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Brainworm, I am pretty good at other subjects, but my major problem is answering questions regarding Reading Comprehension. Although I understand College Reading Comprehension is different than K-12 ("Authors Message" vs "Write Me a Report"), I need some help, and you seem like just the person I need. 1- What are some good reading strategies that I could someday pass onto my future students? Hopefully some that might also help benefit me. 2- What are some good 'reading questions' to ask? I just hate creating "What color is X character's hat in chapter 2?" sort of questions. 3- What are some good childrens literature to recommend to preteens? (4th/5th/6th Grade), understandable if you can't answer this one.
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May 4, 2010 09:39
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Brainworm posted:I think it's absolutely possible. The thing is, grad school is full of the kinds of work that expands to fill all the time you're willing to give it. Teaching is especially like that, and part of being a good teacher -- a part I'm still learning -- is spotting when you've hit that point when each hour you work accomplishes less than the last. This is absolutely right on the money. I'm a history Ph.D. student, and I consider my school my job. Therefore, I hold 8-hour days, and have absolutely no problem with not getting completely swamped and upset at my workload. A typical sememster for me will be 12 hours of coursework at this point, which is normally three seminars. That's a whole ton of reading and plenty of writing. Just by sticking to a schedule and not doing the "jerk off around the office for three hours and go play videogames" thing that I see so many other students do, keeping my head above water is no problem at all. A further comment on what you've said about there being jobs for good people. I am confronted, constantly, with a wall of negative bullshit from other graduate students. Most of them fully believe they will never get a job. Why, then, I ask, are they there at all? Most of them, again, have no real reason. That "escapism" you mentioned. I have a feeling that if only the people who knew what graduate studies entailed, and were willing to to what is necessary to secure a position entered programs, the numbers would be a whole lot less inflated and horrifying. I'm not by any means saying that it is a "do this, then this, then this, enjoy tenure!" kind of thing, but there are certain steps that will greatly improve your chances. Publish if at all possible, conference all the time, this kind of thing. Most people, though, are just in it for the fantasy, seems like. edit: further thought - the people who seem to waste absolutely huge amounts of time are the same ones that seem to complain about their comps reading lists the most. Huh.. wonder why its tough to read four or five books in a week when you spend all your time complaining to people about how a word in the local paper's crossword is misspelled. edit 2: uh oh right, a question! I actually was wondering what the comprehensives part of an English program was like. I assume it is along the same lines as history where you are given a bunch of broad-rear end questions about your various fields and you have to explain developments in the historiography of them. For example, an older question my professor showed me was "explain the changes in the historiography of Britain's Reform Act of 1832. Carry your discussion up to the present, include at least ten references to specific works and authors." What kind of things were you forced to answer in your trial by fire? Platypus Farm fucked around with this message at 12:35 on May 4, 2010 |
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May 4, 2010 12:27
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Brainworm posted:That said, I certainly wouldn't go to graduate school if I thought of it as a sort of sacrifice fly -- years of paying dues that'll land an ultimately rewarding job. If you're not going to enjoy graduate school you shouldn't go, and if you don't like it you should leave; there's no job, professorial or otherwise, that'll meet the kinds of expectations you'll build out of six or seven years of self-imposed suffering. I think you are being unduly dismissive of the idea that "whether you will get a career out of it" can or should be the deciding factor in whether graduate school is worthwhile. There are plenty of people who would enjoy graduate school, and would be happy to go if they could get an academic career out of it, but who don't want to spend six years of their life on it and then go into a different career, poorer and six years behind everyone else. And that's why the distinction between humanities and other subjects matters: there are plenty of jobs for chemistry phds outside of academia, whereas non-academic jobs for philosophy phds are even rarer than academic ones.
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May 4, 2010 13:55
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chinchilla posted:Here's an unrelated question: have you read any Douglas Adams? Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? I've loved those books since middle school, for the way their words are crafted, and I wonder what an expert would think of them. I read the Hitchiker's books at about the same age, and I still like them. Don't get me wrong -- these are farces, and have a way of wearing out as most farces do. That's imprecise. What I mean is that the Hitchiker's series, like conventional farces (Marlowe's Jew of Malta or Toole's Confederacy) relies on delivering a series of outlandish surprises, either as plot developments or revelations of character. Of course there's more going on in Hitchiker, but this aspect of it doesn't stand up to repeated readings; for me, re-reading the books (or listening to the radio drama) goes best when I've very nearly forgotten about them. But I've noticed that people seldom talk about Adams's versatility as a writer. I don't mean genre versatility, since most of what he writes well is similar in style and tone; I mean his facility with different forms. The man wrote both a radio play and a series of novels that are both at least durably popular and well-crafted, if not likely classics. That kind of broad strength in a writer is really quite rare. Every once in a while you'll see a well-scripted movie from a novelist, but even with someone like Nicholas Sparks you're more likely to get The Last Song; Arthur C. Clarke managed a twofer with 2001, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find many writers from the last century with like hits in both prose and script. quote:Also, do you put the footnote symbol before or after the comma? After. Footnote markers go after everything else -- punctuation, parentheses, and so on.
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May 4, 2010 20:21
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ChampRamp posted:Biggest pet peeve? Bad grammar? As far as writing goes, probably bad style. I mean, if you're a native speaker and don't have some movie of the week literacy challenge, writing is like wearing a suit. Wearing it correctly might pose some challenge, I guess, but what really matters is whether the whole thing's done well. The key question isn't whether you've done anything wrong, but whether you're pulling it off. And what frustrates me isn't bad style, exactly. It's writers constantly asking the wrong questions -- focusing on what's "correct" instead of what's "good," as though matters of great importance and baffling complexity were routinely navigated by doing things correctly instead of well.
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May 5, 2010 13:16
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Can you tell me about Othello? I'm seeing it this week and I want to be prepared. I can, I can. In fact, I just finished a really great project where a class of students produced Othello. So I've been talking about it regularly for almost a year. The rookie mistake that readers make about Othello and, to a lesser extent, plays like Merchant and Taming, is that these plays are "about" some kind of cultural identity -- what it means to be Muslim, Jewish, or a woman in a society that oppresses or devalues the same. Don't get me wrong. These are important issues in a modern political and social context where unfounded discrimination carries considerable weight. But I don't think issues this broad can be at the center of effective drama in general, and I certainly do not think they are at the center of Othello. I mean, it matters that Othello is a moor, but it's less important for the play than his inexperience with Venetian culture, his outlook on marriage, or his sense of his own dignity. So instead of thinking of Othello as a play driven by racial and religious differences, I think it makes more sense to think of it as driven by jealousy. I don't want to flatten the play for anyone who hasn't seen it or doesn't know it, but the play fits together nicely when you consider how, and on what basis, each character is jealous of another, and how this jealousy informs their actions. So just take the play's opening. Brabantio and Roderigo are jealous of Othello because he's married to Desdemona -- taken something that both these characters feel variously entitled to. Roderigo of course wants to sleep with her, and Brabanto thinks, perhaps justifiably, that decisions about his daughter's welfare should be his, not her now-husband's. Iago is, well, basically jealous of everyone who has more than him. Of course Cassio outranks him, but Roderigo also has more money, Brabantio a higher social station, and so on. I think that's part of why he wants to hurt both of these characters so badly. You get the idea. Jealousy isn't the only motive in the play, but it's a major one, and the only one that all the characters share. I've mentioned this before, but It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has an excellent rewriting of Othello on exactly those terms (Season Four's "Mac's Banging the Waitress").
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May 5, 2010 13:49
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Do you go to the international Shakespeare conferences? I'm sure it's pretty much like any other conference but as it's invitation only I like to imagine this shadowy cabal of Shakespearean scholars setting the agenda for the next two years of study and participating in dark rites, like calling up his ghost to settle textual disputes or just to have bitch sessions with him about the latest horrendous adaptations.
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May 14, 2010 00:53
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Great thread. Could I coax you into talking about Songs of Innocence and Experience? I notice that you mentioned Blake is your favourite of the Romantics and singled these two tomes out. Specifically on the base concept of innocence/experience, paradise/the fall from grace, pure/corrupted, etc. but I'd be interested to hear anything really. edit: I didn't like how that last bit sounded reading it back, sorry. Also reading back in a bit more detail somebody seems to be taking the same set of exams as me this summer. Hoorah for As You Like It, Tess, Songs and Brideshead Revisited, boo to the English A-level system. Some more questions following on from this revelation, seeing as all I'm allowed to think about at the moment is the same stack of books. Was Tess raped*? I seem to keep upsetting people by saying Tess wanted it but it's a comment on natural law and how it would have been impossible for her to consent thus she is treated as if she were raped. I found it fairly amusing that Hardy described it as 'a liberal education', eerily foreshadowing the university experience. I had a look into what some critics made of As You Like It and it's mixed. Harold Bloom is a fan, quite a lot of others disliked it. What's the Brainworm verdict? You commented that it was all about Rosalind but any thoughts from a 'I have been reading this thing for months, an interesting take on it would be nice' as opposed to a 'I'm going to see this soon, what should I know?' viewpoint. I thought it was interesting on a gender/sexuality level with the buffet of crossdressing, homoeroticism and wrestling on offer. I spotted similarities to Lear too, do you think this was somewhat intentional or am I jumping the gun and does Shakespeare just get off on the usurping of a position of power following by a banishing thing? Is 'Exit, Pursued by a Bear' a cool name for a band? *No extra message, just trying to wean myself into using footnotes. ascheapaschewinggum fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Jun 1, 2010 |
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May 27, 2010 04:23
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Brainworm posted:That kind of broad strength in a writer is really quite rare. Every once in a while you'll see a well-scripted movie from a novelist, but even with someone like Nicholas Sparks you're more likely to get The Last Song; Arthur C. Clarke managed a twofer with 2001, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find many writers from the last century with like hits in both prose and script.
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May 27, 2010 09:50
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i like nice words
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TelevisedInsanity posted:Brainworm, I am pretty good at other subjects, but my major problem is answering questions regarding Reading Comprehension. Although I understand College Reading Comprehension is different than K-12 ("Authors Message" vs "Write Me a Report"), I need some help, and you seem like just the person I need. First, apologies for taking so long to get to this -- I'm right now wrapping up a month-long research trip in China/Tibet, and that's kept me pretty busy. Anyway. I've got a few reading strategies, but I'd like to start by rethinking the "author's message" category, which seems a little vexed. That is, there's a kind of reading practice that assumes an author writes e.g. a story because he or she is trying to make a political or philosophical statement or hide some message in the text that it is a good reader's responsibility to recover. I'm not sure that this is a useful way to read. What is a useful way to read depends largely on the conventions of the thing you're reading. For a short story or a novel or a play, it is useful to ask questions about character motivation; while motivation allows some interpretive range, explorations of character motivation generally show whether a reader has understood the text at a basic level. So questions like "why do you think Hamlet chooses to fake insanity?" are useful. You'll get different responses, sure, but the line between plausible and implausible responses is usually pretty stark. I think this also means that a good reading strategy thinks of a text as something other than a series of encoded messages; I've gone on about literature and tradition enough in this thread, so I'll stop by saying that a good reading strategy pays attention to the type of text that is being read and the conventions of that textual type. Short stories and novels either develop or reveal character. Poems use rhyme and meter and imagery. I think good reading practices exercise some knowledge of these distinctions and conventions. quote:3- What are some good childrens literature to recommend to preteens? This isn't a strong point of mine. I think literature for kids that age really needs to get them to own their capacities for thought, planning, intellectual discipline, and quick thinking. So specific books? This'll be scattered. Maybe Ender's Game or Dune, though I'm not thrilled by either as an adult. Asimov might be a good choice. I think biographies are good choices, too -- maybe the one of Henry Hill (Wiseguy?). Of course since I've been reading up on China, etc. I think a great kids' book would be this abridged translation of "Journey to the West" titled Monkey. It focuses on a trickster character like you'd see in Watership Down. I think the bottom line is that anything that encourages kids to be clever or crafty, and gives them some models to work from, is the way to go.
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May 30, 2010 14:16
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Someone on another forum I read posted this E-mail he sent to a professor and I'm wondering if this is something that'd get the student in trouble:quote:Subject: Enjoying [COLLEGE EDITED OUT]?
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May 30, 2010 16:41
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Sounds like that student is just a huge prick. That, or the professor has a massive ego problem. But, either way, sounds like the kind of letter you'd have to sort of be a prick to write in the first place. It isn't like harassment or anything, so outside of having the student's name circulate as someone that's kind of a prick, I doubt there'd be any real recourse. edit: I just saw the last line. So, this guy got an "A" in a course he took at a more well known university, but seemingly did poorer at whatever college he is haranguing this professor from. Seems like a pretty boring case of "professor GAVE ME a bad grade" then. Probably wouldn't even make a blip on the prof's radar.
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May 30, 2010 20:42
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This is a ridiculous question, and it's open to anyone. How can I cite something from this thread? Not for a real publication, obviously, just for a class paper. Brainworm's little essay about Gen Ed programs is relevant to what I'm writing. I can't be arsed to find another source, and honestly, I think he expressed it best and it's his ideas I'd like to use. Borrow, that is, and not steal. Is this even possible?
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Jun 3, 2010 20:22
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chinchilla posted:I can't be arsed to find another source This is your problem. What Brainworm says here is his opinion. His educated, well informed opinion, but certainly not something you should be using to support your argument. I suppose you could call it a "personal communication," but even then you'd want his real name and position.
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Jun 3, 2010 23:35
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:I think you are being unduly dismissive of the idea that "whether you will get a career out of it" can or should be the deciding factor in whether graduate school is worthwhile. There are plenty of people who would enjoy graduate school, and would be happy to go if they could get an academic career out of it, but who don't want to spend six years of their life on it and then go into a different career, poorer and six years behind everyone else. I think the real issue is whether graduate school is worth the opportunity cost -- that is, whether you're better off getting a PhD, working for six years, or getting a professional degree. There's a nice US Census Bureau report on the matter here. Simply put, you're probably better off getting a PhD in Chemistry than a PhD in English, but you still likely won't outearn a dentist or a lawyer. What that says to me is that you'd better be chasing a PhD because you enjoy the chase. Obviously a chemist will make more with a PhD than with a BS, but he or she would make even more money as a doctor or a vet. So yeah, there's the risk that your PhD won't help you at all, and you end up six years behind everybody. But even if your PhD-required job works out, you're still certainly behind where you'd be if you'd gotten a professional degree. That's why I'm saying grad school has to be worth it on its own. You always end up behind -- it's just a matter of who you're behind, on what terms, and how far.
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Jun 11, 2010 20:27
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elentar posted:Do you go to the international Shakespeare conferences? I haven't been invited to the International Shakespeare Conference. I did have to turn down a short-term lecturer job from The Shakespeare Institute (the organization that hosts the ISC). So I've talked with Kate (McLuskie) and John (Jowett) pretty extensively about what they do. I think the closest American analog to the SI is the Folger; basically, you've got a small and relatively permanent staff of almost-over-the-hill academics who turn out bread-and-butter publications -- textbooks, companions, and occasional play editions. Things that normally don't get much credit in the academic market but are really useful for students. The ISC is really a branch of that, a sort of forum where contributors to those volumes get lined up, new companions get thought through, and the like. The conventional wisdom is that the way to get an invitation, if you want one, is to attach yourself to one of these volumes as a contributor. That's actually not difficult if you're a grad student and someone happens to be turning out e.g. an encyclopedia-style volume. So it is a little insidious, at least in the sense that the SI develops really good, but sometimes loaded, tools for graduate and undergraduate study. But I think that group's a little too low-energy to raise the dead. That said, I'd worm my way in just to hear them gossip. Academics are worse than just about any other group I've seen in that regard.
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Jun 24, 2010 18:58
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ascheapaschewinggum posted:Great thread. Glad you like it, and I'm glad to be able to get back on it after China and the avalanche of work that came after. quote:Could I coax you into talking about Songs of Innocence and Experience? I notice that you mentioned Blake is your favourite of the Romantics and singled these two tomes out. Specifically on the base concept of innocence/experience, paradise/the fall from grace, pure/corrupted, etc. but I'd be interested to hear anything really. I should say before I start that although I like Blake, the Romantics are a really weak point for me -- a well-rounded MA holder with an interest in Blake could probably give you a weightier answer. But as a development in English poetic tradition, Blake's Songs are most interesting because of the way they frame the reader's relationship with the narrator and with the public, authorial personality Blake constructed for himself. I'm really more interested in the narration part of this, since I think that's where I can say the most useful, tangible stuff. Going back to Chaucer, there's this persistent poetic idea of the narrator as an individual with his or her own perspectives and virtues and foibles. The textbook example of this is Canterbury Tales, which is built on the idea that different narrators have different personalities which are revealed by the kinds of stories they tell. The Knight and the Prioress have boring and probably-virtuous ones that everyone feels obligated to like, and the Miller has a long fart joke. And this is the basis for a particular kind of poetic development that I think you can see really clearly in the sonnet form; you get individual narrators whose character is revealed by the actions or thoughts the reader can infer from a sonnet sequence's romantic situation. For instance, take this bit of Spenser's Amoretti: Spenser posted:I joy to see how in your drawen work, Naked of trope and in paraphrase, Spenser's narrator sounds like he's on the wrong end of the whip. He's attracted to someone he can't control, and so weaves a sort of elaborate entymological fantasy; he catches her in some trap from which she's powerless to escape but grows to love. From the narrator's perspective, problem solved. And that tells us something about the narrator: I'd stay out of his basement, but his show's probably worth watching. Shakespeare builds on an analogous problem in sonnet 151: quote:Love is too young to know what conscience is; Here's another narrator who I think feels out of control, right? His Dark Lady is sleeping around, and this bothers him. Just not enough that he'll stop sleeping with her. In fact, he seems powerless to stop -- his body keeps betraying him, rising at all the wrong times. But Shakespeare's narrator gets around this by weaving a different kind of fantasy: he resolves in the final couplet that this situation isn't actually a problem, even though he's spent the last dozen lines describing why it is. And this paints a picture of a different kind of narrator, one who solves his romantic problems through ruthless scrutiny and constant evasion. More Woody Allen than Buffalo Bill. What's happening here illustrates a trend that's really pronounced in Renaissance and later poetry: there's a narrator described in ever-increasing detail by those aspects of his personality that can be inferred from his situation. And this presents a poetic problem. Actually, two: 1) A detailed narrator's psychology becomes synonymous with "realistic" or at least "compelling" narration -- readers end up reading poetry for the purpose of constructing in their minds a complex portrait of its characters. This is, I think, one reason Paradise Lost looks the way it does, and was received as it was; the focus on Satan's character complexity makes us instinctively read him as the protagonist, the narrator, or the focus of the story, even though God is more important and Adam gets more stage time. It's also one expectation that makes the novel (which is, after all, nothing but the extremely detailed revelation of character) both possible and popular. 2) There are practical limits to how complex one can make a character and still make that character relatable. I think Shakespeare, for better or worse, described those limits. I can imagine, for instance, being in an interracial and intergenerational relationship with an unfaithful partner whose constant flattery and emotional manipulation leads to mind-blowing sex that I'm powerless to abandon, despite my knowing both of her infidelity and her puppeting me. But that's my flat-backed camel. I can't take another straw. Add anything else -- a war injury, a bad childhood, a coke habit -- and you've got to take something away. Otherwise, that motherfucker won't walk. So after Shakespeare, poets start doing other things -- there are the Cavaliers and their descendants (Libertines), and traditions of religious poetry keep chugging along, hitting high points like Paradise Lost and low points like Paradise Regained. And the Romantics finally find something that works: the poet (narrator) as visionary, as a teller of truths that can't be expressed in any other form, precisely because they're not the kind of detail you get from a novel. They're grand, sweeping tropes of Biblical scale and with an equally direct line to poetic truth. So when you want to tell a big truth, position your poetry as an avenue to Revelation (with the capital R), you need to rework your narrator. Byron does this by inflating the narrator in, say, "Manfred." There you get a figure invested with a supernatural wisdom that, through his experiences and actions, the reader can maybe infer something from. He's a sort of Satan character without the baggage of doctrine. Shelley does this a bit more skillfully. Take the beginning of "Ozymandias": quote:I met a traveller from an antique land This "traveller from an antique land" is something like Byron's "Manfred." Dude's been around and knows something, but the reader can only get it at the back end of a game of telephone. I think this is part of what makes "Ozymandias" a successful poem, but I also think Shelley walks a fine line in it -- you can only keep your monster in the shadows for so long. Readers aren't going to go for a bunch of heavy truths that stay half told, especially from a bunch of self-appointed visionaries whose experiences seem increasingly divorced from the substance of their poetry. I mean, Byron was legitimately interesting, but not everyone can be a dashing athletic war hero cum poet with a club foot. And this is where Blake comes in. The move he makes with Songs is, in this context, totally loving brilliant. He's one of the first to realize that a narrator's perspective is a convention, not some aspect of a real person, so a poet can refract that perspective through the simplest and most artificial of lenses. So Blake doesn't craft a narrator with a relatable psychology; he crafts a sort of trope: "Innocence" and "Experience" are (according to the collected works' published title) "Contrary States of the Human Soul." And he doesn't play out that trope by having a narrator move from being innocent to being experienced, or provide some backstory or justification for his narrator's supernaturally impressive vocabulary of human emotion. He just takes a page from Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso": here's what innocence looks like, and here's what experience looks like. We all know what those states are like, or imagine we do, so I'll go ahead and speak to a universal aspect of human experience without all this visionary frippery.* What's really interesting is that Songs tips the balance of poetry in a good direction; with Songs the poet is re-cast as a keen observer of human behavior rather than a transcendent personality. So as a consequence, you get poets like e.g. Whitman, who can sort of be both -- caught up in the myth of America, but with an eye for the details that give the myth some weight. I know you had more, but this is already a dreadfully long post. I'll hit some of your other questions later tonight or tomorrow. * At least for now.
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Jun 24, 2010 21:20
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Hey Brainworm, could you tell us more about your trip? I think you mentioned the experience of watching a bunch of Chinese people watch Hamlet for the first time a few hundred posts back (from a previous trip?) which sounded pretty interesting.
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Jun 30, 2010 09:31
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I'm taking an online class from the English department this summer and I really don't know what to suspect. It's basically an etymology intro. Any idea how this sort of class translates to being offered online? So far all the classes I've taken online at my uni are just reading and taking a quick quiz after every reading, or asking a clarification questions with 3 big tests spaced evenly, but I hear that the online classes really vary wildly.
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Jun 30, 2010 11:52
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Can you go to this thread and explain wtf literary theory is and why people think its worth doing/paying people to do? http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3317256 Have you read The Name of the Wind, and what do you think of it. I'm not really sure in what way I mean the question, so whatever you think of first is fine. This may have been covered, but... What is your job? I mean that in the sense of what are the things you do that will help you get tenure, get a promotion, get paid more. For example a physicist at research university might answer that question "to do research and bring in grants. also i have to teach a class now and then, but I don't necessarily have to do a good job."
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Jul 4, 2010 02:45
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Platypus Farm posted:I actually was wondering what the comprehensives part of an English program was like. I assume it is along the same lines as history where you are given a bunch of broad-rear end questions about your various fields and you have to explain developments in the historiography of them. For example, an older question my professor showed me was "explain the changes in the historiography of Britain's Reform Act of 1832. Carry your discussion up to the present, include at least ten references to specific works and authors." What kind of things were you forced to answer in your trial by fire? It's been like five years since my exams, so what questions I remember I only remember vaguely. That said, your example sounds a lot like my exam questions: broad but particular, and attentive to simple but wide-ranging relationships ("cause and effect" or "continuity and change"). I also had some teaching questions -- something like "what readings and assignments would you include in a junior-level seminar on Renaissance comedy?" And there were some more timely "weigh in on a current debate" questions, too. One (maybe) difference was that my exams were split into two sessions: a written session where I responded to questions like the ones I just described, and a follow-up oral session about a week later, where I answered whatever questions my examiners had about those written responses. Looking back, the whole exam process was stressful and anticlimactic. Like most stress, the stress of exams was both totally self-imposed and completely out of line. I mean, they're like everything else: totally easy. All you have to do is work.
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Jul 8, 2010 15:53
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lil mortimer posted:Someone on another forum I read posted this E-mail he sent to a professor and I'm wondering if this is something that'd get the student in trouble: I know this is old, so I'll keep this short. I can't imagine this would get a student in trouble, if by "get into trouble" you mean something like "start some kind of disciplinary process." It is jerky, though, and so vapid it's not worth sending. And it does run some risks. Just for instance, say this student needed a syllabus or course description to secure transfer credits at another college. After getting an email like this, I'd still probably send them. Mostly because I'm relaxed enough to ignore students' bad behavior as long as it just involves the two of us. But I'd also be perfectly within my rights not to send them, just as I'd be within my rights to deny any personal or institutional favors that student might need later on. I've several times been asked to refuse or to color a student's recommendation because of his or her conduct with other faculty, on internships, and so on. I mean, if I knew a student wrote something this petulant to another faculty member, I couldn't go on to praise the student's maturity, foresight, or interpersonal skills in a recommendation. I certainly wouldn't pull any contacts to get him or her into grad school or a job even if we had an otherwise good relationship. I'm not going to promise a friend of mine a good technical writer and risk handing him a whiny bitch.
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Jul 8, 2010 16:31
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chinchilla posted:This is a ridiculous question, and it's open to anyone. This is late in the game, too, and I'm sorry about that. Citing forums, etc. is usually done using Columbia Online Style, which has since its wide acceptance been basically incorporated into other formats like MLA and APA and Chicago. But in this kind of situation, the thing to do is contact the author and arrange an interview by e.g. email. That's not much work, and gets you particular answers to specific questions, a chance to follow up, a real name and credentials, and so on. Then you can cite the interview, include it as an appendix, or what have you.
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Jul 8, 2010 16:58
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Barto posted:Hey Brainworm, could you tell us more about your trip? The first time I went to China, when I saw Hamlet, was a pleasure trip; I stayed with some engineer friends of mine who'd been relocated to Hangzhou for a project, worked some odd jobs, and went with the to Shanghai on weekends. I was more of a foreigner than a tourist, and there for about three months. This time, I went with a group of about a dozen faculty from my college. We've got some alums who are interested in building a more robust China program and funded the trip so that there'd be a corps of faculty who could lead semesters abroad and work some China content into e.g. survey courses. So we set up a month-long tour of something more than a half-dozen cities, complete with a government-approved guide and lots of tourist sites, so that (apart from our own research) we'd get some idea of what to expect if we take students to Xian or Beijing or into the foothills of the Himalayas. This trip, I went specifically to study Chinese Shakespeare productions and talk with some Chinese theater folks. The idea was that I could work some global Shakespeare content into my Shakespeare survey, and maybe teach a special course on international Shakespeares under Comparative Lit. or something similar. But as things turned out, all seven of the Shakespeare productions I'd planned on seeing fell through -- a bit like that Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns hires those ringers for the company softball team. So all I really got in China were interviews with actors, directors, and other theater people. The best of these was with Shen Wei, about his West Lake show and how it was shaped by his understanding of Romeo and Juliet. I don't know if there's an article in that alone, but it was pretty cool. But that's how this kind of project usually goes, at least for me. I usually come out with something, but it's never the something I went in looking for.
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Jul 12, 2010 17:33
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Have you ever had a female (or male, but more likely female) student quote or reference Twilight in any way in class or in writing and, if it hasn't actually happened, how would you react?
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Jul 13, 2010 20:28
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Rick posted:I'm taking an online class from the English department this summer and I really don't know what to suspect. It's basically an etymology intro. Any idea how this sort of class translates to being offered online? I dunno. Suspect everything? I've never taught a course in etymology before, and I'm sort of surprised your college offers such a course, at least in English -- dedicated study of etymology seems to have gone out with philology, which is now properly part of linguistics. But my guess is that you'll see short, structured readings with frequent quizzes, occasional short essays, and discussion as e.g. forum posts, since that's almost everything that modern course management software does well for purely online courses. You might get something nifty, like pre-recorded microlectures or set student conference hours, but unless your university invests heavily online course development (rather than just online course offerings) this kind of novelty is unlikely.
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Jul 15, 2010 13:25
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modig posted:Can you go to this thread and explain wtf literary theory is and why people think its worth doing/paying people to do? http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3317256 I can do that, or try. The thread seems to have gone dark, though. quote:Have you read The Name of the Wind, and what do you think of it. I'm not really sure in what way I mean the question, so whatever you think of first is fine. I haven't read it, and I try to stay away from series fiction unless the series as a whole seems successful. The thing about series writing -- whether it's novels or television -- is that it's incredibly easy to write good openers. One way you get (and keep) readers interested is by raising questions, and raising interesting questions is easy: who killed Laura Palmer? How did Starbuck come back from the dead, and how does she know how to find Earth? Why is Jake such an rear end in a top hat? Why is Antonio so willing to risk his life to loan Bassanio a few thousand ducats? Who is Hamlet's real father? What's really, really difficult is answering those interesting questions. After all, a question is only interesting if the answer isn't obvious, and it's very difficult to have a non-obvious answer that (a) doesn't break the narrative rules you've set up for yourself and (b) rewards your audience. And this is generally where series fall apart. They either deliver bad answers ("God did it") or delay answering until the question is no longer interesting ("Bob did it"). A more cynical me would say that series writing favors raising questions steadily and seemingly endlessly, and only delivering answers after you've milked your series for everything you're likely to get. At that point, your audience will have so much invested in your questions that they'll love anything you give them just so that they don't feel like fools for following you year after year. Anyway. I wouldn't be able to count the number of series in recent memory that were (a) really good when they were in the "raising questions" phase and (b) choked in the "answering questions" phase. Twin Peaks, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, The Sopranos, Wheel of Time, maybe Lost (I haven't watched it so I don't know). I mean, it's a long, long list. So I don't invest time in a series until it's over and the reviews are in. And I definitely don't pay attention to reviews of the first season, the first novel, or what have you -- it's too easy to write a good one by making promises to your audience that you can't keep. quote:This may have been covered, but... What is your job? I mean that in the sense of what are the things you do that will help you get tenure, get a promotion, get paid more. For example a physicist at research university might answer that question "to do research and bring in grants. also i have to teach a class now and then, but I don't necessarily have to do a good job." Well, I teach at a liberal arts college. My college differs from may others in that teaching well is our highest priority, and that this is reflected in our four criteria for hiring, firing, tenure, and raises. These criteria are: 1) Teaching Effectiveness 2) Quality of Mind 3) Institutional Fit, and 4) Contributions to the Community All of these want some explanation, and I could detail each of them -- how they've traditionally been applied, how they're measured, and so on -- at considerable length. But I should start by saying that they're in order of importance, and that excellence in (2), (3), and (4) do not make up for shortcomings in (1). If I'm an ineffective teacher but bring in loads of grant money and publish great research, I belong at another college. In my three years here, we've fired people in exactly that situation. We measure Teaching Effectiveness using student evaluations and peer observation. Neither one of these is perfect, but they're both good at discerning whether there are major problems with somebody's teaching -- you see it in consistent evaluation complaints across classes, and in the classroom when you observe. Students are checked out, there's no rapport, and so on. Quality of Mind comprises all kinds of scholarship. Publication and conference papers, of course, but also e.g. textbook writing, which at most colleges isn't tenure or raise-relevant. We also include all kinds of faculty development in this category; my trip to China to study Shakespeare productions there speaks to my quality of mind, regardless of whether it turns out a book or an article. The last two categories are both more nebulous and less weighty. Institutional Fit mostly has to do with a person's relationship to his or her department, division, and the college. Are they easy to work with, or are they always a personality problem? Do they deal plainly with others, or are they meddling in bullshit politics? Are they trustworthy and competent for committee work? Do their priorities line up with the college's, or are they out for themselves at the expense of others? Contributions to the Community has to do with a person's "soft" service, on committees, as an advisor, and so on. It's a catch-all category for these duties because different people develop really asymmetrical workloads. Some take on a lot of advisees, for instance, because they're particularly good at it. Some take on committee work, and so are less available for advising. Some take responsibility for especially time-intensive groups of students. And some ignore their advisees, turn down or plain don't show for committee work, and so on. So I hope that's a useful answer. A shorter one is that my job is to be an effective and innovative teacher whose students and advisees are a priority above publication, and whose research finds its first home in the classroom.
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Jul 15, 2010 14:49
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Froglin posted:Have you ever had a female (or male, but more likely female) student quote or reference Twilight in any way in class or in writing and, if it hasn't actually happened, how would you react? Only ironically (i.e. not as a fan), and that's fine. It'd be fine if they were a fan, too. I'm a geek, and would like to think of myself as geek friendly, and part of that is seeing the good in otherwise well-adjusted individuals' attachments to lovely, lovely media. So if Twilight gives somebody a vocabulary they can use to talk about a complex and worthwhile idea, great. My goal is to move them from that vocabulary to a more intelligible one, just as it would be if they were constantly referencing Harry Potter or Buffy or Faulkner.
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Jul 15, 2010 14:57
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Brainworm posted:So if Twilight gives somebody a vocabulary they can use to talk about a complex and worthwhile idea, great. My goal is to move them from that vocabulary to a more intelligible one, just as it would be if they were constantly referencing Harry Potter or Buffy or Faulkner. Ooh, stealth jab at Faulkner! I love your thread but I have to ask: is there a prejudice against speculative fiction (fantasy, sci-fi) in the English field? There definitely isn't at my university (hell, we have a Master's in Popular Literature), but that may not be representative. Certainly a lot of English *undergrads* say things like "Oh, I read proper books, not just sci-fi crap", but professors seem to take it more seriously, I think. Or is that just me?
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Jul 15, 2010 15:39
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Sir Ophiuchus posted:I love your thread but I have to ask: is there a prejudice against speculative fiction (fantasy, sci-fi) in the English field? There definitely isn't at my university (hell, we have a Master's in Popular Literature), but that may not be representative. Personally, when I head up tutorials (I'm still a grad student), I actually like it when students try to apply the theory lessons to things for which they won't find dozens of articles to plagiarize when they search on JSTOR. It means that maybe, maybe they've absorbed some of the material. Of course, I don't encourage them to try writing their Renaissance literature term papers on Harry Potter or song lyrics, but they love to drop references in anyway. Hey Brainworm, how do you feel about Latin (and classical studies in general) and its non-mandatory status for prospective Renaissance literature students? I took it as an undergrad because I assumed it would be essential to my studies - and I feel I was right - but I'm something of an anomaly. I'd like to hear about how you cover the epyllion craze or introduce someone like Lyly when 99% of your class has never read anything from Ovid in Latin or English? Do you even bother?
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Jul 15, 2010 16:33
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I know you don't do contemporary literature but since you probably work with people who do, I wanted to ask if you knew who the current authors are who seem to be the big ones. In the future I want to study the contemporary novel, but it made me think about how people go about choosing what to put effort into studying since so often it seems like an author's value isn't really discovered until years after their publication (perhaps it takes that long to figure out where to place them in the literature continuum?). Are there any authors now who seem destined for literature course syllabi everywhere?
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Jul 16, 2010 01:07
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z0331 posted:In the future I want to study the contemporary novel, but it made me think about how people go about choosing what to put effort into studying since so often it seems like an author's value isn't really discovered until years after their publication (perhaps it takes that long to figure out where to place them in the literature continuum?). Are there any authors now who seem destined for literature course syllabi everywhere? I would suggest Neil Gaiman as one example, but I am eager to hear the Good Dr.'s thoughts on this as well.
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Jul 16, 2010 16:44
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Brainworm, I'd like to read your opinion on Steinbeck's "East of Eden". I think you said earlier that you haven't read much of his stuff, but maybe that's changed since the begining of the thread. Unrelated: what are your thoughts on David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest"? I finished reading it a week ago and am still struggling to wrap my mind around it (or at least some parts of it).
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Jul 20, 2010 09:58
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Sir Ophiuchus posted:[...] is there a prejudice against speculative fiction (fantasy, sci-fi) in the English field? There definitely isn't at my university (hell, we have a Master's in Popular Literature), but that may not be representative. I don't think there is, but I also think there's a distinction to be made between SF and genre fiction. I mean, they can overlap, but someone like Vonnegut isn't genre fiction, just as Tolkien (arguably) isn't. I can't imagine someone saying Clockwork Orange or 1984 aren't worth reading because they're speculative fiction. Genre fiction is a different story. It's perfectly appropriate for Cultural Studies courses (like, say, Popular Culture or American Studies), since those make it their business to study anything that any definable community values. But non-Cultural-Studies-centered programs need to make meaningful connections between texts inside whatever genre and a wider literary tradition. There are some cases where that works well -- Dune reads well against Hamlet for instance -- but genre fiction is mostly genre fiction because it insulates itself the literary mainstream. So I think you can go both ways with genre fiction. Cultural Studies programs can (and should) make study of it, but I'm not sure how you work it into a non-Cultural-Studies discipline. I don't think that's so much a matter of prejudice as it is field boundaries.
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Jul 21, 2010 21:14
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Amaryllis posted:Hey Brainworm, how do you feel about Latin (and classical studies in general) and its non-mandatory status for prospective Renaissance literature students? I took it as an undergrad because I assumed it would be essential to my studies - and I feel I was right - but I'm something of an anomaly. I'd like to hear about how you cover the epyllion craze or introduce someone like Lyly when 99% of your class has never read anything from Ovid in Latin or English? Do you even bother? Generally, I don't bother. There are moments where I'll bring in translations of classical texts to read alongside, say, Jonson -- this works really well with "Penshurst," for example. And you can do the same with period translations like North's Plutarch, which read against Caesar, etc. But Classical texts are among a galaxy of influences. I mean, we're talking about the English Renaissance, which means you've got an interplay of traditions from England's late middle ages and high-renaissance Europe (esp. Italy, France, and Spain). Classical texts fit in there somewhere -- as an influence on Medieval thought and as continental translations that get translated into English -- but it's tough to make a claim that the study of Renaissance literature is better served by a grounding in Latin than a grounding in e.g. French. Point is, the way I bring in classical sources is through translations, and period translations when I can get them -- after all, Shakespeare's source was North (the translator), not Plutarch (the writer). I keep Jonson in the Renaissance Lit. survey, and do what I can to make sure his classical learning is accessible, but I don't touch Lyly at all, really. Teaching an undergraduate survey means making unthinkable cuts over and over again. That said, I think it makes tremendous sense to require at least one ancient language and one romance language for graduate study in Early Modern Lit. It's something else entirely for a graduate student in Renaissance Lit. to not know Lyly or the epyllion or the epigram, to need Milton's Latin poetry in translation, or to be unable to meaningfully research any Continental literature's influence in England.
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Jul 22, 2010 02:23
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Brainworm, I'd like to start reading more (any) poetry. Since the disastrous introduction to it in high school, (where we spent about two minutes talking about E.E. Cummings "A leaf falling," and then digressed into what the teacher's children had been up to for the rest of what felt like my entire English career) I've tried to start reading random poets but can't seem to find anything that really catches my interest, got any suggestions for a 28 year old, unemployed, angry guy? Help me noble brainworm!
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Jul 26, 2010 00:47
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El Kabong posted:I'd like to start reading more (any) poetry...Help me noble brainworm! I know that I'm not brainworm but I'll be happy to provide some suggestions. (I hope he doesn't mind my chiming in.) The book I often recommend to people curious about poetry is "Making Your Own Days" by Kenneth Koch. Really it's two books with one cover: An easy-to-read breakdown of what poetry is (meter, rhyme, language, etc) and a then a solid anthology/cross-section of poetry - classical and contemporary - punctuated by his occasional thoughts on what the poem is doing that makes it interesting. "All Blacked Out & Nowhere to Go" - Bucky Sinister Bucky's poetry isn't the best I have ever read, but his pop culture references, sense of humor and causal style - along with the time period of the poetry (young, angry punk rock fan) - make him very accessible and easy to read. "The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry" - Alan Kaufman, ed. If you like Sinister's work, you might try tracking down a cheap copy of this anthology. Sinister is in it but so are a lot of other pissed off poets and authors. Occasionally it stretches the definition of "poet," but the variety of voices make it worth a thumbing through. Early Allen Ginsberg Perhaps expected on a list like this, Ginsberg's first two volumes - "Howl" and "Kaddish" - are worth the read. "America" is one hell of a poem/mind-trip: heart-breaking, comical and cheesed off simultaneously. "Blood Dazzler" - Patricia Smith Although most notable for her work in spoken word/slam poetry, and despite the fact that she's actually a native of Chicago, Smith's take on Hurricane Katrina is one of the best volumes of any poetry I've read in the last couple of years. "Notes for my Body Double" and "My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge" - Paul Guest I'd put Paul Guest on a list of the best poets writing today. Although a quadriplegic, his disability doesn't show up in his poetry as often as you might expect. When it does though, it hits the reader hard. The sense of humor he displays, for example, about something as complicated as getting on a plane is almost always tempered by darker, seething emotions. If that's not enough, you might consider checking out some pieces by these poets: Frank O'Hara Charles Bukowski (especially if you like musicians like Tom Waits) John Berryman (specifically "The Dream Songs")
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Jul 26, 2010 03:54
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Thanks for putting so much into this thread, it has been a good read. I am having trouble figuring out what part of this passage from Antony and Cleopatra means: quote:Stay for me: Specifically the "Dido and her Aeaneas shall want troops" part. My best guess is that he is using "want" to mean "lack" and that all the ghosts will hang around himself and Cleopatra instead of Dido and Aeneas, but I wasn't quite sure.
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Jul 26, 2010 04:14
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z0331 posted:In the future I want to study the contemporary novel, but it made me think about how people go about choosing what to put effort into studying since so often it seems like an author's value isn't really discovered until years after their publication (perhaps it takes that long to figure out where to place them in the literature continuum?). Are there any authors now who seem destined for literature course syllabi everywhere? I've talked about this one before, and I think at length. The most important thing to remember is that a text's inclusion in the canon isn't about how "good" it is according to any rational set of criteria; it's about how, and how well, a text engages with literary tradition in a coherent way. So take Vonnegut. I think my favorite book of his might be Bluebeard, because it makes a deceptively complex statement about art and artistic creation. Someone who prizes social engagement, or direct, unambiguous social statements would like Player Piano, Breakfast of Champions, or stories like Harrison Bergeron better. But I'll bet every organ in my body that Slaughterhouse Five becomes the canonized text. Why? Because it has the clearest and most coherent engagement with a literary tradition. I know I wrote about Slaughterhouse as a rewriting of Red Badge of Courage, but you can also read Slaughterhouse as the most literate of a generation of American war novels bookended by Catch-22 and The Things They Carried.* I've listed authors that take their rewriting seriously earlier in the thread. I'm sure of it. Bret Easton Ellis is, by that standard, going to make the canon faster than any of the other skilled brat pack authors like McInerney -- in fact, think you can see this playing out in academia right now. In 1990, I think Less Than Zero and Story of My Life would have been mentioned in the same breath. But Ellis has stayed afloat. Some of that might be American Psycho, but a lot of it is also his reworking of Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, and so on. You can say the same thing about Cormac McCarthy, and how he reworks Westerns in Blood Meridian or Defoe (and a million other last man on Earth stories) in The Road. I think this also means that Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is going to be the novel of the Civil Rights movement -- at least more than anything from Baldwin or Wright. Point is, that's what to look for. I'm not current enough broadly enough to give you a list of names much longer than what I've laid down here, but I'll bet that the academically current authors who stick will be the ones who engage a clear literary tradition. It's been that way for a few hundred years. * Incidentally, this means I put my money on Slaughterhouse over Catch or Carried, should it come to that. Catch is probably the more revolutionary war story, and arguably the best read, but in rewriting Red Badge, Slaughterhouse responds to the tradition of Anglophone war novels with a directness that Catch and Carried don't.
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Jul 27, 2010 23:27
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Naked Man Punch posted:
America sounds palatable. I'll get something by Guest too, and see how they stack up against each other. Thanks man!
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Jul 28, 2010 06:26
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