Assurance of learning : the role of work integrated learning and industry partners

In the partnering with students and industry it is important for universities to recognize and value the nature of knowledge and learning that emanates from work integrated learning experiences is different to formal university based learning. Learning is not a by-product of work rather learning is fundamental to engaging in work practice. Work integrated learning experiences provide unique opportunities for students to integrate theory and practice through the solving of real world problems. This paper reports findings to date of a project that sought to identify key issues and practices faced by academics, industry partners and students engaged in the provision and experience of work integrated learning within an undergraduate creative industries program at a major metropolitan university. In this paper, those findings are focused on some of the particular qualities and issues related to the assessment of learning at and through the work integrated experience. The findings suggest that the assessment strategies needed to better value the knowledges and practices of the Creative Industries. The paper also makes recommendations about how industry partners might best contribute to the assessment of students’ developing capabilities and to continuous reflection on courses and the assurance of learning agenda

“Calypso”—Harry Belafonte (1956)

Harry Belafonte, the Harlem-born son of poor undocumented Jamaican immigrants, an untrained singer whose heart was set on becoming an actor, made music history with “Harry Belafonte: Calypso.” This record was the very first by a solo performer to sell a million copies, holding the top spot on “Billboard’s” pop album charts for an unprecedented 31 weeks (in addition, 58 weeks in the top ten, 99 weeks among the top 100). The higher-ups at RCA had doubted the commercial potential of a thematically unified recording of “island and Calypso songs,” but the “Calypso” record, released at the end of May 1956, quickly soared in sales, knocking Elvis Presley’s first album out of the way to take over the top spot within a few weeks. The “Calypso” album also reached the top of music charts in most of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, and was “covered” via native language recordings in many countries

Ruby Dee, 1922-2014

Ruby Dee was a marvelously expressive actor, and a lifelong risk-taking radical committed to challenging racial and economic inequality. She made history as part of an extraordinary group of Black Arts radicals — including Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, Harry Belafonte, John O. Killens and Julian Mayfield, as well as her husband Ossie Davis — who actively protested white supremacy and thought deeply about the political implications of conventional racial representations, creating new stories and introducing new Black characters to convey deep truths about Black life. In small parts and choice roles, Dee’s presence lit up stage and screen. In her work as an actor and at rallies and on picket lines, Dee stood with working men and women, Black and white, and dedicated her talents to righting the wrongs articulated by the Black and labor left

Civil Rights, Labor, and Sexual Politics on Screen in Nothing But a Man (1964)

The independently made 1964 film Nothing But a Man is one of a handful of films whose production coincided with new civil rights insurgency and benefited from activists\u27 input. Commonly listed in 1970s surveys of black film, the film lacks sustained critical attention in film studies or in-depth historical analysis given its significance as a landmark text of the 1960s. Documentary-like, but not a documentary, it offers a complex representation of black life, but it was scripted, directed, and filmed by two white men, Michael Roemer and Robert Young. This essay argues that the film\u27s unusual attention to labor and gender politics as key elements both of racial subordination and liberation resulted from an unusual and productive, though not egalitarian, collaboration across racial lines. The white and Jewish filmmakers recognized the black freedom struggle in the U.S. South as part of World War II–era mobilizations against fascism and postwar challenges to colonialism around the world. The filmmakers viewed black struggles for justice, dignity, and self-respect as integral to achieving a just society for everyone, which shaped how they conceived the social and familial effects of racialization and the cultural dynamics of white supremacy. Centering their film story on the struggles of a black couple drew on progressive strategies from the 1940s and 1950s to represent ordinary people as exemplary citizens. Roemer and Young also had unusual access to the political debates of black activists because of Young\u27s recent work filming television documentaries in Nashville and in Angola. Thus, Nothing But a Man offers a rare glimpse into shifting relations between race and labor and between political economy and gender as the civil rights movement took shape

The Making of A Raisin in the Sun

Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun premiered on the Broadway stage in January 1959 just as the edifice of national segregation was cracking open. Response to the momentous 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Bd. of Education included both the important early challenges to long-accepted practices of white supremacy and the intensified mobilization of widespread white defiance to the ruling. Black Bus boycotters in Montgomery, Alabama, and their young minister leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Black high school students attempting to attend Little Rock’s Central High and their families faced organized harassment and dangerous forms of assault. The play’s immediate success then and since has made it one of the most well-known and frequently produced dramas of the twentieth century

Civil Rights, Labor, and Sexual Politics on Screen in Nothing But a Man (1964)

The independently made 1964 film Nothing But a Man is one of a handful of films whose production coincided with the civil rights insurgency and benefited from input from activists. Commonly listed in 1970s surveys of black film, the film lacks sustained critical attention in film studies or in-depth historical analysis given its significance as a landmark text of the 1960s. Documentary-like, but not a documentary, it offers a complex representation of black life, but it was scripted, directed, and filmed by two white men, Michael Roemer and Robert Young. This essay argues that the film’s unusual attention to labor and gender politics as key elements both of racial subordination and liberation resulted from an unusual and productive, though not egalitarian, collaboration across racial lines. The white and Jewish filmmakers recognized that the black freedom struggle in the U.S. South, one of “the most dramatic changes happening in America,” intersected with World War II–era mobilizations against fascism and postwar challenges to colonialism around the world. The filmmakers viewed black struggles for justice, dignity, and self-respect as integral to achieving a just society for everyone, which shaped how they conceived the social and familial effects of racialization and the cultural dynamics of white supremacy. Centering their film story on the struggles of a black couple drew on progressive strategies from the 1940s and 1950s to represent broadened democratic citizenship rights. Roemer and Young also had unusual access to the political debates of black activists because of Young’s recent work filming television documentaries in Nashville and in Angola. Thus, Nothing But a Man offers a rare glimpse into shifting relations between race and labor and between political economy and gender at their formative stages

Hollywood Imagines Revolutionary Haiti: the Forgotten Film Lydia Bailey (1952)

This essay explores the history of Lydia Bailey, the only US studio-made film to depict the Haitian Revolutionary period. It asks why, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, such an unlikely project might have seemed commercially promising enough to justify a significant production budget. The essay draws on private studio memos as well as public press discussions to shed light on the high stakes in debates over racial representation and colonialism/decolonization in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and to illuminate everyday assumptions of white supremacy as these shaped the making of the film and its promotion. Production files and a range of industry, daily and weekly mainstream white press and Black newspapers document the racial divide shaping the film’s production and reception. The story of the making and forgetting of Lydia Bailey reveals the process by which transnational Black history and Black struggle became more public and legible in the wake of WWII anti-fascism and internationalism, and then was driven back off stage by the political mobilization of Cold War anti-Communism

Finding a New Home in Harlem: Alice Childress and the Committee for the Negro in the Arts

Alice Childress’s performing career in the 1940s was primarily associated with the American Negro Theater, a collectively run professional theater company with a mission to nurture black talent and create compelling theater for Harlem audiences; as Childress would later comment, “We thought we were Harlem’s theater.” ANT made use of all available resources to accomplish this mission; producing plays written by black and white playwrights, hiring white teachers, and accepting white actors and technicians committed to its goals

Literary Radicals in Radio’s Public Sphere

Radio was THE emerging medium in the middle decades of the twentieth century, and radio historians have helped us understand some of the myriad ways it influenced the public sphere and created new forms of cultural consciousness and multivocal formulations of national community. Michele Hilmes has argued that radio was “significantly different from any preceding or subsequent medium in its ability to transcend spatial boundaries, blur the private and public spheres, and escape visual determinations while still retaining the strong element of ‘realism’ that sound—rather than written words--supplies.” Jason Loviglio has analyzed the techniques and implications of radio’s creation of an “intimate public.” Radio’s social impact came both from its rapid diffusion into the nation’s households and neighborhood gathering places, and from the simultaneity of experience produced by listening to particular programs broadcast at set times. In contrast with most other countries where broadcasting’s national function justified centralized state control, U.S. radio developed through private ownership, with the result that consumer choice among commercial options dominated the definition of “public interest.” Despite regulatory norms, radio’s promise of immediacy and projection of intimacy made it difficult in practice to fully police the boundaries between commercial, entertainment, and political content. This essay will explore the pathways by which some 1930s and 1940s left-wing writers gravitated to radio, and helped to expand the form, content, and the political possibilities of radio’s public sphere, beyond the constraints of its conventional commercial formulas and supposed prohibition on political messages. Especially after 1935, flourishing theatrical innovation and burgeoning social protest movements encouraged literary radicals to expand their imagination of the political and to experiment with new forms of representation

Makers: Women Who Make America [film review]

The three-hour documentary MAKERS: WOMEN WHO MADE AMERICA, promises to tell “how women have helped shape America over the last fifty years…in pursuit of their rights to a full and fair share of political power, economic opportunity, and personal autonomy.” However, rather than provide a historical analysis of the reemergence of feminism as produced by social movements and social change, MAKERS, according to the film’s press release, focuses on “unforgettable moments in history” told through stories of “exceptional women whose pioneering contributions continue to shape the world in which we live… stories of women who led the fight, those who opposed it, and those-- both famous and unfamous -- who were caught in its wake.” There may be much to praise in MAKERS as television, but it offers very little as a historical teaching resource at the college or high school level