The Path to Reality is Through Fiction: Documentary Studies at Franklin Pierce University Embracing Fiction One of the greatest contemporary Eastern-European thinkers, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, challenges us to take the role of stories more seriously in our lives, told cinematically or otherwise. Stories, or “fictions,” are reality, he reminds us. “If you take away from our reality the symbolic fictions which regulate it, you lose reality itself.” He speaks of the false dichotomy of presenting a choice between illusion and reality, and instead calls for a way to enable the perception of “not the reality behind the illusion, but the reality in illusion itself.” Zizek’s challenge and insights are entirely fitting in our day, the postmodern digital age, which is blurring the lines between reality and illusion, between fact and fiction, between narrative cinema and documentary. My own migration from sociologist to documentary filmmaker in recent years has come from a desire to express reality using the tools of cinema rather than the tools of social science. What both practices Doug Challenger, photographed by Sheryl Delieto ’13 have in common, though, among other things, is that the practitioner of each engages in researching, documenting, and interpreting reality. Zizek’s insight that “there is something real in illusion (especially in cinema), more real than in the reality behind it” puts my journey on solid ground.
New Certificate Program This professional journey has led me to create, along with Monadnock Institute director John Harris and other faculty colleagues at Franklin Pierce, a new, “hands-on,” interdisciplinary Certificate Program in Documentary Studies, in place for the 2012 fall semester. This 18-credit certificate program invites students to enrich their studies in any major with knowledge of documentary genres as well as with the skills of audio and video documentary storytelling. The program will engage students in life off campus, using primarily the Monadnock region as a laboratory for learning the basic documentary tools for researching and presenting reality within the artistic framework of compelling stories. ~ Professor Douglas Challenger
Bringing the Past to Light CGPS American Studies student, Erik Onufer, has been examining America’s past through an internship at the American Independence Museum in Exeter, N.H. It has been Erick’s charge to decipher the handwritten notes that are written on one of the Museum’s two draft copies of the U.S. Constitution, printed in 1787 by John Dunlap. “The writing is on the margins and in between the lines,” Erik reports. These historical records were part of the Dunlap Broadsides – poster-sized documents that were sent to each town and hamlet in the original 13 colonies and read aloud in town halls and other public places. The age of the document and the writing style make deciphering the handwritten notes quite a challenging task. When completed, Erik’s translations will be hung with the original and included with the copies that the museum has for sale. “I think it’s fascinating to be working on one of the most important documents in the world,” says Erik, who plans to go on to graduate school in museum studies upon his graduation from Franklin Pierce in January 2013. “It’s an unbelievable dream for me.” www.franklinpierce.edu 23