Another New Literacy-chic Blog

I wanted to pop back over to the blog that started it all and mention that with my blogging taking a more professional-personal slant, I have fragmented still further to create another blog in addition to Booknotes from Literacy-chic, which is going strong as I blog my way through Diana Gabaldon's Outlander novels.  The new blog is a bit shakier--I am not sure how much material I will have for posts, or how regularly I will post. With a book blog, it is easy--if I need material, I read another book.  But the new blog, Teaching, Training, Blogging, will be notes on my current job as a software trainer, submerged in professional and organizational development techniques and lingo, and how insights from my current job could potentially influence undergraduate education.  I have a few good ideas to start out with, and after that... who knows?  I know I will be discussing the following topics:

• Classroom communication
• Composition and REALLY using computers/software
• Rhetoric and Communication Styles
• Personality-type reflections
• Collaborative course guidelines/class rules

And hopefully, more things will present themselves so that I don't have to feel guilty about cluttering up the internet.  Yes, this is something I think about!  

After the Fallout

Things are settling down here. The semester has ended. Grades are due soon, but I only have final papers to evaluate, which tends to be easier than the papers during the semester, both because the quality is often better and because I don't have to make the extensive comments that I make on earlier papers, since most of the final papers will never be seen or retrieved by students. The children's schools will be winding down also. My son is looking forward to an orchestra competition out-of-town at a festival next Monday, and has his end-of-the-year concert tonight, in which he performs the solo! He had to try out for it, so we are very proud. Doodle is also practicing for an end-of-the-year program, and we had our "Mother's Day Tea" at her school last Friday. It was so neat having her serve me tea just as my son had done for years while he was at the same school. I wish I could send all of them there, but the job search won't permit. We are still looking for housing for the fall--ideally cheaper housing than what we currently have. It's a challenge, but we have some viewings lined up for Saturday, so we'll see. . .

I am recovering from the stress of two weeks ago. I had the dreaded meeting with the advisor, but it was not so bad. Instead, what I think has happened is that he has realized that I do indeed need help with this whole process. I was told that he will work with me on the answers to some anticipated questions to help me to better survive interviews. I had started thinking of some of this anyway, but my preparation may have been off. The random nature of the interview process leaves me very insecure, and I don't take comfort from the fact that it's like this for everyone. I think of myself as someone who thinks well on her feet and can communicate effectively, but I feel like I can't be completely honest in answering or I will jeopardize my chances of getting hired. That is singularly uncomfortable for me. If I conceal my thoughts about something, I feel like I'm being hypocritical and dishonest. I probably come across as smug or judgmental, too (imagine that). Because really, I'm judging them as much as they are judging me--that's too much judging for someone like me. But maybe if I'm not in the kind of "fog" that I was in last time, I will be able to think of responses that work. *sigh*

I have come to realize the depth of my insecurity. I think it has been building during all of the years I was away from coursework. It perhaps had its seeds in coursework, as I realized how different, and in many ways, agenda-driven, most of the scholarship in my field was from what I had imagined myself doing, and tried to fit myself into it. I developed a defensiveness, realizing that I would be judged according to the fact that I was not doing what others were doing. But I have not ever seen literature as a vehicle for social change, and I did not use it to critique society or to lobby for a more enlightened existence. I wonder--had my undergraduate courses been more overwhelmingly political, would I be here now? But I had professors who were contentedly thematic or New Critical in their approaches. Or even subtly New Historicist. I can't think of any who were overtly feminist--and this includes the lesbian poet who once tried to teach me to dance in a bar in New Orleans. I realize that even those professors--one art historian comes to mind--who tried to adopt a feminist perspective failed miserably by most standards, and I was allowed to write a paper refuting the agenda of Eva Keuls' Reign of the Phallus (but not refuting its research, which I found fascinating) in my freshman honors seminar. In those days, I didn't even like literature that was overtly political--Animal Farm, for example--because that's not what I was looking for in literature. Now I adore dystopia, so that has changed drastically, but I'm all about the context of the work. Though I do admit that I see an enduring message in many of the dystopian works I teach! So I was not out of line with my undergraduate professors, who preferred to teach interpretation rather than theory, and who did not structure their courses thematically to promote certain ideologies or worldviews or whatever. Would it shock you to know that I never read "The Yellow Wallpaper" in an undergraduate course? I did read The Awakening in high school, and utterly rejected it. I believe I had to read it again in an American Lit course, but I probably did not repeat the task. And I didn't like Emily Dickenson.

In graduate school, things changed radically. The goal of papers was completely different, and left me rather befuddled as I tried to figure out what, if anything, I had that was worthy according to the different standards I was confronting. My papers were (predictably, perhaps) reactionary. I proposed "different" ways of looking at feminist issues, focused on areas that were less politically charged (to me), and rejected Marxism except in the rare cases when it seemed to fit the author's own agenda. But I became dismayed by it all. Some of the versions of Marxism I encountered in guest speakers, etc., impressed me by their absolute futility, and the selections of texts in my graduate seminars were often uninteresting to me. I have a very short list of courses that I enjoyed, and even fewer texts that inspired me. And then there was the teaching. When I taught literature, I had a considerable amount of freedom, except the limitations imposed by the Intro to Lit anthologies. (Would it surprise you to know that I have never taught "The Yellow Wallpaper"?) In an era when any designated "greatness" of literature is considered suspect, the question of how to introduce literature to non-majors becomes complicated. And as far as I can tell, it comes down to introducing ways of viewing the world, reshaping the way students view the world by introducing, celebrating, or promoting certain perspectives, or using literature to try to make sense of life experiences, which some anthologies do try to do even though this is kind of a universalizing impulse. My problem with both approaches is that presenting literature with such specific purposes imposes a way of reading on the text. This limits the potential for discovery of meaning. I do not believe that there are infinite ways to read a text, but I also do not believe that the critics always have it right. That's why my interpretations of texts in my dissertation are not linked in any way to the criticism of the authors whom I study. That's probably why one of my committee members wrote so many little X's in the margins, though he seemed to like the overall dissertation. I do believe that the greatest literature is universal in a sense, in that it taps into the things that are common to humanity. And I do not think that the idea that there are things common to humanity contradicts the singularity of individual experience. But I'm a very empathetic person, and a very empathetic reader, so perhaps this desire to get inside others' heads and understand them makes me see the question of universality a bit differently. I want to see how we as individuals connect while understanding the differences that we face as individuals or as members of different communities. If there is no universal connection, then literature is pretty much meaningless.

Which I guess brings me to another breaking point of sorts with my discipline. Because I believe in a some kind of universal human experience, albeit mediated by particular circumstances, I think that there is inherent value in reading to seek those connections, to find ourselves in others, to find others in ourselves, and by evaluating ourselves and our experiences through reading, to grow as fully realized individuals. This is very outdated. But I feel that in order to function in a community, which is where the emphasis is these days in teaching and studying literature, we have to know who we are, and that's a complex question. I can't teach this, and I don't try. But I also don't try to stress difference to the point that it annihilates the self. I don't want to change anyone's worldview, but I do want to help students to put their worldview in perspective, and I think literature has infinite potential to give individuals perspective, as long as they are open to it and recognize it for what it is, and in order to accomplish this, we need to be non-threatening, by which I don't mean subtly subverting their worldview while pretending to be sympathetic. Not at all.

So I didn't really come into this profession to introduce or promote certain ideas, though I have dabbled in and do enjoy ecocriticism and postcolonialism. I don't think that by teaching certain texts in certain ways, that I stand to improve anyone's social condition. And I'm not terribly invested in the idea that everyone needs to tolerate everyone else's beliefs and ideas to the suppression of one's own, because that doesn't lead to understanding of any kind. And frankly, there are a lot of things I'm not interested in talking about with students. And wouldn't you know? Every one of them is represented in the standard composition text. And typically, they are represented in such a way that it is clear what the authors of the book want the student to think. In teaching argument, the arguments presented make a case for a certain worldview. And the students sometimes accept it without opposition, because the claims are so persuasive. Or they get mad because their opinions differ and they don't know how to articulate them. Now, a lot depends on the student and how the materials is presented, but I'm just not interested in negotiating any of this. Perhaps the issue is that while I can find universal experience in art, I can not find any evidence of that same interconnectedness in the diatribes that litter composition texts. So there's no room for sympathy or empathy, and there's no art. Granted, there is some clever use of language, which I can appreciate, but that is not the same as art, because art has an element of beauty or at least awe. Art evokes rather than stating, which is why popular music is not art these days! So this is why teaching comp and resolving to find a job in comp represents such a defeat for me.

And really, friends, I have felt disillusioned for so long, and read so many bleak accounts of the "realities" of the academic job market, and the promotion and tenure process, that the sense of futility has been overwhelming at times. The fact that I did not quit one of the many times I considered doing so is a small miracle. So perhaps I have something to do here before it is all over? Perhaps. I don't know.

But I entered into this meditation because I have been told twice by professors recently--my advisor and then my direct supervisor in Writing Programs--that I needed to work on my self-confidence. Now, when I was in high school, people didn't think I was self-confident, because I had some self-doubt, and some social insecurity. But that didn't mean that I didn't think I was at least as good as the people around me, I just didn't think anyone else was likely to recognize it in any kind of meaningful way. I guess not much has changed. But I felt pretty confident in coursework, and I have always felt that I could at least accomplish whatever I put my mind to. I'm not so sure about that anymore, though I did write what one friend of mine calls "the big book report" (which mine was *not*). I wonder if that is because I don't have sufficient relish for the task before me? And I can't imagine what circumstances could help me regain that relish. So perhaps the problem is that I am unsure of whether I want to put my mind to the task before me. Is that the same as a lack of self confidence? I'm not so sure. But it doesn't matter if I relish the task before me or not. At this point, my options are severely limited, and feeling like I don't have a choice motivates me to inaction--a choice in itself, no?

Opportunities for Dialogue

Thanks to the comment she posted on my blog, I discovered blogger Entropy's "Sphere of Influence," which raises a lot of good, Catholic questions. It is refreshing to see a blogger really engaging with issues of faith, including asking questions when questions need to be asked and seeking faithful answers. I am engaged at present with her questions for Traditionalists, on which post I have been embarrassingly outspoken. She asks and answers some good questions about Virginity in a slightly older post, and I have found any number of probing discussions by browsing around a bit.

In a more academic mode, I was able to engage with fellow grad-students & professors to give input about the standard syllabus for Freshman Composition--the bane of every incoming Freshman (who didn't test out) and the 2nd year grad students who have to teach it. My gripe--teaching a novel for one of the major papers when they haven't even learned what they need to about writing yet, and won't with the distraction of "Argument as Literature" or "Arguing about Literature." Introducing the novel to the course was part of a two-fold effort to engage the university with a community reading project and pacify grad students who wanted to be teaching literature. I would rather be teaching literature (except that it requires more prep work that I won't need with a new baby on the way and I'm finally fairly happy with my syllabus for the first time in 6 years of teaching). But pretending that a writing course can accommodate literature and all of its assorted teaching baggage--er, difficulties--strikes me as a little naive. Besides that the novels in question were not particularly compelling to me personally, and it's never fun to teach someone else's "pet issues." Sure, one involved literacy, but from the perspective of literacy-acquisition and racial injustice, which is not where I'm coming from at all, though it is interesting in its own right. So we discussed the issue of teaching a book, the particular writing assignments, and some general strategies for improving classroom interaction. All good.

After this meeting, there was a brainstorming session for the 4C's conference (College Composition and Communication), which will be in New Orleans next year and I need an easy-to-get-to conference on my cv. Being on home turf is always a good thing, especially since the family could come with me and I hate traveling alone (which would not be an option anyway since I will have a 4-month-old!). So we talked about possible panels and it looks like we will be organizing one around the people who are working with literacy theory. One person is doing literacy acquisition narratives, one is doing technology & literacy, and I am doing literacy as portrayed in literature. I was informed of an article that intersects somewhat with what I am doing--even down to the time period. Also, I was able to explain--in rather more detail than I expected, after being asked to elaborate--what I am writing about for the dissertation. This had the happy result of making me think about what I was doing. An hour or so later, in Cheddar's, we ran into a former professor of my husband's, who also asked for the dissertation-in-a-nutshell, and giving the quick & dirty account of one's research project is always a beneficial thing. So I find myself slightly more interested in thinking about work than usual--all in time to prepare for tomorrow's class. Oh well. That's how it works! But at least it will be a workshop-y class, which I advocated at the meeting today and which seem productive for my class this semester. Those classes have much less prep than the ones in which I really have to teach something.

Interesting that these on-campus meetings were possible because my son was home (he had a cold, but wouldn't have been going to school anyway). Otherwise, I would have missed the first meeting, which began at 3. I realize that I need a bit more of this talking-to-people about academic stuff. It's just a pain to drag myself to the meetings to interact with people. I need to work on that. Did you notice "sloth" as one of my major sins?

I AM, I am: A Rare Reflection on a Homily

In general, I tend to be slightly frustrated with homilies, even fairly good ones. The composition teacher in me wants to ask, "where is your thesis?"; to comment, "you introduce too many ideas in that paragraph" and "your composition lacks focus," "you repeat your point rather than elaborating" or "did you exceed the maximum word limit?" I generally prefer compositions that are too long to too short, as long as they remain on-topic with no unexplainable digressions. I do think there is some value in critiquing homilies, even in this manner, because it requires the ability to summarize or restate what the point or points were, with the possible result that we review and analyze the points of the homilies themselves, not just the possible structural imperfections! (Yes, we are paying attention to substance, too!--perhaps more than when I grade papers...)

This evening, the homily was given by a deacon who endeavors to stick close to and explain the readings, sometimes a bit too literally or pedantically, but I generally appreciate the effort to connect the readings to each other, to the particular feast day or liturgical season, or to the theology that they inform. He focused primarily on the first reading, from Exodus, in which Moses encounters the Burning Bush (a scene of Ten Commandments fame, and it's hard not to picture Charlton Heston--or, secondarily, Michelangelo's Moses). Particularly, he addressed the name by which Moses would call God as proof of his truth to the Israelites: I AM. In contrast the the great I AM, he recounted occasions on which no one answered "I am," occasions on which someone was asked to take personal responsibility for one's actions: "Who is responsible for the underwear up the flagpole?" "Who is responsible for moving the teacher's Volkswagon onto the sidewalk?" "Who is responsible for the mess in the kitchen?" He pointed out that society doesn't particularly like for us to answer the question, "Who is responsible?" with the response, "I am," particularly in the case of sins, which are increasingly explained as being something other than sin.

What he did not say was, I think, the most interesting point of the homily, the one which I would have tried to coax from the student writing an essay on the subject (in another life, when I have the occasion to grade a composition on a religious theme--my students would willingly write them, but I could not, in my current setting, fairly grade them because of the hogwash that they would offer for religious justification; in order to have an intelligent composition on religion, you likely have to have the ability to discuss religion openly in class as a valid topic, and to stress that religion and logic are compatible). The Deacon did not say, but I believe implied on some level, that by taking responsibility for our actions, by saying "I am" to the question, "Who is responsible?" we are able to participate in the Divine purpose in our lives, and in the Divine presence in the universe--by being the "I am"--the motivating force in our own lives, the moral agent that takes responsibility for our own actions--and doing so in accordance to our understanding of God's will, we are reaching for the "I AM." This can apply to any number of instances, and it has to do, at times, with participating in (or facilitating) the good that may come from evil and sin. Here, I clearly diverge from the homily, and I am thinking of two things--the "doing evil to undo evil" arguments for legalization of abortion, as a default argument, of sorts, and an extreme example to explain the point, and the co- or sub-creation within Creation that Tolkien portrays in The Silmarillion.

In The Silmarillion, Tolkien creates the Valar as sub-creators, whom Ilúvatar created in order to participate with him in Creation. Each of the Valar sings a part in the beginning melody, a song which brings about the actual substance of the universe. Melkor, the greatest of the Valar, seeks to challenge Ilúvatar (sorry for the oversimplification), and weaves discordant sounds into the melody in an attempt to take control of it himself, but each time, Ilúvatar is able to create still greater music and harmony out of the discord. This idea of creating beauty out of discord is extremely significant for Tolkien, and is a profound reflection on the Doctrine of Original Sin and the Incarnation. I understand the Great I AM, the underlying responsibility for the universe, in these or similar terms.

It is in reference to the personal "I am" that I invoke the problem of abortion. I invoke above, reluctantly, but because they are the most visible and dramatic example of the theology I am trying to invoke, the arguments that abortion should be permitted in the cases of rape and incest. The justification is typically seen by those who oppose abortion in all cases, on moral grounds, as seeking to "fix" an evil situation by acting in a manner that is intrinsically evil. In my terms, when asked, "Who is willing to take responsibility for this new life?" it is the refusal (or inability, in the face of the evil situation) to answer, "I am." The "I am" is not the answer, in these cases, to the question, "Who is responsible for creating this new life?" (The answer to that would be "I AM.") In this situation, the personal "I am" is having the strength (admittedly, such an act of responsibility would take considerable strength, and there is no way of knowing if any one of us would be equal to the task) to be responsible for transcending the evil, and participate in the Divine task of turning discord into beauty.

I am a strong believer in personal responsibility, and it is easy enough to recognize in perhaps the majority of elective abortions, the refusal, supported by numerous discourses, to take responsibility for one's own actions. But in the case of the usual exceptions, rape and incest, it is more difficult. The obvious answer is, "you can't answer evil with evil," but that answer is only partly satisfactory, and has always left me wondering whether there might be another way to answer this to address the injustice of making someone who is not, through an act of her own will, responsible for the situation take responsibility for the actions of another. (Notice I do not seek to answer the anticipated objection, "Well, is the Church going to support this child for her?"--The question is not relevant.) This is not where this post was meant to go, but it is, as I said, the most obvious example of being the remedy to a sin that is not one's own. Taking responsibility for one's own sins, the actual subject of the homily, is more straightforward. Furthermore, when one's personal sin yields a good result, it is not an excuse for the sin, but evidence of the turning of discord into beauty, and hence, a revelation of Divine goodness--the "I AM" behind the "I am."

It was a Lenten homily, and also a Spring Break homily, perhaps intended to save the priests time in the confessional before Easter listening to tales of Galveston. For me, it made sense of a puzzling passage--why "I AM," anyway? Was it just a Hebrew thing that didn't translate well?--and some puzzling moral issues, and provided a much longed-for excuse to blog about Tolkien. All in all, a successful homily!

P.S.--Part of the curse of teaching composition is that abortion is the ready-made example for EVERYTHING!