to record that the proceeds of the first dramatic performance on the campus, “The Court Scene from the Merchant of Venice,” which was directed by Mrs. Gillis (first semester 1915-1916), were used to buy the first non-technical books for the library.

 

As years rushed by, a number of names, mostly American, appeared in the roster of the English Department. More courses were offered. The services offered by the Department, aside from the regular classroom teaching, were gaining recognition. The future held much promise.

 

And then came the war.

 

Of the two remaining American members of the Department, only Mrs. Harriet Richards was interned at the University of Santo Tomas concentration camp; the other one, Mrs. Ruth Mack, had gone back to the States earlier.

 

With the coming of the Japanese, the Department of English, as such, ceased to exist. The Japanese, determined to efface all vestiges of American tutelage, forbade the teaching of English.  The Department taught German and Spanish instead. Strangely enough, though, Mr. Y. Utiyama, educational adviser of the Japanese Military Administration, ordered that teaching of English, not Spanish or German, should be continued till the faculty and students would have acquired a working knowledge of Nippongo. He made it clear that only English reading was to be taught, no composition and grammar.  Before a student could graduate, he should know Nippongo. Accordingly, a Japanese instructor, Mr. H. Kongsio, was promptly sent to the campus to acquaint College constituents with the conqueror’s tongue. A Filipino national language instructor, Mrs. Josefa Diaz, was made in charge of the Department.  Apparently lying low, English was actually functioning shoulder to shoulder with the Filipino national language. As a precautionary measure, the Department of English sought refuge in the camouflaging title of Department of Languages.

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[1] General Contribution No. 902.

[2] Assistant Professor and Head of the Department

[3] Emma S. Yule, Philippine Agriculturist, 18, 327-331 (1929)

Confessions of a "constipated academic"

I am borrowing the phrase “constipated academic” from historian Ambeth Ocampo. I think the phrase suits me right now. In fact, to add a little more drama, the “thing” in the noun phrase should be “academic wannabe” which would then make me a “constipated academic wannabe.” That perfectly describes me at this point and I am not complaining. No, I actually am complaining pala because academic constipation is a painful experience – very painful.


On Friday, October 24 – United Nations’ Day and my father’s 62nd birthday, Ambeth Ocampo’s third in a series of articles on names appeared in print and online in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. He concluded his article with this line: “If one is curious one can find delight in simple things like names. If you are a constipated academic, you squeeze the life from learning by focusing on theoretical frameworks and other boring stuff.” Upon reading those lines, I felt Professor Ambeth was talking directly to me. I felt as if Ateneo’s nationally renowned professor of history was insinuating that PhD students like me are cold, socially detached (human) beings trying so hard to draw or construct contrived theoretical explanations for our pet subjects. And strange as it may seem, I couldn’t agree more.


I just ended the process of writing my research proposal early this afternoon, and right now, I just feel so dreadful about the sleepless nights, headaches, muscle pain, occasional nausea, cough and cold, and social and personal animosity the writing process has caused me. It goes without saying that intellectually masticating heaps of reading materials and mentally digesting dense texts to produce what else (?) but a (self-) convincing “theoretical framework” of what I intend to do to make modest tremors in my field of study are, well, formidable tasks. Of course, there’s the frequent intellectual indigestion – so brain wracking that I had to more frequently than ever seek Divine Guidance at the nearest religious parish or spiritual sanctuary. Thankfully for me, the Great Thinker is also the Great Healer and has provided me the greatest care.


When intellectual digestion becomes successful, the process of squeezing the (mental) manure so to speak (my “byproduct” is supposed to fertilize academic fields for more harvests!) becomes another formidable task. It troubled me for weeks – no, months – and I needed all the energy, all the support, and all the features of the university’s educational infrastructure I could benefit from and rely on: I had to do library work, library work, and more library work with movies on the side, fantastic rumor-mongering among friends, nitpicking of our pet peeves (with disconcerting karmic effects!), a little dose of social networking, long distance calls to my family, and some leisure reading. Of course, there were (and still are) the quite regular visits to the Church of Saint Mary of the Angels at Bukit Batok which boasts of quite eloquent and quite viscerally interesting Franciscan friars. Hmmm…. (it is not what you think it is!)


More often than not, to be able to hit the ground running, I would induce myself to vomit words. I chanced upon the expression “word vomit” through NUS Filipino graduate students steeped in writing end-of-term papers with the minimum of 6000 to 7000 words. My proposal is actually as much a product of word vomit as it is of my modest capacity to synthesize things. I am quite amazed and at the same time apprehensive that I have exceeded by more than a page the 50-page maximum (this aside from the bibliography, appendices and other attachments) set by the department for thesis proposals (It reminds me of the scene in “Antonia’s Line” where a university professor finds Antonia’s grand daughter Therese wanting for submitting a paper beyond the required number of pages. To follow instructions strictly is a sign of discipline, you know.).


The explanation for the number of pages is not really because I have a lot of things to say (well, actually, I have a lot of glittering generalities to prove). It is because I was initially so afraid of the possibility of not reaching the minimum 30 pages of double spaced text that I began to liberally lift from my previous papers in the university, make some modifications of them (meaning creating lengthy paraphrases), and deliberately vomit words as it were.When I began to notice that I had already exceeded the minimum number of pages and was already on the verge of reaching the maximum, I also realized that I still had a lot of arguments to prove and develop. I was then faced with the difficult task of cleaning up the mess and it’s not always easy when your vital points are actually built around the mess!


Naturally, getting over the constipation and being able to justify one’s mess are such a relief; but while that is the case, I still feel the pangs of the excruciating squeeze to beat deadlines (and to create the impression that my postgraduate education so much deserves to be subsidized!).


On the side, there are the proverbial nagging questions: Who will read/appreciate my work? Will people even borrow my dissertation from the library? Will it have an impact in the field? Will it have influence on other people’s lives (such an ambitious question!)? Will my future studies using my semi-original framework attract research funding? In one of my early meetings with my supervisor, I was warned that undertaking doctoral research is a lonely journey. Most of the time, people you like to talk to don’t actually care about your research interests; they have their own research and other interests too. I guess even after the dissertation, the lonely journey continues.


The experience has so far taught me that higher learning is… (I want to use the term “formidable” again but I have used it twice at least so let me check the thesaurus…)…aha, redoubtable (that doesn’t seem to fit and merely personifies the noun but what the heck!). Come to think of it. The conceptual metaphors STUDYING IS EATING (re: intellectual or mental mastication) and LEARNING IS DIGESTION (re: intellectual digestion, academic constipation) have underlain my PhD experience so far. And for a guy (ching!) like me who is not really crazy about eating and not so very much adventurous with food, those conceptualizations can…yes, be formidable (I guess this is becoming part of my idiolect!). If we think about them further, we can derive such entailments or even larger conceptual metaphors as LEARNING IS (PHYSICAL) SURVIVAL or the erudite sounding LEARNING IS LIFE, which makes a lot of sense and which makes the line “Education is a right” more resonant.


And at my age, when all about me is tentative and when the prospect of navigating the great unknown is still exciting, I definitely still don’t want to die. So I don’t want to stop learning.

The ComArts Connection

I write this entry to put into record the little pieces of information I know about a fragment of UPLB history. UPLB marks its centennial in 2009. It’s also the year when the AB Communication Arts program – my “reason for being” during my more-than-a-decade stay in UPLB - reaches her mid-thirties. This blog talks about her.

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The Bachelor of Arts in Communication Arts (ABCA or ComArts) – UPLB’s first liberal arts program – turns 35 in UPLB’s centennial year.

Founded in 1974, the program arguably marked a milestone in the life of UPLB widely known for its trailblazing research and world-class academic pursuits in tropical agriculture, forestry, and allied disciplines.

The institution of UPLB’s first liberal arts program, however, was carried out not without the proverbial birth pangs. One professor from the Department of Humanities, in fact, alluding to a song from the Broadway musical Miss Saigon, described ABCA as having been “conceived in hell and born in strife.” Such was how tremendous the challenge to those who wanted to institute a liberal arts program in a campus envisioned by many of its constituents to be a regional (that is, Southeast Asian or even Asia-Pacific) leader in science and technology.

It helped a lot though that the program was the brainchild of UPLB’s foremost proponent of liberal education:  Dr. Edelwina C. Legaspi, now UP Professor Emeritus of the Humanities. Almost thirty five years after the institution of the AB Communication Arts program, Dr. Legaspi’s name remains indelibly attached to it.

After graduating magna cum laude from UP Diliman’s AB English program, Dr. Legaspi was recruited by UP College of Agriculture Dean Leopoldo Uichanco to teach at Los Baños in the early 1950’s. Not long after she joined UPCA to teach English language and literature to agriculture majors, she went on a Fulbright scholarship to pursue her master’s degree in English at the prestigious Radcliffe College (now the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University). After earning her master’s in 1954, she chose to return to Los Baños instead of joining Diliman’s faculty at the College of Liberal Arts where her credentials would have been most appreciated. Soon, she chaired the UPCA Department of English (later renamed Department of Humanities), got married, raised four sons, and in the early 1960’s, went together with her family to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York to pursue a PhD in Rhetoric and Public Address under a Ford Foundation Fellowship.

(In the 1960’s, Cornell University was considered the mecca of rhetorical scholarship in the United States. Dr. Legaspi is perhaps the only PhD holder in rhetoric and public address in the UP System and even in the country today. UP Diliman’s Department of Speech Communication and Theater Arts has acknowledged this by requesting, on several occasions, her service as graduate adviser or supervisor to students who chose to do their graduate research in rhetorical theory and criticism.)

Dr. Legaspi returned to UP at Los Baños after earning her doctorate from Cornell in 1966. She reassumed her position as chair of the Department of Humanities, and in March 1973 – more than three months after UPLB became UP’s first autonomous university – she was appointed by UP President Salvador P. Lopez as founding dean of the College of Sciences and Humanities (renamed College of Arts and Sciences a few years later). Her appointment meant a reaffirmation of the UP President’s commitment to liberal education. An eminent man of letters himself, President Lopez told Dr. Legaspi that his decision was based on the fact that among the potential contenders for deanship, she was the only candidate who, despite having resolutely served UPCA, was not “agriculturalized” and who had remained faithful to her training and education in the liberal arts (personal communication with Dean Legaspi).

As dean of the new college – what would later be one of UP System’s largest colleges in terms of enrollment, she worked for the institution of new curricular programs and offerings including a liberal arts curriculum – the AB Communication Arts curricular program, instituted in 1974.

The ABCA’s or ComArts’s institution marked UPLB’s transformation into a comprehensive autonomous (constituent) university that offers degree programs not only in the natural and social sciences and the professions but also in the cultural sciences or the arts and humanities. It may also be construed as a strategic move to put the expertise of the faculty of the Department of Humanities to better use.

Before the institution of the ABCA program, the department had been known only as a “service unit” offering general education (GE) subjects (in literature, humanities, and the like) and service courses (e.g., ENG 10, intensive English modules for foreign students). While the department had been competently serving this distinct function, the absence of a degree program it could call its own did not maximize the expertise that the humanities faculty had had. Faculty members of the department held degrees in a variety of areas in the arts and letters such as English language, literature, language teaching or pedagogy, art studies, foreign languages, and speech and drama. The constraint of teaching the same set of service courses year in year out could debilitate the faculty members’ potential to advance their knowledge and maintain their expertise in their fields. Proponents of the ComArts program knew this very well and admirably took advantage of the department’s composite of expertise.

It should be noted that the teaching of specialized courses in the humanities has not only benefited students of communication arts. Undoubtedly, it has had a significant impact on the teaching of general education courses in the arts and humanities, which every UPLB student needs to take. A department with an academic program that bears specialized courses does something that a mere service department would find difficult to sustain. It ensures that a regular UPLB student taking GE courses gets to be taught by discipline experts who continue to have the passion to learn and pursue advancement in their areas of specialization while at the same time capable of taking a broader or a generalist perspective. (NB: This I must warn the reader, though, is only the ideal scenario.)

The core of the ComArts program is language and literature from which disciplinal areas such as speech communication/speech arts, theater arts, and (creative) writing have developed and continue to be nourished. Consistent with the academic interest of most of its faculty, the program primarily focuses on the aesthetics of linguistic communication or the language arts which have both expressive and communicative functions (This should explain the term “communication arts” and should clear up notions that it is undefined and that it overlaps with what we generally know as communication programs that offer courses in broadcasting and journalism.). Since language is inextricably connected to other semiotic resources (such as audio-visual forms of expression and communication) and not to be taken separately from its historical, social, political, and cultural contexts, other areas and allied disciplines come into the picture.

Designed with a necessary measure of fluidity and flexibility, the ComArts program allows students to take courses in fields like business management, economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, history, human ecology, development communication, and (community) education – courses that will complement and enrich their understanding of communication arts in any of the program’s three areas of concentration: speech communication, writing, and theater arts.  At best, the program enables them to chart their unique directions in the areas that would best nurture their human potential.

In the publication titled “The Humanities at the University of the Philippines at Los Baños and Their Place under the Agricultural Sun” (College, Laguna, 1984), the UPLB Commission on the Humanities, formed by then UPLB Chancellor Emil Q. Javier and chaired by no less than Dean Edelwina Legaspi, offered the following as reasons for ABCA’s existence:

“The ComArts program ‘aims to develop the human being first; his choice of vocation will depend upon his adaptability to the opportunities open to him. He is not meant to be trained technically but to be developed as a versatile graduate.  He is encouraged and assisted in seeking ‘opportunities to think creatively, clearly, deeply and widely about a variety of human problems; … ways of expressing [himself] clearly, logically, and with grace language.’ He is expected to ‘develop a keen sense of values… [and to continue developing his] potential as [a] human being.’

“[The] AB ComArts curriculum is more general than specialized, more liberal than professional.  In keeping with its nature, it directs its efforts to the development of critical thinking and reflective intelligence, in the acquisition of the ‘why’ than in ‘how to’ skills."

The Commission also acknowledged that the Department of Humanities, which offers the program, subscribes to the sentiments of the Alumni Foundation of the University of Chicago when it said:

“The purpose of general liberal education is not a job, but any job; not a profession, but any profession; not a station in life, but any station in life. Like the marriage vow, ‘in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for better or for worse’ general liberal education recognizes that no one knows what life may bring.  Whatever may happen to you in later life, you will be better if you know how to think, to think clearly, and to think for yourself."

Almost twenty five years after the publication of the Commission’s report and almost a decade since the dawn of the 21st century, the core values and fundamental principles behind the AB Communication Arts program have remained steadfast. I believe it is time, and needless to say, worthwhile, to revisit them and reflect on their relevance in our changing times. Such exercise is necessary whether in reaffirming or transforming a program that undeniably made an indelible mark in UPLB history.

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I do not subscribe to the inclusion of a laundry list of names and personalities in historical or feature writing. But to give the reader an idea or peek into the interesting mixture of personalities that have “graced” and fashioned themselves from the AB Communication Arts program in its 35-year old story as well as the Department of Humanities in its 100-year old existence (Note: It started out as the “English department” in the UP College of Agriculture in 1909.), I am writing some of their names below.

I mention here a few ABCA alumni who have ventured into a variety of fields: Alexander Cortez (theater/ stage director), Juliet Labog-Javellana (print journalism/ Philippine Daily Inquirer news writer), Benito M. Vergara, Jr. (history/ author and professor of Asian Studies at the University of California Davis), April Robillos (communication studies/ study abroad advisor at Purdue University), Rene Somera (anthropology/ former Chairperson of the De La Salle University’s Department of Behavioral Sciences), Rodrigo "Jiggy" Manicad (broadcast journalism and television arts/ news and public affairs reporter), Mario Dumawal (entertainment news/ television reporter), Hosanna Espanto (technical communication/ associate editor of The Philippine Agricultural Scientist), Claudette May Datuin (art studies/ professor of art theory and criticism at UP Diliman’s Department of Art Studies), Maria Luisa Culiat-Sadorra (English language teaching/ former Chairperson of De La Salle University’s Department of English and Applied Linguistics), Sheryl Raros (literary arts/ poet), Layeta Bucoy (dramatic literature/ playwright), Father Ruel Lero, SVD (the religious clergy/ priest and spiritual counselor).  Other alumni have gone into such fields as law, business, public relations and advertising, college teaching, primary and secondary education, community organizing, and even the armed struggle of the Philippine Left!  Interestingly, two ABCA alumni have served as chairpersons of the UPLB Department of Humanities – Noel K. Torreta (2001-2007) and Jerry R. Yapo (2007 to date).

Here are some of the names that have graced the faculty of the Department of Humanities: Edelwina C. Legaspi (rhetorician and UP Professor Emeritus of the Humanities), Paul Blanco Zafaralla (art critic and recipient of the 2007 UP Alumni Association Professional Award for Art Criticism), Pacifico D. Espanto (Iluko poet and the first Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences), Paz Eulalia Saplala (former CAS Associate Dean and former UP Open University Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs), Teresita Guillen (writer-painter and former Dean of UP Mindanao’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences), Josefina A. Agravante (Professor of Speech Communication at UP Diliman's Deparment of Speech Communication and Theater Arts and former Dean of the UP College of Arts and Letters), Pedro "Edru" Abraham (ethnomusicologist/performance artist and Professor of Humanities at the UP College of Arts and Letters), Ces Quesada (stage, television and film actress), Cris Millado (playwright and stage director), Remedios Z. Miciano (former Vice Dean of De La Salle University’s College of Education), Ruperta R. Asuncion (Iluko poet and 2008 UP Alumni Association Distinguished Alumna for Culture and the Arts).

Tribute to Dean Corazon B. Lamug

I learned about the sudden death of Dr. Lamug yesterday morning from friends back home. I received two text messages and an email while in the middle of reading an article on Sarah Palin and the reality of the political mind. The news was, to say the least, shocking. For a moment I could not concentrate on my reading. For hours, I could not get myself into rewriting a fragment of my research proposal. How could anyone so energetic and brimming with life pass on so suddenly? I knew through my friend, Wengki, who was Dr. Lamug’s advisee and who lived with her for a semester, how health conscious and fit the former dean of the UPLB College of Arts and Sciences was.


Dr. Lamug, UPLB professor of sociology and president of the Philippine Sociological Society, died while swimming off the shores of Coron, Palawan. I am informed that she was on a weekend educational trip with a colleague and students of her graduate class. That she died so suddenly is distressing, but the fact that she died while in action was – as one of her former students would say – characteristic of her.


Dr. Lamug was such an important figure during my early years of teaching in the University of the Philippines at Los Banos. She was a social scientist par excellence, a formidable administrator, and a good person. In solidarity with her students and colleagues in UPLB, I wish to pay tribute to her in this blog.


Dr. Lamug was two-term dean of the UPLB College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) – arguably the ideopolis of UP Los Banos and whose founding in 1972 was instrumental to UPLB’s transformation from a highly specialized agriculture and forestry campus to a comprehensive autonomous/constituent university of the UP System. During these terms (2000-2003 and 2003-2006), I served as instructor then assistant professor in the Department of Humanities – one of the nine units of CAS. Having been under her leadership, I knew Dr. Lamug as a formidable administrator. Like any right-thinking leader, she demanded competence and professionalism from her faculty.


I remember sitting in an ad hoc committee where I together with our department head had to present a proposal for the refurbishing of the speech laboratory. There she pointed out the proposal’s limitations and weaknesses and reminded us to do better in our “homework” during our next meeting.


I also recall that during one of the college-level meetings on the revitalization of the General Education Program, she had some of the sharpest and most cutting comments on the humanities course proposals. I had to defend the proposal for SPCM 1 (Speech Communication) and though it had the mark of approval from discipline experts, it still was subjected to what I perceived then as a scathing scrutiny from the dean. Later, I realized that that very stressful meticulousness was a preparation for more caustic comments in the university level deliberations.


Of course, I could not forget how she, as a member of the UPLB technical panel for the humanities and social sciences, “lambasted” the research proposal I submitted for possible university funding. That was a year after she gave me a warm hug for getting a university teaching award (This reminds me that one is really only as good as his last performance). She minced no words, described my proposal as “sketchy” (a word that would haunt me in the weeks that followed), and reminded me of the exacting research standards that UPLB is known for. The revised proposal was later approved by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research but when the university administration changed guards it was cut from the list of proposals for funding.


The proposed research might never have seen the light of day in UPLB but it was to transform into something else. Parts of the “botched” revised research proposal were crucial to my application for study overseas. I reworked my proposal and submitted it as part of my application for admission to a PhD program at NUS. And while I was waiting for the results of my application, Dean Lamug so kindly recommended that I apply for the Ford Foundation Scholarship Grant. The grant allowed successful applicants to study in universities of their choice and I was one of two people from the Department whom Dean Lamug identified as potential applicants.  But before I completed my application for a Ford scholarship grant, I received an email from NUS informing me of my admission to the university under a research scholarship.


I decided to accept the NUS offer and informed Dr. Lamug of my decision. She was very encouraging and did not question my decision to resign from the university. Her advice was most heartening and forward-looking: “Immerse yourself in NUS's research and publication culture.” She knew then that should I decide to return to the university or to pursue a career in the academia, a considerable research and publication experience would be most indispensable.


I knew her mostly from our moments of professional interaction. They were significant moments as their consequences were crucial to my development as a young academic. When I think about this, I recognize that beneath what I perceived as Dean Lamug’s tough and stern façade was actually a caring and nurturing person.