Blog

Renaissances

Visualizing Self-Fashioning

We discussed the introduction to Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning yesterday. Then, each section formed groups of 4-6 students and drew out a variety of ways to visualize the self-fashioning process, as described by Greenblatt. Here are the results of our experiment – note the heavy featuring of aliens and authority (represented in many cases by book, crown, and cross to correspond to Protestant Christianity, sovereignty, and Roman Catholicism) in many of these drawings. In this drawing, the Read more…

By dori, ago
Defending Society

Reflections on the Class

Over the last semester we have read a variety of sources, from Sidney’s Defense of Poesy to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. They all respond in some way to the course theme of “Defending Society.” We began our class by asking the question  “defending society from what?” The implicit answer for Philip Sidney’s Defense of Poesy was “from fiction.” That is, to defend poesy (fictional writing) he had to first perceive that it was under attack. Fiction was under Read more…

By dori, ago
Defending Society

Keyword Generation: Fahrenheit 451

Last session, we focused on a Fahrenheit 451 passage in which Montag and Faber discuss why people struggle with unhappiness in their seemingly post-scarcity economy. We decided that the following keywords best characterize the themes of the passage as they relate to the work as a whole: Cycle. Faber contrasts the fake cycle of flowers coming from flowers rather than the natural cycle of flowers coming from earth. The cycle has short-circuited in Montag’s world, with an Read more…

By dori, ago
Defending Society

Peer Review Guidelines, Short Paper 2

Read your partners’ papers and answer the following questions. What is the argument? What feedback can you offer regarding the clarity and persuasiveness of the argument? What evidence do they use to support the argument? What feedback can you offer in terms of organization? Does the paper have a conclusion, an introduction, and transitions between paragraphs? What feedback can you offer in terms of the use of conventions?

By dori, ago
Defending Society

Draft for Bartholomew Fair online resource

The draft for our class project is up! You can find it at: http://ben-jonson.gitlab.io/outline/ The page uses angular, d3-force (the graph), ngx-charts (pie charts), ngx-md (parsing and showing markdown text), and vmware clarity (overall styling and layout). Please contact me with any suggestions for improvement or if you notice errors that need to be corrected.

By dori, ago
Defending Society

Peer review workshop guidelines

Peer Review Guidelines for Short Paper 1 Instructions: A. Read the paper in full one time without stopping to ask for clarification. Respond as a reader in the author’s target audience (not as if you were going to grade it). This means that you might: • Note where you had to reread a sentence (this often means the sentence is worded in a confusing way) • Note elements of the paper that seemed distracting to Read more…

By dori, ago
Defending Society

Partitioning the Defense of Poesy

I’ve synthesized below the parts of Defense of Poesy we identified in group work: Exordium: Story about horses and name-dropping a famous riding master (page 3) Narratio Poesy is under attack! (starting page 4) Propositio Poesy is important to society because it is universal, original, teaches and delights, and is in the Bible (starting page 30) Poesy has good goals and should be respected (page 10, page 53) Partitio Six kinds of poesy (pg 26-29) Read more…

By dori, ago
Defending Society

Defense of Poesy collaborative study guide

Questions: 1) How does Sidney use the term idea in today’s reading? Intangible concepts, beyond the realm of appearances; poets can access them; people who read can learn how or why a maker made something Poesy expresses ideas – main point is in the idea; teach and delight; speaking picture A concept, from which flows a story, which can alter behavior through teaching and delighting 2)What are the three kinds of poesy Sidney lists? Which one(s) Read more…

By dori, ago
Uncategorized

Tips for the Reflective Essay

Put a few keywords in the first paragraph that relate to the skill you are arguing improved. For example, if you are arguing that you got better at making improvements across multiple drafts in response to feedback, use a keyword like “process” in the first paragraph and then repeat it throughout. Try to avoid lengthy descriptions. Instead, describe something on your way to something else. For example, instead of “I read Gosson and Castiglione on Read more…

By dori, ago