#eng400

[literary-and-cultural-theory]

#eng400 #literary and cultural theory #feminism #male gaze

[eng705]

Feminist analysis brought to bear on the history of women’s fashions. Notice how the emphasis is on function rather than adornment.  

#eng400 #literary and cultural theory #feminism #everyday life

[sweatervestboy]

Digital Resources on Wallace Stevens

Stevens’ Poems & Primary Sources

Poems, Bio & Bibliography at the Poetry Foundation

Academy of American Poets on Stevens

Recordings of Stevens reading his work

Online Archive of Stevens’ Papers

Selections of Stevens’ Letters

Criticism & Reviews

Critical Excerpts Collected at Modern American Poetry 

UPenn Page of Links on Stevens

Wallace Stevens Society (Includes the Wallace Stevens Journal)

Review of Paul Mariani’s new bio of Stevens

Ronald Sukenick’s Guide to the Collected Poetry of Wallace Stevens 

NYTimes Archive on Stevens

Art and Writing Responding to Stevens (More to be Added Here Soon)

Links page at Wallace Stevens Society (scroll down to Art Inspired by Stevens)

Abstract Paintings by Diane Szczepaniak inspired by “Sunday Morning”

Terrance Hayes’ “Snow for Wallace Stevens” and an article on the poem

Video of Ned Rorem’s “Last Poems of Wallace Stevens” for soprano, cello, and piano, and the text

Michael Schacter’s “Three Wallace Stevens Songs”

Children’s Art Responding to “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

Documentaries, Lectures & Podcasts

The Idea of Wallace Stevens (A discussion of “The Idea of Order at Key West”)

Video: Favorite Poem Project  on “The Idea of Order at Key West”

Voices & Visions Documentary on Stevens

#ENG400 WallaceStevens

[jessicajachim11]

Guest Blogger: The Fault in the Writings About the Fault of Writing

A person's word usually means nothing today unless you get it in writing. You can't just "shake on it." Sure, we have to promise that we're telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," but important information must be put into writing, signed, and notarized. It pretty much has to be all but chiseled in stone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTrPJvEzmwQ

However, in the past, the spoken word was seen as the reliable method of passing down history and for handling legal issues.

In Chapter 8 of Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy, Ong explains that writing has been seen as an autonomous discourse, or a self-contained, independent expression of ideas, disabling readers from directly responding to or challenging the author. It was also impermanent, impersonal, and it was believed to diminish memory. We know this, ironically, because of the writings of people like Plato.

The claim that writing is impermanent, impersonal, and incapable of being challenged is not the case, even more so now than just over thirty years ago when Ong's book was published. In the early 80s, the world of social media was not so prominent as it is today.

Ong writes, "Writing is passive, out of it, in an unreal, unnatural world. So are computers."

Today, social media has changed writing from autonomous discourse to a connection of human minds around the world interacting, questioning, challenging, and responding.  In http://www.ted.com/talks/amber_case_we_are_all_cyborgs_now, Amber Case describes the connection over the Internet as a very organic connection between humans. When I post something on Twitter, people can read it instantly and reply. Social media enables online writers to interact with and directly respond to one another, making it no longer an autonomous discourse of passivity, but instead a very active exchange of ideas by people all over the world.

A note on permanency... Ong also points out the claim that writing can be erased while orality is permanant (you can't erase your words). But try posting one of your deep dark secrets on social media and see if you can erase it forever. http://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_how_to_think_about_digital_tattoos  shows how what we put online is as permanent as a tattoo. Unless you're able to memorize books like Eli in Book of Eli or in Ray Bradbury's Fehrenheit 451, writing is a much more permanent method, especially when it's cast into the realm of the internet. Also see www.egcgroup.com/blog/permanency-online-media

In what cases could online writing be considered autonomous discourse? Since this blog post is not autonomous discourse, please respond!

#eng400 #JessicaJachim

[shellieanne92]

"God knows--and Science will know tomorrow." --Mr. Cashnell, "Wireless" by Rudyard Kipling

I love this quote, because it rings with so much truth. Everything already exists in the world that God has created; all that is left is for man to discover it. And that is exactly what he does through science. This quote is an interesting reminder that science does not create anything new--it merely uncovers what already exists.

Speaking of discovery, I want to hearken back to the article "Some Possibilities of Electricity." As I was reading it I couldn't help but think the whole time: "cell phone. These are cell phones. Cell phones. Oh my goodness, cell phones." Back then, the word "wireless" referred to radio waves. This is what William Crookes article refers to, and what Hertz is credited to have discovered. But today, if you Google the word "wireless" (which I did), a whole list of cell phone providers pops up. Wireless has a whole new meaning in the modern world. Wireless internet, wireless cell phones--these words didn't even exist in the 1890s. The forms of electricity, of wires, and of communication have changed and evolved exponentially over time. In 1892, scientists could dream of technology such as cell phones, but they could not imagine it. Now, it is a reality we could not imagine living without.

Nonetheless, this technology has always been. When it was in the form of the telegraph, the wireless technology was there, it just had to be discovered. When it was in the form of wireless radio signals, the technology for cell phones was there, it just had to be discovered.

God knows what potential for technological advancement is in our world. Science is merely man's way of uncovering it for ourselves.

#eng400 #wireless #kipling #crookes

[sumwalker9]

How that simple dot at the end of the sentence became something you use to tell people you're mad. Right. Now. 

#eng400

[jjc1414]

Modernist Fiction and News

One of my sources is the book Modernist Fiction and News: Representing Experience in the Early Twentieth Century by David Rando.  We have talked a lot about storing in this class.  I want to share some quotations from the book that not only apply to my paper, but also furthers some discussions we have had and takes those discussions to a different literary era.  

"The early twentieth century was the first period to face the impossibility of adequately storing, remembering, and prioritizing the avalanche of information that new recording technologies and mass communication networks pressed upon consciousness, thereby, altering not only human experience but also reality itself." (1) 

"This book thus defines the modernist novel and narrative prose as that set of writings that first responded to the technological possibility of total information storage." (4) 

"We must then ask this overwhelming question: what in modernism's historical moment constitutes the greatest perceived threat to memory that animates its conservation drive? The answer seems paradoxical: it is the new potential impossibility of forgetting (enabled by the new technologies of remembering) that constitutes the greatest challenge to modernist memory." (7)

#eng400 #modernist #storage

[h-archer]

Paper preparation: James' and Thayer's Telegraphs

Paper Preparation:  Telegraph: ‘on the line’ vs. ‘in the mind’

  Key Terms: Jamesian, telegraph form, telegraphic romance, virtual experience

  Structure: Historical/contextual information about the telegraph

                  Compare/contrast the form and content of the two texts

                  Close reading of a passage from each text that demonstrates the different effect of

                  each.

Sources: Pollard, Tomas. "Telegraphing The Sentence And The Story: Iconicity In In Thecage By Henry James." European Journal Of English Studies 5.1 (2001): 81. Academic Search Premier. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. 

--Discusses the use of telegraphed messages in the book `In the Cage,' by Henry James. Conditions of structural diagrammatic iconicity; Use of iconicity to imitate the transmission of the telegraph in plot and syntax; Central role of the telegraph in the book.

  Shelangoskie, Susan. "Anthony Trollope And The Social Discourse Of Telegraphy After Nationalisation1." Journal Of Victorian Culture (Edinburgh University Press) 14.1 (2009): 72-92. Academic Search Premier. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.

Orienting: What form does the telegraph take in each novel?  How does the telegraph influence each telegraphist/protagonist?

#eng400 #finalpaperpreparation

[cooljustinafan]

The Mystic Pad

To make use of the Mystic Pad, one writes upon the celluloid portion of

the covering-sheet which rests upon the wax slab. For this purpose no pencil

or chalk is necessary, since the writing does not depend on material being

deposited upon the receptive surface. It is a return to the ancient method of

writing upon tablets of clay or wax: a pointed stilus scratches the surface, the

depressions upon which constitute the "writing."

-----“A Note upon the ‘Mystic Writing Pad”’ Freud 

This passage from Freud gives a psychological glimpse into the process of writing. Many people do not view it as a process. The process of writing can be difficult at times, because some do not take it slow and think about the words and how to use language to express thoughts. Freud is stating how our minds work as blank slates and the information we process is by the stylus  As the stylus writes information on our brain, new ideas are given to the human mind, which allow us to be human. In order to be truly human one must allow this self discovery process to occur.

#eng400 #writing

[literary-and-cultural-theory]

#eng400 #literary and cultural theory #globalization #coronavirus

[eng705]

#indigenous politics #eng400 #literary and cultural theory

[patrecec]

The Glass Barrier in Henry James's In the Cage

For my final paper, I plan to focus on the glass barrier in Henry James’s In the Cage. In the first chapter or two of In the Cage a lot of emphasis is placed on this barrier. Though it is rarely mentioned later in the text, the affect that it has on the telegraph girl is still present in her behavior as well as her perception of others in the novel. In my paper a plan to examine the way that this barrier acts in several different ways to influence the characters in the story and how the glass barrier mimics the interactions between the characters.

There are several issues that I plan to discus in this paper. First I plan to examine, how the glass works to form a “cage”. Why does the telegraph girl feel caged in by this glass? Furthermore, although she always refers to her workspace as a cage, it is also evident that she uses this barrier to define her personal space. I am particularly interested in the way that the glass provides security and symbolizes oppression. I am also interested in the way that the glass separated the girl from others while also helping her to feel connected to them.

I plan to research telegraph rooms the actual purpose of glass barriers. Was the purpose of the barrier to keep others out or was it to prevent the sound of the telegraph machines from protruding through the rest of the store. Either reason leads to a different interpretation of the role of the glass barrier in the story.

#eng400 #inthecage #glass #finalpaper

[cpassons]

Close Reading: The View on Mortality--possible extension through media

Nathaniel Hawthorne provides some overlapping perspectives -- in Chapter XI: The Arched Window, and Chapter XII: The Daguerreotypist -- of two men from two different generations, and their stance on the shifting presence of mortality.

The elder Clifford is suspended atop the cold, dark, and lifeless house of the seven gables, looking down upon the energetic, younger generation in celebration of life. Clifford speculates the conglomeration, "by its remoteness, it melts all petty personalities, of which it is made up, into one broad mass of existence--one great life--one collected body of mankind, with a vast, homogenous spirit animating it" (118). Clifford comes to realize his own status by proclaiming the only thing to which there is an inevitable is "the final great remedy--death" (119). One stark episode chronicles Clifford approaching an epiphany to which he once was unaware, by which he declares his own existence, "We are ghosts! We have no right among human beings--no right anywhere, but in this old house, which has a curse on it, and which therefore we are doomed to haunt" (121). Clifford's final summation is that the house, and ultimately death itself, is a means to an end: a destination to which old age is quickly ushering Clifford, even against his own will.

The topic regarding 'rights' of human past has a haunting permanence in Holgrave's own observation over morality. Although just as melancholy, Holgrave's perception does hold onto a glint of some hope. Rather it be the nature of him being a daguerreotypist and his conception on the lasting effect of photography through preservation, Halgrove refuses to accept that the end is just that. His view on death has more ambivalence when compared to Clifford's beliefs, "We must be dead ourselves, before we can begin to have our proper influence on the world, which will then be no longer our world, but the world of another generation, with which we will have no shadow of a right to interfere" (128). Holgrave also implicates that new media overlaps (and is likewise derived from) older media to form one solitary and unified product as he criticizes skepticism by uttering, "His error lay, in supposing that this age, more than any past or future one, is destined to see the tattered garments of Antiquity exchanged for a new suit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork" (128). Holgrave concludes in the same sentiment as Clifford, that the house of seven gables may very well be stuck in the past, in its old ways, and dying, instead of living and thriving through innovation. For Holgrave remarks, "I ought to have said, too, that we live in Dead Men's houses; as for instance in this house of the seven gables. The house, in my view, is expressive of that odious and abominable Past, with all its bad influences" (128).

Even though the past may be contained in a solitary vessel (the house of the seven gables), there can be some agreement made with Holgrave's sentiment in that such containment is unnatural. Even though death may very well be inevitable, so are the impressions made by humans, and denying any contributions only deprives the grander processes of societal innovation.

#eng400 #house of the seven gables #overlap

[eng400]

Semiotics and Peirce's Triadic Theory of Signs

I've included below a very helpful excerpt from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.   It basically explains Charles Peirce's theory of signs, which offers an alternative model of semiotics to the binary of signifier/signified that we briefly discussed last week and which was founded by Ferdinand de Saussure in the early 20th century.  Peirce's theory is slightly different than Saussure's and might helps us get a handle on the end of Pym's narrative. 

If we can map this theory of signs onto the end of Pym's narrative, specifically the figures, chasms, and words explicated in the final "Note," than we might just be able to get our minds wrapped around this incredibly enigmatic ending where Poe brings us face to face with the origin of writing.  If you have time, I strongly encourage everyone to carefully study the words below, in addition to reading the first few paragraphs of Emerson's chapter on language.  We'll discuss both in class, among other interpretations and concerns.  Come with questions, observations, and everything in between.

I should emphasis again that not everything we read is going to be this heavy.   

Here's the excerpt on Peirce's theory of signs.

In one of his many definitions of a sign, Peirce writes:

I define a sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its interpretant, that the later is thereby mediately determined by the former. (EP2, 478)

What we see here is Peirce's basic claim that signs consist of three inter-related parts: a sign, an object, and an interpretant. For the sake of simplicity, we can think of the sign as the signifier, for example, a written word, an utterance, smoke as a sign for fire etc. The object, on the other hand, is best thought of as whatever is signified, for example, the object to which the written or uttered word attaches, or the fire signified by the smoke. The interpretant, the most innovative and distinctive feature of Peirce's account, is best thought of as the understanding that we have of the sign/object relation. The importance of the interpretant for Peirce is that signification is not a simple dyadic relationship between sign and object: a sign signifies only in being interpreted. This makes the interpretant central to the content of the sign, in that, the meaning of a sign is manifest in the interpretation that it generates in sign users.

#eng400 #semiotics #Peirce #Poe #language

[shellieanne92]

Let's try this again... (Video about Lonliness and Social Media)

This is the video that my link was supposed to lead to, but my technologically challenged self is having a hard time figuring out how to link it to tumblr. So if you would like to watch the video (which I highly recommend you do, because it's awesome/thought provoking), try going directly to the website below:

http://elitedaily.com/news/world/this-video-will-have-you-completely-rethink-how-you-conduct-yourself-online-and-in-person-video/

:)

#eng400 #socialmedia #lonliness

[sumwalker9]

Of One Blood

"Undoubtedly your Afro-Americans are a branch of the wonderful and mysterious Ethiopians who had a prehistoric existence of magnificence, the full record of which is lost in obscurity."

-Of One Blood, p.99

"It is hard to believe your story. From what a height must this people have fallen to reach the abjectness of the American Negro," exclaimed a listener.

"True," replied the Professor. "But from what a depth does history show that the Anglo-Saxon has climbed to the position of the first people of the earth today." 

-Of One Blood, p. 101

"...return and restore the former glory of the race." 

-Of One Blood, p. 101

I've actually had this selection saved in my drafts since last week, and until today's class I didn't exactly know what I wanted to post using this selection. Today's class discussion focused in the restoration and excavation of African-American history rather than the reconstruction or reparation of the race's history, which can be seen in the selections above. On page 98, Hopkins uses the Professor to tell the story of ancient Ethiopia. I believe that Hopkins uses this story to demonstrate the significance of Ethiopia as the genesis of civilization. She even uses Biblical genealogies, as well as scientific evidence(whether it is real or factual, I don't know) to propel the story. Hopkins suggests that canals (traffic, defense, irrigation), lakes (water storage, land fertilization), astronomy, philosophy, and chronology can be traced back to the Ethiopians. A listener states that the race has fallen from this magnificence; however, the Professor suggests that the race hasn't fallen from that glory, but that history only shows the rise of the Anglo-Saxons as the first people or civilization. So, it is not a matter of making a new place in history for the race, but rather a restoration or return to the magnificence that is already there--a reclamation of history. 

#eng400 #ofoneblood #excavation #restoration