(no subject)
I still can't find my camera cord. I have a sneaking suspicion it ended up in the trash can, which is directly under the usb port on my computer. I was bummed b/c I looked up the kind of cord I need on the Kodak website, and it said they were twenty bucks! But Amazon sells them for $1.95, so I ordered one. :P I will be able to post pictures of my new dining room table upon my return to PA!
Jane and I went and picked up the table and chairs this afternoon. The little table JUST fit in the back of her station wagon, and we got the four chairs in too, all in one run! The things are really light; the guy I bought them from carried the table down two flights of stairs by himself. I like the set; I think they're pretty, and because they're really light colored, they brighten up the place. Esp combined with the effect of the light tan couches. If I get new covers for them, I'm going to try to get tan ones.
Got the books I borrowed from Dr. Dean back to him today, and I think I'm going to take back the rest of my library books this evening after dance class: even after two trips, there are 18 of them on my floor. I did my revision of the conclusion for my transatlantic paper this afternoon, and I'm going to go over it once more with my mom tomorrow evening to get final feedback before I turn it in. Then an extra transatlantic class on Thursday (it's Cixous, God help me. I haven't read it yet, but I'm leery of anything that gets compared with Derrida: in my experience, anything on that level is probably going to go mostly over my head, and we don't discuss the basic meanings of such texts in class, so I'm sitting there trying to analyze literature according to a critical framework I don't actually grasp yet). We're bringing food, which should soften the blow. Oh, and I have three hours of tutoring Fri morning. >_< Almost forgot. Meanwhile, I shall be cleaning up the apartment and attempting to pack. I almost don't want to start cleaning until I finish my transatlantic paper, b/c the cleaning will begin in my room, and the first step will be gathering up all my library books. I don't want to do that until I've finished that paper.
My transatlan prof put me on to Jane Tompkins' "Me and My Shadow", and altho I don't think I can fit it into my current essay (though it might end up in a footnote), I'm loving it. It's saying so many of the things I've been thinking recently. I remember in Shillock's class discussing alienated labor: "The worker is alienated from the product because its design and production are appropriated by the capitalist class and escape the worker's control." That's the way I feel about most of my academic writing. I'm alienated from it; I don't really care about it. I'm only doing it to further my career--that is, for money and possibly down the road, prestige. I'm not writing these papers because I care about the topics at all. One of my profs noted on the term paper I wrote for him last semester that it read like it was written "for the nonce"--and that's precisely what it was. That's what my medieval paper practically was, too. It started out with enthusiasm on my part, when I thought that I would be writing about theological concepts, because I'm interested in those and find them applicable to my own life and beliefs. But as the research got more and more "professional," and especially when I had to start citing the "right" sources, I unconsciously became more and more alienated from the writing, until I got to the point where I didn't hardly care about the content of the paper anymore: I only cared about the grade. And that's not right.
In fact, the only time I find myself caring about the content of my academic writing anymore is when I'm writing pieces that resist academia and that apply directly to my life. That Pamela article I wrote last semester (I sent out the abstract to an online journal, but I don't know if they've read it yet) that examined the cultural backlash against Mary-Sue-ish writing such as Twilight was a piece I cared about, and this transatlantic paper, which is resisting the idea that absorbed reading is bad, I also care about. These are the kinds of topics I want to study for my dissertation, because they're some of the only topics in the study of literature I find myself caring about--that I don't find myself alienated by.
(I don't feel alienated by my fiction writing--though I think I might, if I started trying to write it as "great literature", because I'd be trying to fit into the culture's idea of what makes a great book instead of what *I* think makes a great book. And it's so hard, b/c almost everybody in the culture that has a certain level of literary education buys into that set of values, including me. That's why I want to argue against that limiting set of values in my academic writing.)
That feeling of alienation from academic writing is what Tompkins is talking about. She describes how very academic prose automatically alienates itself from individual readers and from individuality, period. It is supposed to be abstract, unconnected with personal feelings and perceptions. But what I want to know is, what is the point of studying literature unconnected with personal feelings? Aren't the feelings and ideas and the personal reaction you have to literature--"great" literature or otherwise--what makes it good? what makes it worthwhile in the first place? When you read literature from the critical distance required by academic writing, you disengage from it. You can talk about how a novel combats patriarchal norms or racist stereotypes or unfair economic systems until your eyeballs fall out, but it won't mean a damned thing unless that novel hits you in the guts and makes you feel and think differently than you did before you read it. That's what literature is all about, "great" or not. It's about the imagination and about how those things you imagine--whether it's a world without some particular great evil, or just an enthralling love story--those things affect you, both inside and out. Even if a book or a poem puts a beautiful picture in your head that gives you a good feeling when you think about it, that's a worthwhile piece of literature. And you can't stand back and analyze it from a critical distance, or the beauty and the emotional connection goes right down the drain.
I get the feeling I'm starting to ramble, and I need to get changed for dance class. So I'll stop here--for now, anyway.
Jane and I went and picked up the table and chairs this afternoon. The little table JUST fit in the back of her station wagon, and we got the four chairs in too, all in one run! The things are really light; the guy I bought them from carried the table down two flights of stairs by himself. I like the set; I think they're pretty, and because they're really light colored, they brighten up the place. Esp combined with the effect of the light tan couches. If I get new covers for them, I'm going to try to get tan ones.
Got the books I borrowed from Dr. Dean back to him today, and I think I'm going to take back the rest of my library books this evening after dance class: even after two trips, there are 18 of them on my floor. I did my revision of the conclusion for my transatlantic paper this afternoon, and I'm going to go over it once more with my mom tomorrow evening to get final feedback before I turn it in. Then an extra transatlantic class on Thursday (it's Cixous, God help me. I haven't read it yet, but I'm leery of anything that gets compared with Derrida: in my experience, anything on that level is probably going to go mostly over my head, and we don't discuss the basic meanings of such texts in class, so I'm sitting there trying to analyze literature according to a critical framework I don't actually grasp yet). We're bringing food, which should soften the blow. Oh, and I have three hours of tutoring Fri morning. >_< Almost forgot. Meanwhile, I shall be cleaning up the apartment and attempting to pack. I almost don't want to start cleaning until I finish my transatlantic paper, b/c the cleaning will begin in my room, and the first step will be gathering up all my library books. I don't want to do that until I've finished that paper.
My transatlan prof put me on to Jane Tompkins' "Me and My Shadow", and altho I don't think I can fit it into my current essay (though it might end up in a footnote), I'm loving it. It's saying so many of the things I've been thinking recently. I remember in Shillock's class discussing alienated labor: "The worker is alienated from the product because its design and production are appropriated by the capitalist class and escape the worker's control." That's the way I feel about most of my academic writing. I'm alienated from it; I don't really care about it. I'm only doing it to further my career--that is, for money and possibly down the road, prestige. I'm not writing these papers because I care about the topics at all. One of my profs noted on the term paper I wrote for him last semester that it read like it was written "for the nonce"--and that's precisely what it was. That's what my medieval paper practically was, too. It started out with enthusiasm on my part, when I thought that I would be writing about theological concepts, because I'm interested in those and find them applicable to my own life and beliefs. But as the research got more and more "professional," and especially when I had to start citing the "right" sources, I unconsciously became more and more alienated from the writing, until I got to the point where I didn't hardly care about the content of the paper anymore: I only cared about the grade. And that's not right.
In fact, the only time I find myself caring about the content of my academic writing anymore is when I'm writing pieces that resist academia and that apply directly to my life. That Pamela article I wrote last semester (I sent out the abstract to an online journal, but I don't know if they've read it yet) that examined the cultural backlash against Mary-Sue-ish writing such as Twilight was a piece I cared about, and this transatlantic paper, which is resisting the idea that absorbed reading is bad, I also care about. These are the kinds of topics I want to study for my dissertation, because they're some of the only topics in the study of literature I find myself caring about--that I don't find myself alienated by.
(I don't feel alienated by my fiction writing--though I think I might, if I started trying to write it as "great literature", because I'd be trying to fit into the culture's idea of what makes a great book instead of what *I* think makes a great book. And it's so hard, b/c almost everybody in the culture that has a certain level of literary education buys into that set of values, including me. That's why I want to argue against that limiting set of values in my academic writing.)
That feeling of alienation from academic writing is what Tompkins is talking about. She describes how very academic prose automatically alienates itself from individual readers and from individuality, period. It is supposed to be abstract, unconnected with personal feelings and perceptions. But what I want to know is, what is the point of studying literature unconnected with personal feelings? Aren't the feelings and ideas and the personal reaction you have to literature--"great" literature or otherwise--what makes it good? what makes it worthwhile in the first place? When you read literature from the critical distance required by academic writing, you disengage from it. You can talk about how a novel combats patriarchal norms or racist stereotypes or unfair economic systems until your eyeballs fall out, but it won't mean a damned thing unless that novel hits you in the guts and makes you feel and think differently than you did before you read it. That's what literature is all about, "great" or not. It's about the imagination and about how those things you imagine--whether it's a world without some particular great evil, or just an enthralling love story--those things affect you, both inside and out. Even if a book or a poem puts a beautiful picture in your head that gives you a good feeling when you think about it, that's a worthwhile piece of literature. And you can't stand back and analyze it from a critical distance, or the beauty and the emotional connection goes right down the drain.
I get the feeling I'm starting to ramble, and I need to get changed for dance class. So I'll stop here--for now, anyway.