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I have a bunch of questions: You mentioned that you wrote your dissertation on famine in Shakespeare. Can you talk a little about how that project developed while you were in grad school, e.g.: When you were thinking of possible thesis topics, did you find that many of your best ideas had already been written on extensively, forcing you to go back and find new areas to research? Or did your grad school experience keep you abreast of current scholarship to the point that the only questions you found interesting were necessarily un- or under-researched? Did your experience in grad school lead you to focus on interesting, under-researched questions early on, leading you naturally into the selection of a thesis topic, or did you find yourself deliberately brainstorming interesting, unexplored topics? Generally speaking, at what point did you find yourself transitioning from the texts-plus-foundational-scholarship approach (e.g. a "Desire in Film" senior seminar I took in undergrad in which we would watch films and read like Lacan and Deleuze, without any real impetus to engage with current psychoanalytic scholarship) towards a position where your job involved real interaction with your academic field at large? By what measures do you gauge the success of the books you write now? Do you intend your books to be useful to other academics-as-researchers, or to academics-as-teachers (e.g. another professor using your book as reading for a class s/he might teach), or are you more focused on the intellectual questions themselves and less with the functionality of your ideas as objects/texts? Do you now or did you ever write creatively in a serious way?
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May 28, 2009 19:15
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lewi posted:I noticed that you didn't include Much Ado in your list of preferred comedies - could you describe why? It's one of my favourites... It's not that I think it's a bad play -- in fact I think it's pretty good. But I also think that Midsummer does a lot of the same things as Much Ado, only somewhat better. Just for instance, the relationship between the cranks (Beatrice and Benedick) in Much Ado is soft. I mean, they trade jabs, but once Benedick hears the Beatrice loves him, he's putty. And Beatrice mellows out for reasons I can't completely figure. They bicker, but their hearts aren't in it. I've never been able to believe they've ever really hated each other, so I can't possibly believe they're in love. It's too lethargic. It's what thirteen year old girls who collect plastic ponies think confrontational romance looks like. Oberon and Titania are just better cranks. When they argue they actually try to hurt each other. For instance, in the first volley of their argument, each one accuses the other of cheating. So to turn up the volume, each of them unapologetically admits it. Then Oberon escalates by having his friend drug his wife so she'll hump a man-donkey, then kidnaps (and apparently enslaves) her adopted son. Also, because they're arguing, harvests fail and people starve. But they just don't give a gently caress. That's what an argument looks like when you're really in love.
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May 28, 2009 19:23
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Brainworm, what amount of time do you typically spend on an individual novel in your classes? My senior year in high school I took AP English, and we spent 4 months reading The Things They Carried. I loved The Things They Carried when I read it, but the sheer amount of time spent parsing and discussing it made everyone in the class hate it to the point where every line became a joke. By the end of the class, I doubt there were any English Majors left. Was my teacher giving a standard collegiate course, or was she simply crazy? Also, I am a big science fiction junkie, are there any books you would recommend that are in the vein of Alfred Bester?
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May 28, 2009 20:08
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The "Henriad": Do you believe the central theme of the plays are about the "education of a prince," (a sort of bildungsroman for Prince Harry) or the rise of a "hollow world" where rationalism overtakes ritual and "divine right"? I guess supporting either argument would hinge upon your understanding of the soliloquy in 1 Henry IV (I.iii, 173-195 in the Norton Anthology edition) as truth; the fact that it is a soliloquy leads me to believe it is. The audience is not a character, and Prince Harry is not aware of its presence. There is nobody to lie to; why would he lie? Similarly, I would take the Hotspur/Prince Harry comparisons as support for the "hollow world" argument. Hotspur is doubtless concerned with "honor" throughout the play, while Harry purposefully creates a dishonorable persona (if we take I.iii to be the truth.) For instance: The battle at Shrewsbury is in no way an advantageous engagement for Percy's men. Severely outnumbered, and tired from the march, the rebels stand very little chance against Henry's army. Worcester finds the absence of Northumberland's forces a cause for "apprehension." But Hotspur finds that it "lends a luster" to their "enterprise" (IV.i, 66-78). Winning the battle outnumbered will certainly bring him "honor," but at the expense of the lives of his men. As a commander, he has a commitment to his soldiers to do what is "due or right." By disregarding their lives, he does neither. I would clarify this by saying that Sir Walter Blunt exemplifies an understanding of "honor" that is more rooted in duty than fame: When he is slain by Douglas, it is under the name of "King Harry." Not only has he died for his king, he has been mistaken for the king. His disguise was only so effective because he wore the king's colors and heraldry, and not his own. Would he have slain Douglas, Hotspur, or any of the other rebels, he would not receive recognition for this service. Blunt does not seek fame, but rather adheres to "what is due or right," giving his life not for renown, but service. But the most surprising exemplar of this sort of "honor"(at least up to this point in the tetralogy) is Prince Harry. While he does not seem to possess the more obvious, "grinning honor" of Sir Walter, his commitment to "what is due or right" becomes apparent (V.iii, 57). While he at first seems interested in the same vices as Falstaff and the tavern crew, his soliloquy lets the audience in on a truth that guides his actions throughout the rest of the "Henriad." He "knows us all" and our perceptions. He manipulates the tavern crew, the other characters, and the people of England into thinking him a thief and rabble-rouser, (I had a professor describe the tavern crew as a "fraternity party") in order to later appear "better than his word" (I.ii, 173-95). He lies, certainly, but to renew an England in serious crisis. The soliloquy's abrupt switch to "royal" rhyme from "common" prose hints at an underlying noble capability and refinement: he speaks like a king. Strangely enough, Hotspur's rendering of "honor" seems to have much in common with the lowly Falstaff's understanding. Both characters give honor a ritualized, tangible essence.* Prince Hal, however, cares little for outward display. After he slays Hotspur, Hal gives his "favors" to "hide [Hotspur's] mangled face" (V.iv, 95). Hal's "favors," the representation of "physical honor" obviously mean little to him, as they stay with the dead Hotspur. Additionally, his claim to the death of such a foe is given up to Falstaff. Hal is acting beyond the interests of personal heroic representation in favor of political calculation. He is biding his time. Though the modern audience tends to see such calculation as dishonest and repugnant, it must be considered that the "Henriad" deals with a specific time of political intrigue: the myriad rebellions an example of the fact that such intrigue always existed, despite claims of "divine right" and "God's favor."** Very few characters don't manipulate in some way***, and the most stunning part of the histories is Shakespeare's ability to place his characters in a wider frame of changing intellectual and political thought. Hal biding his time and creating a persona of wide dramatic appeal so that his ascent is marked by a "reformation" not only for him, but for the throne (I.ii, 191). And the idea of a legitimate, reformed throne will help curb the rebellions, and embolden and serve the people of England more than himself. In this way, Henry's "plague" of Richard II looks to be a hope for the crown, and consequently England. He has counterfeited in the name of honor, not gained honor by counterfeit like Falstaff. His counterfeit was aligned with a shade of honor that considers "what is due or right," not "title" or "fame" proven in battle by gallantry as at Shrewsbury. Woah. Really didn't mean to write all that. Gotta run. *Hotspur believes he can "pluck" it from the "Moon." He expresses his desire to "wear" honor, in a sense, and to wear it conspicuously (I.iii, 201-7). Honor becomes a commodity to be collected and stored, an expression of deeds. We still see this today in ceremonies, medals, etc. But, if there is any doubt that the pragmatic "hollow world" began to do away with this notion, consider the abandonment of distinctive officer battle-dress in the modern world. Falstaff similarly understands that he can "wear" honor, in a sense. Truly, he believes it is nothing more than a word, and therefore "Air" (V.i, 134). But he understands that it is not "air" to men such as Percy, and is therefore worth something to those in positions of power. He knows what he can gain from honor: power, money, sack (see his actions as while raising a regiment, where he uses his position of power as a money-making scheme.) Therefore, he estimates honor as "fame" and "recognition," a wooden "stucheon" of heraldry that merely displays these credits. Thus, he has no problem wounding the already dead Hotspur and claiming the kill. Though he sees honor as presentable and accumulated like Hotspur, Falstaff is more interested on how he can use honor. He counterfeits honor: while he will achieve honorable status for allegedly taking down the estimable warrior, the way he attains this status is in no way "honorable." ** See Richard's disruption of the duel, a ritual in which "God defend[s] the right" in Richard II (I.iii, 101). Richard ceases the duel when Mowbray subtly suggests that the king has asked him to give up his honor in the past, hinting at Richard's involvement in the death of the Duke of Gloucester (I.iii (148-167). Richard's banishment of Bolingbroke and Mowbray is exemplary of a politico preventing God's judgment for self-preservation. The action is similar to Bolingbroke's rebellion and the several rebellions in the following play: man deciding leadership rather than God, cutting away the divine thread of heirs. *** See Hotspur and Gaunt for examples. The two are more representative of the faithful, ritualistic "old guard" of outward presentation and straightforwardness.
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May 28, 2009 21:45
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silencekid posted:You mentioned that you wrote your dissertation on famine in Shakespeare. Can you talk a little about how that project developed while you were in grad school [...] I stumbled into it about the same way I stumble into everything else. It started when I found a pamphlet about a 17th century professional glutton named Nicholas Wood, and I thought it might be interesting to do a project on the history of professional gluttony -- this was before I was thinking dissertation, so it was really just for funsies. So I wrote up that project with the aid of a friend of mine. But after the project was over, I still had some big questions. After all, if you think about it, a culture has to have some pretty sophisticated things in place before people can start eating as professional entertainment; real stage acts of, say, any of the other deadly sins haven't yet gone mainstream (or didn't until they could be viewed anonymously). That got me looking at the history of food, and of famine in particular, and that's when I found out that there had been a huge famine in the early half of Shakespeare's career (about 1593-97, following a small one in 1589). That led me to rethink the beginning of Coriolanus, a few passages in Midsummer and Titus, and some of the more oblique tropes in the sonnets. And when I started digging, I saw there was a book length project somewhere in there. quote:Generally speaking, at what point did you find yourself transitioning from the texts-plus-foundational-scholarship approach [...] towards a position where your job involved real interaction with your academic field at large? When I started publishing. My class and exam reading was all really foundational, so it wasn't until specific readings of specific plays pushed me to current scholarship that I made the leap to just-printed crit. I mean, I had gone to journals for the occasional article, but never for anything like the two dozen or so I work into a normal article. About the same time, I started editing a journal. Tracking down reviewers also booted me into keeping up on current scholarship. I mean, you're not going to get Gilles Deleuze as a referee. quote:By what measures do you gauge the success of the books you write now? Do you intend your books to be useful to other academics-as-researchers, or to academics-as-teachers (e.g. another professor using your book as reading for a class s/he might teach), or are you more focused on the intellectual questions themselves and less with the functionality of your ideas as objects/texts? When I write, I target my smartest undergrad. Not so much in terms of what would be immediately readable. More in terms of what would be just beyond the ideas they'd generate on their own after some thorough research. I'm not the only one to do this -- it's sort of an informal guideline for most wide distribution journals. This hits the student researchers, academics as teachers, and academics as academics (since what's really valuable to most of us is basic information on a new thing). And I gauge my success based on reviews, at least insofar as I judge my success based on what other people think of my work. That's mostly for lack of better options, since that's really the only time I get feedback that's from a position of expertise, relatively impartial, and thorough enough that I can improve my later writing. I also think about invites -- chances to speak to college students or general audiences about what I've written. Even one of those is a good sign, since the readership for most academic publishing is really, really small. Like in the hundreds if not dozens. The asterisk here is that I'm not really worried about success once a book is out. Getting it published is enough, since I'm usually sick of something by the time it gets to press. quote:Do you now or did you ever write creatively in a serious way? I did, but not super seriously. It was part of running a creative writing workshop, not part of career building. So I've published a couple short pieces. But I've never stepped on gas. That said, the writing part of my job really falls under creative non-fiction -- that is, academic work where I pay attention to style and tone. Actually, that's really just a way of saying I pay attention to style and tone. So nevermind.
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May 29, 2009 03:28
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tennisjump posted:Brainworm, what amount of time do you typically spend on an individual novel in your classes? That, sir or ma'am, is criminal. Our semesters aren't even four months. I can't even imagine how that worked. At the slowest, I usually run a novel or play every week and a half or so. This is great for a three-times-a-week Shakespeare course, since that breaks down to an act a class, which is just enough time to get discussion to a point where everyone sees there's a lot going on -- we can talk about character motivations, staging possibilities for specific scenes, close readings of a couple passages, but not burn the thing down. At the fastest, we'll do one book or play a week. That's a target I try to hit for about half the texts in most survey courses, since that gets us through an even ten once you pull the time for paper writing. That also means that everyone gets a freebie: one week where they can check out of the reading if they're overloaded and still not get reamed on the final grade. I don't like moving that fast in a freeform discussion class, so that kind of speed usually involves reading to answer specific questions, like "how do you think text X influenced text Y?" or "how do the villains in these texts evolve from these early novels to the late ones?" It's also not sustainable for more than a couple weeks in a row -- after that, the class sometimes forgets how to ask their own questions.
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May 29, 2009 03:40
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Glowskull posted:The "Henriad": Do you believe the central theme of the plays are about the "education of a prince," (a sort of bildungsroman for Prince Harry) or the rise of a "hollow world" where rationalism overtakes ritual and "divine right"? I think this depends on exactly how you read Henry V -- Norman Rabkin's "Rabbits, Ducks, and Henry V" (SQ 28.3) raises some of the points I'm going to, so I'll hit them in brief. If you think of the "Henriad" as the rise of Hal, a new kind of king, the obvious question is whether he's a good king or a bad one. I mean, we know Henry IV isn't great -- he's plagued by guilt over deposing Richard (even though Richard was clearly terrible), and the political consequences of this deposition, coupled with Henry's own lackluster politics, threaten civil war. But his son, as the plays constantly remind us, can go either way. Either he inherits his father's sins or he doesn't, and the Henriad plays this out over and over again in Hal's shady beginnings, battlefield valor, and relationships with both his father and Falstaff. But the most complicated issues behind this inheritance get raised in Henry V. Henry's a conqueror, sure. But he's tricked into his invasion of France by corrupt clergymen and lets the Dauphin get at his pride -- something he never allows Hotspur. And his conversations with his troops suggest that he's not willing to own any duty toward them; he outright says that their lives (and afterlives) are not his responsibility. That's probably a necessary attitude for a conqueror to have about his soldiers, but it's deeply unflattering when it percolates into more human relationships. My reading of this -- and this isn't necessarily Rabkin's -- is that Henry V presents an authentic ambiguity or, if you will, an insoluble problem with conquest: yeah, conquering France is great, but it burns a lot of money, spills a lot of blood, and gets you a bunch of lands that are largely unprofitable and cranky of governance. So the play isn't so much about the education of a prince as it is the education of a kind of prince who's time has passed (and may have been passing even in his day). This kind of perspective surrounds most of Shakespeare's great kings. Think Lear. His world moves on while he's still in it, and that's really the engine for the tragedy. But, like in the Henriad, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Instead, it's a celebration both of simple valor and of the idea that simple valors fit modern politics poorly if at all. After all, a world full of heroes digs a lot of graves. So your entertainment praises the bravery of national heroes and the valiant deaths of long-gone patriots while at the same time maintaining that such bravery and sacrifice are no longer necessary. If they were, the play would be passing discomforting judgments on its audience. Brainworm fucked around with this message at 04:36 on May 29, 2009 |
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May 29, 2009 04:32
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Right now I'm an adjunct English professor in what could best be described as a community college. It's really a basic college where I'm younger than a good portion of my students and I can teach with a BA in Lit. A great many of my students were (and are) in factory jobs and got their GEDs not that long ago. Classes run for a month, 3 nights a week, 4 hours a night. DEFINITELY scrambling to make sure I get everything in. It's been one of the best experiences of my life, although it leads to some very interesting  moments. (A student answered on their final exam that a good opening strategy for a paper is to "tell an antedote". ) It is also one of the most frustrating. I have to cram a month's worth of class work into one week and I have to try and keep them interested in the class work for that long. This month I taught a Composition class. Next month I have 2 independent studies. If I had the money and the time, I would probably go back to school and get my advanced degree so I could teach in an adjunct position in higher schools. I honestly don't want to teach full time because someone somewhere would end up dying.
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May 29, 2009 04:33
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Brainworm posted:Yeah, he's the best crank out there. There used to be some Charlie Rose interviews of Bloom floating around Youtube, but now they're on Charlie Rose's site. Priceless. He seems to think many authors are secretly products of a gnostic wonderland. I wonder if he's joking, or just saying that because he knows he can get away with it. (tenure, fame, etc.) Have you come across this particular fetish of his, Brainworm? Edit: Yet, as I listen to those interviews, I find myself more and more inclined to believe him. Barto fucked around with this message at 12:33 on May 29, 2009 |
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May 29, 2009 12:17
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Barto posted:He seems to think many authors are secretly products of a gnostic wonderland. I wonder if he's joking, or just saying that because he knows he can get away with it. (tenure, fame, etc.) Have you come across this particular fetish of his, Brainworm? The thing about Harold Bloom is that he has a deeply idiosyncratic religious and psychological vocabulary. So as I read or listen to him there's always this dawning lucidity as I gradually realize what he means when he says "gnosticism" or "kenosis." He's oddly persuasive that way. I'm never sure whether it's genius or Stockholm syndrome.
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May 29, 2009 14:56
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Brainworm, this is a fantastic A/T thread. Thanks for this. My questions for you are a little scattershot: Have you ever been able to formulate your own functional definition for the difference between Modernism and Postmodernism? I've seen a lot of people try to explain it through content, writing style, and chronology -- all to varying degrees of effectiveness -- but it always seems so inconclusive. I don't know, maybe there is no difference...? In terms of pedagogy and methodology, what are your opinions on group work? Do you feel it appreciably improves the productivity of your class meetings? And for that matter, does peer revision help students' writing? Do you have a preference between teaching three-days-a-week versus two-days-a-week? Do you feel one is more conducive to learning? And I understand this one is completely subjective, but do you have a LEAST favorite "big" novel? I'm measuring "bigness" by its academic standing in the canon, how often it is studied in classrooms, and its all-around fame (of both the text and its author) in our public consciousness. For example's sake, I'm thinking along the lines of Ulysses, The Great Gatsby, 1984, David Copperfield, Moby-Dick, etc., etc. Again, awesome thread!
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May 29, 2009 18:00
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Brainworm, echoing other people's comments, this is a great thread! I just passed my A-exam (comps) today, so I'm officially ABD! My field is the history of science, and I work on 19th century German chemistry. My first question is the same as Scum Freezebag's: what do you think of peer review workshops for writing classes? I taught two writing seminars this year and have had mixed results. I find that the feedback is usually not helpful, though the students otherwise appear to be engaged with the process. Second, what do you suggest for a grad student like me who wants to improve his writing? I'm an "adequate" writer but I'm not great and I want to improve my style, sentence structure, word choice, etc. I'm good with overall organization, structure, and arguments; I feel that my style, however, is kind of clunky, or at least could be improved. Would something like Joseph Williams' Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace be useful? Also, grammar question: is there a hard and fast rule on apostrophes for words ending in s? So for above, Joseph Williams' or Williams's? Chris's or Chris'? The rule I've heard in the past is "write it like you say it," but that seems rather arbitrary.
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May 29, 2009 18:36
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Scum Freezebag posted:Have you ever been able to formulate your own functional definition for the difference between Modernism and Postmodernism? I've seen a lot of people try to explain it through content, writing style, and chronology -- all to varying degrees of effectiveness -- but it always seems so inconclusive. I don't know, maybe there is no difference...? Yes, I have. But this is going to spill a bit of ink, and it needs some jargon. I'll do my best, but unless you're really interested in Postmodernism you might want to skip this one. So fair warning. There are at least three different dimensions of Postmodernism: a simple, chronological dimension (i.e. when it started), a dimension of textual form and content (i.e. a catalog of differences between Modern and Postmodern texts), and a dimension that comprises a more generalized way of looking at the world -- this would be in orbit around what Althusser used to call a "macro-subject," but I think zeitgeist will work as long as we can all agree I'm ruthlessly abusing the word. Anyway. This third thing, the zeitgeist, really seems to gently caress people up. So I want to define it using a really simple set of distinctions. That will also work as long as we can agree that I'm about to also ruthlessly abuse almost every word in this post. Slices of zeitgeist Modernity and Authenticity Modernity and Postmodernity chiefly differ from one another in their relationships to texts (broadly defined). For the Postmodern, a better term for "texts" might be "culture," since the overriding assumption of Postmodernity is that culture is constituted by the production and reproduction of texts or, if you prefer, media. Same thing. This is distinct from Modernism, which assumes that there is an inherent distinction between media and some kinds of cultural practices (like rituals). Consequently, there is a categorical difference between witnessing an "authentic" performance, such as a tribal dance, and an "enacted" or "re-enacted" performance, such as a tribal dance staged for tourists: the "authentic" dance is a ritual, while the "enacted" or "re-enacted" dance is derivative. The "enacted" dance therefore means differently, even if it is formally identical to the "authentic" version, performed by the same dancers, and for the same audience. You can see this in hardcore Modernists. Eliot's poetry claims a socially privileged place for ritual and constantly mourns its transformation into a set of what he might call "hollow" repetitive acts; the "ritual" and the "repetition" could look identical, but they mean differently because of some unobservable, quintessential quality. Benjamin makes an analogous claim in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," just as Adorno makes an analogous claim in "On Jazz." Or a more tangible example: If you've ever seen the documentary Crumb, think about the way Robert Crumb talks about his record collection. The records he collects are, according to him, the first recordings of various kinds of native music. He further claims that native music changed once natives heard recordings of their own performances -- though what this change might be he doesn't say. Let me suggest that Robert Crumb is reasoning from Modern ideology when he says this. His ideological reasoning mirrors Eliot's and Benjamin's and Adorno's in that he makes a distinction between "authenticity" (the tribals who had not heard their own music) and "reenactment" (the tribals who had). But this is clearly absurd. Unless we're prepared to suggest that the medium by which native musicians heard their own music in itself changed their attitudes toward performance, we have to accept that Crumb is wrong. Native musicians heard their own performances. They performed them. And of course their performances are re-enactments of other musicians' work -- responses to recordings made using human memory, rather than wax cylinders, as media. Easy enough. But this is where things get tricky. Postmodernism is not an inversion of this Modern understanding. And it isn't, as Baudrillard would have it, a situation where "reenactment" replaces "authenticity" as the engine of human experience. I want to make a much weaker, simpler argument: Modernism categorically assumes a constant and significant difference between the authentic and the (re)enacted, and accords that difference cultural and interpretive primacy. Postmodernism does not, although it allows the authentic/(re)enacted distinction to be made. That is, Postmodernism is often caricatured as making no distinction between acts and representations of acts, e.g. a culture in which television is equivalent to lived experience. I'm claiming that Postmodernism doesn't necessarily employ the "Crumb Fallacy" by assuming that "authentic" acts are necessarily formally different from (and necessarily preferable to) "(re)enacted" ones. Postmodernity and Spectacle In order to get what I'm going to say about Postmodernity, I need to slap down a definition for what I'll call "spectacle," which is roughly equivalent to the one Guy Debord cooked up while he was shotgunning cognac and giving some aspiring Parisian intellectual a scorching case of herpes. By "spectacle" I don't mean a collection of public images, or what we might more generally call media; I mean a social relationship between people that is mediated by images. Spectacle, in this sense, defines a way of understanding media that differs from the Modernist -- in a nutshell, Modernists think of media (which they call "culture") as selectively shared experience, which is largely what informs the authentic/enacted distinction they're so fond of making. You either read this poem or you didn't. You were either at this game or you weren't. Either case determines the validity (read: authenticity) of your position. Spectacle thinks of media as the (not a) means of communication that constitutes all human relationships. "Culture," in this logic of spectacle, is just the aggregation of media, which includes (and makes no value distinctions between) the authentic and (re)enacted. These things are equal in the same way that all words are equal: they are functionally identical matter for communication. Or, in other words, Postmodernism's logic of spectacle suggests that anything a person can understand is a text, rather than an event. And when you're reading a text, authenticity is irrelevant. I can see a baseball game in person or watch it on TV; while both observations of the game are different texts, neither is inherently more valuable. Once you get that, the rest writes itself. So, a definition: Postmodernism is the conscious understanding (or assumption) of spectacular media. That is, Postmodernism is just conscious acceptance of the idea that media are actually spectacle (the matter of social relationships or, if you will, the constitutive elements of culture), rather than a series of human experiences that can be separated into differently valued categories (like "rituals" and "imitations"). That, in short, is the zeitgeist. Getting it makes the other two thirds of my definition easier and (praise God) shorter. Postmodern Chronology The thing that makes a chronology of Postmodernism difficult is that Postmodernism is a way of looking at the world which, right now, coexists and competes with Modernism. That is, both Modernism and Postmodernism are available vocabularies for interpreting culture and media. If anyone says "we live in a Postmodern era" he or she must mean that "we live in an era where Postmodernism is intellectually available," not "we live in an era where Postmodernism has entirely displaced Modernism." So here's an irresponsibly reductive example of how those vocabularies play out. A few years ago I dropped my sister off at a Vermont hospital and went to find some lunch. Right outside the hospital was a McDonald's advertising an "authentic Philly Cheesesteak." This made me start a conversation with myself: Modern Brainworm: That cannot possibly be a Philly Cheesesteak. It's made in Vermont. At McDonald's. Postmodern Brainworm: It could absolutely be authentic. Authenticity is a matter of form, not provenance. If this cheesesteak looks and tastes like a cheesesteak I'd get in Philadelphia, it's authentic. Modern Brainworm: You seem to be missing the point. The best this sandwich can aspire to is perfect and absolute imitation of a Philly Cheesesteak. But that's irrelevant. An imitation is an imitation, and imitations are (a) inauthentic by definition and (b) therefore inferior to whatever they imitate. Postmodern Brainworm: Both your points are absurd. By your logic, the only "authentic" philly cheesesteak (or Philly Cheesesteak) was the one served off some immigrant's street cart way back whenever Alton Brown said it happened in that episode of Good Eats. But it's gone, and you can never get it back. Modern Brainworm: That point is indisputable. The loss of the only authentic Philly Cheesesteak is a catastrophe from which I can never recover, as my desire for a Philly Cheesesteak can never be truly met. My life is therefore doomed to the physically sustaining but metaphysically meaningless consumption of imitation sandwiches. Oh despair! Despair and ennui! Postmodern Brainworm: I find your poetry intellectually complex but ultimately unsatisfying. Also, this cottage of misery you've built for yourself rests on the fetishization of an authenticity that, by definition, disappears the second you look for it. Postmodern Brainworm: Also, this cheesesteak is terrible. Or (alternate ending) Postmodern Brainworm: Because I've proven that I can't experience an authentic cheesesteak (or Philly Cheesesteak), it stands to reason that I cannot judge whether this cheesesteak is good or bad, since I have no objective basis for comparison. Wait a second. I'm repeating Modernist Brainworm's mistake of fetishizing authenticity! I almost seriously engaged in a relativist exercise that could only impress the continually stoned or hopelessly inbred. Postmodern Literary Form If you've followed this so far, you can probably guess where this section on literary form goes: the necessary formal differences between, say, a Modern poem and a Postmodern one are minor. The real differences are in the politics of reception and interpretation. Because Postmodernists assume that culture is constituted by media, everything is a text and can be read like one. So you can interpret a funeral for the same basic reasons you can interpret a poem: they are both, at bottom, forms of communication. This is not true for Modernists. T.S. Eliot would say that a funeral and a poem are different classes of human experience, because one (the funeral) is a ritual which has at its center a shared meaning that transcends language and practice, while the other (the poem) has a determinable (if complex) meaning that emerges from the interaction of words on a page. One consequence of this is the ways Modern and Postmodern texts work with the outside world. Modernists can allude. That is, Modernist practice allows a writer to reference a thing that is not a text (such as a funeral). Allusion in this sense is impossible in Postmodern reading and writing, since there does not exist a thing that is not textual. I'll hit this with an imperfect and hopelessly reductive example: Postmodern Brainworm posted:
Modern Brainworm posted:
For the Modernist, MacGyver is an event, and has meaning only insofar as it constitutes a shared experience. For the Postmodernist, "MacGyver" is part of a cultural vocabulary that can express meaning regardless of one's viewing experiences. That's a heavy ideological distinction, but its consequences on the page are featherweight. So hopefully that clears things up.
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May 29, 2009 22:57
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Scum Freezebag posted:In terms of pedagogy and methodology, what are your opinions on group work? Do you feel it appreciably improves the productivity of your class meetings? And for that matter, does peer revision help students' writing? I absolutely love group work. And I think it works well as long as each group is well built and has a specific mission or focus. For example: I like to start classes by asking each of several small groups to either formulate a question for classwide discussion or to answer a complex interpretive question (e.g. how would you describe the tone of Jonson's "Inviting a Friend to Supper?" which is notorious for either being incredibly caustic and insincere or deeply courteous, depending on who reads it). Both exercises do two good things: they build an environment where people who are less comfortable speaking in class get to build some investment in their ideas (and are therefore more likely to advocate for or help revise them), and they work as a sort of sanity check. Bad ideas generally wash out in small group conversation. Peer revision works about the same way. It needs to be carefully targeted. If you just ask students to offer suggestions on each other's work, they take the path of least resistance: correct (or miscorrect) some grammatical trivia and write "Good Job!  " at the end. But if you build a rubric -- say, five or six questions like "which part of this piece did you like best, and why?" or "which did you think was worst, and why?" you can generate some useful feedback. (Also, it helps if you grade the rubrics.) That said, I'm not sure this makes students better writers. But, done well, it can make them much better editors. I like giving students a copy of the peer review rubric to fill out for their own rough drafts. That, plus guided in-class practice during peer review, sharpens their ears. quote:Do you have a preference between teaching three-days-a-week versus two-days-a-week? Do you feel one is more conducive to learning? It depends on the class. For Shakespeare, I love three a week since it sticks nicely to a one-act-per-class schedule. And I like three a week for Freshmen, too -- they're used to thinking in half hour spurts, so twice a week classes usually mean designing two-phase sessions to cater to that attention span. For upper level students, discussion's usually still cooking after the first hour, so twice a week works great -- the challenge is pushing the discussion for the last fifteen minutes or so, because if students are tired that time can turn into the same people defending the same points instead of a collective effort to make sense of whatever we're reading. quote:And I understand this one is completely subjective, but do you have a LEAST favorite "big" novel? I'm measuring "bigness" by its academic standing in the canon, how often it is studied in classrooms, and its all-around fame (of both the text and its author) in our public consciousness. For example's sake, I'm thinking along the lines of Ulysses, The Great Gatsby, 1984, David Copperfield, Moby-Dick, etc., etc. This is a tough one. Most canonical texts do at least some things well, so they're easy to appreciate even if there's stuff not to like. But I think my least favorites come out of a sort of canonical urge to "represent" historical periods using literature. Gatsby is a good example. Fitzgerald's a good writer, but Gatsby was far and away his biggest bomb -- it didn't really take off until well after WWII, when people decided what they thought the 1920s were like and trenched out a canon that fit it. This doesn't make it a bad book (critics liked it) but it does seem an odd choice for canonization. The Red Badge of Courage is another. Again, it's a finely-written book, and I don't have anything too rough to say about its craft. But it gets used to set discussion of the American Civil War and Civil War literature, which is bizarre. Crane wasn't born until five or six years after the war ended, and the book's popularity probably speaks more to American attitudes about e.g. the Spanish-American War than their collective recollection of the Civil. But if we're talking about stuff I plain don't like, I've got to drop some Restoration Lit., Dryden and Pope especially. Rhyming couplets are irritating, and Pope's superficial certainty about every goddamn thing (e.g. "WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT" from Essay on Man) is infuriating. And I could live happily without ever reading another of Dryden's meticulously detailed allegories of insular parliamentary politics.
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May 30, 2009 00:14
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Naga Warlord posted:I just passed my A-exam (comps) today, so I'm officially ABD! My field is the history of science, and I work on 19th century German chemistry. Nice job. I was in pretty bad shape right after my comps, so more power to you if you're lucid enough to type. quote:Second, what do you suggest for a grad student like me who wants to improve his writing? I'm an "adequate" writer but I'm not great and I want to improve my style, sentence structure, word choice, etc. I'm good with overall organization, structure, and arguments; I feel that my style, however, is kind of clunky, or at least could be improved. Would something like Joseph Williams' Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace be useful? It would. I like Strunk and White's Elements of Style better, though. The content is middling to good, but it's extraordinarily well written. I was sold on it after reading the short hortatory essay on Rule 17 (Omit Needless Words). If you're going to take stylistic advice, best to take it from a writer remarkable for pith and clarity. quote:Also, grammar question: is there a hard and fast rule on apostrophes for words ending in s? So for above, Joseph Williams' or Williams's? Chris's or Chris'? The rule I've heard in the past is "write it like you say it," but that seems rather arbitrary. Ah. Strunk and White I.i.: Form the possessive of singular nouns with 's. So write about Chris's bicycle or Charles's tonsils. The exceptions, as Elements describes them, are the possessive forms of ancient, proper names, as in Isis' temple. But these should be rewritten to eliminate the possessive, e.g. the temple of Isis.
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May 30, 2009 00:26
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OctaviusBeaver posted:What are your thoughts on Macbeth? I frankly think his later work just isn't that good. For instance, I absolutely abhor the Winter's Tale, and had no idea what was going on for most of the play. In my opinion, Shakespeare's biggest flaw as a writer was that he could be clever to be clever, which ends up with passages that really say nothing but say it in a complicated way. Basically, the only reason why you should ever glance at the Winter's Tale is for the stage direction, "A bear attacks." Shakespeare's best plays focus on human nature and the consequences of our foibles and hypocrisy. But if you look at his work, you can find a ton of flaws. For instance, the Merchant of Venice (the play that I did my thesis on), the play focuses too much on the "comedy" of the romantic trials of the Christians rather than the "tragedy" of Shylock. Antonio and Bassanio are only interesting when compared to Shylock because the Jew brings out the hypocrisy and cruelty of Christianity. The last act of the play is practicably negligible, and frankly uninteresting. They've conquered Shylock, dehumanized him, and practicably killed him (remember, a Jew converted to Christianity could no longer live in the Ghetto but would not be accepted by the Christians). And yet, we have this act that focuses on the love affair between the Christian characters in Portia's mansion. Frankly, I feel as if the 5th act is there not because the play needs it, but rather, the audience would demand that the loose ends be tied up.* Frankly, I wish people would stop all this "Shakespeare is the greatest writer of all time" nonsense. He's like the Beatles. At his peak, he provided some really amazing work that very few have bested, admittedly. However, at his worst, he provided some absolute poo poo that an untalented hack could create. Now, to answer someone's questions about Catcher in the Rye: It is a very good book, but I think part of the reason why it remains so widely studied is two fold: 1. The novel speaks to post 1950s youths, and still does. The disillusionment felt by Holden echoes much of the feelings behind youth culture today, though much more complexly and maturely. 2. Salinger hasn't written another work since, and he's still alive, giving the work a mysterious legendary air. Let's be honest, our society loves a good story behind a work of art. Granted, I haven't read the book since high school, so I'm going off what I remember, so take my thesis with a grain of salt. Holden's journey is similar to James' journey in Rebel Without a Cause. On the surface, both seem to live normal, well-adjusted lives, but on closer inspection, one recognizes how dysfunctional they really are. Holden has great schooling and opportunities, but his parents are completely absent in the text. Now, English is like free-jazz. You pay attention to what isn't put into the text over what is.** If something pivotal is missing from a work, the author did so intentionally. Salinger didn't just forget to include a scene with Holden's parents. Basically, Holden is a lost youth. He is lost in a modern world, he lacks direction. His depression arose from the moral destruction all around him. Why does he etch out the word "gently caress" from the elementary school's staircase? Because he sees the decay in even the young children. Catcher in the Rye is heavily studied because it really does sum up the post World War II and 9/11 mindset. I wish I could say more, but I would have to revisit it. Now, I have a question. What can I do with my thesis once it's done? I have a thesis that got an A from a tough professor just sitting around, and I'm really proud of it. I basically argue that Shylock serves as a huge inspiration for Jim in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. * I may be mistaken, but it wasn't until the 20th century that the ambiguous and incomplete ending was accepted by the audience. At the end of a work, everything either had to be dead or fixed, where as today, many of our best works leave things hanging in the balance. Consider the ending of the Godfather Part I and the Godfather Part II. At the end of I, everyone who betrayed Don Corleone is dead, and Michael is now in charge. Disorder has been restored to order. Yet, at the end of II, although everyone is dead, balance has not been revived. Michael is a shell of a man: he tore apart his family, he lost his wife and children, and the Corleone crime syndicate is basically in shambles. Juxtaposed with the rise of the Vito, Michael's downfall and the lack of any restoration drives home the tragedy inherent in the work. It's one of the reasons why II is more satisfying than I. The first film provides resolution to the characters, but their actions do not justify that resolution. The second film provides no retribution, which emphasizes the destructive nature of the crime family. ** Not really. You really should pay attention to both, but if you want to wow your teacher really quickly, just note something of importance that the author didn't put into the text.
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May 30, 2009 02:25
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Cemetry Gator posted:Basically, the only reason why you should ever glance at the Winter's Tale is for the stage direction, "A bear attacks." It's "Exit, pursued by a bear." Pretty good line for a hack.
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May 30, 2009 02:35
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Cemetry Gator posted:2. Salinger hasn't written another work since, and he's still alive, giving the work a mysterious legendary air. Let's be honest, our society loves a good story behind a work of art. There's some about it here: http://partners.nytimes.com/books/98/09/13/specials/salinger-speaks.html (though it's 35 years old), and a bit more on wikipedia. Also, thanks for the recommendations, Brainworm. Extortionist fucked around with this message at 04:15 on May 30, 2009 |
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May 30, 2009 04:11
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This thread is much too fun not to pose a few more questions before I turn in for the night: When grading my freshmen's papers, I'm eager to give them enough feedback and constructive criticism to help them with future assignments. But at the same time, I'm also wary of inundating them with too much information and completely overwhelming them. If you were to quantify, roughly how much commenting do you leave on their work? Do you consider it imperative to make some kind of mark on every single page? Most teachers tend to write out a comprehensive assessment at the end of a paper -- if you do this, what is the "right" length for this assessment? Do you have a favorite Romantic poet? With all the time you've spent teaching, attending conferences, and rubbing elbows with the members of academia, I imagine you've met a bunch of famous literary folk. Is there any one person that made you especially freak out upon meeting? I'm a big Milton fan, so getting to stop and chat a bit with Stanley Fish was a thrill for me. I also almost met Salman Rushdie one time. I'm sure that would have been pretty awesome too.
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May 30, 2009 05:43
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Did you find that learning foreign languages helped your English writing skils? Verbal? If so, would you expect such results to be typical?
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May 30, 2009 15:54
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Brainworm posted:Consider the backstory implied by each of these: Even if you don't want to because you're a highly intelligent English professor who basically gets to write the rules on using grammar, shouldn't you use "whom" in the first three sentences, instead of "who"? Or am I reading this improperly? billion dollar bitch fucked around with this message at 18:45 on May 30, 2009 |
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May 30, 2009 18:20
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billion dollar bitch posted:Even if you don't want to because you're a highly intelligent English professor who basically gets to write the rules on using grammar, shouldn't you use "whom" in the first three sentences, instead of "who"? Or am I reading this improperly?
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May 30, 2009 19:29
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Cemetry Gator posted:Now, I have a question. What can I do with my thesis once it's done? I have a thesis that got an A from a tough professor just sitting around, and I'm really proud of it. I basically argue that Shylock serves as a huge inspiration for Jim in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Publish it. I'm assuming this is an undergraduate thesis, so the Bellingham Review and Shenandoah might be good places to start looking.* Both of them are pretty selective forums for publishing undergraduate work, and even if you don't get in you'll get some feedback. If this is a Master's thesis, you've got more options. There are plenty of graduate student journals and grad. student conferences you could take this to. But, either way, get it out there. * You could also look at other undergraduate journals that publish critical essays, like Blood Ink, Flyway, or Fugue. Just as good. Basically, you want an undergraduate journal that solicits nationally, not just from on campus.
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May 30, 2009 22:21
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Scum Freezebag posted:If you were to quantify, roughly how much commenting do you leave on their work? Do you consider it imperative to make some kind of mark on every single page? Most teachers tend to write out a comprehensive assessment at the end of a paper -- if you do this, what is the "right" length for this assessment? When it comes to commenting, less is more. As long as it's the right kind of less. The first thing to do is build some kind of self-assessment into your students' writing process -- that is, get something from them that tells you what they think they did well or poorly. Then comment on the self-assessments, breaking the assessment down into a few categories, like
The last three categories on this list are where you'll want to concentrate your comments, and my goal's usually to improve one thing from each of these categories during the semester. The last two are generally the most difficult, since that's where you run into chronic writing problems that may be LD-related. This means that your comments can be as short as four sentences: the first should give an overview of how well the self-assessment matches your assessment, and the next three should detail your three problems. If you're a soft touch you might want to throw some positive feedback or encouragement in there, too, but some first-year writers are a little masochistic. So do what you think best given the personality you're working with. Also, I think I mentioned Richard Haswell earlier in the thread. Either way your question speaks exactly to his research areas. I'd start with "Minimal Marking," (College English 45: 1983) and work forward. quote:Do you have a favorite Romantic poet? William Blake. Songs of Innocence and Experience is a fantastic concept for a series of poems, and so direct that I'm amazed it wasn't done before him. And if you can get over the Dungeons & Dragons imagery that shows up in his other work there's a deal worth seeing. quote:With all the time you've spent teaching, attending conferences, and rubbing elbows with the members of academia, I imagine you've met a bunch of famous literary folk. Is there any one person that made you especially freak out upon meeting? It hasn't been the people so much as the conditions I've met them under. I met Toni Morrison in a bar outside Phillipsburg once, completely by accident. We ended up talking for a couple hours. And I went drinking with Naomi Klein* and Ariel Levy,** too (not at the same time) -- in both cases we happened to be giving talks in the same town.*** The amount of alcohol involved in all of this is probably a warning sign. Anyway. Those kinds of run-ins are more interesting than the usual conference conferencing, where you mostly trade predictable academic points and dulled stories.**** * Also her husband, Avi Lewis, who non-Canadians probably won't recognize. ** Who is, in all seriousness, the best dressed lesbian I've ever met. Not that this sets a high bar. *** Although, in Levy's case, she was giving a high profile talk at a high profile university while I was addressing a select audience of retirees at one of the East Coast's nicer public libraries. **** Except one time I convinced a party of well-known senior Shakepeareans to break into the Alamo with me.
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May 30, 2009 23:44
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Radd McCool posted:Did you find that learning foreign languages helped your English writing skils? Verbal? If so, would you expect such results to be typical? It didn't. Not even a little. I've heard that rationale for learning foreign languages thrown around before, and it always confuses me. Like there was nothing to be gained by learning, say, Spanish or Arabic.
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May 30, 2009 23:49
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Brainworm posted:It didn't. Not even a little. I've heard that rationale for learning foreign languages thrown around before, and it always confuses me. Like there was nothing to be gained by learning, say, Spanish or Arabic. It's definitely misleading. I'd say, rather, that learning a foreign language might help you understand English grammar better. An inflected language especially can teach you how to distinguish between who and whom, for example Mostly though, learning Latin has made me use too many subordinate clauses, so I guess it made me a WORSE writer.So that I'm actually asking something and not just nattering about grammar, hey Brainworm, what are your Top Ten Tips for the Timorous TA? I'll be teaching my own section of Elementary Latin next semester, and any help I can get would be valuable. edit: vvvvvvvv Yes, he should have used "whom." Strictly speaking, the relative clauses should have started with "with whom" but even I am not often that pretentious. Eggplant Wizard fucked around with this message at 00:57 on May 31, 2009 |
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May 31, 2009 00:13
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aneurysm posted:Page 8 of this thread. You should read this thread, it's interesting. I read the thread. I was just checking the actual rule. I guess I should rephrase the question: Despite Brainworm's unwillingness to use "whom" (because he's an English professor and thus gets to ignore the rules), would the indicated portions have been an appropriate place to use it? Or is my grammatical spider sense tingling in the wrong places? billion dollar bitch fucked around with this message at 00:40 on May 31, 2009 |
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May 31, 2009 00:34
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exactduckwoman posted:what are your Top Ten Tips for the Timorous TA? I'll be teaching my own section of Elementary Latin next semester, and any help I can get would be valuable. Ten, huh. These aren't going to be in any particular order. The best teaching tool you have is your relationship with your students. When they walk in on the first day, they may or may not like either the subject or the arc of the class. There's nothing you can do about that. You don't get to choose your students. But you do get to choose how you relate to them, and how you'll govern their relationships to one another in the classroom. I'm not sure that a student being comfortable with you (or in the class) guarantees his or her success, but an uncomfortable student will almost certainly fail. This doesn't mean your students have to like you. It just means that they need to think they can approach you. This gets to be a problem with new Professors and TAs because people who are insecure or nervous in the classroom almost reflexively use their expertise to establish some kind of control -- you know, turn the class into an exercise in I-know-and-you-don't. That's not the kind of control you want. Instead, you want to control the room by implicitly setting goals and meeting them collaboratively. Just for instance, you'll want to set up situations early on where the students help you. Forget the title of one of the books, a character name in a text, or something like that. The second a student volunteers it, you've changed your role in the classroom from Dictator to Chief Collaborator. You set precedents at the beginning of the semester and the beginning of every class. That is, students are going to follow the soft rules you lay down. So if you start each class with a lecture, students will listen, but they won't talk unless prompted. If you start a class with small group discussion, they'll talk, but might be tough to bring to attention. If you start the first class by leading them through the syllabus, they'll expect you to start class by leading them through the reading. And so on. Point is, if you've planned lecture and discussion, you've got to lead with the discussion. Otherwise, the discussion likely won't start well. Teach skills, not trivia. Probably, your students have course materials and a reference library that contains all the actual information they need to know. So your job isn't to be a second-rate book. It's to show your students how to do whatever they need to do to learn whatever they need to learn. So say a student asks a really simple factual question that was in the assigned reading, like "what does X do?" The wrong way to handle this is to tell her. She doesn't learn anything and you've just implied that your students don't need to do the reading. A better way to handle it is to ask if anyone else has the answer. Assuming someone volunteers it, ask where it came from. They'll probably say "the reading," so get something more specific, like "the beginning of chapter three." Then ask how that student found the passage so quickly. If you're in a typically asymmetrical class, your answerer will probably say something like "I write two or three word summaries at the top of each page." With that, you've set clear and useful expectations. Students are expected to read, but also to annotate their reading so it's useful as a reference later on. You get the idea. Work from time backward, not from objectives forward. The nuts thing about both graduate scholarship and TAing is that both are open ended. I mean that both comprise tasks that have no clear set of finishing criteria that aren't deadlines. You can always do more reading or re-reading or research or writing or revising, and you can always bring some greater depth of knowledge to the classroom -- you know, prepare answers to questions that might get asked. The problem with this is that any small complex of tasks can seem like they demand all of your time. And if you work from your objectives forward, that's exactly what they'll do. If you have an afternoon to prep class, it'll take all afternoon. And that's no way to live. It's not sustainable. Incidentally, I work with professors who haven't learned this. One in Biology routinely takes three or four hours to plan a class. Maybe her classes are good and maybe they aren't, but I'm sure her research isn't getting done and her home life probably sucks. So start working by budgeting your time. Decide how long you're willing to spend planning a class or researching whatever and then, when time runs out, drop it. Maybe it sucks. Maybe it's not finished. Doesn't matter. Just because you're a grad. student doesn't mean your college has a first mortgage on your life. Learn to be unprepared. That is, learn to be comfortable with your work not being done. Maybe you haven't prepped everything you need for a class. It happens. But being nervous about it won't help. If you're working hard, you're doing it wrong. Your goal in class, as in life, is to find the smartest path of least resistance. You won't always. So the second you find yourself thinking "this is really tough," stop whatever you're doing. You've hosed up. The only questions that matter are "how?" and "how can I fix it?" And be direct about this. If you're putting a lot of energy into some class bit and not getting anything back, stop. If what you've done wrong isn't immediately apparent, ask your students what's going on, e.g. "So I'm really hitting this and not feeling anything, so I'm pretty sure it's not working. Here's what I wanted to accomplish. How can we get there?" Speak plainly. As the question above. If something's worth hiding, hide it. If someone needs to know it, say it. E.g. "so I read your paper, and the first thing I thought when I finished it is, 'this guy had to be wasted. Had to be. Because his last few pieces of writing were pretty good and this is totally incoherent'" (at least when this is what you actually thought). Or "you two coming in late, it's really starting to piss me off. I like both of you. If I were going to choose two people in here to go out drinking with, it'd probably be you. But that makes it worse because I've already cut you too much slack, and I think you think that I don't care whether you're on time." Your students are adults. They can make their own decisions. So you can't order them around. The worst you can do is threaten, and threats are for people who are out of ideas. Learn to fail fast. Teaching is complicated and lots of things you do aren't going to work. So as you get to know your class, learn how to spot when something's not working. And when something's not working, change it (on the fly if you have to). It's not like you're going to make things worse. For the past eight years or so I've kept a notebook of everything I've tried in every class and how well I think it worked. After every semester ends, I check these entries against my evaluations. Get feedback. Seriously. Student feedback is the only tool you have for making better classes, so get as much as you can use. Obviously there are end-of-semester evaluations, but that doesn't mean you can't ask students to fill out (anonymous) home-rolled evaluations every couple weeks. Shut up. The quality of any class is inversely proportional to the time you spend talking. You might be thinking that talking is the only way to present everything your class needs to know, and that might be true. But what you say has nothing to do with what your students learn. This is why information delivery systems like television are lousy educational tools. They can present tons of information, but they don't have any mechanism for discovery or self-direction. That's what your class time is for. So do what you want, however you want. But remember that your metrics for success should involve what your students learn, not what they had the opportunity to learn. In my experience, this means taking every opportunity to back off and let the class go where it wants.
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May 31, 2009 02:06
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billion dollar bitch posted:Despite Brainworm's unwillingness to use "whom" (because he's an English professor and thus gets to ignore the rules), would the indicated portions have been an appropriate place to use it? Or is my grammatical spider sense tingling in the wrong places? Yes, "whom" would have been grammatically correct in all of those cases. If you're deciding which to use, remember that "who" is correct only when it names an independent clause's grammatical subject. Sometimes it helps to substitute she/her or he/him in an active-voice paraphrase of the sentence in question, e.g. I contracted herpes from an escort who(m) I met in an airport lounge => I got herpes from her, therefore "whom."
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May 31, 2009 02:19
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Hi Brainworm. I haven't worked my way through your whole thread yet, but it's great so far. You are a very clear communicator. Question: Would you mind letting me pick your brain in an AIM or skype conversation? I just graduated from college and am going to try to make some pocket money tutoring local high school kids in writing, and I'd love any advice or pointers you could give me. I have some training in writing assistance and did it as a job at college for three years, but you clearly have some great knowledge and are good at communicating it, so I think I (and my potential tutees) could benefit a lot from your input. Please let me know - either find me on aim (AToastToThor) or shoot me an email at neil dot chaudhary at gmail.com.
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May 31, 2009 16:46
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Clobbermeister posted:Question: Would you mind letting me pick your brain in an AIM or skype conversation? I just graduated from college and am going to try to make some pocket money tutoring local high school kids in writing, and I'd love any advice or pointers you could give me. I have some training in writing assistance and did it as a job at college for three years, but you clearly have some great knowledge and are good at communicating it, so I think I (and my potential tutees) could benefit a lot from your input. Please let me know - either find me on aim (AToastToThor) or shoot me an email at neil dot chaudhary at gmail.com. I'll email you and we can go from there. Meantime, I think you'll want to pull some articles off of JSTOR, MUSE, etc. if you can still get to them. They're all short and totally readable. First off, you'll want two by Stephen North -- "The Idea of the Writing Center" and "The Idea of the Writing Center Revisited," which are probably both in College English. You'll also want the half-dozen or so articles comprising the so-called "Bartholomae/Elbow debate" (that is, David Bartholomae and Peter Elbow), plus whatever other article-length stuff you can get from Bartholomae. Top that off with Barbara Gleason's "Politics of Remediation" (that was in College Composition and Communication in 2000), plus whatever else of hers you can find. This is a bit of reading (but not as much as it sounds) and you don't have to read it right away or even very soon. You just want to get these articles before your college locks you out of its databases, because print copies are almost impossible to find and databases charge insane rates for per-article access.
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May 31, 2009 19:51
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Very interesting thread. Thanks, Brainworm. Was wondering if you had any general scholarly insight or recommendations for stagings of Midsummer and Merry Wives. I'm part of a theater company that does summer Shakespeare at a few venues in California, and our season opens next week.
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May 31, 2009 21:36
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Morty the Mad posted:Was wondering if you had any general scholarly insight or recommendations for stagings of Midsummer and Merry Wives. I'm part of a theater company that does summer Shakespeare at a few venues in California, and our season opens next week. I've got more for Midsummer than Wives, so here it goes. My thinking on Midsummer is that it was actually written more as a masque than a play -- and by "masque" I mean an intimate occasional performance like Milton's Comus, not one of those enormous productions by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones. The event(s) Midsummer was written for was almost certainly a wedding,* and my thinking is that the play was performed in pieces during the wedding celebration, possibly by a cast entirely of professional actors, but more likely (given the traditions surrounding these kinds of performances) by an ensemble that included both professional actors and the wedding guests (or participants). As you can imagine, this would make the play two kinds of entertainment; there's of course the play itself, and the fact that the play puts known people in awkward public positions and trades on their reputations, e.g. it could cast a notoriously cranky couple, say the bride's or groom's parents, as Titania and Oberon. The second significant consequence of this is that all the play's plots and subplots change settings in lock step. First, everyone's in Athens. Then everyone's in the forest. Then everyone's in Athens again. To me, this suggests that the performance was built around a wedding celebration that changed venues -- something like a pre-wedding indoor party (for Act I/Athens), followed by an outdoor reception (the forest), then the wedding proper (co-ordinating with the offstage weddings between acts IV and V), and a short indoor reception (for the Mechanicals' Act V Pyramus and Thisbe). This suggests to me that Midsummer has built into it at least two possible novelties. The first is the inclusion of semi-willing amateur actors or (for a similar effect) character construction that alludes to characters and relationships the audience would be familiar with (e.g. an Oberon and Titania who evoke Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie**). The second is a production that articulates with an existing celebration and so changes venues the same way the original Midsummer did. All you need are three locations: a place that could pass for anyplace in Athens (Act I), a place that could pass for a forest (Acts II-IV), and a place that could pass for a (probably indoor) amateur stage (Act V). Less ambitiously, Midsummer is built from a series of deeply parallel plots that illustrate the trials and virtues of different kinds of love. That parallel structure is really the only thing that holds the play together; without it, Act V is just a long joke loosely attached. So you'll want to think about how to double the roles (if you're going to) -- the conventional Theseus+Hippolyta/Oberon+Titania doubling makes sense, but only if your actors are recognizable doubles. If you're not doubling, you may want to make the parallels between these pairs pronounced through some other means. Also, your Demetrius and Lysander have to work with one another. You see some clear textual differences between Hermia and Helena (especially once they start fighting, but we should also remember that Helena's always sort of a masochist***), so your actresses there have some guidance. But Demetrius and Lysander don't get much textual guidance. They're both assholes when they don't get whatever they think they're entitled to, but that's really all we get for sure -- I mean, Demetrius comes off worse, but he also spends more time not getting what he wants. When Lysander's in love with Helena, he's just as mean as Demetrius is. So however your actors play these roles should work in their pairing, but also somehow parallel the play's other relationships. That's all I can think of on Midsummer. For Wives, I'm pretty sure that Bottom's rear end head was recycled for Falstaff's Hearne the Hunter costume (you just have to bolt on some antlers). So you can whack down your props budget the Renaissance way. * My own theory is that it was written for one wedding and revised for a second, but that's off the map. ** Because they're both semimagical and Angelina Jolie seems to share Titania's love for dark-skinned children. I know this is a terrible idea. *** Look at her spaniel speech. My friend Bruce Boehrer called it "an orgy of self-abasement." I don't think I could have said it better.
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May 31, 2009 23:03
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I'm really enjoying this thread. It's giving a great deal of good advice and interesting discussion. My question to you, how "nit picky" are you in terms of grammar? How hard do you come down on your students for stupid grammatical errors, i.e. sub-verb agreement, horribly wordy sentences, etc.
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May 31, 2009 23:39
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There's something to be said about attempted integration of entertainment and papers. Can you provide me with examples of student success and failure? It would likely help me work out my approach given that your perspective is that of my primary audience. This has all been a many year struggle against not knowing what other people find funny. I think my greatest 'hit' in recent years has been in a paper on The Metamorphosis; my first line mimicked the structure of the novella's first line. I think my worst failure is a self-referential paper on the process of writing a paper.* *I did not turn in this paper.
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Jun 1, 2009 08:42
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Brainworm posted:Ten, huh. These aren't going to be in any particular order. Thanks for these
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Jun 1, 2009 12:45
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BrideOfUglycat posted:My question to you, how "nit picky" are you in terms of grammar? How hard do you come down on your students for stupid grammatical errors, i.e. sub-verb agreement, horribly wordy sentences, etc. First off, I think we need to make a rough distinction between grammar and style. I'll call "grammar" clear violations of usage or syntax. This means misused apostrophes and misplaced commas, but also includes collocative errors (e.g. referring to water as "molten ice"). "Style" would be more about how words sound on the page, and described by "if/then" style rules, e.g. "if you want to emphasize X, it needs to either lead or end the paragraph." This includes wordy sentences and unclear writing and, more generally, problems whose correction must involve consultation with the writer, e.g. asking "which idea in this sentence is more important?" or "how did you want your reader to imagine your speaker's persona?" I'm separating these because both are symptomatic of process problems, but of different kinds of process problems -- more specifically, of problems that occur during different stages of the revision process. I mean, however you teach revision, there are always three stages. The first involves working globally with a complete draft -- cutting material and reordering what's left at the section or paragraph level. The second stage involves working within sections or paragraphs to improve e.g. phrasing and clarity, and the third is what we'd commonly call "proofreading" -- that is, correcting grammatical and formatting errors in a piece that is otherwise complete.* So how hard I "come down" on students has everything to do with what kinds of process problems their writing suggests. Remember, you can't teach grammar.** You can only teach the process side of it (proofreading), and that process side needs time to grow. Students need to learn which types of errors they make, look for constructions where those errors are most likely to occur, and use some formal process to correct those errors (which, remember, sound or look correct to them, so the process is deeply counterintuitive). Hitting grammatical errors like they're simply a product of lazy proofing (say, docking a point for every misplaced comma) is unlikely to improve anything and more than likely to produce some aversion to writing anything worthwhile; a student penalized for misusing commas will probably regress to shorter, simpler sentences. So you've got to grow the process; I don't mark off for grammar errors during the first couple papers (while I'm building proofreading), but start once students have a sufficient knowledge of their own usage problems to proofread effectively. Style is a slightly different version of the same case. Penalizing style problems gets you fewer errors, but in the form of regressive writing. And you don't want to reward stylistic immaturity over even poorly-executed complexity. So I set class standards that make "error-free" writing a C and disproportionately reward stylistic experiments (which I'll guide in comments but not often penalize). The analogy I usually use is that error-free paintings end up on those free-verse Hallmark cards that console people on the loss of their cats, not in museums. * You have to work in this order unless you want to waste lots and lots of time. Why stylistically revise or proofread a section you've got to cut? Why proofread a sentence that needs to be revised into clarity? ** That is, about a century of research firmly concludes that knowledge of grammatical rules does not improve the grammaticality of students' writing. Knowing or not knowing the "who/whom" rule, for instance, has no correlation with whether a writer correctly uses "who" and "whom" in his or her writing. A good summary of this research is Patrick Hartwell's "Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar" (College English 47 No. 2, 1985).
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Jun 1, 2009 16:16
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@Brainworm - I thought this thread had hit its peak with the modern/postmodern discussion, but then you went after Pope and Dryden. Keep it up! @Defenestration - I don't have plat...email me at Kappadelek at aol for MFA chatter...its not one of the monster programs though.
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Jun 1, 2009 16:17
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Radd McCool posted:There's something to be said about attempted integration of entertainment and papers. Can you provide me with examples of student success and failure? It would likely help me work out my approach given that your perspective is that of my primary audience. The best papers (and the best writing generally) entertain with style. Again, by "style," I mean the sound of the words on the page. The part of the writing that keeps the reader's interest doesn't distract from the part that delivers the content. The best ways to do this are by using concrete, specific details and by carefully guiding your tone. This means deciding how you want your writing to be understood, and keeping your writing tangible or image-centered. Tropes help with this but aren't strictly necessary. So you could use rough comparison. E.g. quote:The premature baby weighed ten ounces and had thin arms and legs. quote:The premature baby weighed less than a can of Coke, and had arms and legs like matchsticks. This is just one instance of preferring the particular (and the right kind of particular) to the general, which is one hallmark of all good writing. Take this typical introduction to a freshman-level paper: quote:Ever since the first caveman rose from his bed of pine needles, club in hand, freshly raped Neanderthal woman bleeding peacefully by his side, he has dreamed of harnessing the power of lightening to alleviate the most conspicuous symptoms of mental disorders such as bipolar disorder, catatonia, and schizophrenia. This paper will consider both the pros and cons of Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) after providing a brief overview of its evolution as a treatment of mental disorders. There's a kind of detail there, but it's not really harnessed to whatever the paper's going to focus on (presumably ECT). Better to start with a relevant narrative: quote:When I was in either first or second grade -- I honestly don't remember which -- I started lighting fires. They were tiny, fragile ones at first: the corners of discarded envelopes and textbook pages, unlucky mice, the dry-as-kindling litter you find caked against curbs in late July. But as I got older, about when my mom married the town Sheriff (who'd shot my biological father on the steps of a church scant blocks from my house), I graduated to larger fires in trashcans, mailboxes, and the occasional church. Nobody was hurt (except maybe Old Lady Semple, who lost a pension check), and I was shipped off to an asylum in Terre Haute for what we then called "shock treatments." That second example's maybe wordier and more confessional than it needs to be, but those details make it interesting and bear some relevance to the paper's likely subject. So it both engages and informs the reader, rather than having alternate and basically unrelated sections take on each job in turn. The best way to get this is to read good pieces of non-fiction, like what you'd find in e.g. The Believer. I'd also recommend picking up Strunk and White, which gives the best guidance on this matter I've yet seen.
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Jun 1, 2009 17:06
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Brainworm posted:As a litmus test: You can cut adjectives from a sentence without drastically altering what the sentence means. You can't do the same with nouns. E.g.: This is not a useful test for distinguishing parts of speech. There is nothing obviously wrong with (c), despite the noun being cut-out. If the lead-up sentence had been "We purchased some peyote.", then (c) means nothing very different. Here are a better tests: 1) Adjectives have a comparative and superlative forms. Nouns don't. Silly (adj.) -> sillier, silliest Table (noun) -> *tabler, *tablest 2) Noun phrases can take determiners, adjectives do not. Silly (adj.) -> *the silly, *a silly Table (noun) -> the table, a table This is also why I don't agree with your conclusion that "a lot" is an adjective. It doesn't behave like one: *a lotter, *a lottest. It should be considered a quantifier, and grouped with words like "much", "most", "many", "few", "a few", etc.
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Jun 1, 2009 21:01
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