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Established in 1993, the Missouri Center for the Book "celebrates the state’s literary heritage, and recognizes the contributions of Missouri’s authors, book illustrators, booksellers, publishers, librarians, and others involved in the literary arts."
To be a good teacher, it's important to understand things from the student's perspective. It can be harder and harder to do that the more and more familiar you become with the material you teach, and perhaps it's also harder as you have more distance from the time when you last were a student.
So I'm working to recapture that student sensibility, trying to be patient as I learn how to meditate in my classes at the Rime Center, and as I practice my scales on the guitar. The simplest things are often the hardest to learn.
I look carefully for the connections, the thread that runs through various aspects of my life. When I had my beautiful Stratocaster as a teenager (sorta looked like this, remember) I didn't have an amplifier because I spent all my savings on the guitar. Thus, when I practiced, I played the strings much too hard in order to hear the music without amplification. This was not good. My playing was sort of sloppy and the strings would go out of tune more quickly from being hit so hard. Now when I play, I use my amp and try to play gently and more precisely.
When I teach, I notice that as a result of the adrenaline I inevitably feel when speaking in front of a group of people my voice tends to be somewhat louder, more strident, than it would be in ordinary speech. I fear that this means that the more subtle points get overlooked (by me as well as by students), that the tone of my voice affects the tone of the class discussion. I try to speak a bit more softly and trust that people will still hear me but that more possibilities will become apparent.
The difficulty in meditation (as it's being taught to me) is that it's not about doing anything. It's about being. You don't go into a trance. You don't chant. You don't close your eyes. You don't withdraw from the world. You're still present. You're still aware. You just ... are. Your mind, ideally, becomes clearer. A helpful metaphor used the other night is of water in a pond that has been disturbed. The water is cloudy because the mud at the bottom has been stirred up. In order to achieve clarity again, the water has to become still. The mud doesn't go away, however. It just settles. The water becomes clear as it becomes still.
I'm trying to learn that I don't always have to try so hard. And this takes patience.
When I was 10, a half-hour lesson seemed to go on forever. Now it just flies by. I'll spend the next week practicing scales. It's not what I'm used to doing, so it feels awkward. There are many a few things I know how to do easily, but I'm trying to move outside of my comfort zone.
Unable to sleep as Monday approaches, the weight of last week's unfinished business pushing up against the imaginary wall that separates one week from the next like rising water against a dam. Why are Sunday nights always like this? The only night I consistently have trouble sleeping.
So I teach myself some Son Volt songs by using the Online Guitar Archive, a resource that has changed the lives of bedroom guitarists everywhere. And then I improvise a song I'll call "The Insomniac Waltz." Am and G for the verses. C, Em, and D for the chorus.
Tomorrow night at 7:00 is my first official lesson. And yes, the first song I ever learned was, in fact, "Stairway to Heaven" back in 1981 or 1982.
On the other side of my life, in one class tomorrow we'll be discussing late medieval mystery plays, and in the other we continue our discussion of Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740).
If loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right.
Remember my neighbor with the loud television?
Heh heh heh.
This is the new course that I proposed (successfully) to the department. Haven't yet found an available course number for it, but it will be a joint undergraduate/graduate course. If it passes the College curriculum committee, I believe I'll be teaching it in fall 2004:
English4xx/5xx442/542(course number still to be determined): Histories of Writing, Reading, and Publishing
Catalog Description: A study of selected topics concerning the material practices of writing, reading, and publishing within specific cultural and historical contexts. Issues examined may include authorship, education, information technologies, libraries, literacy, periodicals, popular literature, publishers, and communities of readers.
Rationale: This course would draw upon the expertise of any one of several faculty members in the department whose research and teaching already involve many of these issues. How the course would fulfill curricular requirements of a particular student would depend on the individual faculty member's design of the course. Thus, a version that emphasizes seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England would not count for the same category as a version that focuses on turn-of-the-century America. Various permutations of this course will offer students the opportunity to explore the material practices by which writing (literary, political, religious, journalistic, educational, etc.) has historically been created, reproduced, distributed, and consumed. Also under possible consideration will be the imaginative means by which cultures construct such seemingly self-evident categories as 'author,' 'literature,' 'copyright,' 'literacy,' and 'reading.'
I am soliciting information from those more knowledgable than I. Is there any legal reason why a library would be unable to put items on reserve more than once for the same class taught in different semesters? Has our copyright law gotten that bad? Does anyone's university or college library have this policy? Alternately, have you put things on reserve more than once for the same course in different semesters without any objections from your library?
Recommendations for further reading are welcome. Comments do not allow HTML but URL's are autolinked.
I should have mentioned this earlier. The UMKC Undergraduate English Council is encouraging students (and other interested parties) to attend the 7:45 showing of American Splendor (a film about writer Harvey Pekar) tonight at the Tivoli Cinemas in Wesport. The plan is to go afterwards to the Broadway Café for post-movie discussion. Your Tivoli movie ticket gets you a free drink at the Café.
Later in the year will be, I think, a reading and discussion of some of Harvey Pekar's work.
Hmm. I wonder whose idea this all was?
Here's a summary of a number of things that, had I more time, I would blog in full. Perhaps more details to come later. Alternately, dear reader, you could let me know which items you would like to hear more about, allowing me to focus on topics of interest to this blog's audience:
That's enough for now, though more is bouncing around in my head. Time to get my day started in earnest.
Via Slashdot: A discussion of tools for writing. Would you use vi?
For the second time in my life, I am the owner of a nice Fender electric guitar. From 1984 to about 1989, I owned a cream-colored Stratocaster that looked something roughly like this. Alas, it was stolen.
Today, I found the guitar I've been looking for, an American-made sunburst Telecaster that looks something like the one I posted earlier. When I have time and inclination, I'll post some pix.
Both Kathleen and Matt wrote about buying their MP3 players recently, and I've been thinking about how these experiences compare to buying a musical instrument, particularly an electric one. It feels like a much more personal experience, for lack of a better phrase, to me. An iPod is an iPod is an iPod, but different guitars, even manufactured from the same parts, can sound different than each other, so it's important to plug it in at the store and give it a test run. Also, the way it feels in your hands is important. There are variations in the ways that necks are sized and shaped, although such things are reportedly standardized. The kind of wood from which a guitar is made (poplar, maple, ash) makes a big difference in feel and sound. Heavier woods resonate more and allow the sound made by the strings to sustain longer. Furthermore, a Stratocaster's body is contoured to fit the human body: it's scooped a little bit at the back to make room for your torso when you lean over it, and in the front it slopes gently to fit the angle of your strumming/picking hand. A Telecaster does not have this kind of shape, however, but it's still very nice.
I consciously chose this guitar because I am no longer interested in learning to play notes a million miles an hour like I did when I was a fan of heavy metal. To me, Stratocasters are more associated with (male) virtuoso guitarists who love the spotlight and long for their opportunity to solo. I don't want to be that kind of musician. I'm more interested in texture and tone, now, and my favorite bands have shifted significantly.
There's a new book out entitled Trading Up: The New American Luxury, by Michael J. Silverstein and Neil Fiske, that argues that many brands of goods "are successful because they appeal not just to the material needs of consumers but to their emotional desires" (quote from 9/22/03 New Yorker). So when you opt for a boutique hair-care product instead of one from the grocery store, you are "trading up." This accurately describes the way guitars are marketed.
I bought a mid-range priced guitar that explicitly says "Made in U.S.A." on the head. Fender has a wide range of guitars to suit a variety of pocketbooks, but they make a big deal out of the differences between these guitars, not all of which are "Made in U.S.A.":
Note: these are not different models of guitars; these are different product lines, all made by Fender. I haven't investigated each of these lines, but almost all of them feature a Stratocaster and a Telecaster. The prices range from under $200 to well over $1,000. Now, Fender could just make one Stratocaster and one Telecaster and make clear any technical differences between them. Apple certainly does this with iPods: does it go with a Mac or a PC? how big is the hard drive? Easy to answer questions. The language used to describe the different product lines above, however, is the language of the poet, not the engineer. Guitars produce sounds that are "spankin'", "bell-like", "punchy", "crisp", "warm", "full", "sharp", "biting," or "shimmering." It's a synesthetic orgy of ad copy.
At the store today I plugged several guitars into the same amp to hear the differences in sound. Frankly, whatever differences there might have been were inaudible to me. I did want to stick to the line that said "Made in U.S.A." Go figure. I guess I wanted to trade up.
Hmm. This could get interesting. Bernadette Fort is stepping down as editor of the pre-eminent journal in my field, Eighteenth-Century Studies, and a new editor is being sought. The page announcing the change says that "[m]embers are strongly encouraged to send to the Search Committee their comments on the direction they would like to see Eighteenth-Century Studies take in the future." That's a mighty big question, given that the field is so broad. Have to think about this one.
Really, how hard should it be to find such a thing? I went shopping with a friend this weekend, and all we found were stupid, heavy metal, '80s holdovers. This town loves its hard rock.
But then I spent more time poring over the phone book, looking for vintage-friendly stores, and I did find a few places with websites that informed me they were likely to have the kind of instrument I'm looking for.
The problem is that the more you learn about this kind of thing, the less likely you are to be happy with what you end up buying. Fender has made Telecasters for a number of decades, now. Some are considered more desirable than others. Some are made in America, some in Mexico, some in Japan. Some have this kind of wood for the body and some have that kind. There are different kinds of pickups and different woods for the necks. All of these things, "they" say, have an effect upon the quality of the sound.
I just want to tell "them": "Look, I had this dream, which I've chosen to interpret as a message to buy a guitar and amp, and now I'd like a sunburst Telecaster like the one pictured over there to the left. You see, I'd like an instrument where the wood from which it's made is visible through the finish. Yes, I know it's an electrical device that produces processed sounds, but call me a romantic: I want to see the wood. I'm not looking to make an investment. I don't want to obsess over this and make the purchase more important than the creative process it's meant to faciliate. Just show my your selection of Telecasters, please."
Sure, they're right over here.
"Thank you."
Now what kind of amp are you looking for?
"!!!"
Sending hurricane-survival vibes to the east coast from the tornado-prone midwest.
For about the last half of my life I've had a recurring dream that I am about to go onstage to perform in front of a large audience, but I'm totally unprepared. In this dream I am often backstage with the other members of some very famous musical group thinking, "What in the world am I doing?" This, along with the "Oh, here's our new house. My, isn't it big?" dream are the only two dreams I have over and over again. Last night I dreamed I was performing with Chan Marshall.
I've always assumed these music dreams were about performance anxiety, that fears about my unpreparedness for various tasks were being played out in my sleep. Certainly when you have a job like mine in which you frequently stand up in front of people and play the part of a smart person you sometimes feel unprepared. But in my dream last night I wasn't backstage. I was onstage. And I wasn't particularly anxious. We were just playing music together. Maybe my unconscious isn't working through anxieties. Maybe it's telling me I need to be playing music.
So I think I'm going to buy an electric guitar (maybe a Fender Telecaster) and amp. I've been playing for about 20 years, but I haven't worked at getting any better for a long time. I looked into lessons today, and found a place that charges $15 for 30 minutes. That seems really cheap.
I'll keep you posted.
Today I took all of the students in my eighteenth-century novel course to the computer lab and had them all log in simultaneously to the Movable Type install I have running in my account on Jeff's server. They composed an entry each, saved it as a draft, published it, viewed it in the blogspace, then commented on someone else's entry.
No glitches. Not a single one. I am stunned. I have never had such a flawless in-class experience with a piece of software. No one got stuck. No one became so confused they couldn't figure out what they were supposed to do.
All this from free software.
I am so going to learn Liz Lawley's implementation of MT as courseware.
There will be many who memorialize country music star Johnny Cash and correctly emphasize his importance to American culture. But over at Dooce there is as heartfelt an appreciation of actor John Ritter, who also died this past week, as one could ask for:
As terribly American as it may sound, if I had to pinpoint one constant in my early life, through moving at an early age and changing schools and my parents' divorce and their consequent remarrying and puberty and all the changes of adolescence, that one constant would be “Three’s Company.” Jack Tripper was my ambiguously gay guidance counselor...
I loved the show, not because it was particularly good or relevant to me, but because everything was just so outrageous. Even after my parents allowed it in their house, I never fully understood what I was watching, I just knew that the women looked like I wanted to look, Jack wore very cool shorts, and they lived in a place that had palm trees. How exotic!...I never caught on to the fact that Jack was pretending to be gay. In my adolescent eyes, Jack was just a dramatic, flamboyant caricature of a man that didn’t exist in my world, a represenation of something that wasn’t allowed in my world, a part of life I wasn’t even supposed to know about...
Part of me is just sad that he died so young and unexpectedly, but the biggest part of me is mourning the passing of someone who played an integral part in my realization of the world, outside of the sterilized paradigm my parents tried to present to me.
As for me, I'm just wondering what's going to happen to the PBS kids show Clifford, the Big Red Dog, on which Ritter voiced the title character. I love that show.
This weekend someone gave me a chunk of basil the size of a small shrub. Pesto, anyone?
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Ordinarily I'll walk down to the City Market to shop on Saturdays, but the rain today was enough to persuade me to drive. After coffee and a bagel I picked up okra, some Missouri grapes, and a tray of baklava. I shot this picture on the way back home. The cool temperature, gray skies, and humidity are, to me, a welcome change from this past summer's unrelenting heat. |
After great pain, a formal feeling comes -
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -
The stiff Heart questions 'was it He, that bore,'
And 'Yesterday, or Centuries before'?
The Feet, mechanical, go round -
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone -
This is the Hour of Lead-
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -
First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -
-Emily Dickinson, 1862
For the Dead
I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer
The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself
I have always wondered about the leftover
energy, water rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped
or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting there long after midnight
-Adrienne Rich, 1972
-Barbara Krueger, 1987
Via Heidi: Libraries Remember September 11, 2001. Linda Hall Library is participating:
The Linda Hall Library will be open the 24 hours of September 11, 2003, in commemoration of the events of September 11, 2001, and in recognition of the strength and spirit of this nation and its libraries for their support of freedom of expression and access to information.
The library will close at 5:00 p.m. on September 10, and will re-open at midnight and remain open through midnight, September 11.
The other day I was going through some old digital photos and came across this picture of a few pigeons on a windowsill across the alley from our apartment.
Now why did I take this picture? Who would be interested in the birds across the alley?
Oh.
"Pillage and slaughter have emptied the earth of entire peoples."
-Beowulf (trans. Seamus Heaney), lines 2265-2266
Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain
You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins
-Bob Dylan, "Masters of War"
USA Today is hosting an online chat today with comic book author, and subject of the current film American Splendor, Harvey Pekar.
From Billbooard magazine:
Singer/songwriter Warren Zevon died Sunday (Sept. 7) in Los Angeles. He was 56. Zevon was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in August of last year.
One of the earliest singles I ever owned was Zevon's "Werewolves of London," which had as a B-side, "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner," a song based loosely (I think) on the The Song of Roland. As I prep for continuing the medieval portion of my British literature survey class this morning, I'll be thinking of Zevon.
The History of the Book and the Idea of Literature
Deadline for submissions: 28 May 2004
Coordinators: Seth Lerer (Stanford Univ.) and Leah Price (Harvard Univ.)
The past three decades have seen a growing awareness of the book as a technological production, as a cultural artifact, and as a marker in a set of social, political, and economic relations. From an earlier study of books as mere repositories of canonical texts, or as aesthetic objects, or as "evidence" for positivist bibliographic scholarship, a history of the book has emerged that understands print as not simply a technology but a form of social behavior located in encounters with the published word that define both a public life and a private subjectivity. As Roger Chartier put it, "We necessarily hold reading to be an inventive and creative practice that seizes commonly shared objects in differing ways and endows them with meanings that cannot be reduced to the authors' and publishers' intentions alone." How does this new history of the book inflect the study of literary culture? Invited are submissions that consider any aspect of book history as it bears on literary study and that address such questions as the following: What are the relations between the institutions of book production and the rise of authorial identity, of literary canons, and of academic disciplines? How might scholars now and in the future apply such traditional disciplines as bibliography, codicology, and paleography in understanding literary history? How do the history and study of the book contribute to the sociology of knowledge in the large? How does the culture of collecting (e.g., bibliomania) affect the socioeconomics of the book, the production and reception of literature, and the academic study of book history? Do non-Western histories of the book (e.g., in China, in the Islamic world) challenge or reaffirm the discipline of book history as it has emerged in Europe and America?
Articles on the general topic are invited; the subtopics listed are provided by way of example and suggestion only. Submissions must be by MLA members and meet the other requirements in the statement of editorial policy, printed in each January, March, May, and October issue of PMLA. Manuscripts should be submitted by the deadline to the Managing Editor, PMLA, Modern Language Association, 26 Broadway, 3rd floor, New York, NY 10004-1789.
Can you tell I'm going back through old emails? This NPR audio is from early August:
The Rare Book School at the University of Virginia is the only one if its kind in the United States. NPR's Jacki Lyden took a tour of the school's collection, and talked with elite scholars attending week-long sessions to learn more about the preservation and art of rare books.
An interesting looking "Online Virtual Seminar" on manuscript study hosted by the Learning Technologies Group at Oxford University Computing Services.
Two Three things that recently popped up in my mailbox:
As part of the long-awaited implementation of the federal initiative to standardize the grant process across all federal agencies, Grants.gov has published the first edition of a quarterly newsletter, Succeed, and launched a federal funding opportunity database and e-mail alert service. Through the electronic newsletter, Grants.gov will detail advances in the federal grant management standardization process. The first edition includes articles on the Find functionality of the federal funding opportunity database as well as the Apply Pilot.
Rockefeller Foundation
In 2003-2004, Rockefeller Resident Fellowships in the Humanities and the Study of Culture will be offered at host institutions that were selected for their potential to promote new work in the humanities. Host institutions include academic departments, interdisciplinary programs, museums, research libraries and community cultural centers that select scholars to receive Rockefeller Fellowships. They encourage interaction between the visiting fellows and their own scholarly communities, and make libraries, special collections and other facilities available in specialized areas of research. http://www.rockfound.org/
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society is accepting applications for grants to support research leading to publication in all areas of knowledge.
- Who is eligible: scholars who hold doctoral degrees or who have published work of doctoral character and quality.
- Deadlines for applications: October 1 and December 1.
- Total amount to be awarded and number of awards: not specified.
- Amount of individual awards: $1,000 to $6,000.
Since 1933 the American Philosophical Society has awarded small grants to scholars in order to support the cost of research leading to publication in all areas of knowledge. Between 1989 and 2003 our Franklin Research Grant program has awarded well over $4 million to 1,400 scholars. The Franklin program is particularly designed to help meet the costs of travel to libraries and archives for research purposes, the purchase of microfilm, photocopies or equivalent research materials, the costs associated with fieldwork, or laboratory research expenses. The Society does not pay overhead or indirect costs to any institution, or costs of publication. http://www.amphilsoc.org/grants/franklin.htm
On her new blog hosted at Typepad, Heidi is writing about attending the Big Urban Game in Minneapolis. What is it?
A citywide game that turns the Twin Cities into a 108-square mile giant game board. Three teams race three giant (26 feet high) inflatable game pieces — Red, Yellow and Blue — from three different starting points along three different routes between checkpoints in Minneapolis and St. Paul to a shared destination at the west end of the Lake Street/Marshall Street bridge, spanning the Mississippi.
"President" Bush came to town today. I was at work. He was a stone's throw away from where I live. Not that I would have thrown... You know, I'm not even going to make that joke because someone could read it, take it seriously and report me or something. This blog would disappear, and then all of you who link to me would be tracked down, and it's probably best to just let it go.
Update: The scary thing is I'm actually just a bit nervous about leaving this entry up.
The Art and History of Sushi
Young Grasshoppers everywhere, come learn from the Masters! World Foods Market sushi chef, OO Saw Shwe, with Prepared Foods Team Member and member of the Chef's Collaborative, Curtis Johnson, will discuss the history and reveal the secrets of creating beautiful sushi. The Art and History of Sushi will make it look easy! Learn to roll sushi, sample several delicious varieties and take home a free sushi mat.
CONVENER: OO Saw Shwe & Curtis Johnson
CLASS FEE: $9 + $10 material fee = $19
Sec. A: 1 session; Wednesday, September 24; 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM; Whole Foods Market, 7401 W.. 91st St., OPKS; LIMIT: 25
The book I'm writing is about the uses of speech, manuscript, and print in the eighteenth century, specifically within the Methodist movement, which began in this period before turning into what we now know as the Methodist Church. I'm still wrestling with geographical limits: England? Britain? Britain and America? I'm wrestling with a lot of things.
I find myself seduced by the simple claims of "history" as against "theory" and then reminded that you can't have one without the other. Almost all that we know about the past comes through written documents that are subject to many of the same complicated conditions of interpretation as the self-consciously literary texts that we know refuse to submit to easy readings.
My initial focus was on sermons because in this period they are spoken (by preachers, by readers reading them out loud), they are written (by their orators, but also by note-taking auditors), and they are printed (with and without the permission of the purported author). I am turning, however, to other genres: letter writing, diary keeping, marginalia, hymns. All of these linked to the (imagined, on my part? or on their part?) rich, interior life of those who said they stridently wanted something more spiritually satisfying than what was being offered to them. How to get at that interior life? What believers chose to reveal in the evidence that is left behind is no less self-consciously constructed (I think) than the entries we are all posting on our blogs. Even as you write a diary for no one but yourself you perhaps imagine a changed later self reading and you adjust the posture of your current, unchanged self accordingly.
Maybe the interior is forever untouchable by outsiders. Maybe there is no interior, only an imagined one, constructed through the correct outside expressions of faith and doubt.
Thinking about reading tonight. In my eighteenth-century novel course we are about to discuss the Ian Watt chapter “The reading public and the rise of the novel.” I also recently read the chapter “Readers and the reading public” in John Brewer's The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Both authors look to connect demographic data and evidence of social change to the practice of reading, and in Watt's case, to make connections to the development of the genre of the novel. Written forty years apart, the two chapters draw strikingly different conclusions from largely the same information. Watt, for instance, writes that there was clearly a substantial number of women with the leisure time to read novels, so novel reading was a largely female practice. Brewer looks at the same evidence (the number of references to and representations of female novel reading) and concludes instead that there was a great anxiety about women reading novels. Of course, Brewer can also draw upon forty years of research into such topics as library lending records to point out that men read novels just as much as women.
The other kind of reading I've been thinking about is blog reading (and writing). What will happen if I start to devote more blog space to my research and teaching, a subject with a perhaps more limited potential audience than the trips that I take from time to time or the occasional blogging squabble? And will this make blogging seem more like work and less like the enjoyable process it feels like, now? And why is it I think I should be doing this?
Well, it's not an either/or proposition.
Well, they're nothing as ambitious as what that rascal Chuck is up to, but I am experimenting this semester with using blogs as my course websites. Mind you, I'm not calling them blogs in my class. Each class has a main site, where I just post announcements or followups to class discussions, and students can comment or ask questions using the comments feature of MT, but then each class also (now) has a blog for students to discuss the readings, if they are so inclined. I expect a lot of in-class participation, but for those who are less than comfortable being on the spot in meat-space, they will now have an online space in which to hold forth, either under their real name or a pseudonym. I warn you, though, there's nothing interesting there, yet:
Many thanks to Jeff for providing the server space and the technical assistance in getting MT running properly in the first place.
It's the end of a long day. You're driving home. Turn on the radio. Find a song you know the words to. Sing along in the voice of:
One of the most interesting things I've been reading lately is Oral and Literate Culture in England: 1500-1700 by Adam Fox (Clarendon Press, 2000).
This is a very well researched and nicely written book on speech, manuscript, and print practices in this time period. Fox argues that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries all three media
“infused and interacted with each other in a myriad ways. Then, as now, a song or a story, an expression or a piece of news, could migrate promiscuously between these three vehicles of transmission as it circulated around the country, throughout society and over time. There was no necessary antithesis between oral and literate forms of communication and preservation; the one did not have to destroy or undermine the other. If anything, the written word tended to augment the spoken, reinventing it and making it anew, propagating its contents, heightening its exposure, and ensuring its continued vitality, albeit sometimes in different forms” (5).
Others have made this observation before (most notably, for me, D. F. McKenzie in "Speech-Manuscript-Print," an essay reprinted in a few places but perhaps easiest to find in the collection Making Meaning: "Printers of the Mind" and Other Essays (University of Massachusetts Press, 2002). However, Fox provides an amazing amount of detail: this is more a work of history than of theory.
The issues he raises inevitably encourage thought on how late twentieth-century new media might affect existing forms of communication. For example, there are frequent laments for the demise of the printed book in the age of the Internet, but I have never been persuaded that that such a demise is underway or that the Internet is responsible for it if it is. More interesting would be to consider the ways in which the Internet is changing, not replacing, our use of manuscript and print. Amazon.com, anyone? or 1000 Journals? This was, in part, what was at the root of my earlier post on "tracking and exchanging physical texts."
(And now I find that Fox has co-edited The Spoken Word: Oral Culture in Britain, 1500-1850 (Manchester University Press, 2003). Looks like I'll be using the interlibrary loan office, soon.)
I started playing chess with L a few weeks ago (I'd never played before). Tonight was my first victory. I won't gloat, though.
(Yippee!)
Update: It has been brought to my attention that I failed to mention that L does not have a great deal of experience playing chess. I did not realize this and offer my humble apologies.
I've always worked hard to be able to get to know my students' names relatively quickly during the semester. I think I may have finally hit upon a successful way of doing this within the first two weeks (short of taking postage-sized sticky photos of each student and practicing at home).
On the first day of class, I have students get into groups of four or five, pick a spokesperson, and introduce themselves to each other. They have to tell each other their names, their major, and one thing that they think is interesting about themselves or otherwise important for the class to know. Then it is the spokesperson's job to introduce the members of the group to the whole class. This way, shy students aren't forced to talk when they don't feel comfortable doing so.
I've also been taking roll by having students sign in on a sheet I pass around each day. I finally realized they should write their interesting/important thing next to their names. For whatever reason, the combination of three items (face, name, thing) allows me to remember them more quickly than the combination of only two items (face, name). So as I sit here, for example, I can picture the student who is going to the Renaissance Fair in costume, but I can't remember her name. A quick check of the latest sign-up sheet, however, fills me in.
Remarkably few of the students remember each other's names or interesting details, however. I'm going to keep calling them on that, I think.
