tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post3386629432263568800..comments2022-03-27T20:01:12.363-05:00Comments on ecu english talk: Down with Professionalization?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-56693863333929080542009-03-26T22:47:00.000-05:002009-03-26T22:47:00.000-05:00I'd like to give my two cents here for whatever it...I'd like to give my two cents here for whatever it may be worth. I haven't been exposed to literary theory yet but I have read a fairly good amount of great literature. Most of what I've read would probably be considered a part of the "canon" the selection of texts that most professors consider to be the ones all students need to read. This would basically be the great writers of the 19th centuryAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14575356268975631065noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-32415594953549729632009-03-26T12:33:00.000-05:002009-03-26T12:33:00.000-05:00I agree with the above post@!This sentence below c...I agree with the above post@!<BR/>This sentence below caught me right from the start, I belive that some educators have made themselves the pool of knowledge and that the only way for students to get any of the knowledge is to get water from that pool. It makes me think of teachers that you know are brilliant and for some reason because they are so smart they have no way of explaining it to any deanna-russellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15957863244114957646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-43465471236161990532009-03-26T09:57:00.000-05:002009-03-26T09:57:00.000-05:00Dr. Fleming's classroom discussion did nothing to ...Dr. Fleming's classroom discussion did nothing to sharpen the mind of his students. It perhaps helped them put themselves "in another's shoes"--helped them relate to someone else's story. It is not pointless to learn to empathize, but teaching others to empathize does not require a doctorate.CarissaAnnehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08433665740094899973noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-5917734316815565402009-03-26T08:57:00.000-05:002009-03-26T08:57:00.000-05:00I have found that in one year of college I've lear...I have found that in one year of college I've learned more than four years in high school. Why? Because of discussion and professors pushing the students to do things they know they can do. Reading a certain book in high school I hated it. She gave it to us, told us to read it, then we were tested; no challenge, no discussion. Then given the same piece of literature again in college I found the T-Voganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15564757785466905521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-22883127521021685872009-03-26T07:41:00.000-05:002009-03-26T07:41:00.000-05:00Personally, I feel that the breakdown occurred wit...Personally, I feel that the breakdown occurred with the onset of literary theory which was split off from literary criticism. Criticism of literature has been around for millennia. We read the books, discussed them, and heard what the professor had to say. Now, with multiculturalism, everyone has to have a say in it with all aspects of their argument being validated. Nevermind what the authorpenandpaperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18051612692830043863noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-68022072195951205732009-03-26T07:36:00.000-05:002009-03-26T07:36:00.000-05:00After reading the above discussion and reading the...After reading the above discussion and reading the article myself, I feel that for myself there are no definite answers. In an ideal world, a student would have a lesson tailored to best suit their learning style and put in a way that is the most easiest to understand. I feel that if a student and teacher or student and professor relationship could be like this that alot of the formalities Hannahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12090177679722959356noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-49888803724724905912009-03-26T03:19:00.000-05:002009-03-26T03:19:00.000-05:00I must say that i do not agree with Flemings point...I must say that i do not agree with Flemings point (and please tell me if i misinterpreted this) that an X reader would not need to read something by an X author to get anything from it. If you can relate to it in anyway you will be intrigued by that text just for the simple fact that you can relate to it and more than likely you will get alot out of it by seeing someone other than your own ltmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15820073676654443252noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-37860472128064803182009-03-26T01:21:00.000-05:002009-03-26T01:21:00.000-05:00From a student's point of view, I can offer my opi...From a student's point of view, I can offer my opinions on literary criticism. I admit that I don't enjoy reading it; however, having discussions on literary readings is almost essential for me. So often, especially in works that have been around for more than, say, 120 years, there are plenty of things that I miss in my casual and oftentimes distracted reading sessions. Though I typically am Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-8273259668292970142009-03-25T21:10:00.000-05:002009-03-25T21:10:00.000-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14575356268975631065noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-56316892549701267082009-02-16T00:14:00.000-06:002009-02-16T00:14:00.000-06:00One final note on the courses I took in graduate s...One final note on the courses I took in graduate school that were, as I suggested, “solely about the professor’s perspective.” I think I may have misrepresented my experience. I never took a class in which a book written by the professor of the course was the course’s assigned text. And I never took a class in which a professor dismissed a text like <I>Jane Eyre</I> or <I>Wuthering Heights</I> Steve Bentonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03402179867322330887noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-46518411778442460352009-02-16T00:11:00.000-06:002009-02-16T00:11:00.000-06:00I’m with you, Josh, on the value of a reading prog...I’m with you, Josh, on the value of a reading program that includes foundational works of human thought. To your list of Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, Conrad, and Faulkner—all of whom produced texts that have been traditionally associated with the aesthetic/mythic tradition, I would add texts from the critical/rhetorical tradition produced by Plato, Aristotle, Marx, and Arnold. Emerson and Woolf Steve Bentonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03402179867322330887noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-5809206373259887552009-02-16T00:10:00.000-06:002009-02-16T00:10:00.000-06:00You are also right to point out that although I ar...You are also right to point out that although I argue that literary criticism should be regarded as literature, when I call for the inclusion of literary criticism and theory in the classroom (as you do), I am implicitly acknowledging the existence of a body of texts that is in an important way unlike the body of texts that currently gets taught. I admit that though imaginative literature often Steve Bentonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03402179867322330887noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-16859547874976312042009-02-16T00:06:00.000-06:002009-02-16T00:06:00.000-06:00I agree with you that literature and the study of ...I agree with you that literature and the study of literature serve some of the functions that have traditionally been served by mythology and religion. I suspect, though, that you may get a greater charge than I do out of tapping into literature (the "never-ending story") in that regard.Steve Bentonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03402179867322330887noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-20989473681048468262009-02-16T00:05:00.000-06:002009-02-16T00:05:00.000-06:00I agree with you that Fleming thinks the “story” (...I agree with you that <I>Fleming</I> thinks the “story” (fiction, film, poetry) is getting short shrift in undergraduate classrooms and “the worlds we’ve grafted on top” (commentary) is getting too much play (though I don't like those definitional terms). I also agree with you that he overestimates how much what gets taught in undergraduate classrooms resembles what gets discussed in graduate Steve Bentonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03402179867322330887noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-48287323718730327152009-02-16T00:01:00.000-06:002009-02-16T00:01:00.000-06:00Josh, I don’t know if anyone else other than the t...Josh, I don’t know if anyone else other than the two of us is reading these comments, but just in case they are, I’d like to clarify something: I’m really digging this exchange of ideas and I suspect you are as well. I find this kind of discussion to be fascinating because it pushes me to read and think carefully. I don’t think this is a case of two professors who “love the sound of their own Steve Bentonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03402179867322330887noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-73583303066406873152009-02-14T23:43:00.000-06:002009-02-14T23:43:00.000-06:00Again, I was trying to understand what Fleming mig...Again, I was trying to understand what Fleming might have been reacting to without agreeing with him--because I don't. Reading and studying theory was a valuable part of my graduate study (like you, I was not taught or encouraged to read theory in my undergraduate); and I don't think one is more important or better than another. Nor is one the “subject” and one the “discipline” in Joshua Grassohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-61118147763670692392009-02-13T17:58:00.000-06:002009-02-13T17:58:00.000-06:00One final comment: Do we need to avoid indoctrina...One final comment: Do we need to avoid indoctrinating students? I think “indoctrination” is just persuasion that is ham-handed (and, ultimately, shallow and ineffective). No one wants to indoctrinate anyone. But aren’t we all in the game of persuading students of the worth of one or another set of values, directly or indirectly? Many of the best courses I took in graduate school might be Steve Bentonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03402179867322330887noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-79331439383348745132009-02-13T17:57:00.000-06:002009-02-13T17:57:00.000-06:00On another note (I'm putting my response in multip...On another note (I'm putting my response in multiple posts to disguise its length), I wonder if you would say the goal of a literature course should be to help students learn to love the literature or merely understand it? The fudge word here (which I often find myself using) is “appreciate,” which requires some understanding of its complexity but does not require endorsement of a given text’s Steve Bentonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03402179867322330887noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-81844098463840813662009-02-13T17:56:00.000-06:002009-02-13T17:56:00.000-06:00Let me come at it from a different perspective: F...Let me come at it from a different perspective: Fleming draws a picture in which criticism is the bully and “literature” is the abused outcast. I see it the other way. People in the world at large don’t read literary criticism. Students in the public schools don’t read literary criticism. And even in college, even among English majors, students are protected from readings in literary Steve Bentonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03402179867322330887noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-25126141325548023572009-02-13T17:54:00.000-06:002009-02-13T17:54:00.000-06:00Josh, I thought about letting you have the “last w...Josh, I thought about letting you have the “last word” on this subject, but I was so captivated by your response that I just couldn’t resist the temptation to filter it through my own head to look for places in which our perspectives overlap and places where there appear to be gaps between them. My natural tendency is to pay more attention to the gaps, because they require more careful thinking,Steve Bentonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03402179867322330887noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-32175023727496901412009-02-12T22:31:00.000-06:002009-02-12T22:31:00.000-06:00I'm not sure I can add much to the insightful ...I'm not sure I can add much to the insightful comments that have preceeded mine, but this article certainly deserves discussion. On the one hand, I understand what Fleming feels, since in graduate school there is a tendency to focus more on the discipline rather than the subject: I remember PhD's in literature who took pride in not reading "literature" (that is, works of Joshua Grassohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-83688801714439087312009-02-09T10:06:00.000-06:002009-02-09T10:06:00.000-06:00Jennifer McMahon writes: I found the article, “Le...Jennifer McMahon writes: I found the article, “Leaving Literature Behind” thought-provoking; however, I think Fleming overstates his case. In particular, I do not believe that the phenomenon he describes is as pervasive as he contends. It certainly is true, particularly at the graduate level, that literary studies have become increasingly abstract. Many programs have shifted away from Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-55851301358542134192009-02-09T00:52:00.000-06:002009-02-09T00:52:00.000-06:00I disagree, too, Dr. Hada. For me, part of the ma...I disagree, too, Dr. Hada. For me, part of the magic of reading literature is that it opens a door into a world of conversation non-readers have no access to. When I was an undergraduate English major, we never read literary criticism and were even discouraged from reading it (so I've lived Fleming's dream, I guess). It was not until I began to read literary criticism that I finally felt that Steve Bentonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03402179867322330887noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797762748123606005.post-8360966038473581252009-02-06T11:17:00.000-06:002009-02-06T11:17:00.000-06:00Ken Hada writes: Interesting, but I certainly dis...Ken Hada writes: Interesting, but I certainly disagree. Most students get very little from a text (in my 20 years experience at least) without the aid of a so-called specialist offering them various ways to see. This seems to be more of the false dichotomy between critical reading and personal reading. I appreciate things better the more and various ways I understand.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com