Nothing in advance, but feel free to review the film site and some of the other information about Yung Chang's subjects -- Bo Yu and Yu Shui -- as well as the continuing plight of Yu Shui's family. You'll also find Yung Chang's director's statement and other projects.
Enjoy!
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Gates, Jr. "Writing 'Race'" on
Before our discussion of Gates, Jr. on Wednesday, I'm planning to give a brief quiz to help concretize some old terms and learn a few new terms as we finish the fourth unit. Please bring the Bedford Glossary to class. Here are the terms we might discuss. Unless otherwise noted, all of them are in the Glossary:
- Alterity (in the OED)
- Cultural Criticism
- Cultural Materialism
- Diaspora (in the OED)
- Gynocriticism
- Hegemony
- Hybridity
- Identification (in the OED)
- Representation
After we discuss these terms, I'll offer up some of Spivak's claims, we'll look again at the passages from Butler on our handout and my question will be fairly simple:
- If we were to simply substitute "race" for "feminism," "blacks" for "women," "racial" for "feminist," "color" for "sex/gender," "colored" for "sexed," how seamlessly (or not) would these claims carry over into Gates, Jr.'s article? Into Up the Yangtze?
- I don't know what to substitute for the "subaltern," so perhaps we can consider whether it plays a role in Gates, Jr.'s theorizing at all.
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Spivak "Can the Subaltern Speak?" on
- Subaltern as different from postcolonial?
- Subalternity as a condition of voicelessness (or a condition of being un-able or dis-abled)? As a condition of finding new ways to voice?
- The need to temporarily essentialize “women” as a concept for the sake of taking social action, without promoting a homogeneous subaltern female?
- The need for the postcolonial intellectual to embrace the limitedness or the parameters of her task?
- The need for the postcolonial intellectual to ward against (or be aware of) the “encroachment of the unacknowledged Subject of the West”?
2.) Another way to think about this is: How does Spivak claim to develop or improve on what we understand as poststructuralist theory, as it pertains to language and culture? What could she offer as alternatives to the différend, the deconstructed Subject, erasure, anxiety of authorship, and the Western concept of epistémé?
Butler Gender Trouble
Folks, this unit offers us rich readings and rich terminology! So, we will be concretizing our understanding of some key terms each week. In advance of Monday's class, please take time to familiarize yourselves with the following terms (unless otherwise noted, all of them are in the Bedford Glossary). As always, please bring the Glossary to class:
- Cultural Criticism
- Cultural Materialism
- Gynocriticism
- Hegemony
- Hybridity
- Identification (in the OED)
- Representation
If we were reading George's essay ("Mr. Burke, Meet Helen Keller"), we would discover that George compares Burke to Hellen Keller because of what she calls their similar "rhetorical praxis" (341). More specifically, George is intrigued by both Burke's and Keller's responses to cultural piety and blindness. George is also intrigued by Burke's use of Keller as a case study in his own logology -- his own construction of theories about how words (or language) are learned and understood.
Since George invites us to think of Burke's essay as a kind of feminist criticism, let's continue with that line of thinking, and consider where Burke's "Terministic Screens" and Butler's Gender Trouble can intersect on the following:
- the possibility that acts of identification (with something or someone else) and acts of division (away from something or someone else) can occur together
- the possibility that the categories of sex/gender/desire are terministic screens (or not)
- the definition of "representation," i.e., does it involve preservation? Reflection? Deflection? Categorization? Self-construction? Something else? Is representation malleable or fixed?
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Burke "Terministic Screens" on 11/18/11: Reading Questions and Extra/Optional Preparatory Exercise (Road Map)
For Friday, we are reading our last essay by Kenneth Burke--this time, a chapter from his book entitled Language as Symbolic Action. While Burke first offered his concept of "terministic screen" as a way of understanding the relationship between language and ideology, it has been taken up in a variety of critical contexts, including visual rhetoric, cultural studies, and picture theory. This chapter is complex, so I will offer a few advanced questions to guide Friday's discussion:
- A principal assumption undergirding Burke's chapter is the idea that language does not simply "reflect" reality, it "deflects" reality. What does this mean, and what kinds of evidence or arguments does Burke provide to convince us?
- Comment on Burke's distinction between what he sees as "scientistic" and "dramatistic" approaches to literature. How does such a distinction (some might call it a dichotomy) reflect other things we have read, either in our unit on Re/Presentation so far, or in our unit on Text/uality?
Bring to class (in written form, ~1 page, single-spaced) the results of your roadmap. Please refer to specific passages from Burke's chapter as part of your response. Please include the MLA citation for "Terministic Screens" and use in-text citations throughout your response where needed.
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de Certeau "Walking in the City" and Benjamin "Work of Art" on 11/16/11: Reading Questions
You may remember my offering of key claims from Rivkin and Ryan's background essay on Marxism and Marxist Criticism in the last unit. According to the history that Rivkin and Ryan present in "Starting with Zero," American Marxist literary criticism has traditionally been concerned with studying the embeddedness of a work within its historical, social, and economic contexts (644). What they identify as a primarily a reflectionist approach to literature would eventually be supplanted by more critical approaches that emphasized the complexity of relationships between literature and its ambient context (645). As we discuss de Certeau and Benjamin on Wednesday, I will show us several brief cases to help us consider the vitality of such an embeddedness--of such a relationship.
- If you would like to browse ahead of time, check out the University of Virginia's Rome Reborn digital remodeling project. Read quickly through the introductory paragraph, then follow the link to "Gallery" and scroll down until you see the "short version" of the Rome Reborn tour 2.1. (It takes approx. 4 minutes to view).
- The second case is from the social reform photography of Jacob Riis, a Danish American police reporter in New York, who was a contemporary to Stephen Crane, Lawrence Veiller, Upton Sinclair, Nathan Asch, and other writers known as "local color realists." Much of his well-known photography was captured in his expose How the Other Half Lives (Scribners, 1890). If you are interested, browse Kay Davis' archive at the University of Virginia and follow the link to "slideshows" for a sampling of Riis' work, or look at the images in a database format.
Here are some questions that will guide our discussion:
- What is materiality according to either or both of our authors, and how might their various understandings of materiality get represented (or obfuscated or complicated) by these visual projects?
- For de Certeau, the "concept-city" is the optimal space for theorizing power(lessness) and representation. Why? What is at stake? What becomes possible? Or not possible?
- For Benjamin, the reproduction of a work of art is not only a complicated process, it is also an historically suspect one. What does this mean, and what justifications or reasons does Benjamin provide?
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Good Copy Bad Copy on 11/11/11: Discussion Questions
In advance of our film discussion on Friday, feel free to review Good Copy Bad Copy at its host site.
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Mitchell "Metapictures" on 11/9/11: Reading Questions
Hello, everyone. On Wednesday, we still have a good bit from Burroughs and Landow to revisit, and so I'm going to offer what I see as "GPL's 9 Big Bold Claims" because two of them align quite well with Burroughs' "fold-in" method, and almost all of them will be interesting to test alongside Mitchell's "metapictures." Here they are (including the first 5 that made it onto the board during class on 11/7):
- We need a critical theory of hypertext in order to evaluate the role of h.t. as a medium, to determine its strengths and weaknesses, to determine what can only be accomplished through it and not through other media, and to understand what human culture gains or loses by it.
- Hypertext instantiates qualities of Barthes' ideal text by blurring the boundaries between reader/ing and writer/ing, and by providing a montage-like textuality that rejects a deceptive transparency.
- This kind of intertextuality shifts literary history from evolutionary to structural or synchronic models (per Thais Morgan) (35). [We still need to finish our discussion of this point, but one thing to consider is that Landow suggests not all change in literary history need be evolutionary or function according to an evolutionary model--for example, reader-response criticism.]
- As readers move through webs and networks, they continually shift the center of their investigation and experience (36).
- Hypertexts might provide a truer, more efficient information technology, not only for how they give access to clusters and sub-clusters, but also for how they emanate a "non-western" mindset where users are more comfortable starting in the middle (39).
- Hypertext may fulfill certain claims of structuralist and poststructuralist criticism, but its most important contribution is in providing a "rich[er] means of texting [those claims]" (36).
- Hypertext does not permit a tyrannical, univocal voice, or imply the death of any voice; rather, its voice is always distilled from combined experience of momentary focus, present lexia, and continually forming narratives of one's reading path (36).
- While the idea of an intellectual or ideological "center" in a hypertext is not necessarily bad or nonproductive, hypertexts promote interpretive processes that are closer to anarchy than to hierarchy (40).
- Hypertexts cause us to re/define the "network" in critical theory (44) according to their disruptions of "order" and their promotion of "antimemories (or "nomadic thoughts," to use Deleuze and Guattari) (41).
Enjoy the reading!
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Burroughs "The Future of the Novel" and Landow "Hypertext and Critical Theory" on 11/7/11: Quiz Terms
Before our discussion of Landow and Burroughs on Monday, I'm planning to give a brief quiz to help concretize some old terms and learn a few more new terms that will help you to approach SCD #3. Please bring the Bedford Glossary to class. Here are the terms we might discuss, all of them in the Glossary:
- Aesthetic Distance
- Affective Fallacy
- Hermeneutics
- Intention / Intentional Fallacy
- Narratology
- Reader-response Criticism
Daniel "Public Secrets" on 11/4/11: Discussion Questions
Hello, everyone. I truly hope you enjoy reading Sharon Daniel's hypertext essay. Please remember to give yourself about (or at least) 30 minutes to read the editor's introduction, the author's statement, and to navigate the various nodes of the project itself. Because there are audio files, you will want to make sure you have access to earbuds or speakers.
Since it is our first extensive case in this unit, I am posting in advance some discussion questions for us to take up during Friday's class. Please do bring these readings to class (Bakhtin "Discourse," Bakhtin "Problem," Wimsatt and Beardsley, Booth, Miller) as well as the Bedford Glossary:
- Focusing on the first two paragraphs of pp. 324-325 in Bakhtin's "Discourse in the Novel," what would be the usefulness of justifying Daniel's essay according to this notion of heteroglossia? What other ways would you describe the multiple-voiced interactions in Daniels' texts (not using heteroglossia, or not using Bakhtin's language)?
- As a "frame story," how well do you think it works (see Bedford Glossary)? What does/can "the frame" make possible in this essay? Can you think of other texts or genres (even from outside of this class) where those same things were made possible?
- The authors of our Bedford Glossary discuss the prominent role of langue ("native tongue," or the entire system of signs) in semiotic theory (468). Many semioticians have broadened their understanding of what a sign is or can be, but our interpretation of parole (particular utterances or narratives) mainly relies on how they function within langue, or within a larger linguistic system. Without setting up an overly simplistic dichotomy, how might we consider the function of langue and parole in Daniel's hypertext essay?
- On the one hand, Daniel's critique of the corporatized prison system is made explicit, both in her author's statement and in her introductory node to the hypertext. We get that this is a critique, although there is probably some room for debating whether this is a Marxist critique or a feminist critique. But I'm interested in what we think about the interpretability of her text. (We'll be drawing on Booth, Wimsatt and Beardsley, and Miller to tackle this question.)
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Preparatory Exercise for class on 11/2/11
Miller "Genre as Social Action"
(20 points)
Folks, this is a gem of a theoretical piece, but I will not lie--it can be difficult, primarily because it involves a rigorous unpacking of other theorists and texts. Miller claims to be building her own, more robust theory of genre for critical and rhetorical studies but she has to cover a lot of disciplinary ground in order to do so. She has to synthesize a number of theories in order to articulate the gap where her theory will fit.
For our last PE, I think it makes sense for you to "unpack" Miller's tightly packed essay for its genealogy, i.e., the lineage of ideas and underlying it. You have done this before (for PE #4) with Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's essay on "Infection in the Sentence." This time, however, I'll divide up the task:
- if your last name begins with letters C through Ho, please just "unpack" pages 151-158
- if your last name begins with letters Hu through Y, please just "unpack" pages 159-163.
The first section is longer but more prosaic, while the second section is shorter but more abstract.
Ultimately, here is what we want to consider: As she unpacks, critiques, and re-proposes the elements of genre so that we may see genres as situated action, how does she challenge other work we have read? How does Miller complicate some of your own assumptions or ideas or preferences about genre (if she does)?
Bring to class (in written form, ~1 page, single-spaced) the results of your unpacking. Please refer to specific passages from their essay as part of your response. Please include the MLA citation for "Genre as Social Action" and use in-text citations throughout your response where needed.
Good luck with this one last exercise!
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Booth "Types of Narration" and "Morality of Narration" on 10/28/11: Reading Questions
Wayne Booth begins his "Types of Narration" chapter with some assertions about choice. I am interested in testing these assertions a bit, perhaps extending them and seeing how far they go. Thinking back to Nathan Asch's "In Search of America" and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, can readers choose not to be affected by each writer's choice of narrative matter? Can we somehow "protect" ourselves from or make ourselves immune to the narration? What would it mean to read each story as a completely disaffected reader, if that is even possible? How might Booth's "narrative types" help to explain some of the experiences you had while reading either story?
In "Morality of Narration," Booth states quite explicitly what he means--and doesn't mean--by the "morality of writing well" (388). His justifications for this concept seem to reflect some theoretical concepts we have already studied--namely, Walter Ong's audience construction and Longinus' sublime. What are some ways that Booth's concept either builds on, challenges, enhances or disrupts the others?
Friday's "case" will consist of postmodern fairy tales, primarily to help us consider how and when narratives challenge their own frames. How can we discern what is outside the text, or whether there is an outside to the text at all? If you are supremely interested in the definitive book on postmodern fairy tales, check out this title by Cristina Bacchilega.
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Preparatory Exercise for class on 10/26/11
Road Map of Killingsworth "Appeal Through Tropes"
(20 points)
When we turn to M. Jimmie Killingsworth's chapter next week, he may challenge us to think about "trope" in a different way than we are accustomed (or, to think about it at all, if it is a new term for you). In our selections from On the Sublime, we did not see Longinus refer to "tropes," but rather to "figures [of speech]," and Killingsworth will take up this concept so as to expand its theoretical import. While he is pretty systematic in his organization, I'd like you to create a road map of his chapter. As before, the format for a road map is quite open, as long as it involves your putting ideas into prose and citing passages from his chapter to illuminate those ideas.
Some of you did a great job combining spatial organization with prose when you constructed your road maps of Bakhtin's "Discourse in the Novel," so you may repeat that method. Alternately, you can create something like my road map of Burke's chapter on "Equipment for Living" (which is uploaded to our Oncourse site), or you can make it more of an annotated outline, or you can construct a visual roadmap that is heavy with text. You may use signs ... or symbols!
So that the task doesn't seem tedious, I invite you to quickly read through Killingsworth's chapter before starting the road map, and try to offer your own explanation for why he sees the trope as a flexible enough concept to argue for its persuasive importance in literary texts. Shouldn't tropes simply be treated as art for art's sake? What's the big deal, after all?
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Wimsatt and Beardsley "From The Intentional Fallacy" on 10/24/11: Quiz Terms
Before our discussion of Wimsatt and Beardsley on Monday, I'm planning to give a brief quiz to help us start building a knowledge of key terms for this unit. Please bring the Bedford Glossary to class. Here are the terms we might discuss, all of them in the Glossary:
- Cultural Materialism
- Frame / Frame Story
- Genre
- Hermeneutics
- Hypertext
- Intention / Intentional Fallacy
- Langue and Parole (in the section on "Semiotics")
- Marxist Criticism
- Narratology
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Preparatory Exercise for class on 10/19/11
Conceptual "Traces" of Longinus
(20 points)
This is the last "trace" of the semester! As you have done before for Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and On Rhetoric, and for our excerpts from Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, please pay attention to how Longinus discusses, makes assumptions about, or illustrates one of the following concepts:
- the role(s) of the reader, writer, critic (What are their respective responsibilities in terms of either creating or noting the sublime? Where do their roles seem to diverge or converge? Does Longinus address them as if they were or could be the same person?)
- the uses of language (What does Longinus have to say about the importance of words or verbal expression to the text? What can/do words achieve? What variations on language does he seem to consider, i.e., figurative language, metaphors, particular expressions, etc.?)
- genres and style (What types of genres does he discuss, and/or what styles of writing does he want his readers to consider? Alternatively, what unique features of writing does he describe, i.e., large, small, structural, linguistic, etc.? What properties should writing have or not have?)
This may be the most challenging trace because I am asking you to look for terms he discusses implicitly. Please look all throughout his chapter for places where he seems to deal with your concept. Be as thorough as possible!
Bring to class (in written form, ~1 page, single-spaced) the results of your trace. As before, the format is open. You might provide an outline to show us how to read these pages for that particular concept, or you might write several paragraphs where you comment on how Longinus deals with your concept throughout his treatise, or you might do something else. Feel free to note your own surprises or contradictions. Please refer to specific passages from his treatise as part of your response. Please include the MLA citation for On the Sublime and use in-text citations throughout your response where needed.
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McCloud "The Vocabulary of Comics" on 10/10/11: Quiz Terms
Before our discussion of McCloud on Monday, I'm planning to give a brief quiz to help us concretize our knowledge of some terms from this unit. Please bring the Bedford Glossary to class. Here are the terms we might discuss (by now, most of these are a review):
- Deconstruction
- Differance
- Erasure (in the OED)
- Heteroglossia
- Logocentrism
- Presence/Absence
- Sign
- Speech-Act Theory
- Structuralism
- Symbol
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Burke "The Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle" on 10/7/11: Reading Questions
To prepare for our discussion of Burke's essay, I offer several reading questions to help you navigate your way through it:
- This is the second essay we will have read from Burke's Philosophy of Literary Form, but it functions differently from the first in that this essay demonstrates a critical rhetorical analysis of Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf. It is a bit complex, but what are the kinds of things that Burke analyzes for? What pattern seems to emerge from his analysis? Or, how does he organize his analysis?
- In class, I plan to demonstrate a "case" drawing from well-circulated (iconic) representations of flag-raising at Iwo Jima. If you're curious, before class, check out the image. How do you think Burke might analyze this image?
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Preparatory Exercise for class on 10/5/11
Road Map of Bakhtin's "Discourse in the Novel" (heavily excerpted)
(20 points)
Each section of Bakhtin's excerpt deals with (a.k.a., defines, unpacks, and exemplifies) one aspect of "discourse" that Bakhtin says is unique to the genre of novel. Another way to say this is, Bakhtin is arguing for the novel as discourse. To help us follow his argument, I'll ask you to create a road map of his essay. The format for a road map is quite open, as long as it involves your putting ideas into prose and citing passages from his essay to provide evidence. You can do this much like I did in my road map of Burke's chapter on "Equipment for Living" (which is uploaded to our Oncourse site), or you can make it more of an annotated outline, or you can construct a visual roadmap that is heavy with text. Your main goal is to understand each of his aspects.
As you write your road map, consider how each of his aspects could be applied to a novel you have read. You don't have to write this into your road map, but I'll probably ask you to discuss it in class. It's important for us to try on his theory to see if it describes experiences we have had reading novels.
Keep impressing me!
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Derrida "Differance" and Richards and Ogden "From On the Meaning of Meaning" on 10/3/11: Discussion Questions
Folks, we'll need time to finish and catch up on Austin, so I will ask that you read Derrida carefully and thoroughly, after you have reread Austin. My suggestion for getting through Derrida is to try to follow all of the ways that he defines "differance" -- it often helps me to keep track in the margins as I read. The background pages from Rivkin and Ryan should help you put both essays into context.
For our discussion on Monday, the following terms will also provide useful context. You'll find them all in the Bedford Glossary, with one exception. As usual, please bring the Glossary to class:
- Deconstruction
- Differance
- Erasure (in the OED)
- Logocentrism
- Presence/Absence
- Speech-Act Theory
- Symbol
We will spend most of our time working through Derrida; however, I will open the class by asking us to consider some points of intersection between Austin's speech-act theory and what we have come to know as "signification."
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Preparatory Exercise for class on 9/26/11
Conceptual "Traces" of Locke (Chapter IX, to page 825 only)
(20 points)
I did not plan early enough to make this trace collaborative, so I have adjusted it slightly. As you have done before for Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and On Rhetoric, complete a trace on your own for our excerpts from John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Editors Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg tell us that, although Locke was not widely thought of as a rhetorical theorist or literary critic, his discussions of how language related to knowledge were pervasive in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thought (at least in England and Scotland, and--by way of trans-Atlantic travel--in America) (815). We are trying to figure out what makes this relationship between language and knowledge so complex for Locke. As you read the Essay, please pay attention to how Locke discusses, makes assumptions about, or illustrates one of the following concepts:
- the origins of language (Does the mind precede language, or does it emerge with language? Do there seem to be other causes or predecessors of language? Does language have a mysterious origin?)
- the imperfections of language (In what ways does language or communication "fail"? What does Locke mean by "failure"? How is language limited or inadequate for doing certain things? What things?)
- the uses of language (What can language or communication achieve? Are there particular uses that are more moral/ethical, or less moral/ethical? What determines that?)
- the nature of ideas (What are "ideas" and how are they reached? What are their origins? Can they emerge without language? What other ways do they emerge?)
Please do not limit yourself only to looking for explicit uses of the terms you are tracing. Instead, look all throughout his chapter for places where he seems to deal with your concept
Bring to class (in written form, ~1 page, single-spaced) the results of your trace. As before, the format is open. You might provide an outline to show us how to read these pages for that particular concept, or you might write several paragraphs where you comment on how Locke deals with your concept throughout his treatise, or you might do something else. Feel free to note your own surprises or contradictions. Please refer to specific passages from his treatise as part of your response. Please include the MLA citation for Essay Concerning Human Understanding and use in-text citations throughout your response where needed.
Have fun with this -- you are doing admirably so far!
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Barton "Textual Practices of Erasure" or Welling "Ecoporn" on 9/21/11: Quiz Terms and Discussion Questions
Before our discussion of Barton and Welling on Wednesday, I'm planning to give a brief quiz to help us concretize our knowledge of some terms from this unit. Please bring the Bedford Glossary to class, as well as the "Terms of Agent/cy" handout that I distributed in class on Friday 9/16. Here are the terms we might discuss (by now, most of these are a review):
- Audience Construction
- Author Function
- Discourse
- Episteme
- Formalism
- Marxism
- Marxist Criticism
- New Criticism
- Phenomenology
- Power
For our discussion of Barton and Welling, I will invite you to read one article or the other--you do not need to read both. Barton defines what she calls a "discourse of disability," and discusses the causes, effects, and theoretical impact of this discourse in United Way campaign ads. Welling defines what he calls "ecopornography" based on actual and abstract challenges of visualizing nonhuman subjects. Both theorists are making arguments about agency that will be worthwhile for us to consider. Please bring your selected article to class and be prepared to share 1 or 2 passages from the article that you would deem most significant or important for discussion.
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Asch "In Search of America" on 9/19/11: Discussion Questions
Here are some discussion questions in advance of Monday's class. I offer us Asch's 1937 short story as a kind of case for thinking more concretely about the questions of agent/cy, authorship, readership, and literary identification that have emerged for us this week; however, I also invite you to read his story fresh and whole, without expectations of necessarily applying these terms.
- By the end of the story, what do you think Asch has found (or not found)? Why end the story the way that he did?
- Some have called Asch's short story a migration narrative; others have called it a bildungsroman (this term is in our Bedford Glossary). Still others have called it a social critique. After reading it, how would you best describe the story?
- What could be some unique challenges of narrating such a tale (whether we consider it a migration narrative, bildungsroman, social critique, or something else)? I'm thinking especially about the challenges of constructing characters like the story's narrator. How should such a narrator be positioned in relation to the reader?
If you are interested in more of Asch's writings, check out this growing collection of his work at the Winthrop University Special Collections, some of which you can read in digital form, or at least read about online.
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Preparatory Exercise for class on 9/14/11
Unpacking Gilbert and Gubar's "Infection in the Sentence"
(10 points)
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar ultimately justify their scholarship as helping readers to understand the ways in which women writers "overcame their anxiety of authorship" (459), especially in nineteenth-century contexts that constructed disease and "dis-ease" as principally female traits (458). However, they arrive at their argument through a complex genealogy of ideas--some derived from key literary works that they have studied (e.g., major novels or short stories written by Austen, Dickinson, Rossetti, etc.), and others derived from theorists who have applied their own lenses onto these literary works (e.g., Freud, Bloom, Rich, Mitchell, etc.). Moreover, they often take up the ideas of a theorist who is building upon another theorist's text. What results is a tightly packed essay where most of the claims are multilayered.
In preparation for Wednesday's discussion, I will ask you to try to unpack Gilbert and Gubar's essay, with the goal of marking major landmarks in their argument while also demonstrating how they arrived at those landmarks. In other words, try charting the genealogy of their ideas, paying attention to both the theoretical and the literary texts they examined, i.e., whose ideas do they build on, and whose ideas do those ideas build on? What examples do they use? Your goal is to provide your reader with a concise but thorough at-a-glance representation of Gilbert and Gubar's whole argument. What are the most important threads in the argument and what literary texts or theoretical lenses are responsible for the construction of those threads?
Bring to class (in written form, ~1 page, single-spaced) the results of your unpacking. Please refer to specific passages from their essay as part of your response. Please include the MLA citation for "Infection in the Sentence" and use in-text citations throughout your response where needed.
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Ong "The Writer's Audience is Always a Fiction" on 9/12/11: Reading Questions
To prepare for our discussion of Walter Ong's essay, I offer several reading questions to help you navigate your way through it:
- Ong's impetus for writing is full and rich. He states it in his first paragraph, but then he devotes Section 1 to unpacking, explaining, and justifying why the notion of audience was a problematic term at the time in which he wrote (circa 1975). If Ong were to rewrite this article in 2011, how many of these reasons or problems would still hold? In other words, what reasons do you think he might provide for why the concept of "audience" is complicated today?
- Ong builds his argument through history--that is, sections 2, 3, and 4 describe what Ong sees as major periods of "audience adjustment" according to how literary genres were constructed, disseminated and used. How have some of these periods contributed to the audience problems that he identifies in 1975?
- Ultimately, Ong takes his own position on audience in section 5 . How does this position seem to respond to and/or complicate what we know of Formalism and New Criticism? How does it seem to reflect Reader-Response Criticism? There is some debate about whether Ong could be classified as a Reader-Response Critic; we can decide that on our own. (Refer back to our discussion of Burke, the introductory essays, and the Bedford Glossary for definitions of "Formalism/New Criticism." See Leitch's introductory essay and the Bedford Glossary for a description of "Reader-Response Criticism.")
Alternately, you might try simply constructing a "road map" of Ong's essay, in much the same way I did of Burke's chapter on "Equipment for Living." Whatever you do, be sure to annotate and look up any unfamiliar terms so that we can resolve those early in our discussion (e.g., circumambient, antecedent genre, etc.).
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Barthes "The Death of the Author" and Foucault "What Is An Author?" on 9/9/11: Relevant Terms and Discussion Questions
As we read Barthes and Foucault, these terms will provide useful context. You'll find them in the OED and the Bedford Glossary:
- Agent
- Agency
- Author
- Discourse
- Episteme
- Phenomenology
- Power
Part of our class discussion on 9/9 will involve a case--the September 11 digital archive, which has already undergone several revisions since its first construction. Before Friday's class, take some time to browse both archives (new and old) and consider some of their differences, especially in terms of authorship according to Barthes' and Foucault's understandings of author-function and signification. Consider also their differences in terms of agency and power. Please bring the Glossary to class; we may have a quiz on the terms.
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Preparatory Exercise for class on 9/7/11
Conceptual "Traces" of Aristotle, P. II
(20 points)
Aristotle's On Rhetoric is a more difficult text. In it, Aristotle articulates a very detailed system of persuasion with many parts and divisions. The translator, George Kennedy, has annotated it to help us understand the topics and themes in each section. We are most interested in how it raises questions about the bearing of goodness on the acts of speaking, writing, reading, interpretation, and instruction. It also raises questions about the origins and purposes of discourse: Why should we read, write, and interpret at all? What inspires us to do so? What is the use? As you read the Rhetoric, please pay attention to how Aristotle discusses, makes assumptions about, or illustrates one of the following concepts:
- the character, nature, or qualifications of the rhetor (i.e., What makes a good speaker/writer? What are his moral or intellectual qualifications?)
- the character, nature, or qualifications of the audience (i.e., What makes a good listener/reader? Do audiences persuade themselves?)
- the importance of the text to the whole act of persuasion (i.e., How much of the message depends upon the text alone -- its vocabulary, style, organization -- as opposed to the character of the rhetor or the intelligence of the audience? How should that writing/speaking be structured?)
- topics and commonplaces (i.e., What is worthy to write/speak about? Who determines this worthiness? How do writers/speakers know what to write/speak about?)
- the role of logic or the role of passion/emotion in interpreting the text
- the role of nature or talent (i.e., Do you think that Aristotle characterizes rhetoric as a set of rules (craft), a set of theoretical principles or adaptable strategies (art), or the product of genius and/or a mysterious function of language (nature)?
As you did last week, bring to class (in written form, ~1 page, single-spaced) the results of your trace. Again, the format for your response is quite open. I simply need you to show us the most important parts in the Rhetoric where Aristotle seems to deal with your selected concept, either implicitly or explicitly. This week's trace will be slightly more difficult because some of these concepts are implied rather than stated. As before, feel free to note your own surprises or contradictions. And as before, please refer to specific passages from his treatise as part of your response. Include the MLA citation for On Rhetoric and use in-text citations throughout your response where needed.
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Preparatory Exercise for class on 9/2/11
Conceptual "Traces" of Aristotle, P. I
(20 points)
Translator H. Rackham tells us that Aristotle's writings generally fell into two groups: (1) philosophical (theoretical) dialogues, which have all been lost; and (2) scientific (practical) treatises, which have been recovered and constitute what we now understand to be Aristotle's "systems of rhetoric." When I read Aristotle's treatises, I find that "tracing" them for a specific concept helps me to understand more about the whole of his argument, and helps me to appreciate the various ways I can apply it.
In Nicomachean Ethics, our challenge is to try to understand Aristotle's "Idea of the Good" and to begin thinking about what bearing that goodness has on acts of writing and reading (which will be the focal point of our discussions of On Rhetoric next week). Is "goodness" inherent? Learned? Acquired through social or political activity? Does it represent a way of living or a way of being? Does it lead to opportunities for citizens, or does it serve to close them off from opportunities, or something else? As you read the Ethics, please pay attention to how Aristotle discusses, makes assumptions about, or illustrates one of the following concepts:
- happiness
- character
- moral virtue
- goodness
- politics
- gentility
Bring to class (in written form, ~1 page, single-spaced) the results of your trace. The format for your response is honestly quite open. You might provide an outline to show us how to read these pages for that particular concept, or you might write several paragraphs where you comment on how Aristotle deals with your concept throughout his treatise, or you might do something else. I simply need you to show us the most important parts in Nicomachean Ethics where Aristotle seems to deal with your selected concept, either implicitly or explicitly. Feel free to note your own surprises or contradictions. Please refer to specific passages from his treatise as part of your response. Please include the MLA citation for Nicomachean Ethics and use in-text citations throughout your response where needed.
Have fun with this -- we are all learning as we read!
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Burke "Equipment for Living" on 8/31/11: Relevant Terms
As we read and reread (and reread) Burke, these terms will provide useful context. You'll find them in the OED and the Bedford Glossary:
- Marxism
- Marxist Criticism
- Formalism
- New Criticism
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Preparatory Exercise for class on 8/31/11
Schema of Critical Approaches
(10 points)
Select 1 of 3 options for introductory essays:
- Leitch's introduction to The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (pp. 1-7, plus any additional 10 pages)
- Richards' introduction to Rhetoric: The New Critical Idiom (pp. 1-18)
- Richter's introduction to The Critical Tradition (pp. 1-6, 13-22)
Bring to class (in written form, ~1 page, single-spaced) what you understand to be the hierarchy of movements or concepts presented in your selected essay. In other words, how does the writer of your essay present and organize "critical theory" (i.e., by movements in literary criticism, by schools of thought, by disciplinary problems, by rhetorical questions, by theoretical approaches, by something else) and what led him/her to do so? Provide a concise but informative explanation of this hierarchy or organization in your own words, for an unfamiliar reader, and be sure to consider any nuances of the writer's approach.
Please include the MLA citation for your selected essay, and use in-text citations if you refer to specific passages from the essay in your response. You may construct a visual schema with text, or an annotated outline, if thinking visually would help you to complete this exercise. Please be prepared to explain your schema during Wednesday's class, and to discuss how it does or does not intersect with Kenneth Burke's essay, "Equipment for Living."
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