Dr. C.’s Learning Web

I’m in the midst of A. S. Byatt’s Possession in my Intro. to Literary Studies class, working up to assignment one, which asks students to work with symbolism in Byatt’s romance. The idea of symbolism is quite complex (the etymology alone is intricate and fascinating). Students are accustomed to talking about imagery, themes, character, even the writer’s biographical and cultural context. Symbolism, however, is something new for most of these freshmen and sophomores.
Over the years, I’ve tried various ways of explaining symbolism to students. The most satisfactory ways I’ve found to depend on close reading that enacts the drama of symbolic suggestion as a kind of unfolding awareness of connections, of patterns, of possibilities of meaning. That kind of going-through works well. Yet I’ve always felt the lack of some more communicable conceptual language, one that would convey the complexity of symbolism and its effects without reducing symbolism to something [...]

Original post by Gardo

For days now, I’ve been mulling over this session, and the Twitter response to it while it was happening. (I was there and in that Twitter stream.) Jim’s post and the extraordinary set of comments it elicited have catalyzed my own efforts at response here.
It turns out that I have very conflicting responses. I’m sure I’ll have more as I continue to think about the session and its aftermath. I post these responses in an effort to keep my thoughts going. I have no ironclad conclusions to offer and I look forward to more conversations as I try to sort things out in my own mind.
I thought at the time, and still think, that Bob Young was not just ignorant of his audience, but at least mildly contemptuous of it. One colleague afterwards said to me that Young had been “baiting” us, and I think that’s right. I’m not a [...]

Original post by Gardo

Photo from this site, where the “about” tab says “The photographer doesn’t matter here–the photo does.”
I woke up this morning with one of my favorite pieces of music in my head. I take that as a sign that my brain is very happy. And why not? The ELI Annual Meeting is in full swing.
And swing it does. There’s a remarkable zest in the rhythm here, and enough finger-snapping beats  to make Count Basie himself smile with delight. Henry Jenkins’ keynote got us off to a fine start. Plenty to think about, some things to take issue with, some things to embrace, and over it all, a feeling of gratitude that he’s doing his work and helping the academy understand the intellectual feast that lies before it, whether or not the setting is what we’re used to. (I was very fortunate to have the chance to talk to Henry some at [...]

Original post by Gardo

A dear colleague passed away suddenly last week. We are immeasurably poorer.
Pat was one of the first colleagues outside the department I got to know on my arrival in 1994. Our shared interest in music, particularly medieval and Renaissance music (one of Pat’s specialties), was one of our first strong connections. Oddly and regrettably, it’s a connection we never explored in the depth we’d have liked. One of the great ironies of working in a university is how little time or occasion there is for sharing the life of the mind. That said, there was another connection that did bring us together again and again, a connection I wouldn’t have guessed right away. Pat was devoted to exploring the uses of information technologies in teaching and learning, and that shared passion  was the subject of many conversations and a fair amount of collaboration as well.
Here’s at least part of what [...]

Original post by Gardo

There’s a thread here I’d like to pursue, or at least snarl with elan.
Today in my “Introduction to Literary Studies” class we were discussing Aristotle: the Poetics mostly, with a fillip of the Rhetoric. Our text, the redoubtable Norton Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, had an especially observant introduction to the Aristotle selections, one that contrasted the way Plato “explores paths of thinking” with the way Aristotle focuses on “categorization [and] definition” by means of “propositional statements.” The contrast made me think of the document/data continuum (I almost said dichotomy) that Eric Miller was speaking about yesterday.
I think there’s a strong streak of Aristotelian propositional method in the idea of a data-driven web. Read the Poetics and wonder at Aristotle’s indefatigable defining, analyzing, parsing, specifying. The man never tires, never even hesitates in the face of the enormous task he sets for himself. And even the most breathtaking propositions–his [...]

Original post by Gardo

Prepping for the Rock/Soul/Progressive class tomorrow, and these words in James Miller’s Flowers in the Dustbin once again got my attention:
Meanwhile, most of my friends (discounting those who have continued to make their living by writing about, or recording, popular music) long ago stopped listening to rock. As they settle into middle age, their old albums gathering dust, their current musical tastes are now attuned to quite different styles of music, from country-western to classical, from show tunes to patriotic women’s choruses from Bulgaria–almost anything, in fact, but the once beloved soundtrack of their adolescence and early adulthood.

Okay, Dr. Miller, here’s my confession. I’ve never understood the behavior you say your friends exhibit. I feel as intensely about this music now, in my middle age (I don’t remember “settling” into this phase, but sure, I’ve arrived here), as I did when I was an adolescent, or even as a child. [...]

Original post by Gardo

I’ve met all four of my classes once now. This semester it’s two sections of Introduction to Literary Studies (gateway course for the major–theory and criticism and genre and close reading and a partridge…), one section of Introduction to New Media Studies, and one section of Rock/Soul/Progressive. Each beginning was different. Some of the classes obviously came with their game heads on. They were ready to go, or got to that stage after a very short while (and mercifully little stand-up comedy from me). One was very sluggish until the very end, when things suddenly caught fire. In every case, there was at least one fascinating moment. I try very hard to elicit those moments, and once they’re there, try very hard to give them just the right mix of attention and restraint to get them to grow. Perhaps that’s why class always feels like an intense conversation to me–but [...]

Original post by Gardo

This is my 500th blog post.
To mark the occasion, I’m podcasting an interview I did with filmmaker Errol Morris back in March, 1997. The audio, alas, isn’t very good. I hadn’t planned to put the audio out at all, actually; the tape recorder was there as a backup to my notes, just as it was for the Ken Burns interview I did several years later (and with similarly iffy audio). I’ve cleaned the sound up as much as I could in the time I’ve had to devote to it. I think it’s at least listenable, and that the content of what Errol has to say is worth trying to listen through the bad sound.
Errol as at what was then called Mary Washington College as the 1997 Distinguished Visitor in Residence. He was with us for about a day and a half, during which time he screened a video copy of [...]

Original post by Gardo

Just when I think Jerome Bruner has extended my horizons all the way from Virginia to the Antipodes, I read something else by him that demonstrates how much farther I need to stretch. Just two days ago I read what may be the single best essay on education I’ve ever read–and given some of the stuff I’ve been reading over the last four years, that’s saying something. “After John Dewey, What?” is collected in On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand (Harvard UP: 1962, rev. ed. 1979). I’m using the eighth printing (1997), so clearly the book’s got a considerable audience. I’d like to be among them to hear what they think about this book. I have the funny feeling I sometimes get when I’m immersed in a scholarly or literary author: I want to find the online discussion forum devoted to the author’s work, the fan sites that document [...]

Original post by Gardo

The new term begins in ten days, and I’m thinking about how to prep the sandbox for the fifteen weeks that follow. Truthfully, “thinking” is too mild a word. “Yearning” is more like it: yearning for the inspiration and insight into form, tempo, and activities that will give my students their best chance at surprising themselves and me with the depth and quality of their work.
For this post, rather than try to work out that yearning in my own prose, I want to experiment with some quotations, both audio and text. The two audio quotations come from KCRW’s “The Treatment,” in which host Elvis Mitchell does weekly interviews with actors, directors, writers, and other creative personnel from film, music, television, and other media. The two text quotations come from two Jerome Bruner books I’ve just started. Together, these four quotations fuel my yearning. I see the character of what I [...]

Original post by Gardo