Materials for my two sessions are available in a google drive folder here. If you want easier access to the google doc on using google drive (very meta, I know!), I've made it public to anyone in the world to view; here's a link to it, and it's also embedded below. Now that I've put …
Revising Critical Theory
I've been teaching a MA-level critical theory course for a couple of years now, and while I think it's effective on some levels as-is, I would like to offer a more curated, in-depth approach. Currently, the course is organized loosely chronologically, using the 2nd edition of the Rivkin & Ryan anthology--what I used in graduate …
Forking for Beginners
I've been trying to wrap my head around github, and while it's been a slow process, I think my experience may be useful for other folk like me--those of us who have just enough knowledge (and the curiosity, and the really big eyes) to make a mess of things. So, I thought I'd make a …
From Tunis to Kairouan: March 3, 2012
Electronic workshopping with google docs
In the past several years, I've tried many, many different workshop methodologies--the full class single-paper workshop one day, followed by small-group workshops the next; round-robin workshops; lightning critiques; the simple exchange/read/comment; send your draft to a peer through email and use Word to comment/merge; in-class electronic workshopping with a peer; in-class polishing at the computer …
Scholar’s Day 2012: Beware Women!
Tomorrow, I'll be leading a Scholar's Day mock classroom event with 9 newly-admitted students who received high academic awards. My presentation is titled "Beware Women! Jonathan Swift and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu on Women and Writing in the 18th Century." I love to teach these classes, particularly because they offer us an opportunity to start …
Found it!
Todorov, Literature and Signification, quoted in Jameson, The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism (1972, Princeton): Every work, every novel, tells through its fabric of events the story of its own creation, its own history... The meaning of a work lies in its telling of itself, its speaking of its …
Electronic Texts and Tacit Persuasion Patterns
Teaching critical theory last night, I was pleasantly surprised by a passage in Richard Lanham's 1983 Analyzing Prose, excerpted in Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan's anthology Literary Theory as "Tacit Persuasion Patterns." Somehow it jumped out in a new way this term, and it sparked an interesting discussion of how student blogs can work to …
Continue reading "Electronic Texts and Tacit Persuasion Patterns"
From formalism to rhetoric
To open discussion today, I want to start with a quote from Brooks' "The Formalist Critics" that seems to offer an excellent transition into a useful consideration of rhetorical analysis: Literature is not inimical to ideas. It thrives upon ideas but does not present ideas patly and neatly. It involves them with the "recalcitrant stuff …
Formalism, Using Blogs in Class
I just received the MLA edition on teaching contemporary theory to undergraduates I ordered in preparation for my courses this term, and on a quick browse, it looks less useful than I thought it would be--that is, more theoretical. Which is not bad, but telling.... Why do we assume that if a text like this …
Tonya Howe 