"On His Deceased Wife"
By John Milton
Methought I saw my late espousèd saint
Brought to my like Alcestic from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom washed from spot of childbed taint
Purification in the Old Law did save,
And such as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind.
Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined
So clear as in no face with more delight.
But, oh! as to embrace me she inclined,
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Monday, February 3, 2014
Transmedia and Accessibility
Ask me three years ago, I would have told you that I disliked the jump into technology and that I mourned the almost certain demise of paper-books. (I worked at Borders, so I was more concerned about my job security, to be honest.) But I'm finally, slowly adapting. Despite my many frustrations with my touch-screen smart phone, I know in my heart that I cannot switch back to a "dumb phone" that cannot play music or run iHeartRadio or Pandora apps.
Still, even as I embrace technology and all its advantageous gadgets and applications, I have questioned what will happen to classic literature and learning. I am the kind of person who loves being in an actual classroom for formal education. I might even use a pen and paper to take notes. On the parallel, I'm the nerd who will Wiki all the answers to all the questions. If I can blend the traditional with technology, where's everyone else?
I found the answer to my question in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a webshow on Youtube.com based on Jane Austen's classic novel, Pride and Prejudice. The story was pulled into the modern era for a modern audience. Not only was Lizzie Bennet a Southern California grad student, but she interacted with her audience "off screen" on Twitter and Tumblr. It was a new kind of story-telling, but it was the same classic story made accessible to today's young women (and men, too).
Though people who watched The Lizzie Bennet Diaries understood that the story was fictional, the pattern of bi-weekly updates and live character interaction on social media pulled that screen away and immersed the audience into the story like no cinema film or television show can do. Transmedia storytelling is still finding its footing in the mainstream. The first prolific Youtube series that went transmedia was the story of LonelyGirl15 back in the days of Myspace.com. The creators of the show didn't tell anyone that the story was fictional, so many real-life viewers believed that Bree (aka LonelyGirl15) was in real danger. Months later, the audience uncovered their plot, and the rest was history.
Storytelling like this creates a new wave of research styles and a new style of critical thinking and discussions. In the case of LonelyGirl15, it was the fans of the show who spent the time to unravel their story, both the fictional plot and the production's deception. In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, fans decided to enter the stage directly by hacking a webpage to avenge the defaming of a character. People got invested, and then they got involved. I'd like to think that this passion and creativity is a gift from technology, finding new ways to be clever and realize that sometimes the box is bigger on the inside.
Currently, the same production company that gave us The Lizzie Bennet Diaries are in the middle of a new show called Emma Approved, based on Austen's novel Emma. I'm looking forward to how this story will unfold.
I meant to post this shortly after the first week of school in relation to technology in the classroom, and then we got "real" assignments.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Thoughts on Dr. MLK's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"
This is NOT English 495 related, but I had a few thoughts on an assignment for my English 406 Advanced Composition for Teachers course. We were to analyze some of the rhetorical strategies in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail. I remember once briefly reading an excerpt in high school. Now, with Dr. Clark's Rhetoric, Literacy and Culture class in mind, Dr. King's work revealed itself to be a beautiful force of persuasive argumentation. I loved it.
Dr. M. Jimmie Killingsworth discusses a specific argumentative structure in his book, Appeals in Modern Rhetoric. It's a triangle: in one corner is the audience, and in another is the speaker or author of the argument. What closes the triangle together and connects the first two points is shared values between (we'll go with) author and audience (I like alliteration). Enclosed within the triangle is the purpose of the speech, the call to action that the body of the persuasive speech is built towards.
I noticed immediately that Dr. King uses the same structure to appeal to his audience and call them to action. Specifically, Dr. King addresses eight congregational leaders who published a statement in support of the police officers who arrested King and subdued the anti-segregation movement. He addresses and admonishes them directly at least eight times in the course of the letter, and he has the credibility to do so. He opens his letter with a statement of his ethos: like his audience, he is part of the clergy; and he's the president of the Southern Christian Christian Leadership Conference. He expects to be addressing his equals in rights, understanding and knowledge.
Dr. King heavily relies on the idea of shared values with these men to turn their heads toward his purpose. He repeatedly uses the name of Jesus Christ and aligns himself with Paul the apostle, who wrote half of the New Testament from various cramped jail cells. Without that shared value, the credibility of King's logos wavers; were he writing to an wholly atheistic audience, he would have had to change his tack.
Because of the shared values, pathos in the argument should be already understood - if the audience (clergymen) have been fully convicted by King's reminders of what is already in their own knowledge (the commands and demands of humility, justice and equality in the Christian faith), then they would have no choice but to feel the compassion they must feel to Dr. King's mission. When Dr. King does bring in his pathos argument, it reads as if the only reason someone could not feel for the plight of the black American was if they had put their own humanity away. As clergymen, it is their job to be beholden to their flock, and their flock is everyone. Dr. King's audience is a group of highly educated, distinguished community leaders; they shouldn't need a man in jail to tell them what their job is, but in the early 1960's, they apparently did.
I want to say that the United States has gotten better at appreciating each others' differences and holding up the values of equality, but the residue of hundreds of years of racism and classism still remain, especially in the church. As a Believer myself, it's painful to see members of the church scoff at, or worse, ignore and deplore someone's struggle.
I see one of our current challenges as a faith is what to do with homosexuality and the rights of a homosexual couple to marry and raise a family. We're not lynching people in the streets for being gay, but so many young people have taken their own lives because of a lack of acceptance and love from their families and communities for being broken or wrong. Our complacency as a church is just as much of a wrong as the complacency of the church Dr. King addresses during the Civil Rights Movement.
I don't know who we need to throw in jail to shake this system awake again, but it has to be soon. I'm tired of the church abandoning its own instead of fulfilling its first mission to love.
Dr. M. Jimmie Killingsworth discusses a specific argumentative structure in his book, Appeals in Modern Rhetoric. It's a triangle: in one corner is the audience, and in another is the speaker or author of the argument. What closes the triangle together and connects the first two points is shared values between (we'll go with) author and audience (I like alliteration). Enclosed within the triangle is the purpose of the speech, the call to action that the body of the persuasive speech is built towards.
I noticed immediately that Dr. King uses the same structure to appeal to his audience and call them to action. Specifically, Dr. King addresses eight congregational leaders who published a statement in support of the police officers who arrested King and subdued the anti-segregation movement. He addresses and admonishes them directly at least eight times in the course of the letter, and he has the credibility to do so. He opens his letter with a statement of his ethos: like his audience, he is part of the clergy; and he's the president of the Southern Christian Christian Leadership Conference. He expects to be addressing his equals in rights, understanding and knowledge.
Dr. King heavily relies on the idea of shared values with these men to turn their heads toward his purpose. He repeatedly uses the name of Jesus Christ and aligns himself with Paul the apostle, who wrote half of the New Testament from various cramped jail cells. Without that shared value, the credibility of King's logos wavers; were he writing to an wholly atheistic audience, he would have had to change his tack.
Because of the shared values, pathos in the argument should be already understood - if the audience (clergymen) have been fully convicted by King's reminders of what is already in their own knowledge (the commands and demands of humility, justice and equality in the Christian faith), then they would have no choice but to feel the compassion they must feel to Dr. King's mission. When Dr. King does bring in his pathos argument, it reads as if the only reason someone could not feel for the plight of the black American was if they had put their own humanity away. As clergymen, it is their job to be beholden to their flock, and their flock is everyone. Dr. King's audience is a group of highly educated, distinguished community leaders; they shouldn't need a man in jail to tell them what their job is, but in the early 1960's, they apparently did.
I want to say that the United States has gotten better at appreciating each others' differences and holding up the values of equality, but the residue of hundreds of years of racism and classism still remain, especially in the church. As a Believer myself, it's painful to see members of the church scoff at, or worse, ignore and deplore someone's struggle.
I see one of our current challenges as a faith is what to do with homosexuality and the rights of a homosexual couple to marry and raise a family. We're not lynching people in the streets for being gay, but so many young people have taken their own lives because of a lack of acceptance and love from their families and communities for being broken or wrong. Our complacency as a church is just as much of a wrong as the complacency of the church Dr. King addresses during the Civil Rights Movement.
I don't know who we need to throw in jail to shake this system awake again, but it has to be soon. I'm tired of the church abandoning its own instead of fulfilling its first mission to love.
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