Key Points on Leading Discussions

1. “To do all the talking and not be willing to listen is a form of greed,”-- Democritus of Abderu, Greece, circa 5th-4th century BC. A good discussion fosters good listening habits in everyone, including the professor.

2. Identify why students may listen poorly.

3. Identify how can you create an active and engaged listener:

- Learn to present well, considering overall content and delivery.

- Leave time for key ideas to sink in, by rephrasing or revisiting them.

- Provide aids.

- Assign “minute papers.”

- Pace your lecture / speech with discussions.

Be aware of all the obstacles and challenges to this:

(a) Discussions and peer pressure can be threatening, and talking may be “uncool.”

(b) Discussion is more time consuming.

(c) It takes more forethought.

(d) You have less control on the substance and quality. You have to be flexible; you may have to alter your lecture based on the discussion.

Consider how you can best act as facilitator:

(a) Be prepared for discussion: think of your directed opening question and always use a shared knowledge base (from a shared reading, screening, experience).

(b) Have students submit this before class (emailed screening notes in my “PoCo” class).

(b) Listen and don’t fixate on your point.

(c) Observe who is responding and who isn’t; observe body language.

(d) Post and verify: put on a board what people are saying; rephrase their point to make sure you and everyone else is getting it; ask them to clarify if obscure or unclear.

(e) Do not trust silence as consensus but test it. State the problem from the opposing point and see if anyone agrees.

(f) Be comfortable with silences, but be willing to rephrase your question or ask it from different perspectives.

(f) Test your student’s listening accuracy.

(g) Ask students to support their opinions (discussions can end with a “yes” and “no”).

(h) Deal with conflicts and do not ignore them.

(i) Challenge your students but do not threaten them. (e.g, instead of telling someone they are totally wrong, ask them to test how their argument or view reconciles with something else they may have said previously, or that someone else may have said, or they may have read. Assist them in critiquing their own position).

(j) Do not single out one student; throw controversial issues back to the students rather than aligning yourself from the beginning as opposed to or in favor of one student’s point of view. If someone takes up all the class time, find a way of drawing that to their attention inoffensively; if they are offensive, deal with it at that moment by restating their point and allowing the class to address it, plus speaking to them after class. Do not generalize from one student’s opinion to everyone’s opinions.

(k) Always summarize and synopsize the discussion, and refer to student comments as and when they become relevant over the course of the class.

Acknowledgements: This handout combines my personal experience with points from Northwestern University’s Faculty Development Program as well as Idea Papers from the Center for Faculty Evaluation and Development, Kansas State University.

COURSE DESIGN AND SYLLABUS. I

Beliefs (about Pedagogy)

(Sets your) Goals and Objectives
(Defines your) Parameters
(Allows you to construct) A Syllabus.

Questions to ask yourself when you design a course:

- Course Goals (what do you want your students to learn)?
* Content
* Skills
* Attitudes

- What do I expect from a student entering this class?
* Prerequisite skills
* Level of expertise, comprehension and knowledge

- What kind of performance will I require?
* Knowledge
* Comprehension
* Application
* Analysis
* Synthesis
* Evaluation

- What class activities will promote these goals/modes of performance?
* Lectures
* Debate/Discussion (small group / large group)
* Case studies
* Library Research
* Field Work
* Essay / Media-production
* Role-play

- (Related) What assignments will I use to evaluate the students?
* Exams
* Papers
* Group Projects
* Oral Presentations

- (Related) How much uniformity should the assignments have?
* Standardized test (no student choice)
* Menu (students have internal choice)
* Individualized

- What support have I given to the students to reach these goals?
* Weekly schedule
* Bibliographies
* Demonstrations
* Hand-outs
* Individual conferences

- What kind of feedback do I want to give the students?
* Ongoing
* Summative
* Individual
* Small Group

- What kind of class atmosphere will foster these goals?
* Competitive
* Cooperative

- How much of the class time should I take as a teacher?
* Anywhere from 99% to 10% (occasional discussion; seminar style teacher-led discussion; student-led discussion; student-designed directed projects).

- What policy of class attendance will foster the success of the class?
* Mandatory and graded
* Mandatory and not graded
* Expected
* Voluntary

- What should the pace of the course be?
* Readings per week, decided roughly be number of pages
* Fixed by syllabus?
* Flexible

- How will I grade the students?
* Achievement of class goals and assignments (comparison with course standards)
* Achievement of norm (comparison with others in class)
* Progress from the term’s beginning (comparison with self)

Q. How will I actualize and convey all this with a syllabus? Look at the syllabus you have with you and call out the key components that you think make it a good syllabus.

Q. Swap your syllabus with your neighbors, and evaluate their syllabus for what it has and what it might be missing.

Preparing for the Academic Job Search: Writing the Perfect Cover Letter

Annual SCMS Conference, March 2006
Vancouver

Preparing for the Academic Job Search: Writing the Perfect Cover Letter

Workshop Panelists:

Dr. Marsha Kinder, Associate Vice Provost for Research in the Humanities and University Professor of Critical Studies in the School of Cinema/TV at the University of Southern California

Dr. Oliver Gaycken, Assistant Professor in the Dept. of English at Temple University

Dr. Amelie Hastie – Associate Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz

Dr. Kaveh Askari, currently finishing a post-doc in the Film Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Charles Keil, Associate Professor in the Center for the Study of Drama and the Dept. of History at the University of Toronto

Dr. Jennifer Peterson, Assistant Professor in the Art Dept. at the University of Colorado, Boulder


** these are notes taken during the workshop, this is not a verbatim transcription, it is meant to give you a sense of what was discussed**

Marsha Kinder:

The letter does count, it demonstrates that you can write well, it is read but you need to remember to be concise

3 main suggestions for your letter

1) Do your homework, know about the department you are applying to and what classes are regularly taught, stress your versatility, what you have taught and what you are capable of teaching, courses you think would enrich their dept.

2) It should contain what fields your dissertation masters, how your research furthers the field, be honest about when you will defend (make sure your Chair knows this date), describe your next projects

3) Be confident, speak in your own voice, be concise 2-3 pages max, use letterhead from the department where your did your dissertation, don’t be defensive, bitter or insecure and don’t forget to include your CV

Kaveh Askari:

I spent most of my time revising the description of my dissertation – to make it
compelling to search committees

I looked up the basic service courses in each dept. and matched my own experience and
offered courses that I alone could do

I made sure to keep the length at about a page and a half

I had others from outside my field read the letter before sending it out

The most difficult aspect to the job application was managing time to make sure
everything got done.

Amelie Hastie:

Your letter should provide a sense of yourself without being too intimate or self
aggrandizing, it should display confidence without arrogance.

Avoid adjectives for yourself and your work, i.e. interesting, revolutionary, etc. instead
show examples

Provide a coherent description of your work and its place in the field

Don’t reiterate your CV, make larger claims and comments -discuss what the relationship
is between the classes you have taught and your research projects

Jennifer Peterson:

You should prepare various versions of your dissertation – 7 page version, 2 page version
and 1 paragraph for your cover letter, have everyone look at it

That one piece of your letter can stay the same but the other portions will change

Look at other people’s letters, to get a sense of what is acceptable, what works and what
doesn’t

I constructed my letter in 4 simple parts

1) Introduction – who I am, what I am doing know

2) Work – dissertation summary

3) Teaching – individually researched and tailored for each job

4) Logistics – contact info

I strove for brevity

If you have done something non-traditional, don’t be afraid to mention it

Charlie Keil:

What ever you do - BE HONEST!

Feel free to be creative, but make sure you are honest, if you haven’t done something, say
“I welcome the opportunity to ……”

Be aware if the position you are applying to is a shared appointment or if film is just one
small section of a larger dept., it will affect how you position yourself

Be aware of how you pitch your work, relate how it is important and what it does rather than
relying on institutional crutches, i.e. who you worked with or where you did your work

Nobody wants a form letter

Make things seem like opportunities – you want to look like a good colleague

Don’t be afraid to be a little idiosyncratic (depending on the job)

Oliver Gaycken:

I made sure to include a few sentences about collegial activities and some of the program
building that was interested in

Budgeting your time wisely is KEY – don’t underestimate how much time it will take or
how emotionally strenuous it can be

General Comments from the Group:

• Emphasized Oliver’s point about interests in collegial activities

• There is a lot of luck involved in the job process

• Include courses you are prepared to teach and contextualize your work

• Be able to rationalize what you are doing, your methodology

• Be prepared to talk about future projects

• Organize or take part in mock job talks about 30 minutes, with both grads and faculty

• Remember your opinion matters; don’t be afraid to become a peer.

• It is good not to narrate yourself as a grad student, but as a colleague

• Your on-campus visit will be stressful and exhausting, get sleep because you will need to maintain the same attitude on each day of the interview

• Don’t be afraid to take 10 minutes for yourself in a quiet place, it will help you gather your thoughts and re-vamp your energy

• It is important to have a sense of humor and perspective – Don’t give up.

• Don’t count on the committee knowing what it is supposed to be doing, be proactive and don’t be afraid to take control of things in a positive way

• When answering questions try not to be too concise or too wordy

• Have questions – be prepared, know the dept and feel comfortable asking questions about the dept, the school, the area, etc…

Stages in the Job Search

1. Identify suitable positions and make a list. Sort through their deadlines, requirements, research their departments, mentally prioritize based on your preferences, and speak to your faculty.

2. Preparing your dossier:
(a) Job Letter
It’s the face of your dossier; very important. Work on it carefully. Key virtues: clarity; while using a standard format it should stand out with your distinctive voice; interesting project (customize to each job offer) described in compelling and exciting ways; voice of a potential colleague not a student; convey how you fit into a program and departmental / job’s vision and how you can extend it, without sounding arrogant. Do not use overly complicated dissertation-language. Don’t write anything you can’t answer at greater length if probed.

(b) CV
Offer all your contact information; name and number on each page; do not staple; use appropriate format for citations and try to customize sequencing for the position (typically: education / pubs / grants / invited talks / conferences / teaching experience / other professional experience); identify dissertation advisor, and if relevant, the committee; you may include a few sentences on your dissertation; identify and categorize publications by status; note dates for all publications and conferences; include teaching and research interests (makes a good topic for questioning if you get an on-campus, as you are unlikely to have taught the classes you hope to design); contact information for all referees.

(c) Dissertation Abstract
It’s never a bad idea to include a one-page abstract of your dissertation, as long as it is well written. Your letter will probably not give you the opportunity to describe several aspects of your dissertation. So synopsize the key argument; situate it in a field of literature; discuss how it extends that field; identify your primary objects of analysis and methodology; what you achieve with this dissertation.

(d) Writing Sample
Find your best sample, but not something you will be presenting if you have to give a job talk. It doesn’t have to be published yet, but it helps if it is something being considered for publication (you will be competing with others who will send published articles). I include a brief covering paragraph situating the writing sample in my work, though I have not seen this done by others.
Ideally the sample should allow the reader to see how something mentioned in your letter is exemplified by your writing, and how this extends their scope for a new hire. The hiring committee will read your writing sample, even if the entire department doesn’t. In one job interview, I got very fine-tooth-comb questions on one of my writing samples.

(e) Recommendation letters
This should never be a last minute thing: approach those who have known (at least since you started writing your dissertation) that they will be recommending you for a position. You can also ask for recommendations from professors in other universities, if you have organized panels with them / published an article with them, etc.
Give them the list of jobs, all the relevant material (addressed and stamped envelopes; draft cover letter and cv; dissertation abstract; flag anything important) and inform them of deadlines.
If you are applying for a teaching oriented position, consider who might evaluate your teaching well. As a PhD student, you should invite your mentor to your classroom so that they can also address your teaching abilities and give you feedback.

(f) Optional though important for teaching oriented schools:
A TEACHING PORTFOLIO
- Statement of Teaching Philosophy (Be specific--link to which classes you taught; notion of your successes and failure / weakness, and how you have addressed them; your experience; what you believe and value; a manifesto).
- Student Evaluations.
- [Sample syllabi: I would not submit this with the job dossier, but if you get an on-campus, it’s always impressive when a candidate produces a syllabus or two that can fit into some rubric of the job description and department course listings.].

3. Preparing for phone interviews
I ask myself a series of questions, based on my letter and cv, and their job description, and write down the answers in brief point form. I may or may not consult them during our phone conversation, but it allows me to organize my thoughts.
Kinds of questions: Can you describe your dissertation (research area) briefly ; key theoretical engagements; films or media texts examined; literature in the field; how much is published / how close is it to becoming a book; what research projects are you working on; can you teach x, y, z, class; how will you fit our curriculum and its needs (they may state these needs to you); what is your ideal course to teach; what grad seminars can you teach; have you taught large classes (what do you think about them); what strategies would you use for these contexts?; what have you tried in a class that has failed / succeeded.
It is important to be natural, responsive to questions, and not stick to anything pre-scripted. Don’t ramble but don’t be too cryptic.
At this stage, you need not have too many counter-questions prepared, other than a few clarificatory ones either related to the specifics of their search, or its process and timeline: E.g. for our global media search, we asked candidates how they fit that description, and later a number of them asked us how we were defining the term, conceptually / to meet departmental needs.
Obviously, it is important to research the department, but don’t pretend to know more than you do (“I would really like to meet so and so in the program, his work interests me”—but what you don’t know is he’s emeritus, barely shows up to campus, and no one likes him).


4. Preparing for on-campus visits:
- You will get an itinerary ahead of your visit, and if not, you should ask for one. If there is anything missing in the itinerary that you would like (meeting with grads; with undergrads), you can also ask, provided it is not too much trouble to the department. Have some logic to your request though; don’t just ask to impress.

- Decisions: What will you present as your talk? Will it show your field of specialization or your breadth? How will it differ from a conference paper?
40 minutes to 1 hour in duration; should show your larger interests—introduction to yourself and your work, focus in, pull out. Set up a mock presentation(s) and interview (“Grad Forum”). What questions might you get (this is impossible to guess, but you should still prepare for it).

- How will you prepare for the full faculty interview? Questions will start with your research, then teaching and service. Don’t be too socked into your dissertation (all answers should not begin and end there, even though you’re working on it). Don’t refer to a literature base when you’re blanking on any single references (e.g. the recent writings on racial “passing”). Do have a list of courses you can teach, with texts, your analysis of the texts, the broad course structure, and specific exemplifying film/ media texts. (I got the following question, based on my suggestion that I could create a course called “Commonwealth cinema”: If you could pick just one Australian, British and Canadian film for this course, which would it be? Why?).
REALIZE THAT YOU CAN CONTROL THE DIRECTION OF THE INTERVIEW.

- Which individuals and constituencies will you be speaking with: Faculty in the program; graduate students; undergraduates; Associate Dean; Dean; if interdisciplinary, faculty from any other program. How will your interactions with each differ, and what kinds of questions will you ask each group? For example: what are their tenure expectations; service expectations; courses that they need filled; new initiatives on campus regarding x, y, z, etc.
Again, don’t be too scripted, but you should think of their questions and yours ahead of time. Important: graduates are an important resource on the department. Frequently, (unlike the faculty that will be more inclined to giving you the positive side of things) graduates will also air their grievances against the program or individual faculty. Listen to them but don’t gossip, and try to get a sense of the departmental climate. Ask them about the seminars; what they are looking for in terms of new guidance area; their involvement and representation in departmental life; the city and its resources.

- You will have several lunches and dinners. You have to be knowledgeable about other people’s work and ask them questions about the program (the interview goes on in social occasions) and you can’t only be in shop-talk mode. Fortunately for us, casual talk is also about movies, tv shows and books.

- Use this opportunity to learn about the city where the University is: cultural life; neighborhoods; kinds of students and their demographic; University’s history; house prices.

- General stuff: Pack carefully and spend some time figuring out what you will wear and when. Sleep well and eat well. Enjoy the fact that an entire department is investing time in getting to know you because of your research interests.

REALIZE THAT THEY ARE ALSO ANXIOUS BECAUSE THEY DON’T WANT TO HIRE SOMEONE WHO WILL NOT FIT IN; AND THEY ARE ALSO TRYING TO IMPRESS YOU.

5. Negotiating a job offer. What cards do you hold? Do you have another job offer? In some places, you get something in writing and then you begin negotiations; in others, it is email or verbal until you agree, and then you get the offer in writing. Either way, they have to name a figure and make an offer. You can negotiate base salary; funds toward housing; funds with move; research funds and conference travel; research assistant; sabbatical or time off; time to tenure and expectations.
How long do you have to accept / reject the job? Do you need to make a second trip before making the final commitment? Who will pay for this?

The Office of Student-Industry Relations

For those interested in exploring careers in the film industry, The Office of Student-Industry Relations offers frequent career meetings (both group and individual) and workshops.

Teaching Statement

Below you will find a copy of the teaching statement sample distributed in class.

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

Priya Jaikumar

5331 N. Winthrop #3, Chicago IL 60640

priya-j@nwu.edu

I was drawn to teaching communication and media studies courses after working as a print and television journalist in India because I found a dearth of critical spaces within which it was possible to examine, contest, and understand the contemporary mass-mediated socio-political environment. Sic years ago, I was given my first opportunity to teach in the United States, a country that was then unfamiliar to me except as a hyper-construction of its own media and texts. Experiences during this first encounter with teaching formed the kernel of my teaching philosophy. I found that I had an easily available comparative international framework of analysis with which I could inform class discussions. Moreover, I was keenly interested in my student's views, because they gave me access to the lived experience of a media context that I had studied, and that I had entered only recently. In conscious continuity, I would say that today my teaching philosophy rests on a belief in critical pedagogy and student involvement.
In any course, there is a core of information that I expect all students to acquire by the end of the term. I take for granted the value of clarity, both in my expectations from my students and in the structure of the course. But a class must go beyond this. I do not believe that teaching should contribute merely to the accretion of information. My best teachers have been those who provided me with a durable vocabulary for analysis, informed by a sense of history and a conception of what was at stake. Whether I have been employed to teach a course on Public Speaking, Popular Culture or Film History, I have tried to cultivate the same attitude towards pedagogy, which depends on a comprehension of what the students find relevant while extending their concerns with new material and questions. For this, teaching requires a degree of preparedness combined with spontaneity. Strong syllabi, readings and screenings remain ineffective unless they are brought alive in class. Knowing how to present material, phrase questions, provide an assortment of information, draw links between the familiar and the unfamiliar are some ways in which learning can be made more dynamic. Additionally, nothing communicates itself more contagiously than a genuine interest in the course material. Students are inspired to do better if the teacher is herself enthused about the texts.
I do not believe there is an ideal proportion for combining lectures with discussions, but vary them depending on the nature of the class. There are several things I have learnt over the course of my experience as a teacher. I believe it always helps to know your clas both as individual students and as a collective. I found out through the mismanagement of a difficult situation early in my career that controversial subjects are best approached by first questioning the collective for its dissenting views rather than by opposing individual students' opinions. Also, given that a class combines students at varying levels of understanding and interest in relation to the subject, I find that despite disparities something valuable may be got from student responses at all times when the students are encouraged to refer their comments to specific arguments in the texts, to link them to previous class discussions, or to related matters of contemporary relevance. A course is a comprehensive exposure to certain ideas and discussions, and I like to set up dominant themes at the back of the class that we may collectively return to and evaluate from time to time, based on our learning through the term. Because I consider a course to be a comprehensive unit, I always prefer to include such factors as student improvement and effort to the usually normative standards of evaluation.
Being a teacher has altered me as an individual. I find that I have trained myself to listen to people better. I am more attuned to the role of power within a small group, whether this is distributed along the lines of gender, race, class or seniority of rank. Ideally, my role as a teacher would be an extension of that which I hope to embody as a person: clarity of thinking without a dullness of routine and the predictable, and an ability to inform and critique while avoiding dogmatic thought or humorlessness.

Sample Abstract

Below you will find a copy of the sample abstract Priya distributed in class.

Visualizing Architectures of Insurgency

A few aspects of the anti-colonial Indian uprising of 1857 are immediately evident when we turn to records of the event. It attracted international attention for its magnitude of violence against the occupiers, interpreted through various political lenses including the vision of Karl Marx, who treated it as an exposure of the "barbarism of bourgeois (European) civilization" in his articles for the New-York Daily Tribune. The event produced a definitive rupture in the form of global empire, as the British government assumed authority over the corporate East India Company, beginning an era of colonial administrative rationalities worldwide. Equally significant, the uprising marked photography's widespread use in managing the resistant colonial body, inaugurating photography as a political tool.
While attention has been paid to Britain's photographic staging of dead colonial bodies to commemorate the terrible vengeance wreaked upon those who would be insurgents, shots of ruined cities central to the insurgency are treated as incidental backdrop. Arguing that ruins bearing the shock of recent violence constitute a rupture in the picturesque aesthetic of British "follies" (monuments deliberately constructed to appear whittled by time, to cultivate a contemplative spectator), I study the production of space and spectatorship in a photographic album of Lucknow's architecture in 1859, published shortly after the city was demolished for playing a key part in the insurgency. During the early to mid nineteenth century, when diverse objects were referred to as "albums" (including scrap books of Victorian gentlewomen and Englishmen's private collections of public images), the Lucknow album is distinct in offering a pre-cinematic narrative, structured like an early travelogue in auto-ethnographic mode, addressing a modern viewer by using a kinetic sense of movement across pitted buildings with deep historical residues. A dual hermeneutic operates as the "anti-aesthetic" of destruction annihilates the classic contemplative viewer, and the image of a ruin--Lucknow in this instance, but proleptically also Ayodhya, the World Trade Center, Faluja--mobilizes a voyeuristic tourist while enacting the phantom presence of a menacing mob, a key figure of phobia for modern technological mediation worldwide. Placing the Lucknow album in relation to two films with the same locational referent--the Edison silent Relief of Lucknow (USA, 1912) and the Urdu Chaudhvin ka Chand (India, 1960), both of which move location from an "unconscious optic" to a foregrounded terrain--I describe how opposing spatial concretizations of insurgency lead to differing but comparable modes for consuming a violent history and politics through the visual.

Bibliography:

1. Bruno, Guiliana. ATLAS OF EMOTION: JOURNEYS IN ART, ARCHITECTURE, AND FILM. New York: Verso, 2002.
2. Chakravarty, Gautam. INDIAN MUTINY AND THE BRITISH IMAGINATION. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
3. Chaudhary, Zahid. "Phantasmagoric Aethetics: Colonial Violence and the Management of Perception." CULTURAL CRITIQUE 59 (Winter 2005):63-119.
4. Eisenstein, Sergei. "Montage and Architecture," (c.1937), ASSEMBLAGE 10 (1989):111-31.
4. Oldernburg, Veena Talwar. THE MAKING OF COLONIAL LUCKNOW, 1856-1877. NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
5. Lloyd, David. "Ruination, Partition, and the Expectation of Violence (on Allan deSouza's Irish Photography)," SOCIAL IDENTITIES 9, no.4 (December 2003): 475-509.
6. Sturken, Marita. TOURISTS OF HISTORY: MEMORY, KITSCH AND CONSUMERISM FROM OKLAHOMA CITY TO GROUND ZERO. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.

Biography:
Priya Jaikumar is Associate Professor at the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California. She has published articles on colonial and postcolonial cinemas, questions of state power, feminism, and transnational cultural formations. Her book CINEMA AT THE END OF EMPIRE details the intertwined histories of British and Indian cinema during the late colonial period.

--

Shorter Version

Title: Visualizing Architecures of Insurgency

The anti-colonial Indian uprising of 1857 produced a definitive rupture in the form of global empire, beginning an era of colonial administrative rationalities worldwide. Equally significant, it marked photography's widespread use in managing the resistant colonial body, inauguating photography as a political tool. While attention has been paid to Britain's photographic staging of dead colonial bodies to commemorate imperial vengeance, shots of ruined cities central to the insurgency are treated as incidental backdrop. Arguing that ruins bearing the shock of recent violence constitute a rupture in the picturesque aesthetic, I study the production of space and spectatorship in a photographic album of Lucknow's architecture, published shortly after the city was demolished for playing a key part in the insurgency. With "albums" referring to diverse objects (including scrap books of Victorian gentlewomen), THE LUCKNOW ALBUM is distinct in its pre-cinematic narrative, structured like an early travelogue in auto-ethnographic mode, addressing a modern viewer in a public space, paced kinetically across pitted buildings with deep historical residue. A dual hermeneutic operates as the image of a ruin--Lucknow in this instance, but proleptically also Ayodhya and Faluja--mobilizes a voyeuristic consumer while enacting the phantom presence of a menacing mob, a figure of phobia for modern technologized mediation worldwide. Placing THE LUCKNOW ALBUM in relation to two films with the same locational referent--Edison's RELIEF OF LUCKNOW (USA, 1912) and the Urdu CHAUDHVIN KA CHAND (India, 1960)--I describe how the circulation of opposing spatial concretizations of insurgency produce a violent history through the architectural visual.