I'm still an English professor. Shoot.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > I'm still an English professor. Shoot.

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

Got a source for that quote? Google turns up nothing. Also: "I put forth a proposition" is not only pretentious but redundant. Seems like that guy could use a few more English classes.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 20:47

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 18:56

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

the JJ posted:

Enjoy.

Eesh.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 23:28

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

The Scientist posted:

I have been watching a ton of documentaries about Mountaineering, and the following question came up:

Which of these is correct?

"The climber spent a week in base camp acclimatizing to the extreme altitude."

Or

"The climber spent a week in base camp acclimating to the extreme altitude."

The second one. I never heard the first outside of Powerpoint presentations in the military. "Acclimatize" is a word that means exactly the same thing, but it sounds silly to me. :bahgawd:

Eugene V. Dubstep fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Mar 17, 2016

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 21:20

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

JessicaDupre posted:

Hi, I'm new here, also a humanities professor like other people on this thread. I'd like to hear your thoughts on voice in writing, feminist satire, and sexism in online discourse.

You could try JSTOR.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2016 20:11

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

Stabbatical posted:

So, my question is are all defences of one text as being 'better' or of a 'higher quality' than another just an expression of the background of the person making that claim? Are there any good arguments for that which aren't marred by the either the economic or social self-interests of the persons making them?

Often I'm pretty stumped by these sorts of statements as well. I don't think they're necessarily unjustified, only that they rely on more background knowledge than I have. I can imagine that if a particular critic spends most of his public life arguing that "quality" means rigorously metrical, allusive, and traditional, and furthermore that Milton in particular is the "most wonderfully sublime poet in any language," then he would feel comfortable referring to him offhand as "higher quality" than Ogilby in an essay that isn't concerned directly with either poet. Hume assumes that his readers are familiar enough with his position to pick up on the irony. For example, if Mike Stolaska said "Interstellar is the best science fiction movie since The Phantom Menace," then I would realize that he is actually insulting Interstellar�not because I myself dislike Interstellar, but because I know that Stolaska founded his career on mocking the Star Wars prequels. Hume is definitely NOT appealing to any critical consensus on Milton, since at that time none existed. Remember, Milton in the 1700s is still a pretty controversial figure because of his republicanism.

So no, it's not a circular justification, it just requires that to understand it you read either (A) a lot more Hume than this one essay or (B) the helpful footnotes that tell you what he means.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 01:18

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

FightingMongoose posted:

Thanks for the reply. Trip report time:

The company doing the production decided to go off book so I spent a lot of time watching Prospero monologue to a wooden doll, a lot of time listening to what I guess was the original Shakespearean verse set to a capella, and at the end it was revealed that Prospero was an old man in a nursing home.

On the plus side the actor for Prospero was really good and I found them quite moving when they were talking to the audience or another actor and not a doll.

Oof.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2017 14:27

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

Baron Porkface posted:

In fancy-pants literature speak, what role does quidditch really play in Harry Potter?

A lot of posh English youths wearing dresses, getting high, and grasping long rods while swatting balls around: I'll let you write the paper.

e: oh, I thought I was in the talk-poo poo-about-lit thread, which I also have bookmarked. I'll let the actual English prof. answer, but since I'm here you might be interested in a review I just read by Geoff Dyer of some other book about soccer. He doesn't like the book, but he does sketch some of the ways people might look at sport symbolically/philosophically.

Eugene V. Dubstep fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Dec 31, 2017

# ¿ Dec 31, 2017 05:46

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

I first read this thread before I started undergrad full-time, and now I'm a couple months away from a Master's in literature. It's been almost as powerful a corrective to my academic writing as the "venting about students" thread. Nothing so far has caused me as much heartache as this line:

Brainworm posted:

And "thus." loving thus. You've got no license to use that word unless you wear a suit of armor for a living.

I wish I had never read this post. Growing up, I had two dogs: a big lummox who ran straight into the electric fence and yelped whenever deer appeared on the other side, and a quicker one who learned to wriggle under after the first time it shocked her. No matter how much I write, I can't break the habit of structuring paragraphs as if I'm approaching the all-purpose transition thus, and I have to turn somersaults to avoid it when I finally remember Brainworm bitching about words that annoy him.

Eugene V. Dubstep fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Apr 30, 2019

# ¿ Apr 30, 2019 17:56

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

Discendo Vox posted:

What's wrong with "thus"? Supplanted by "ergo"?

"hence"?

Out of those three, I would think "thus" is the least offensive.

# ¿ May 9, 2019 23:25

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

Under what circumstances did/do you revoke tenure?

# ¿ Jun 23, 2019 23:54

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

Wallet posted:

The third just seems like fraud.

Yeah.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2019 15:08

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

Finally, someone has the balls to say what we're all thinking: Tootsie is better than Hamlet

# ¿ Apr 11, 2020 16:38

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

Toph Bei Fong posted:

I think some of this is that a lot of them are just gatekeeping nerds begging to be taken seriously. You can see the same sort of behavior in comic book fans.

For example, Ulysses is a lot of dick jokes, written by a guy who loved loving the farts out of his wife. It's a funny book about a cuckold getting himself out of the house so his wife can continue her affair. And a lot of this is framed in the most deadly serious way, but at the core, it's a series of funny set pieces: a silly teacher gets bullied because he's such a dramatic loser compared to his Chad med school roommate, a guy jacks off to a pretty girl while watching fireworks, the teacher and his buddies have an argument over whether Shakespeare is the greatest author who ever wrote, or the greatest great author who ever lived... The dissonance between the subject matter and the tone is the point. Gravity's Rainbow is a paranoid fantasy about a Harvard doofus who gets caught up in shenanigans because the map of girls he's hosed happens to sync up with a map of rocket bombs dropped on London, which They are convinced means something, even though their math specialist keeps telling them that no, it's just a stupid coincidence. It features, among other things, one of the villains hiding out in a pig costume to escape capture, only to be captured and castrated because They are so incompetent that they're mistaken him for the hero...

This is basically right but can we at least be clear that, crude humor notwithstanding, Ulysses is a formally difficult novel. You're not likely to pick it up for the first time and understand what's going on, and for that matter the plot isn't even the reason the book is so widely admired and studied. Literature professors are positioned well to guide students to an understanding of it that they would never achieve without a much broader and more involved independent reading of the whole canon before Joyce, not to mention Irish history.

Same goes for GR.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2021 10:01

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 18:56

Eugene V. Dubstep: Oct 4, 2013; Can't post for 8 years!

Wallet posted:

Some of them are. Some of them just want to provide a list of the animals symbolically associated with different characters in Ulysses as if that somehow gives it deeper meaning.

Well yeah, that's why I only said literature professors are 'positioned well' to help students understand and appreciate what's going on with Ulysses. I meant it in the same sense that the Chiefs' offensive line is positioned well to protect Mahomes from a sack.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2021 15:23

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > I'm still an English professor. Shoot.