Cameron, thank you and go to bed. You do know I say that as a friend, a
colleague and a time-zone sharer. I write this from bed so you don't get
to respond.
Holly (I read your and Cameron's posts seconds apart, so responding
primarily to you via responding to Cameron), fashion design does not
rate as 'design' in so many (traditionally masculine) fora it's not
funny; in case anyone wonders, this is a response to Holly's response to
Lubomir. Design Studies, the journal: go and count the number of their
keywords listed, and tell me how many there are. Ok, not really, I
already did the count; several times over the past seven years, in fact.
You're required to use four out of the journal's prescribed list, as
part of your five:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.authors/30409/authorinstructions#42001
Fashion design is not there; I will not submit there until it is, if
ever. Never mind; there are current, relevant journals out there for us.
Not that DS isn't; it's just somewhat matey.
Not that this is what you asked about Holly, but it does point towards
the broader context you and I have talked about before, and the overall
field of your (soon-to-be-research) question. Which is why I am emailing
the list and not Holly directly.
t
On 10/11/11 12:45 AM, cameron tonkinwise wrote:
> Beware straw men.
>
>> * If you effectively remove all faculty who are not formally trained through
>> a PhD requirement, how will you engage with their kind in the outside world?
> Lots of people with PhDs are quite engaging. Lots of people who are faculty
> engage with people who are not faculty, as part of their teaching, researching
> and living.
>
>> * How can you have anything to say about design if you live in your own
>> hermetic bubble world of journals and PhD lists?
> Lots of people with PhDs read journals and PhD lists, and also magazines
> and newspapers, and go to exhibitions (both artistic and trade). Many even
> have friends; some, surprisingly, have clients. Nearly all unfortunately watch
> television, which these days seems filled with reality TV shows about design
> (Project Runway Season 9 climaxing soon - 'Back to Parsons, designers!').
> It is actually very difficult to live in a bubble these days.
>
>> * How can you be truly alive if you are in a self-selecting echo chamber of
>> your own research culture and thereby are never challenged to work with
>> those who see things differently?
> Lots of people with PhDs are alive (despite the post-terminal nature of their
> degree in the US). People with PhDs who self-select to avoid being challenged
> are bad academics, bad designers and bad people, but this has nothing to do
> with them having a PhD. Lots of people without PhDs self-select to avoid being
> challenged. In the US, they are called The Tea Party.
>
>> * How can you be effective if, in privileging the PhD voice over any other,
>> you thereby fail to practice the kind of participatory design culture that
>> you might well preach in lectures when designing your programs?
> By doing PhDs with/in participatory design? Or participating richly in design
> cultures after you've finished a PhD? Who is trying to stop who from participat-
> ing with this sort of question?
>
> I am not defending a university system that uses the PhD as a metric for its
> managerialism.
>
> I am defending the value of an increasingly rare thing: a type of degree that
> secures you 3-5yrs to study something significant very thoroughly, so
> thoroughly that you, with the support of peers and experts past and present,
> will discern something new and worth telling others, in your discipline(s) and/
> or your practice(s).
>
> My question is: what practitioner would not want that privilege, that opportunity
> to evaluate and extend their practice?
>
> When Leon von Schaik (with others) initiated RMIT's practice-based PhD pro-
> gram, he did so by inviting leading practitioners he knew into the program.
> Those practitioners agreed because it gave them, at last, the chance to:
>> receive peer critical feedback on their practices beyond short magazine
> reviews of their designs
>> access a space and time and process in which to critically interrogate their
> own practice beyond post-client debriefings and come to appreciate its value
> and its limitations
>> undertake speculative work that could develop their practice in new directions
>> articulate to their professional community what their practice had allowed them
> to come to know, knowledge that was otherwise buried within firms, and some-
> times within individuals in those firms.
> Very few, if any, were interested in undertaking a PhD to become qualified
> for academic positions.
>
> Whatever you think of the Invitational Stream at RMIT's 6 monthly Graduate
> Research Conference, it attests to the possibility that PhDs can be very
> beneficial to mid- and late-career practitioners. This is exactly what the US
> is missing out on by having insufficient PhD programs, especially practice-
> based, in design.
>
> So let's not let this debate descend into caricatures of people with PhDs
> as socially autistic. Just look at this email for example.
>
> Cameron
--
Timo Rissanen
Assistant Professor of Fashion Design and Sustainability
Parsons The New School for Design
560 Seventh Avenue
New York NY 10018
(Office: 1107 at 232 W40th St)
t. 212-229-8966 x2657
c. 917-860-1751
e. [log in to unmask]
w. http://fashion.parsons.edu/
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