I've mentioned twice already two essays by Katherine Hayles, which seem to me quite resonant w/ our conversations, and address directly some of the questions we've been worrying. So I've added to our password protected file both "How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine" and "How We Think: Transforming Power and Digital Technologies" (both essays from a book forthcoming). Enjoy!

I just felt like sharing that after class today I went straight to my Teaching of Writing course and on the board was the following quote:

"We write by the light of every book we've ever read." - Richard Peck

I scribbled it down in my notebook and decided to share just because I felt like it was another way to express the ideas we've been unpacking in class! 

I was sort of musing after class about the phrase, "a word is worth a thousand pictures" and am not sure I fully agree with that statement. The phrase agrues that a picture can be more directive for the imagination, invisioning for the onlooker, while words leave room for the imagination. However, I would partially disagree. Firstly, imaginative thought inspired from words or pictures isn't necessarily reproduced as just a vision or reciprocal image in the mind, but also in words. The way words may inspire an image in the mind, a picture may inspire words; which is also of an imaginative kind. Secondly, words aren't always so vague as to inspire just any interpretation; they contain associations, connatations, and produce feelings within a reader, just as a symbol in a painting holds a particular layer of meanings to the person observing. I always felt that word choice within a text was anything but random; specific to whatever statement or meaning the author desires to convey. Perhaps a word is worth a thousand pictures in terms of it's significance in transferring meaning to a reader, but I am not so sure words have so much less control that they are unable to strongly direct and influence the reader into a particular frame of mind or imaginative state.

Pretty much sums up my past 4 years at Bryn Mawr, thought I'd share it with the class!

Gee’s theory that discourses speak through people is really striking to me. We are channels for discourses, and are capable of shaping and changing them. After reading and discussing in class María Lugones’ “Playfulness, ‘World’-Travelling, and Loving Perception,” I started seeing connections between plurality of self, agency of actions, and the damaging qualities of hierarchical thinking; this reading, combined with Gee’s ideas of agency of discourse, are closely tied to two of some of my favorite texts, poet Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” as well as poststructuralist writer Hélène Cixous’ “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Among all of these texts, ideas of plurality (“inhabiting different worlds” at the same time), “playfulness” as a rejection of hierarchy and patriarchal thinking, and being “survival rich” speak to each other in many striking ways.

In Gee's article, he broke down literacy in terms of being able to control our discourses. He discussed the social construction of literacy and how it is not simply a matter of the ability to read and write. I found that it was extremely important to make this distinction and to recognize there are many different types of literacies. However, I feel it is also essential to acknowledge the power that reading and writing hold. As liberal arts college students taking an education course, we recognize the value in all types of literacies but the average person automatically associates literacy with reading and writing. Schools are determined to be good or bad based on their test scores in reading and writing. In my sociology course, Problems in the Natural and Built Enviornment, we discussed how many things are social constructions but that doesn't make the consequences of them any less real. A student may be literate in terms of music or social skills, but if they lack the ability to read or write, they will be significantly disadvantaged compared to students who can. Our society places different values on different types of literacies, giving agency and power to those who posess valued literacies. It makes me wonder how we can change the system; how can we make major structural changes to ensure equality.