Literary Kinds

 David Shields, who argues that, "the history of art is the history of appropriation," has just released a new book entitled Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. The book is made up of aphorisms, fragments of texts, and mini-essays. Its formlessness conveys the author's purpose to defy the traditional genre of novel. As a book review in the Guardian points out, "More problematically, Reality Hunger also celebrates plagiarism as a literary tool." Over half of the book is deliberately composed of other people's thoughts. This would be an apt book for us to explore given recent questions raised in our class discussions concerning originality, authenticity, and "remix" as a cultural phenomenon.

See the book review in The Guardian for more background:

We began with some questions that were posted online for Nicole and Jen:
Did either of them feel any worry about posting their work on the internet, where future employers could find it?
Nicole didn't feel much concern but wondered if she should, mentioning her middle-school Myspace that's still online; Jen plans to work in the digital humanities, and so feels it's great for her to have an online presence. Nicole adds that most people's names are all over the Internet in places they didn't put it on purpose (Bi-Co articles, etc.).

Right now I'm leaning toward studying graphic novels. Webcomics are a logical progression from blogs, and we could discuss comics vs. graphic novels (I don't actually know anything about this).  We could study graphic novels like Persepolis, young adult graphic novels, and maybe manga.  I don't actually know too much about western graphic novels (beyond Johnny the Homicidal Maniac...), so this would be a learning experience for me to an extent.  Also, if we did superhero comics (I don't know much about these either), we could discuss how the concept of the hero is perceived over the years (and maybe across mediums).

A couple of ideas for our curriculum after spring break:

1)  Graphic Novels: Much of what we've studied with blogging involves visual components (i.e. pictures like in the travel blogs we read).  Graphic novels such as Persepolis, Mouse and Watchmen would allow us to explore more of this visual side of learning and discussion.  Pieces like Persepolis would also allow us to study visual learning as an international phenomenon, considering that we did not really delve into any international blogs but mainly concentrated on those based in the US. 

-there were many hell week interruptions, including: frequent manical laughs and a ghost reading bad poetry  

-our guest that day was Paul Robstein, who started off with a silly little poem 

-at first, I was confusing 'b-ing' with 'being'

-he asked us why we talked vs. why other people talked

-a horse whinny interruption

-asked us why we read and write

-then, a hellee performance interlude: an argument, then another poem and finally a condom application lesson

-robstein said another poem

-discussion of intersections

-"Keep your mouth shut unless you know what you're talking about" -Ludwig Wichenstein (I agree[ed])

-Life is mundane until you delve into it-- then, it's constant excitement

 The class was visited by the Easily Distracted "citizen intellectual", Professor Tim Burke. Several questions were asked and topics covered:

As I was reading the Digital Humanities Manifesto I found myself respecting the authors who wrote it and intrigued by their rational. I thought that some of the statements made were rather bold. For example, "The digital realm [is] open source, open resource...anything trying to close space is the enemy." I think it may be a bit extreme to call anything trying to somewhat privatize the internet an enemy, yet I do believe it can be moreso something of a progress blocker?

I definitely prefer posting essays online to handing them in to only the professor for a number of reasons.  For one, in most classes, I've never been able to see what my classmates are writing - unless the purpose was to "peer edit," which, in my opinion, just turns into students trying to find flaws with papers just so they'll look like they did their homework.  There is more room for finding grammatical errors to look like a know-it-all than there is to discuss new ideas.  That sounds really bitter, but I swear I don't mean it like that.  I don't hate peer review because someone was mean to me about grammar.

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