ENGS 345: Practicum in Teaching Writing

As everyone knows, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas… on hidden-camera surveillance footage to be unearthed and used for future (or present) blackmailing purposes. Duh.

And I’ve mentioned before that everything you put online stays online in one form or another. Forever. Right, Monica?

And I always make it a point to talk with my classes about how everything other people put online about you stays online forever. This isn’t news, and it isn’t rocket science. You’d think a smart up-and-comer would have figured that out by now.

So, pop quiz time: Who’s The Guy On The Left Honking Hillary’s Hooter?

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As promised, I’ve revised the Calendar. Here’s the summary of changes:

• The Teaching Journal #2 will include a 2-4 page reflection on the journal to date; it will be due on November 6
• The Greatest Teaching Fear revised draft will be due on November 20

That’s it!

I’ve been buried under multiple stacks of papers from both classes (note to self: plan paper turn-in schedule more carefully next semester!), but I’m digging my way out, slowly. In the meantime, here’s something to distract entertain and inform you.

I posted earlier about a great satirical video purporting to show the “Petticoat 5,” the first computer by women, for women. That video came from the British show Look Around You, whose creators, Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz, are now at work on a new project.

Popper and Serafinowicz are reportedly in talks with Adult Swim to develop their new show. I was initially doubtful about the enterprise. I loved the video, but I had no idea how they could spin this into a regular series.

That was before I clicked through to the main page for Tarvuism. There I learned everything never knew I needed to know. And it was so easy! After reading the fun stuff on the main site, I poked around the Tarvupedia. Holy crap on a cracker! There is a ton of stuff there. And it’s fantastic. Now I really, really hope they get their show. I’m dying to see Tarvuism in action.

And here’s an added plug for my spring classes! Notice that the Tarvunty is illustrated!

Yes, this spring I’ll be teaching a seminar for senior English majors on The Illustrated Novel. If only the campus bookstore would agree to carry the Tarvunty! I’ll also be teaching a graduate seminar on 21st Century Literacies. The entire Tarvuism web site is an excellent example of the literacies we use now that we’re living in the future 21st century.

(X-posted to Digital Digressions and Literature in a Wired World)

Apropos of our recent discussions of rhetoric, here are two recent videos that use rhetoric to encourage (or do they?) people to vote in the upcoming election. The first is another celebrity-infused compilation reminiscent of will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” song & video (and will.i.am is in this video, too). Here’s “Don’t Vote”:

The second is from the Colbert Report, and it takes a slightly different approach. This is “Voter Abstinence”:

Now, for everyone who wonders why I don’t do more work with classical rhetoric in my work (and for the grad students in Robyn’s theory seminar who recently read an article by Richard Lanham), here are a fun list of many (but not all — not by a long shot!) of the classical rhetorical figures and tropes* employed in the “Don’t Vote” video:

• aetiologia: giving a cause or reason
• amphidiorthosis: to hedge or qualify a charge made in anger
• anaphora: repetition of the same word at the beginning of successive clauses or verses
• antistrophe: repetition of a closing word or words at the end of several successive clauses, sentences, or verses
• apophasis: pretending to deny what is really affirmed
• commoratio: emphasizing a strong point by repeating it several times in different words
• contrarium: one of two opposite statements is used to prove the other
• dehortatio: dissuasion; advice to the contrary
• diallage: bringing several arguments to establish a single point
• epimone: refrain: frequent repetition of a phrase or question
• homiologia: tedious, redundant style
• indignatio: arousing the audience’s scorn and indignation
• palilogia: repetition for vehemence or fullness
• paraenesis: warning of impending evil
• pleonasmus: needless repetition
• sarcasmus: a bitter gibe or taunt
• tautologia: repetition of the same idea in different words

Can you find them all?

(X-posted to Digital Digressions)

* All figures and tropes can be found in: Lanham, Richard A. A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms Second Edition. Berkeley: U of California P, 1991.

This is tremendous fun. Kitty Burns Florey, the author of Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog (the best, and possibly only, book about diagramming sentences), has noticed Sarah Palin’s special relationship with the English language.

In an article for Slate, Florey takes a crack at sentences from Palin’s interviews with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson. The results aren’t pretty, even if Florey’s lines are, as always, impeccable.

Florey turns, for instance, to Palin’s oft-repeated meditation on Vladimir Putin’s rearing head:

It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where—where do they go?

And generates the following diagram:

Impressive, no?

But for me, the most interesting part of the article is this bit of Florey’s own thoughts on the value and usefulness of sentence diagramming:

One thing we can’t learn, of course, is whether her words are true or make sense. Part of the appeal of diagramming is the fact that just about any sentence can be diagrammed, even when it is gibberish. Cats chase mice and Mice chase cats present the same kind of entity to the diagrammer. So does Muffins bludgeon bookcases. If it’s a string of words containing a certain number of parts of speech arranged in reasonably coherent order, it can be hacked and beaten into a diagram.

Which makes the inescapable conclusion about Palin’s speech habits when she’s not extensively and elaborately scripted, as in the Couric and Gibson interviews, either tragic or terrifying.

(Thanks to Joe.My.God for the link.)

(And cross-posted to the Digital Digressions.)

First up, a very handy list of “5 Sayings You Can Probably Use Without Getting Fired” from Carol Richtsmeier at Bellringers.

Word of warning: Ritchie’s #1 thing might not work for you if you can’t summon your inner Southerner strongly enough to pull it off. But for those of us from the South/Southwest, she really does hit the nail on the head with that one.

And here’s something completely different: novels written on cell phones and intended to be read on cell phones. It’s all the rage in Japan, and is even reinvigorating the flagging Japanese book publishing industry.

• Charles Muir at Core Brand
• Peter Brantley at O’Reilly Radar
• Yukari Iwatani Kane at the Wall Street Journal

What I want to draw your attention to is the way the form of these cell phone novels affects their content. From the WSJ article:

Many mobile novels are influenced by comic books the young writers grew up reading. That means lots of dialogue and really short paragraphs that fit nicely on a small screen. Huge empty spaces between sentences can convey that the characters are deep in thought.

Also, there seems to be a strong connection between the popularity of mobile novels and the instant, often non-judgmental feedback made possible by their technology:

Mobile-novel writers like getting instant feedback from readers. That encourages them to keep going or even to change stories to suit readers. Of course, the close interaction between reader and writer can sometimes be too much. A 27-year-old woman, who wrote a sad love story called “What the Angel Gave Me” under the pen name Chaco, became so popular two years ago that she was getting 25,000 unique online visitors a day. Chaco, who won’t disclose her real name, says she felt pressured to update her novel and respond to comments every day to keep readers happy.

Can you imagine getting 25,000 different people to read your work? And to have many of those people be so inspired by your work that they want to write to you about it?

I’ve given you a sample student paper, written in response to the prompt: Compose a brief analysis of a technological element of contemporary culture, paying particular attention to the role(s) of that technology in/to contemporary culture.