Quizzes, Reading Qs, and Preparatory Exercises

Review/Workshop Discussion on 4/25 and 4/27

Congratulations, everyone! You have -- with grace, fortitude, and aplomb -- traversed four different groups of readings this semester, and I have truly enjoyed traversing them with you. As promised, we have two days on the syllabus dedicated to "workshop" and "review" of specific readings, concepts, or texts, and really these are intended to give you class time to begin thinking concretely about how you are going to use your 5 critical texts for the final LCD. Moreover, it's an opportunity for you to voice lingering (and new) questions about particular concepts or texts, specific to your final project. For both days, obviously, bring your LCD assignment sheet to class. As well, bring to class the texts you plan to work with.

So as to make this useful to everyone, I will ask you to submit questions ahead of each class, so that I know what to prepare for:

• submit questions via e-mail by noon on 4/24 for class on 4/25
• submit questions via e-mail by noon on 4/26 for class on 4/27.

The tendency is to think of these as "spare days," and thus not very useful. However, this is my invitation to you to actually tell me what you want to discuss, and to let me know what lingering questions you are still struggling to resolve in what you read. And chances are, one question you have will be shared by at least five others in the class. So, take agency and voice them!

Looking forward,

-Prof. Graban

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Up the Yangtze on 4/18/12: Discussion Questions

In preparation for our film discussion day, 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. [As of 3/24/12, these original links are unavailable! For now, you can locate Yung Chang's interview, information about the humanitarian aid project that grew from the film and a blog post in which Chang updates viewers on Yu Shui's family. I will try to recover the original site.]

1. What does this film demonstrate about what makes representation so challenging? In other words, if we think about representation as a theoretical or critical process, i.e., not as a negotiation between two people or two cultures but as a literary condition, what do you think Chang would say makes it uniquely challenging? Or, based on viewing the film, what do you think would be his challenges in representation? 
2. How does the film act like an intertext, i.e., what intertextual elements seem noteworthy for discerning Chang’s agenda, how the film might impact both Chinese and American viewers, how the film represents Chang’s unique positioning as Canadian-Chinese, its critical potential? 
3. What passages from the “Passages for Representation” handout seem reflected in what Chang argues, or in how the film narrates? 
4. Thinking back to Booth’s narratology, what kind of narration appears in the film? What kind of narrator is Chang? What other narrator-agents does the film provide? 
5. Thinking back to Ong’s audience-construction, how does Chang construct his audience(s)? What kind of audience(s) are we called to be? Equipped to become? 
6. Which of these concepts best describes the situation Chang depicts in the film (by “best describes,” I suppose I mean “best captures the complexity”): Alterity, Diaspora, Hegemony, Hybridity, Subaltern?

Enjoy!

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Gates, Jr. "Writing 'Race'" on 4/13/12: Reading Questions and Terms

Before our discussion of Gates, Jr. on Friday, we may review some key terms. Most of them are in the Bedford Glossary, so please bring that to class. Some of them will require looking up ahead of time:

• Alterity (in the OED)
• Diaspora (in the OED)
• Hegemony
• Hybridity
• Identification (in the OED)
• Representation

After we discuss these terms, we may review some of Spivak's claims and look again at that passages I distributed from our past readings (Cooper through Butler), but my questions for us will be fairly simple:

1. 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 Butler's claims carry over into Gates, Jr.'s article? 
2. I don't know what to substitute for the "subaltern," so perhaps we can consider whether this concept from Spivak plays a role in Gates, Jr.'s theorizing at all.

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Spivak "Can the Subaltern Speak?" on 4/11/12: Reading Questions and Quiz Terms

Folks, this unit offers us rich readings and rich terminology! So, we will be concretizing our understanding of some key terms this week by taking a quiz. 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
• Diaspora (in the OED)
• Gynocriticism
• Hegemony
• Hybridity
• Identification (in the OED)
• Representation

In this essay, Spivak draws on a much longer work by the same name, and we see hints of that longer argument, especially in the details of some stories she tells. Much of that longer discussion, as well as this shorter one, is based in her cultural critique of Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari (whose book, A Thousand Plateaus, was mentioned in Landow’s chapter on “Hypertext and Critical Theory”).

1.) In this essay, how does Spivak argue for:

• Subaltern as different from postcolonial? As different from oppressed?
• Subalternity as a condition of voicelessness (or a condition of being un-able or dis-abled to voice)? 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 avoid “encroachment of the unacknowledged Subject of the West”?

2.) Another way to think about this is: What do you think Spivak offers us that Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Burke, and other post-structuralists did not quite offer, in terms of explaining critical relationships between 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?

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Butler Gender Trouble on 4/9/12: Quiz Terms and Reading Questions

Folks, this unit offers us rich readings and rich terminology! So, we will be concretizing our understanding of some key terms this week by taking a quiz. 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
• Diaspora (in the OED)
• Gynocriticism
• Hegemony
• Hybridity
• Identification (in the OED)
• Representation

To prepare for our Butler discussion, I'd actually like us to think comparatively about Butler and Burke. You may remember Kenneth Burke's term "logology" from earlier in the semester -- his own construction of theories about how words (or language) are learned and understood. Some contemporary theorists have been experimenting with the idea that Burke's logology could be feminist on its own. As a way of testing that claim, I'd like us to consider where Burke's "Terministic Screens" and Butler's Gender Trouble do or do not intersect on the following:

1. the possibility that acts of identification (with something or someone else) and acts of division (away from something or someone else) can occur together
2. the possibility that the categories of sex/gender/desire are terministic screens (or not)
3. 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 4/6/12: Reading Questions and Preparatory Exercise (Road Map) 
(20 points)

Yes -- this is the final PE of the semester!

For Friday, we are reading our last essay by Kenneth Burke--this time, a chapter from his book entitled Language as Symbolic Action. I will ask you to construct a road map of Burke's chapter. Surprised? 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 Burke's chapter to illuminate those ideas. Some of you did a great job combining spatial organization with prose when you constructed your road maps of Killingsworth's "Appeals Through Tropes," 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. Think of this as your last great symbolic act!

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.

And now for some tentative discussion questions. 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. It is kind of complex, so I here is how I'm thinking about discussing it on Friday:

1. One 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?
2. Burke distinguishes 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 this unit on Re/Presentation so far, or in our last unit on Text/uality?

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de Certeau "Walking in the City" and Benjamin "Work of Art" on 4/4/12: Reading Questions

You may remember that I offered some key claims from Rivkin and Ryan's background essay on Marxism and Marxist Criticism a few weeks ago. 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 ask you to consider the vitality of such an embeddedness--of such a relationship--of such an ambient context.

Here are some questions that will guide our discussion:

1. What is materiality according to either or both of our authors?
2. For de Certeau, the "concept-city" is the optimal space for theorizing power(lessness) and representation. Why? What does it allow us to do? Or not do?
3. For Benjamin, the reproduction of a work of art is not only a complicated process, it is also historically fragile. What does this mean, and what justifications or reasons does Benjamin provide?

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Stranger than Fiction on 3/28/12: Discussion Questions

Here are some questions that will guide our discussion:

1. Consider this idea (from Barthes as channeled through some of our semiotic theorists during the "Anti/Signification" unit): "Language is in the uttering, not the utterance." How is this salient in the film, if it is?
2. Text, hypertext, intertext, or metatext? Can we justify Stranger than Fiction as one of these, according to a specific theorist?
3. How might you explain the film in terms of Burroughs' "fold-in method" or "cut-up" technique?
4. Thinking back to pp. 324-325 in Bakhtin's "Discourse in the Novel," what would be the usefulness of justifying the film according to this notion of heteroglossia? What other ways can you describe the multiple-voiced interactions in the film (not using heteroglossia, or not using Bakhtin's language)?
5. The authors of our Bedford Glossary discuss the prominent role of langue ("native tongue," or the entire system of signs) in semiotic theory (468). They also say that 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 can we consider the function of langue and parole in Stranger than Fiction? In other words, how do you see the concepts working together in the way that Bakhtin needed us to see them working together?
6. If this film is a reflection or a critique, on what does it reflect or of what is it a critique? I'm interested in what we think about the interpretability of that film as one of those genres (reflection, or critique). In other words, using Bakhtin, Booth, Killingsworth, and/or Miller, discuss the characteristics of the film that make it especially interpretable.
7. Thinking back to Bakhtin’s “The Problem with Speech Genres,” what are the possibilities or limitations for calling this film a “speech genre”? Or, thinking back to Miller, how does it challenge certain film genres? Which ones?

Also, I thought you might be interested in the other film I considered for this unit--Naqoyqatsi: Life as War (2002, Godfrey Reggio and John Kane), the third film in the Qatsi trilogy.

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Burroughs "The Future of the Novel" and Landow "Hypertext and Critical Theory" on 3/26/12: Quiz Terms

Folks, before our discussion of Landow and Burroughs on Monday, I'm planning to give a quiz to help concretize some old terms and learn a few more new terms that will help you to approach SCD #3. (This is the quiz you have been waiting for for several weeks.) It will be slightly longer than the previous quizzes, so please come prepared! Please bring the Bedford Glossary to class. Here are the terms that might appear, all of them in the Glossary:

• Aesthetic Distance
• Affective Fallacy
• Genre
• Hermeneutics
• Intention / Intentional Fallacy
• Hypertext
• Langue and Parole (in the entry on "Semiotics")
• Marxist Criticism (again!)
• Narratology
• Reader-response Criticism (and also in Richter's background essay)

For our discussion of Landow, I'd like you to keep an eye out for what I like to call Landow's "Big Bold Claims." In other words, as you read, keep track of all of the characteristics, qualities, and potentialities of Hypertext that Landow argues for. What is hypertext? What can hypertext do? Why does hypertext require its own critical theory? What kinds of processes are involved in the interpretation of hypertexts? How does hypertext reflect the various paradoxes we have studied so far?

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Case: Daniel "Public Secrets" on 3/23/12


Hello, everyone. For the third and final time this semester, class is on the blog today and we'll be discussing a case!

I truly hope you enjoy reading Sharon Daniel's hypertext essay. Please remember to give yourself at least 30 minutes prior to class time 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. This text has a number of different components, and you'll want to discover as many of them as you can. In fact, I highly recommend that you browse the essay and post before class time begins, so that you can use your full 50 minutes to converse on the blog.

As before, I am asking for one substantial post, which I will count towards Monday's posts, and as many comments as you can manage to your classmates' posts. By "as many comments as you can manage," I mean that -- for the space of 50 minutes -- I'd like you to offer engaged responses, and even push the conversation in new directions. Depending on how you engage, this may result in one long comment, or several shorter comments. I cannot dictate how many comments you should write; instead, I will encourage you to have fun with it!

Please take up one of these discussion questions in your post:

1. Thinking back to 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 can you describe the multiple-voiced interactions in Daniel's text (not using heteroglossia, or not using Bakhtin's language)?
2. The authors of our Bedford Glossary discuss the prominent role of langue ("native tongue," or the entire system of signs) in semiotic theory (468). They also say that 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 can we consider the function of langue and parole in Daniel's hypertext essay? In other words, how do you see the concepts working together in the way that Bakhtin needed us to see them working together?
3. 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. However, I'm interested in what we think about the interpretability of her critique. In other words, using Bakhtin, Booth, Killingsworth, and/or Miller, discuss the characteristics of Daniel's hypertext essay that make it especially interpretable as a critique.
4. Thinking back to Bakhtin’s “The Problem with Speech Genres,” what are the possibilities or limitations for calling this hypertext critique a “speech genre”? Or, thinking back to Miller, what are the possibilities for calling this hypertext critique an example of “situated action”?

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Mitchell "Metapictures" on 3/21/12: Reading Prompt and Discussion Question

I truly hope you enjoy Mitchell's essay! One dilemma taken up by the theorists in this unit is whether and how texts are interpretable on their own. For example, what is or becomes involved in interpretability, and how does interpretability affect genre, or vice versa?

Question: For Mitchell, rather than thinking of images as texts, it is more advantageous to think about textuality as an approach to reading images. What can he mean? 

As you read, please try to disambiguate some of Mitchell's key terms, paying attention to how they differ from one another:

• image
• textuality
• metapicture
• pictorial turn
• dialectical image
• hypericon

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Preparatory Exercise for class on 3/19/12
Unpacking 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 very 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 this PE, I think it makes sense for us to "unpack" Miller's tightly packed essay for its genealogy, i.e., the lineage of ideas and authors underlying it. You have done this before 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 A through Ke, please "unpack" pages 151-158
• if your last name begins with letters Ki through W, please "unpack" pages 155-163.

The first section is more prosaic, while the second section is more abstract. I will ask everyone to read pages 163-165, since these contain her conclusions.

Ultimately, here is what we want to consider: As Miller summarizes other theories in order to come up with the elements of genre that would help us to see it as situated action, how does she challenge other theorists 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 her 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.

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Booth "Types of Narration" and "Morality of Narration" on 3/9/12: Reading Questions

Wayne Booth begins his "Types of Narration" chapter with some assertions about choice. When we meet for class, I will be interested in testing these assertions a bit, perhaps extending them and seeing how far they go. For example, 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?

Similarly, 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. I will ask us to consider 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 3/7/12
Road Map of Killingsworth "Appeal Through Tropes

(20 points)

When we turn to M. Jimmie Killingsworth's chapter, 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 do 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 impact. 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.

You can do this much like I did in my road map of Burke's chapter on "Equipment for Living," or you can make it a fleshy outline, or you can organize your ideas spatially on the page, or you can construct a visual roadmap that is heavy with passages and prose. Whatever you do, your main goal is to understand (and demonstrate) Killingsworth's typology of the trope and what he seems to think it can do. 

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 forms? Or as art for art's sake? What's the big deal, after all?

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Wimsatt and Beardsley "From The Intentional Fallacy" Continuation of Bakhtin's "The Problem of Speech Genres" on 3/5/12: Quiz Terms

Before our continued discussion of Bakhtin 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 some terms from which I'll construct the quiz:

• Cultural Materialism
• Genre
• Hermeneutics
• Hypertext
• Intention / Intentional Fallacy
• Langue and Parole (in the entry on "Semiotics")
• Marxist Criticism (again!)
• Narratology

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Bakhtin "The Problem of Speech Genres" on 3/2/12: Discussion Questions

Folks, as you read excerpts from Bakhtin's essay for Friday, it might help to keep two things in mind:

1. The topics in the essay represent what Bakhtin had planned to write as a full-length book, and so much of his discussion of casual or informal genres is dictated by his own plans for building a more comprehensive theory of genre;
2. The organization of the essay is such that pages 60-63 offer justification for the project, pages 63-66 provide a plan or an outline, and pages 67-75 set up and then overturn certain truisms about language and genre.

I hadn't necessarily planned to demonstrate a case, but I may draw on movie trailers to help us consider a couple of questions inspired by Bakhtin's essay:

     The Shining Original [disturbing images] and Remade

     Mary Poppins Original and Remade 

     Snow White Original and Remade 

     Lord of the Rings Original and Remade 

     The Matrix Original and Remade  

Each of these original and remade trailers represents a particular kind of genre that we associate with the films and/or stories they tell (e.g., romance, action, horror, musical). I am interested in how we can theorize their transformation into alternate genres. What do we notice about audience construction, audience participation, possible topoi, and organization in the original and remade versions--both according to the properties and characteristics they hold in common, and according to Bakhtin's discussion of truisms (pp. 67-75)?

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Preparatory Exercise for class on 2/29/12 
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?)
• 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 a fleshy 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. Whatever you do, please refer to specific passages from his treatise as part of your response and mediate them accordingly. Please include the MLA citation for On the Sublime and use in-text citations throughout your response where needed.

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Satrapi Persepolis on 2/22/12 and 2/24/12 and 2/27/12: Discussion Questions

Since this is one of our "cases," and considering the fact that it may be your first time reading it, I really want you to be free to experience Satrapi's comic-memoir in any number of ways. We will only be reading the first half of her memoir (pp. 1-153), chronicling her childhood in Iran prior to leaving for Vienna at age 14, and we'll take two class days for discussion. We may discuss some of the following (or we may not, depending upon your own list of curiosities and questions):

• how much we should (or even can) extend our theorizing into this kind of genre
• the limitations of comic identification
• the challenges of theorizing agency in her text
• her most provocative use of drawn symbols
• the role(s) of narration
• the problem(s) of materiality and place
• how she draws perplexity, gender-bending, entrapment, liberation, etc.
• benefits and risks of identifying with Marjane and/or with Satrapi

Enjoy reading!

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McCloud "The Vocabulary of Comics" on 2/20/12 2/22/12: Quiz Terms

Before our discussion of McCloud, 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 will be a bit of a review):

• Deconstruction
• Differance
• Erasure (in the OED)
• Heteroglossia
• Logocentrism
• Presence/Absence
• Sign
• Signification (in the OED)
• Symbol

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Burke "The Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle" on 2/17/12 2/20/12: Reading Questions

To prepare for our discussion of Burke's essay, I offer several reading questions to help you navigate your way through it:

1. 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? How does he organize his analysis?
2. 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 this linked image. How do you think Burke might analyze this image?

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Preparatory Exercise for class on 2/15/12 2/17/12
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 a fleshy outline, or you can construct a visual roadmap that is heavy with passages and prose. Your main goal is to understand each of his aspects, and to begin to understand his concept of heteroglossia.

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 the experiences we have had reading novels.

Keep impressing me!

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Derrida "Differance" on 2/13/12 2/15/12: Discussion Questions

For today's discussion, the following terms will provide useful context. You'll find them all in the Bedford Glossary, with two exceptions. As usual, please bring the Glossary to class:

• Deconstruction
• Differance
• Erasure (in the OED)
• Logocentrism
• Presence/Absence
• Sign
• Signification (in the OED)
• Speech-Act Theory
• Symbol

We will spend most of our time working through Derrida. When I read this essay, I find I have to write in the margins and try to follow all of the ways that Derrida defines "differance"; however, I will open the class by asking us to consider some differences between Richards and Ogden's "symbol" and what we have come to know as "sign."

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Richards and Ogden "From On the Meaning of Meaning" on 2/10/12: Discussion Questions

Folks, you may not believe it, but you are doing great so far with some very difficult texts! Class is on the blog today and we will begin blogging on Richards and Ogden this week, but we will likely continue discussing this text as we discuss Derrida and Bakhtin next week.

As before, I am asking for one substantial post, and as many comments as you can manage to your classmates' posts. By "as many comments as you can manage," I mean that -- for the space of 50 minutes -- I'd like you to offer engaged responses, and even push the conversation in new directions. Depending on how you engage, this may result in one long comment, or several shorter comments. I cannot dictate how many comments you should write; instead, I will encourage you to have fun with it! Here is the prompt for your post (it's simpler, and a bit more open this time):

• Whereas Locke begins laying out a theory of words as "signs of internal conceptions," and of signification as a potentially fallible process, Richards and Ogden are more interested in mapping out a relationship between "symbols" and referents. What's the difference, and how is this significant to our Anti/Signification paradox (so far)? I'd love for you to put both texts into conversation, either on a single passage or a single point, simply to play with and explore how their theories collide, intersect, lay foundation for, or build on the other (knowing, of course, that Locke writes well before Richards and Ogden). In other words, how are they relevant, one to the other, and can you offer an example from media, life, other texts, etc., to demonstrate that relevance?

As before, I will count your post toward Monday's posts. (Thank you, Emily.) You are absolutely welcome to complete your post ahead of our class hour, and I would highly encourage that. But I will ask that you log in during this class hour to comment on classmates' posts. Those comments will, effectively, comprise our classroom "discussion," although your discussion will likely be more narrowly focused on one or two of your classmates, rather than on the whole forum.

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Preparatory Exercise for class on 2/6/12
Conceptual "Traces" of Locke (Chapter IX, to page 825 only)
(20 points)

As you have done before for Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and On Rhetoric, complete a trace through 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 a very full 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. Whatever you do, 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!

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Cases: PETA, Banerjee, United Way on 2/3/12

Class is on the blog today! I am asking for one substantial post, and as many comments as you can manage to your classmates' posts. By "as many comments as you can manage," I mean that -- for the space of 50 minutes -- I'd like you to offer engaged responses, and even push the conversation in new directions. Depending on how you engage, this may result in one long comment, or several shorter comments. I cannot dictate how many comments you should write; instead, I will encourage you to have fun with it!

Here is the prompt for your post:

• Please spend a few minutes viewing the PowerPoint slide show in our Oncourse Resources folder, called "agent/cy." The slide show offers several different genres, although all of the genres were at one time circulated in various public media, and they all represent some kind of public advocacy. Items are clearly labeled for their source, with the exception of the polar bear photograph, which is one of Subhankar Banerjee's. 
• I would really like to know whether/how you think any of these examples is justifiable in terms of Barton's or Welling's articles. I'm not just asking you to determine whether you think these are legitimate examples of Barton's "disability discourse" or Welling's "ecopornography." Rather, I am asking you to consider the possibilities and limitations of each writer's principal argument, and how these examples reflect what is possible or limited about those arguments. And of course, what this means for our understanding of agent/cy as a paradox (if it is).

After giving it more thought, I have decided that I will count your one post toward Monday's posts. It seems reasonable to me.

You are absolutely welcome to complete your post ahead of our class hour, and I would highly encourage that. But I will ask that you log in during this class hour to comment on classmates' posts. Those comments will, effectively, comprise our classroom "discussion," although your discussion will likely be more narrowly focused on one or two of your classmates, rather than on the whole forum.

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Barton "Textual Practices of Erasure" or Welling "Ecoporn" on 2/1/12: 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 1/23. Here are the terms that may be on the quiz (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 1/30/12: 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, choice, reciprocity, and literary identification (or mis-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.

1. 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?
2. 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?
3. 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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Campbell "Promiscuous and Protean" (pp. 1-3, 6-14) on 1/27/12: Discussion Questions

Because we'll be discussing another brief case, and one that is directly mentioned in Campbell's article, I am not asking you to formally prepare questions in advance. However, I will ask you to consider the following as you read and prepare to join the discussion:

1. If you were to look back over Burke, Aristotle (esp. Rhetoric), Barthes, Foucault, Ong, and Gilbert and Gubar, which of these theorists seems to make the clearest argument to you for how or why agent/cy is a paradox?
2. How does Campbell's examination of Sojourner Truth's text add a new or different dimension to that paradox (if you think it does)?  

As always, please bring the Glossary to class, as well as the handout on "Terms of Agent/cy" that I distributed in class on 1/23.

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Preparatory Exercise for class on 1/25/12

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, using in-text citations where needed. Please also include the MLA citation for "Infection in the Sentence" from our reading list.


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Ong "The Writer's Audience is Always a Fiction" on 1/23/12: Reading Questions

While there is no formal PE due on Monday, to prepare for our discussion of Walter Ong's essay, I offer several reading questions to help you navigate your way through it:

1. 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 2012, 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?
2. 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?
3. 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 or the Bedford Glossary for a description of "Reader-Response Criticism.")

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 1/20/12: 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 1/20 will involve a case--the September 11 digital archive, which has already undergone several revisions since its first construction. Before Friday's class, Be sure to 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 1/18/12
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 1/13/12
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
• goodness
• politics

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 1/11/12: 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 1/11/12
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."