A central feature of this course will be the writing we do on this site.  In what follows, I will outline three things:

• a rationale for why I ask you to blog in the first place, rather than write traditional essays
• a quick primer on how to create your first post
• a simple rubric to guide your writing + an example of a good-looking post

First things first: why blog?

1. Blogging is sharable: rather than have a private circuit between you and me, we have a much more dynamic conversation across the entire class.  
2. Blogging is public, sort of: I like the idea that we are responsible for our ideas in front of broader audiences.  In practical terms, I doubt anyone is listening in most of the time, but I think it’s important that we roll up our sleeves and defend our arguments in an open and public forum as often as possible.  And of course, you can show your family/friends/pets what we’ve been up to in class.  For those who have reservations about privacy, note that a) you are free to create your own Commons name/avatar as you please, so you can use a pseudonym if you like; and b) you are free to delete your posts at the end of class.  If anyone has serious reservations despite all this, feel free to contact me.
3. Blogging is sturdy: rather than forget the piece of paper once it’s been handed back, we can link back to prior statements or observations, or to each others’. If you like, you can leave your posts up for future 306ers to see.
4. Blogging is responsive: rather than only getting comments from me, you’ll comment on and get comments on each other’s work.

What makes for an excellent post?  For this class, posts should:

• contain at least 400 words (use word count in WordPress or your word processor)
• explain a given text’s argument (or part of an argument), using quotations and paraphrases of the text with page numbers in parentheses
• engage that argument critically, noting its limitations, its links to other texts we’ve read, its unstated assumptions, etc.

Here’s a simple rubric, adapted from Mark Sample, that I will use to evaluate your work:

What do I write about? You are free to choose any focus you wish and to write about any of the texts we’re reading in any combination. A couple of suggestions:

• You may write about what we’re about to discuss our what we’ve just discussed. I prefer that you not write about something we’ve discussed long ago. So, for Friday, you may write about Nietzsche or about de Saussure. By the time Blog Post #2 rolls around, I don’t want to hear about Nietzsche, since we’ll have moved on.
• Be careful how much you bite off. It’s better to “do more with less” than the opposite here. So a close examination of de Saussure is probably a better idea than a breezy, loose comparison of Nietzsche, de Saussure, and Culler, in which each gets a sentence or two.
• The perfect is the enemy of the good. Getting zeroes in the gradebook for the posts is deadly. Better to dash of something that’s not your best work than to leave it blank. And it’s good discipline: no one feels like they “got it” after reading Lacan for the first time, so writing your way towards clarity, no matter how messily, is valuable.
• Use the study questions: it’s perfectly permissible–even suggested–to simply answer one of the study questions in your blog post, or to use it as a springboard for a more complex argument. They’re there, so use them!

Last but not least, here’s an example of a good-looking post.  I’ve annotated it using the hypothes.is tool, so you can see what makes it exemplary.  And remember: it’s not an exercise in cookie-cutting: your results may vary, and there are lots of ways to write an excellent post.

Hi 306/301 students:

Two quick things as we move towards Opening Day on Friday:

1. You are encouraged, but not obliged, to read Jonathan Culler’s introduction to “theory” here. I’ll digest some of its main ideas on Friday, but I think you’ll find it useful to orient yourselves before we dive in the deep water with Nietzsche for Tuesday.

2. You are also welcome (but not required) to introduce yourselves to me and to each other via Padlet, using the whimsical prompt I’ve created.

This is just to welcome you to English 306/COMPL 301 this semester. Take a look around: you can get a sense of the assignments and expectations via the syllabus and what we’re read and when via the schedule. Feel free to reach out via email with any questions, and I look forward to meeting you later this month.

Here is a 30 minute audio lecture hitting some of the high points of the Spillers piece for today. I also recommend the Wikipedia entry on Spillers. Weirdly, it doesn’t say much about her career beyond the “Mama’s Baby” essay, but it gives a bang-up summary of the argument.

Your only assignment is to email me a brief (one-paragraph) comment or question on the reading. Here are some questions that you can answer, though you’re free to write about some other aspect if you like:

1. How does Spillers open the essay? What does it mean to be a “marked woman”? How does this opening compare with Fanon’s from earlier in the term?
2. What is the Moynihan Report? You might need to use Google or Wikipedia to get a quick sense. What are some of the ways Spillers confronts the conclusions of the Report regarding the “black family”?
3. What is distinctive about the shape of the black family that emerges from enslavement? How and why does it differ from the patriarchal structure of Western families, the structure assumed by Freud’s theory?
4. What is “monstrous” about black mothers in Spillers’ view? See p. 80. Is this a bad thing? What are some of the effects of the centrality of this maternal figure in the black family?

And for good measure, here’s the lecture on Peter Brooks’s essay from Tuesday. As with today’s class, if you haven’t already, you should email me a one-paragraph response to any of the study questions to stand as your participation grade for the day.

For Tuesday, we’ll be back in action. We’ll read an excerpt from Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: I don’t have the right page numbers, since my copy is at the office, but you’ll find it in the Norton. I’m going to post the correct study questions right now as well. For those who have used their “skip,” you’ll need to submit your final blog post by Tuesday. Feel free to expand on your paragraphs on Brooks or Spillers for that assignment, if you like.

As promised, here’s a 15 minute lecture on Johnson:

Johnson480p

Brief lecture unpacking Barbara Johnson’s “Melville’s Fist” for 306 students

After you’ve finished reading and watching, please post on one of the following questions, which will serve as your Blog Post #3:

1. What kind of reader is Billy? What kind is Claggart? How does Johnson use Saussure’s theory of signifier/signified to clarify this difference?
2. On 2268-9, Johnson reads the plot of BB against the grain: that is, as if Claggart were right and Billy were guilty of a willful mutiny. What is the point of this? What does it say about BB that either reading is equally defensible?
3. How does Johnson distinguish, on one hand, a “difference within” and, on the other, a “difference between” in her discussion of Vere’s act of judging? What does Melville’s text tell us about these two different kinds of differences?
4. What does the example of Vere suggest about our commonsensical notion that judges are “above politics”: that is, that they decide on guilt/innocence independently of the practical effects of this judgement (2275)?

Greetings to students in my ENGL306/COMPL301 this term. I look forward to meeting you Monday. Note that all the other posts on this site were written by myself and prior students, who have left their work here for your benefit.