book review segment….

Hi All,
Herewith, a slice of my book review– I am having a devilish time trying to come up with conf proposal topix…..
Honda, in its earliest days in the US motorcycle market, introduced its products in an ad campaign that quietly suggested, “You meet the nicest people on a Honda.” The approach was [...]

Read Full Post »

Possible Conference Topics

Women and the Gendering of Talk, Gossip, and Communication Practices Across Media
Charting Transnational Native American Studies: Aesthetics, Politics, Identity
Nationalism(s) and Cultural Memory in Texts of Childhood
Recent Jewish American Literature and Trauma
Mortified: Representing Women’s Shame
The poetics of Pain: Aesthetics, Ideology, and Representation
 

Read Full Post »

Book Review Bit

I’d like to preface this by saying I’m less than pleased with the result of my book review.  I just couldn’t get into it and thus, I hate it (but I’m pretty sure the assignment hated me, so there you go).  Anyway, here’s a bit of my book review of the Berlin text:
 
Before diving into [...]

Read Full Post »

Conference Paper Ideas

Here’s are some of the ideas that I thought were interesting for a conference paper:
Individuals Shaping the Writing Center- MAWCA This is one the Dr. Lynch-Biniek suggested to the UWC staff and I’d really like to write for this.
Rhetorics of New Media-SWTXPCA Conference
Censorship-Transverse-U of Toronto
Sex, Death and Boredom-Fordham

Read Full Post »

Class or cooking-it’s a toss up!

I, too, am sorry you are ill, Dr. Mahoney (aka “Cuz”)!  You need to get better fast.  Without class tonight, my daughter is suggesting I should cook dinner.  At this point, I am checking all the pockets of my coats to see if I can come up with enough money for a hot dog or two from Yocco’s [...]

Read Full Post »

my paper…yippee for the day off

 
The Rise and Fall of English
 
So, I read the title and thought, “Wow! What a downer. Do I really need to read this text for my English Studies course?!” The answer of course is no. I don’t really need to read the book, but rather should and did. My own question becomes a huge question [...]

Read Full Post »

Feel better, Dr. Mahoney!
I am just going to post an excerpt from my paper as well. I found this review a bit difficult to write because I have basically accepted the fact that I’m terrible at summarizing. I tried, but I”m not sure how much that counts for anything.
I will be checking out the conference [...]

Read Full Post »

week 11/11

Thanks alot guys… now I cant wish Mahoney to feel better either, cuz you already did it; you stole all my brown-nosing fire!
I found Scholes’s discussion of truth theory to be one of the liveliest sections of the entire book.  Aptly named “No dog would go on living like this,” in this chapter Scholes laments [...]

Read Full Post »

Pleasant surprise, considering my day today!

Don’t be fooled, I really hope you get better Dr. Mahoney and I hope everyone else stays well. I was actually looking forward to class tonight! I’m going to include just a section of my book review since it’s about 1600 words and I don’t want to overload everyone. The personal study plan (which I [...]

Read Full Post »

Book Review teaser

Dr. Mahoney,
Hard to follow up the two preceding posts but get healthy (and keep your family healthy) so we can continue arguing about what English is in class. Below is an excerpt of my review on Scholes. The entirety of it is coming your way in email. Take care, all.
 
The basis of Scholes’ argument takes [...]

Read Full Post »

A whole day off? Think of what I could accomplish (but won’t)

Man, what a suck up Lori is. Well, I won’t try to outdo her (although I hope you feel extra better) but I will add my two cents (which doesn’t really make sense because I’m posting on a separate related topic but I mean, really, where else could that sentence have gone). Anyway, I am [...]

Read Full Post »

P.S.

I don’t know why some of my previous post came up missing, however if you just highlight the area that’s missing it then shows up. Weird!

Read Full Post »

Class stuff for 11/11

I hope you’re feeling better Dr. Mahoney!
The links below take you to both my book review and my personal study plan.
BOOK REVIEW
PERSONAL STUDY PLAN
I haven’t decided if I really like where my book review is at right now. I’m sitting in the middle between 1,000-2,000 words and I feel like I need to expand, but [...]

Read Full Post »

Dolphins 3, Porpoises 0

Communication or stimuli?
(Or too many episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger?)
Check out the article: Mysterious Porpoise Deaths Blamed On Berserk Dolphins
 
 

Read Full Post »

Democratic classroom

One sentence on page 110 in Berlin brought me to a crossroads as to which path I’d like to take as an English instructor. Berlin notes starting on page 109 that, “For democracy to function citizens must actively engage in public debate, applying reading and writing practices in the service of articulating their positions and [...]

Read Full Post »

blown out of the water

 
Berlin has exposed and called into question many conflicting ideologies and contradictions about positionality, aesthetics, class, race, and gender as they relate to the traditional English curriculum in its privileging of the study of canonical literature /poetics over rhetoric.  In the second half of Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures he combines postmodernist theories of language and [...]

Read Full Post »

Once again, Berlin seemed to top Scholes in that his suggestions for his two possible courses seemed to be well-thought out and were explained in a much more elaborate, understandable way. Additionally, Berlin’s thought process was again much easier to follow compared to Graff and Scholes.  I felt that Graff and Scholes were trying to [...]

Read Full Post »

Compressed Time

Berlin responds to Graff’s institutional history through treating it as a master narrative where he fills the gaps with the history of rhetoric. Rhetoric, he claims, had been “censured” (28) by English departments and its history ignored in Graff. Berlin’s  main concern is to teach critical literacy through cultural studies and rhetoric. I like that he theorizes [...]

Read Full Post »

The Love Song of J. Alfred English Teacher

Let us go then you and I,
When English studies is about to die
Like a patient bleeding out upon a table.
Let us go, through many half-deserted halls
Where no students hear the call
To become a learned English major
(Since there are no jobs, they wager.)
Let us follow a passionate argument
Concerning English course content
To lead us to an overwhelming [...]

Read Full Post »

Enjoying Berlin…

I’ve gotten past the abstruseness of Berlin’s Chapter 4, and find that in the rest of the book, as he did in the first three chapters, the author makes good sense. In introducing and “unpacking” the concept of social-epistemic rhetoric, he emphasizes that the producer of discourse is …. a construction, a fabrication, [...]

Read Full Post »