Gossip

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer taking up the subject of Jane Austen must allude to the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice. Ok, that's done (if awkwardly) and I can move on. I can't help but wonder if Austen's style, and the fact that there have been so many who have written so well on Austen is a stumbling block--like the perceived necessity of misquoting the first line of Pride and Prejudice--in writing about Austen. I know it has been for me! Since beginning to teach this class  I have hardly written a word on this blog about Austen. And yet, as I discover in class every day, there is still so much to say . . . .

In reading the first few chapters this time around, I found my self thinking about gossip. At the beginning of Chapter 3 the Bennet girls and their mother are wondering about Mr. Bingley. But this soon transforms into the whole community wondering and gossiping about the new arrivals. Notice how many times "report," "intelligence," and "hearing" or "heard" show up through here. The Bennet ladies "accept second han-hand intelligence" about Mr. Bingley from Lady Lucas's "report." Mr. Bingley "has heard much" about the Bennet girls." Everyone is alarmed by a "report" that Mr. Bingley will bring twelve ladies to the ball, but later they "hear" that only his sisters will accompany him. During the ball a "report" enters "general circulation" about Mr. Darcy's wealth.

While we often think about how Austen creates the characters of Elizabeth and Darcy--and how we follow Elizabeth's thoughts in particular--when we think about this novel, before we ever find out any thing specific about either of them the voice of the community is well established. Who gives these reports? Who circulates this information? We only know in a few cases.  Like the "truth universally acknowledged" some information seems to float through this book without any real source.

This raises many questions: Is the community more important for Austen than her main characters? To what extent are her readers part of this community? Is she making the reader part of the community by giving us this seemingly free-floating information? So many Austen readers note with admiration that she creates a little world in which we live as we read her novels. The creation of this world has, in part, to do with creating this community voice that makes us feel like we, too, live in Meryton. Does gossip make us feel like we belong? That raises so many more questions--am I the only one thinking about Facebook right now?

Better Late Than Never . . .

 . . . in several ways.

I had planned to write a brilliant first post of the semester saying all kinds of profound things about Janes Austen, and why I wanted to teach a class about Austen and the world of Austenalia.  That post hasn't happened in the rush to start the semester--now in week 4! And profundity seems to be eluding me. Why teach this class? Because I really like to read and discuss Austen and I was convinced that students who had even a faint glimmer of appreciation for her novels would be enthusiastic and, therefore, write well. 

What happened instead of that brilliant post? There have been great discussions and some promising essays are shaping up. I am suddenly seeing more in Helen Fielding Bridget Jones Diary than I ever have. I am finding myself convinced that maybe there's something to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies after all.

The real post about Austen is coming.  In the meantime, one of the many tasks keeping me from blogging is reviewing the proofs of an essay that will be published this winter. Since everyone is now revising their first essay, you might take a quick look at a long post I wrote in February 2011. In that post I talk about the history of this now-finally-soon-to-be published article. It might be interesting if you want to know how the process of revision I'm asking you to do in this class lines up with writing and revising for publication.

See You in the Fall!

Expos Observer is on vacation until the Fall 2012 semester. If you have questions about my fall class, leave a comment or email me at ksteele@ou.edu.

Alphaville

In the chapter “Photoshop of Democracy,” Henry Jenkins describes an election that took place in Alphaville, a town in the game The Sims.* The election was contested and raised questions about who could participate.  Basically, it forced the game players to decide together how they wanted to govern their imaginary community.

 Jenkins takes the players of this game and the way they approached the conflict very seriously, arguing that games like The Sims allow people to “play with power on a microlevel, to exert control over imaginary worlds” (228). He goes on to argue that the games function like public squares, the places where we gather to  discuss our own communities and to participate in self-governance.  He concludes that  “Alphaville-style democracy [can be seen] as a productive thought experiment, especially insofar as participants pulled back, talked about their different perspectives and experiences, and worked together to perfect the mechanisms governing their communities” (231). 

What is important for Jenkins is that these imaginary spaces seem to have the potential to “model ideal  . . . online democracies” (231).  He warns against “writ[ing] all this off as a ‘learning experience’” (231).  In other words, by suggesting that the games “model” online democracies, he is taking the idea that we might participate in online democracies very seriously.  While, perhaps, at this point, those online democracies are not extending beyond the screen and into the world, it seems that he means to suggest the possibility of that happening.  To underscore this, he later discusses political scientists who have studied the different ways people can participate in deliberative politics--discussing issues rather than simply casting a yes/ no vote. Overall, Jenkins argues (to be a bit reductive) that online activities have the potential to change the way we go about participating in the big questions that confront us as a nation.

On the one hand, as Jenkins himself often acknowledges, it can seem a bit silly to say that games and gamers are showing us the potential for new forms of political discussion and participation.  But on the other hand, it is a really intriguing argument:  by doing things we already find fun and engaging in “imaginary worlds,” we might change the ways we begin to think about the “real world.”

I like Jenkins argument for its optimism: We aren’t just playing games, we are changing the way serious discourse happens in the country! But I also really like the way Jenkins uses the idea of ‘modeling’ as an argumentative strategy. This concept provides a bridge for his argument that helps explain the connection that might exist between fiction, fantasy, and fun, and their apparent opposites--hard news, reality, and the serious business of life. While you might be critical of the actual connection being made, it seems like a useful concept to at least consider when discussing how the activities we engage in our leisure time might actually shape our entire world outlook.

*Henry Jenkins. Convergence Culture (New York:  New York University Press), 2006.

Some Advice from General Washington

From George Washington's Rules of Civility.

What can I say? It's conference week! Look for brilliant original thinking next week.

Paying Attention to Reading

While you should, of course pay attention to WHAT you are reading, I'd like to make a case for paying attention to the contexts of reading. We read to navigate the world, amuse ourselves, learn, but we rarely think about reading itself. As we think about the significance of reading in large historical terms (for this unit), it is also important to think about the many ways this act can be performed and experienced.

To get a feel for this kind of thinking consider studying. While studying is not always reading, it often is. And you probably know what conditions--or contexts-- work best. Do like to study in a quiet room? In a coffee shop? At the library? Do you listen to music or have the tv on? Do you find yourself distracted or calmed by other people's voices?  Do you sit at a desk or on the floor or your bed?

Does the presence or absence of any of these conditions change your level of concentration?

We can ask some of these kinds of questions about reading and observe the way differences in context-- the where, when, and how of reading--influence the what of reading.  Sven Birkerts argues that physical books help us understand history--not because they are about history, but because they physically represent or reconstruct history: when we read printed, paper books "we form a picture of time past as a growing deposit of sediment; we capture a sense of its depth and dimensionality." While you may not agree with his exact point about history and printed books, the larger point, as he puts it, is that "context cannot but condition the process."**  Again, where and how we read has a relationship with what we read.

Test this out. Watch yourself as you read for a day or simply imagine different reading situations.Where are you when you read for class? When you read the newspaper? If you read the news online, is that different from where you might read for fun? How much attention do you pay to shades of meaning when you read Facebook updates? How much when you read an essay or a novel? What does it feel like to look at your computer screen while reading? What does it feel like to read a printed book? How is that different from holding an e-reader? What different ways can you get at the words, ideas, chapters, indices in these two forms? Test this out--find a book that is available in both electronic form and as a bound paper copy. Read them and notice what you do differently--and how that changes the way you process what you read.

Asking these questions is, obviously,moving toward analyzing reading in different contexts which is part of what you will do in your essay. It is key to remember that these differences don't necessarily mean one way is better than another.  We should take our analysis of the contexts of reading further and as better for what? better for when? better for whom? 

** 128, 129, "Into the Electronic Millennium" in The Gutenberg Elegies. New York: Ballantine, 1994.

Your Cheatin' Heart

No, this isn't a lecture about plagiarism. I've been so busy--and excited--by conferences this week, that I'm cheating by reposting from last February about revision.  It might cheer you up as you revise your own essays--completely finished in just a few days! And who sang that song about the cheatin' heart, anyway?


Why they call it the Revision “Process” (originally posted Feb 9, 2011)

A bit of free time in my schedule (thanks, snow and ice!) over the past two weeks allowed me to finalize and send off an article.  It will be published in Winter 2012. I started it in 2005.  7 years--SEVEN YEARS-- from inception to print for a 25-page essay.

The process that an academic article goes through is similar, intentionally, to the process of drafting and revising your essays in this class will go through.  Here are the steps:

1. Submit draft for PEER REVIEW and COMMENTS:

I picked the right journal for my essay, so my essay wasn’t immediately rejected, but was sent to outside readers for evaluation.  This is called peer review, or scholarly review.  The people who read, and commented on, my work are scholars in the same field that I work in (peers).  They recommended one of three options: publish, don’t publish or, more commonly, “revise and resubmit.”  That’s what I got.

You should see the similarities for this class:  You submit your conference draft.  I read and comment (no option for rejecting them!). You also participate in a peer workshop.  Your classmates are your peers and, like in scholarly review, they are readers who are qualified to evaluate your work because you are all working on similar lines of thinking.

2. Receive and evaluate comments.  Begin REVISING and RETHINKING.

I initially received two set of comments; on other essays, I’ve received three.  The two sets of comments suggested that I do two literally opposing things to revise the essay. So, as I set out to revise I had to take the comments into consideration, but I also had to make some real decisions about what I WANTED the essay to do.  The comments didn’t give me a template to follow for producing an excellent essay--they gave me feedback about what I was already saying and suggested new lines of thinking.

For you:  You’ll get my comments and some feedback from your peers. How do you sort it out? Is my feedback necessarily better than your peers’? What if you get conflicting advice? What if the advice you get doesn’t line up with what you’re trying to say? Yep, YOU have to decide what advice to take, what to reject, and ultimately what you want your essay to be.

3. Dither and work on revising the essay for 2 or 3 years. Move across the country and pack up all of your research so it’s hard to get back to the essay.  Completely change directions and force yourself to write entire new sections.

Lucky you:  Deadline is coming right up. Skip to step 4.

4. Finalize the essay. PROOFREAD and EDIT.

Once the editor accepted the revised version (this often takes more than one round of revisions), it was time to prepare the manuscript for publication and that means EDITING. Editing is different from revising.

Revising: new thinking, new research and reading, new paragraphs, changing the thesis. 

Editing: proofreading, putting in citations, checking and rechecking the exact wording of each quotation, considering your word usage and tone.

I’ve worked, happily, with journals that do some of the editing for me. But in this case, unhappily because I’m not a good proof reader, I was on my own.  Hello ruler, red pens, style manual, dictionary, and several days of headache.

For you:  The stakes aren’t quite as high here--you won’t be publicly shamed if something is misquoted. But you do need to proof read for typos, spelling errors, and make sure your citations are correct.  One reason professional writers like help at this stage is that it’s hard to proofread and copy edit your own essay.  But you can have a friend or peer help you.  You can also get some help with this kind of work at the writing center although you shouldn’t expect the writing tutors to simply copy edit your whole essay--and it is you who is still responsible for the final product! 

5. Turn it in:  Sure, there’s stress in making the deadline, but don’t you feel relieved that you have to finish and that the class doesn’t last 7 years?