Sunday, April 24, 2011

letters versus email

my dissertation topic is online English 101 classes.  i'm most interested in how instructors and stud nets create, or try to create a sense of classroom bonding through the digital space provided.  do all instructors take a more hands off approach (i've certainly see this)?  do all students take online thinking it will be easier?  these and many more questions fuel my research.  when i explain to ludite, i'm often forced to provide evidence of connections being made online, and of senses of bonding in digital space.  my membership in fan communities and facebook usually serve as those examples.  but for extreme ludites like my dad i bring up letter writing.  prior to the 1960's, and maybe even later, many people were building lasting friendships on nothing more than postal letters.  i just finished watching season 1 of Downton Abbey and the letters being written and delivered in the early 1910's were amazing.  gossip traveled through letter, news about the continent, the impending war, politics, all traveled via letter.  lasting connections were forged in gossip, and credibility was built through news.  these were rhetorical moves created and discussed by early epistolary authors (many of whom wrote to improve the minds of women, blah).

so i know all this, however, when faced with odd real world news of something similar i immediately cringed.  someone was recently telling me they met someone online, and formed a lasting bond he expects to turn into marriage with a girl in russia.  she is quite a bit younger than him.  i immediately found myself questioning this completely unknown girls motives.  i questioned the possibility of a bond through these means.  however, i'm usually pro-this type of communication/interaction.  so what's the difference?  why are we still so turned off by the idea of a mail-order bride, a bride who in many cases is volunteering for the job?  cities that have legalized prostitution have found the prostitute has a better life, less disease, more choice, more money, less harm done to her because she has more control, doesn't have to hide everything.  so choosing to enter the mail-order bride market provides these women with choice.  providing them the opportunity to converse regularly provides the potential couple more interaction than some arranged marriages have now.  so i guess  my real issue is that i can teach the idea that many people enter marriage for business arrangements, less for love, but i can't act out that understanding in real life.  whether the couple-hood is mediated through paper and pencil, or computer and internet, the business aspect that started that potential match is still there.  so where would a site like match.com fit into my completely arbitrary scale?  when people sign up for these sites are they looking for love? companionship? partnership?  in any case, all of these emotions, values, lifestyles are now being mediated through a computer screen.  do we truly know how to tell the difference?

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Dissertation reading: Professing literacy in composition studies


Goggin, P.  (2008).  Professing literacy in composition studies.  Cresskill, NJ:  Hampton Press.

Goggin looks at the various definitions of literacy, specifically tracing how they are applied and used with computers and composition studies.  Mapping the definitions of literacy shows changes in definitions and applications over time, as well as places where changes need to occur, or disconnects exist.  Focusing on Goggin’s mapping of the various definitions of literacy as they apply to computers and composition is an important way to understand the applications of literacy in pedagogy, and how digital literacy functions in classroom space.  The map becomes a way to understand applications of literacy in current scholarship of digital classrooms, digital literacy and composition pedagogy.

the title becomes catchier after you've read the book and really let it all sink in.  being literate about literacy is what so many literacy scholars profess, without realizing the many different ways they use the word, define the word, apply the word.  One of the hardest spellings for many children to learn is their, there and they're.  All three words sound exactly the same, but have very different meanings.  Goggin is arguing literacy has the same problem.  we think it can apply to everything and anything, but that also means its hard to define, so we assume everyone knows what it means when we use it in a given context.  at the beginning of the semester i gave my freshmen composition 101 students and extra credit assignment, as 5 people "what is literacy?" write it down.  When they came in to class and we discussed the assignment some were amazed at my mind reading skills, i could guess a lot about the age, education and SES about a person based on how they defined the term and what they knew, or at least what aspects of it they cared about, which again points to SES.  In describing all the various ways computers and composition specifically apply the term literacy, and all the skills, applications, pedagogy, reading and writing implications one little concept has needs to be fleshed out so we don't accidentally use the literacy version of they're when we really mean their. 

Monday, April 11, 2011

Romance Review: Challenge to Honor

Challenge to Honor
By: Jennifer Blake
Review: another meh

Unfortunately i think the meh review is more due to my raised expectations than the book itself.  i read a lot of regency romance and contemporary romance, and LOVE Gone With the Wind, so i feel that middle period is often missing from romance settings.  several austen fanfic writers are taking on WWI and WWII, a few have taken on the Old West in its various stages, but 1800's American New Orleans is such a mystical mix of creoles, spanish, french, americans, slaves and free slaves that still influence so many of its traditions today that the setting is ripe for culture.  i've read lisa kleypas' When Strangers Marry which is set in New Orleans and LOVED the story.  so when i saw a whole series (recommended through amazon's listmania which is awesome, i love the idea of recommending books based on categories that you self design.  its so interesting to see how people categorize, list and describe their own reading) about 1800s New Orleans i was super excited, so i bought the first one (YAY Kindle).  i had a really hard time liking the characters.  the culture, and the honor duels, and the training of swords men for honor duels, the lack of access to anything including money and choice of husband that the women had, the issue of slavery and the impending war with mexico for control of the south were amazing.  but the hero and heroine were so annoying and they just kept lying to each other.  fine, don't put your heart out there, by all means take a risk with losing your virginity outside of marriage in a time where your bride price is based on the existence of a hymen, but don't go so far as to tell that man you actually like him.  definitely get naked, and lie, always a good idea.  or just a way to annoy the reader.  so it took me forever to get into the story, i was about 75% done according to the kindle before i started to like them.  then there was a fire, the whole story came out, there was a kidnapping, sneaky maids, more sword fights, guns, parents standing up for their daughters, then it was over.  so i really liked 25% of this book, but the first 75 was a struggle.  the scenery, the food, the rituals and history of the area kept me reading the 75% because they really were amazing, but the hero and heroine were so blah and liars to boot.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Romance Review: The Baby Project

The Baby Project
By Linda Susan Meier

score: meh

I recently attended a Linguistics conference where my co-presenter discussed repetition in arabic, especially the Quaran, the the helpfulness in teaching language and culture when repetition occurs in a language.  He did note, however, that repetition in the English language is less common.  I don't say "my mom said x" over and over, i would typically switch to "she said" assuming listeners/readers were following my train of thought.  in general terms, its seen as rude to not assume the reader/listeners are paying attention, and to keep repeating the subjects instead of pronouns.

Unfortunately Ms Meier was not aware of this when she wrote the baby project.  overall the story is interesting, heartbroken female lead who suffered a ridiculous tragedy, abandoned male lead who is forced into fatherhood after never having a father in his life.  he quickly forces joint living, attraction is everywhere, baby is adorable, hearts are mended and we work toward HEA.  fairly basic set up.  HOWEVER, the tragedy that broke our dear heroine's heart is AWFUL, just awful.  to make matters worse, Ms Meier tells us the tragedy over and over and over again.  i was never sure if she assumed we readers had already forgotten the horrific tragedy after 5 pages, or she was trying to make us really really sad so we would identify with the humanness that our heroine presented.  either way, the repetition became tedious and was more distracting than an actual reminder of events in the plot line.  unlike the linguistic practices of languages like arabic, english speakers find it annoying to be repeatedly told the same thing, it feels like you're assuming we're not paying attention.  if you're worried we're not following your story, telling us a horrific plot device will not fix the overall problem. 

so, overall, fairly predictable plot line.  adorable baby that is underplayed.  lots and lots of repetition to be sure you don't forget the backstory of our dear female lead.  making the story meh. 

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Romance Review: BDB Lover Eternal

many JR Ward fans were eagerly anticipating this latest installment of the Black Dagger Brotherhood novels.  the injury to payne ending the previous installment left much to be desired, however, the follow up story did not meet all my expectations.  introducing xcor and his misfit gang as same species rivals, instead of the baby powder smelling lessers was a very interesting twist, focusing on the relationship of paynes brother v with his shellan and the cop was also interesting, but the denouement left much to be desired.  this felt too much like a transition novel, moving away from the stories of the brothers we were introduced to in the first novel, and opening up the JR Ward vampire-verse for as many more stories as she can come up with, which seems like unfair treatment of all that payne went through in her life.  her separation from her twin, her valiant defense of him, and her imprisonment as a result were strong back stories that needed to be explored with her healer much more.  instead, the happily ever after came way too quickly with the couples of this novel, and the progression into stories of new characters was left wide open.  i  hope with the snippets of quinn and blay lead to a full on book about them!!! and quinn's site, and Layla.  tell us more about them!! i don't care so much about xcor and his misfits - if the new brothers can get over their treatment by the glimera then the old misfits need to grow up.  hello you're hundreds of years old, don't try to depose a king for the glimera's shortcomings.