Frameworks
Started the scenarios for the computing backbone today. They can be found here, although I must warn my millions of readers--they are sketchy and WIPS.
Started the scenarios for the computing backbone today. They can be found here, although I must warn my millions of readers--they are sketchy and WIPS.
I'm having a really hard time finding a theoretical perspective. I'm really feeling the pressure of theory. I want to just be a New Critic, but they're kind of not too cool. But really, as fellow grad student Matthew & I have discussed, all the theory folks really care about close readings. They just want to be able to venture outside (or other places inside) the text to find them.
Maybe I'll start the New New Criticism. Look at whatever you want. Find answers and schema that unlock the text for you, so that you can find your meaning.
I really believe, along with Scholes, that we are teachers of reading. I read his letter to the MLA today and wish that I was going to be attending the Philadelphia convention to hear his keynote. While I don't know that our politics are the same, I feel inspired by his call to return to the basics of our profession, to equip our students with the tools they need to be better readers of, well, everything.
That's what I'm hoping to do, in some small way, with my project--to find out what our students need to do to be better readers of poetry. And can I convince them that it's cool to read?
Not really related, but I was crusing the knitting blogs (my other passion) and saw an icon going around that referenced the "blue fringe." It got me thinking about the internet and geography.
My physical location has never seemed really important in my computing (except for reasons of ergonomic comfort), but knowing where a person is physically located is perhaps crucial to their sense of self and outlook. Yesterday in Ramsay's class we were discussion Katherine Hayles's discussion of Norbert Weiner's work and I commented on how Weiner seemed to be much more comfortable in the local than the global (not totally sure that's how I said it, but at the moment that seems relatively accurate--ah, memory!). This stemmed from an early discussion with my office mate and his girlfriend about the inability of students to connect with long dead allusions in poetry and our role as instructors in helping them do this, lest those poems to which we allude disappear and our students be shut out of that discourse community. Local intervention, personal connection, is what changes things, not global.
Not sure what that means and I've long (perhaps) left Hayles, but this claiming of pride in being part of the "blue fringe" just underscores the importance of identification with the local, with the immediate environment in which we operate.
I'm having a hard time getting going today. Yesterday I created an XML dtd/template for the
Many ways to procrastinate and feel like you're doing something useful. I will go to campus at 1 p.m. and set myself to work. But right now I'm going to sit and knit. And watch TV.
For those interested, here's a bit about the project--bare-bones idea, shanked from my IRB proposal:
The goal of this study is to use XML markup technologies, through the English Department's
The study's importance derives from its approach to poetry pedagogy. While the application of computing technology to the teaching of writing seemed a natural fit for professors in the academy, the application to reading has been less enthusiastically grasped. Most computer "readings" of texts utilize hypertext linking to include external sources. Few seek to apply the technology as a reading environment that also sees the necessary connection between reading and writing. This project takes as a foundational idea and goal the necessity of those two activities for the understanding and enjoyment of poetic endeavor.
While we've always been able to "write with the writer" by notations in margins, copying, etc., technology allows for a highly customizable reading of the text. Once features are marked up in the particular poem, XSLT processing strategies can offer a variety of readings efficiently, thereby offering the student a number of windows into the poem from which to choose.
Finally, the study will offer introductory/directional data for future work in the application of XML technologies to the teaching of reading. This research is, first and foremost, exploratory in nature. I hope to find trends in frequency of features in commonly marked texts, as well as the instructive ommissions; how many students incorrectly identify a feature or miss markup opportunities, for example. In the XML creation segment, I anticipate further exploration, both the part of the researcher and the subjects, into the constructedness of poetic endeavor. A central question there is "How do students read a poet?" Does the search for the structural underpinnings of a body of work produce viable scholarship?
Yesterday I attended a training class on the Human Subjects research approval process. For a humanities scholar, this was a step into a new world. Never had I considered the research that I did to be anywhere related to the atrocities that have been committed in the name of science. I still don't quite understand why I'm having to submit to this process, but submit I must.
So I've been putting together my "test instruments," which is a fancy way of saying that I'm getting together survey questions and assignment directions. Ugh. The upside, of course, is that I will have set the course for both of my classes next year by the end of this week. The downside is that I will have set the course for both of my classes next year. I like to live by the seat of my pants in class, so having to adhere to a rigid research agenda in class will be challenging.
One good piece of news: I don't have to get retroactive permissions for the data that exists in the
Welcome to my dissertation blog. The plan here is to log my diss thoughts and responses. Part notetaking, part philosophical musing, part ranting...well, a little bit of everything and a whole lot of nothing.
I decided to do a blog because I find that I'm in many places with no one repository for electronic data. So here we are.
Next Time: The Human Subjects Process