Mini-Blog #1: The Other Half of Teaching

I am posting this week’s blogs in two truncated segments to align with the two articles that I am responsible for during the coming week; I figured this would be a good pedestal to begin my discussion of them.
 
Finders’ article has a relevance to it that goes well beyond the mere pedagogy he’s promoting.  In [...]

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Fact or Fiction: Length Doesn’t Matter?

Let me tell you about the days when I feel most like a failure of an English teacher.  They are typically centered around literature—the canon, because our syllabus knows no other option.  These texts are challenging: Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, and Macbeth are the only three mentioned by name in the twelfth grade curriculum.  Apart from [...]

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Focus

Part of teaching English is helping students develop strategies to stay on task with their reading, especially when they’re reading something that they’re not particularly interested in. One of my favorites (though I’ve not yet taught it and quite frankly, have a difficult time using it for my own reading processes) is the funnel. Using [...]

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Confession of an Arrogant Snob

In the next seventy-two hours, fifty sophomores in the Fleetwood School District will be finishing up the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.  I have found the book to be a tough sell in the beginning, with greater success as the action intensifies.  I enjoy the book a lot—particularly everything it has to say—but I’ve [...]

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Real World Intertextuality

I know that I wasn’t the only person from this class to spend Monday with Dr. Daggett; not only did I see some of you there, but I also witnessed how far-reaching his presentation was after seeing a front-page newspaper article on the man.  My final reaction: wonderful speaker, frightening connections, great arguments, unclear direction.  [...]

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Order, Not Subtraction

Scholes provides an overview of the rise of English disciplinary history in his first chapter.  In his introduction to Yale, he says the following:

In 1767, English grammar, language, and composition were introduced by the tutors, who taught these subjects.  In 1768 a literary and debating society was established by the students.  In 1776 instruction in [...]

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General Education and New Criticism Sitting in a Tree

The problem with General Education and its marriage to New Criticism was neither General Education nor New Criticism themselves.  I embrace most of what “The Great Books” program represents; I’ve studied Hutchins in the past and found many of his policies to correspond with my own.  Do I think that college students should spend half [...]

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Questions, questions…

This is probably going to sound like complete mush but it’s late and I realize I’m close to missing my blogging deadline.  I’ve really enjoyed Graff’s detailed history of the evolution (and conflicts) of English throughout the years.  I must agree though, that I also feel that I have more questions now than ever.
I am [...]

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Literature and our Experience

I have to say I truly enjoyed the article on literature and lit. criticism. As a professional writing major, I haven’t had much experience with literature studies except for an undergrad Shakespeare class and the required freshman lit course. I love reading and am wholly enthusiastic about plunging deeper into this “new world” over the [...]

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The baggage of “literature”

  Taylor begins his article, “Literature and Literary Criticism,” by making a distinction between two terms in English Studies:  literary studies and literature.  He continues, distinguishing them in the following definitions:
The term literary studies… implies plurality, interdisciplinarity, and transition.  It is a term that implicitly acknowledges instability in the categories of knowledge and practice.  Literature, [...]

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Literature, Criticism and Interdisciplinarity

I just finished reading Taylor’s “Literature and Literary Criticism”, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I especially enjoyed his thoughts about the literary canon, and his assertions that the canon is always in flux, more a product of current social conditions and philosophies than a static, nonsensical list of dead white guys.
“One of the fundamental observations of [...]

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I’m a Literary Man, So Help Me God!

Please take my blog for this week to be a continuation of my blog for last week; I’m trying to reconcile the same concerns.
 
I just finished reading Taylor’s article on “Literature and Literary Criticism,” and I’m more than a little nervous because so far I consider it to be the most effective introduction in the [...]

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