Archive for the ‘Writing assignment 1: position statement’ Category
I am a Reader
Megha Baikadi 985 archives and feelings Dr Alexis Lothian Writing Assignment One, 9/10/2013 Why are you here? What are the key contexts for your scholarly work? To whom do you feel responsible? What makes academic labor meaningful to you? [reference at least two of the readings] I plan to be a teacher. That’s […]
Doing, Thinking, Writing, and Then, More Doing
Lauren Shoemaker Dr. Lothian ENGL 985 10 September 2013 Doing, Thinking, Writing, and Then, More Doing In the spring of 2005 I went to San Francisco on a service learning trip that I found out about because I had chosen to stay in a class meant for English majors that was not required for […]
The Magic of Reading: A Student of Literature’s Emotional Testimony
Sheila Gross Dr. Alexis Lothian ENGL 985: Archives and Feelings 10 September 2013 The Magic of Reading: A Student of Literature’s Emotional Testimony “Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it.” – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows […]
The Bodhisattva Organic Intellectual… Sorta
In many ways, it’s difficult for me to write this. It’s not that I’m not in touch with my feelings or anything along those lines: I’ve been writing my feelings for years now. It’s also not because I find articulating my personal beliefs regarding education and my position in the wider field to be inherently […]
where I belong
While attending Catholic grade school, there was a continual focus on the finding of a vocation. It seems contradictory now as recent perusing through old Catholic school books reinforces an emphasis on sacrifice in a way which would encourage work in any field, irrespective of “calling”, that provided for the family. I can’t shake the […]
The Intellectual of Change: Crafting New Classrooms for Better Learning Practices
Julie Pavlick Dr. Lothian ENGL 985 9/10/13 The Intellectual of Change: Crafting New Classrooms for Better Learning Practices Academia can be a difficult place for a student who is not sure that they love learning. Not everyone comes into college realizes that they desire to achieve a master’s degree, or go further in their academic […]
An Academic Position Statement on Holding an Academic Position
I did not grow up thinking I would ever become a teacher. It was not until I entered college, where I received several opportunities to become a writing tutor that I then began to seriously consider a teaching vocation, specifically in English. As an undergraduate, I ran English study groups for several areas of literature, […]
Holding on to the organic and the institutional
“There is no distinction between the American university and professionalization” –– Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, “The University and the Undercommons” As a thoroughly professionalized academic, I have written a great many formal statements about who I am, what I write, why I teach, how pedagogy and research intertwine. You can undoubtedly find a few […]
At the Pulpit
Pedagogically, I am a prophet with a single message, that the linear perception of cause and effect is an illusion. I take this as an extension of Kermode’s reflection on endings, turning the focus from results to process, from “main” characters to the chorus who provide relevance and who must be main characters within their […]
Assignment #1 = My Humanist Mission
Kamal Salem ENGL 985 Dr. Alexis Lothian Assignment #1 Fall 2013 Sept, 10th. My Humanist Mission I have always been interested in humanism for the respect and dignity it grants to individuals. The humanist focus on individuality, freedom of thought, free-will and liberty best suits a world where opposing ideologies (religious, political…etc.) combat for supremacy. […]
Recent Comments in this Document
December 3, 2013 at 4:33 pm
I think this is precisely Gramsci’s point — the factory worker and the sculptor may both be intellectuals or artists, but only one has the *function in society* ––the class position, the privilege––that makes it his or her assigned role. Just as it no doubt requires a certain class status or aspiration to see oneself as able to choose a social function or calling.
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December 3, 2013 at 2:37 am
And, regarding the university as machine, Ferguson would have it even more strongly: he would say that the liberal multiculturalist concern for development of identities is part and parcel of the university as machinery of capital, since it refocuses students’ energies on individual identity rather than the potential for redistribution of resources.
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December 3, 2013 at 2:23 am
Great articulation of the temporality of the classroom.
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December 3, 2013 at 1:46 am
Coming back to this, I’m thinking about whether this discussion of taste might be interestingly put in the kind of terms Mel Chen uses in her discussion of the boy licking the train…
Another possible citation for you, if you pursue this, might be Siane Ngai’s Ugly Feelings, which deals with various literary affects––and the sizeable subdiscipline of food studies, about which I know relatively little but which seems extremely interesting.
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December 2, 2013 at 1:45 am
This is, overall, an attempt to expand on my first writing assignment, channeling the concept into some practical form with some practical justification.
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December 1, 2013 at 4:59 pm
Gramsci’s idea of the organic intellectual is of one who is part of the subaltern group committed to opposing and transforming the social order first; intellectual work is developed with and for the group, rather than in an institution outside of it. So Nafisi’s commitment to the interests of women, which goes beyond her institutional role, might be a kind of organic intellectual work. The distinction between organic and traditional intellectual often doesn’t fit neatly onto the real world, though…
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December 1, 2013 at 2:58 pm
What do we gain by using the term labor––why might it be important to recognize what we do as *work*?
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November 28, 2013 at 7:30 am
Yeah, when we read it in class some of these critiques came up. They have a lot of textual support, too.
But that doesn’t mean its not a good text to tackle issues with – actually, it may be the best way to deal with them. after all, we can sometimes get the best critiques out of texts we *don’t* agree with. It really shows how the cultural scripts differ from the actual truths.
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November 28, 2013 at 7:24 am
Addressing the first part of your comment, there is a binary between bad-old times and good enlightened now, but I think there’s another possible binary between the good, golden past and the present troubled times. I mean, so many historical moments get romanticized, likely because those past things were good to some, and those who would or think they would benefit are those who romanticize them.
And yeah, looking at every ill does sometimes does come across as polarizing all groups into subsets of ills. It becomes too difficult to speak generally, then.
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November 28, 2013 at 7:14 am
Very nice!
I like the examples you’ve chosen to reflect on. The idealization of certain times or actions (often historical) is rampant, and it seems to be an important tool for disseminating happiness scripts, both those of perceived history and the now in which they are created and disseminated.
The female troublemaker and the feminist killjoy… I agree just the act of not enjoying, or not wanting the thing they are ‘supposed’ to want can be itself a killjoy (it doesn’t have to be starting arguments, though that’s fun too).
I’m not sure how much the subject (middle/upper class women) is simply problematic and how much it is simply the script, the happiness script of the culture. I think that probably didn’t sound right. I mean, given the racial, class and gendered nature of happiness scripts, I wonder if this film might be a site for finding problematic elements in the cultural happiness scripts, and not itself a problem choice for such a script because of its exclusions.
I can see how well you’d do with these texts – its really fascinating to me. popular culture is rich with layers of meaning, and so can be carefully analyzed… but it is also dear to students, so they should care (very much) about how it is analyzed. This combination can be a very powerful tool!
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