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what is a close reading?

By Sunshine
October 25, 2016 - 21:41
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I feel like it would have been helpful for me to be in class last week to have a bit more understanding of something that I thought I knew about. What is a close reading? From reading Anne's course notes, and all the articles that reject close readings as something that can be intersectional (if I understood correctly), I found that it contradicts my understanding of close readings and how I like to use them. For me, close readings lets you assume things that are not explicitly written (but also most of what I remember learning about close readings was about paintings and photography, visual art forms, so maybe that's why I have a different understanding.).

"Moving Out of the Gallery...."

By Anne Dalke
October 25, 2016 - 19:47
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I thought this article, about art dealers "moving out of the gallery and into the taco bell,"
(a reaction to the fast-paced, expensive art world, "a way to slow the process down
and let people experience the long view") might interest you all, as we continue to
explore ways in which our exhibit might engage our visitors:
www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/arts/design/art-dealers-move-out-of-the-gallery-and-into-a-taco-bell.html

the book of salt

By calamityschild
October 25, 2016 - 18:45
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The Book of Salt, to me, feels like getting to have dessert first at a meal. I enjoyed delving into this book, and I love the vivid, sensitive, luxurious way Monique Truong describes her characters and their lives. The detailed descriptions of meals and surroundings always feel like a treat to read. In other books, I found it delightful to be able to savor such lengthy illustrations of the action playing out on the page.

Dewey and Ellsworth

By Liv
October 23, 2016 - 22:51
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Due to my absence in last week's class Jody and I agree to me posting about my thoughts to the readings y'all covered. I am warming up to the idea of serendip for it "accessibility" to the people in our class cluster (and beyond in some cases. @ Sula) but am still struggling with bringing in my full self on serendip for other reasons. Nevertheless, here we go! 

"Such events have provoked a sense of urgency in the search for new mindsets capable of moving away from the strict binary discourses of self/ other, real/virtual, reason/ emotion, mind/body, natural/artificial, inside/ outside, thinking/feeling, irony/humor. " -Ellsworth 3

Got mother's body or not

By Raaaachel Wang
October 23, 2016 - 13:46
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In the class, we discussed the three levels of the title. Two physical meaning and one about Billy’s mental change. For those two physical levels, the facts that Billy Beede is pregnant and getting into a mother’s body shape day by day and she’s going to Lajunta to get Willa Mae, her mother’s body are no denying. But from the perspective of the mental level, the mental heritages that Billy Beede gets from her mother, is not that obvious and determined. Is she really getting her mother’s body mentally?

Sophisticated, sociable, dangled by so many people, Willa Mae seems so different with her daughter, who is naïve about sex and everything, at the beginning of this story.  Except for having a fatherless baby, Billy Beede doesn’t have too much in common with her mother.