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August 28, 2005
Writing about literature
Regular readers of Schenectady are too familiar with my technological insecurities. Now here's another:
I am terrified of literary analysis. In my early-eighties English PhD, I was compelled to take two of my three qualifying exam areas in literature. When I get into it, I think literary criticism is kind of fun. Okay, a lot of fun. But in the early 80s at WVU, there was no literary criticism. There was only literature, ground up and mushed into a heap by hegemonic New Criticism. It came within an inch of killing my lifelong love of reading. I actually had to take the American lit exam twice. I escaped with a dissertation in ESL-focused comp/rhet and a good grounding in sociolinguistics. In my 21 years in the professoriate, I have spent only two in an English department, and that was at TCU in a halcyon time (the late 90s) when comp/rhet and lit lived in harmony. Brigadoon U. At Colgate, I taught interdisciplinary world culture classes that included art, music, architecture, and philosophy, along with lit, and I was fine with that. At TCU the course necessarily became world lit, and I bungled it horribly. I'm just not an easy fit with the study of literature.
As I've been working on the handbook, there have been what I call the Scary Chapters: critical thinking, argument, visual rhetoric, digital writing, writing about lit, and ESL. Scary for different reasons: critical thinking and argument because I so hate so much of what has become canonical in those areas; visual rhetoric, digital writing, and writing about lit because I am so aware of my shortcomings; and ESL because so much is at stake.
Well, I have two Scary Chapters to go: writing about lit and ESL. And I'm well into the writing about lit chapter and feeling rather happy, actually. When I roll up my sleeves and dig in, I have a lot of fun with literary analysis, despite my insecurities. And, as is the case with the new literacies chapters, there will be a lot of reviewing by experts, to correct anything I've bungled.
So all this is just a very long-winded way of saying "Whew. It isn't as bad as I'd feared." And now back to the one-page overview of critical theories. Holy sheet.
Posted by senioritis at August 28, 2005 07:47 AM
Comments
Congrats to you!!!!!
Hope your ears aren't burning too much--I've used your name so many times this week, I imagine folks are starting to aim their anger at you as well as me. The subject of that anger? My refusal to require my freshman to submit their papers to me via MyDropBox.com.
I'm trying to give the due respect to those who have spent the last six days and nights informing me that since this is my first semester in the classroom I might want to take their advice, but I like to think I'm not going to be the kind of professor that assumes all the students in my class are thieves because, quite probably, one or two, or even three, for all I know, miught try to slip some plagiarized wrtiting past me.
Wish me AND my students luck. I've picked the battle, but it's the students who will be fighting the war.
Frozen With Fear
Posted by: Kirsten at August 28, 2005 11:10 AM
Wow, Kirsten, you are my new hero. You might lose this battle, y'know; TAs (and especially first-time TAs) have precious little power when the rubber hits the road. But of course from my perspective, this is a very important battle to engage. MyDropBox is the devil; it works against the student-teacher relationship that is so integral to good composition pedagogy. Keep me posted!
Posted by: senioritis at August 28, 2005 11:34 AM
You were at TCU in the late 90's? Did you know Earnest Cox, by any chance?
Posted by: Krista at August 28, 2005 12:43 PM
Yep. I take it you do, too? Tell him hello for me!
Posted by: senioritis at August 28, 2005 12:47 PM
Oh, and tell him "hi" for me, too!!!!! :-)
Posted by: Billie at August 28, 2005 04:34 PM
I do — he was my professor at UALR and has since become a close friend. I'll be sure to send him over here! (And how do you know Andy Herrman, anyway?)
Posted by: Krista Kennedy at August 30, 2005 09:33 AM
Andy & I got to know each other many moons ago at conferences (WPA, I think), when we were both very "new."
Posted by: senioritis at August 30, 2005 10:25 AM