Selected Poem for Poetry Analysis

"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.

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.

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.

The Classics are Classics for a Reason

During the poetry seminar on Wednesday, I scoffed that those who make up the Great Western Canon of literature are "old white dudes." I really deserved the fact that my clownish, crass witticism garnered only a giggle from my peers.

However, my words did not spring from falsehood: the classics are nearly all written by men. Only in the recent century have anthropologists and literary experts begun to construct the canon of female writers through the ages. The more stubborn side of my feminism resists wanting to begin to relate to the men of the canon. None of them seem to be young, fabulous women.

Despite opposing genitalia and societal roles, I often find that the same stuff that makes me is often expressed in their poetry, songs, and stories. These honorable gentlemen are part of the classic canon for a reason: they know the stardust that makes the human soul, and they bind it in words and make it visible.

The words that personally rang true for me were from William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud…”

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Wordsworth is explaining the benefit of escapism. The moment spoken of is the discovery of a field of daffodils - according to the Daffodil Society, to find one daffodil spells misfortune, but to have several means joy and happiness. "[W]ealth", says Wordsworth of the field, "continuous as the stars that shine / And twinkle on the milky way." The sight of dancing daffodils is a joy to be treasured. Which is why, "when on my couch I lie / In vacant or in pensive mood," Wordsworth escapes to that day with the daffodils. The stresses of every day life can fade away for one moment as the speaker returns to that moment in his own contemplation. 

In the days since my dad passed away, I find myself in that vacant and pensive mood. I'm numbed to feeling and weighed down with urgency and obligation. It's harder and harder to go back to a field of daffodils, a place to recharge and find peace. 

Though over a century and a half, and different life experiences separate me and Mr. Wordsworth, he found the words I want to say - nothing is more precious than a moment to breath and find peace and spend a some time enjoying the daffodils. 

Hello, Multigenre Literacy!

Dear Participants of Spring Semester's English 495, greetings.

I believe we are a blessed generation, living on the edge of the twenty-first century. I do believe it was in this generation that mass usability and accessibility to public internet was born. The internet was adolescent with us; we are the first generation as a whole to really grow up with internet-based media, as bumpy as it was. (No one will miss the AOL dial-up sound. No one.) I see this class as an opportunity to nurture the idea of using the internet as an educational tool. 

My first personal blog was created on 2006 on LiveJournal.com. Though it's nothing more than an archive of the hormonal musings of a fifteen year old, it represents a demographic of people who decided to use the internet as a social sphere. I wasn't just recording my thoughts, I was learning to use internet social media (as opposed to the old school method of writing personal letters) to forge relationships over cyberspace with real people miles apart. 

My first student blog was in high school; I remember that my teacher was still unused to the formatting of the WordPress account where we, the students, were supposed to post forum discussions. While the rest of the class bumbled about right along after her, I had already been basic HTML literate for two years. Since then, I have created at least three blogs just as a student, and I see effective use of the technology maybe two of every three times. It kind of depends on how effectively the teacher can use the blog themselves. 

Other everyday educational technologies like Moodle.edu and the miracle of email are probably the two technologies that education has created and adapted to. I do enjoy the ease of the online class profile and forums, and the almost instant (depending on professors) access to grades. It makes the best part of learning - sharing - as easy as an upload and a click. 

What do you think? Is tech literacy a tool for education, or should we stick to the classic methods? Where do you see edu tech in five years? Ten?

Looking forward to this semester with you,
Rose

A Politically Incorrect Rant about Marriage Equality

The Supreme Court of the United States has been reviewing the constitutional validity of California's Proposition 8 for the better part of today.

Proposition 8 declared that only marriage between a man and woman was to be recognized and validated in the state of California. Just over half of voters in the state agreed to this definition of marriage. I was not one of them. 

I do not regret my decision to vote for the definition of marriage to remain between a man and a woman in the mere fact that my personal beliefs about biology, culture and religion stand behind this agreement. However, I do sincerely regret that I voted against the happiness of many who dwell in my state. And, at the core of it, my own beliefs are not honored in the state's definition of marriage as well.

I believe that marriage is a promise between man, wife and God, a life-long commitment and partnership between two people to uphold a set of ideals in a community, to unite in personal decisions, and to pass these ideas on to another generation - their children. 

What makes me regret my vote? My definition of marriage has nothing to do with the state. It has to do with community and interpersonal relationships, the keeping of vows, the raising of children. But not a bit of it has to do with the state of California or the Unites States of America. I see marriage as a personal decision to unite my life with someone else, and that the binding of that tie is the will of God. 

I fully believe in the separation of Church and State, and in that, I feel like the State should not have a definition of the word "marriage" as it pertains to personal and religious agreements. 

Unfortunately, what I want requires a redefinition of culture. The argument for marriage as an historical institution that honors the union between man and wife is valid up until people bring the word "love" into the argument. While Americans have been marrying "for love", marriage is truly a business, and the institution of it as a business is the real history of its millenia-long establishment. 

Women were not people; they were commodities that produced more commodities. Women were bought from their fathers and sold to other men to continue life as was known. A father got rid of his burden, giving her to another man who promised to take care of her in exchange that she properly service his needs. Marriage was not about love. It was about money.

That's not today, right? Hahahahaha! What's the number one reason people get divorced? What's on a single woman's criteria for a husband? Money. Marriage by law is honest to goodness about money. 

Separate marriage from money. Separate the Church from the state. Get rid of entitled bigots from either side. Make a vow genuine. Love truly.

Get the state out of my marriage, get the church out of the government. 

Is this real life?

An impassioned message to those planning on being parents. Or just an angry rant from a young woman to the internet.

My mother set up rules for me to follow anytime I step out of the door into the big, wide world.

"Cover yourself! You don't want to draw attention."
"Always have friends and a plan."
"Don't let yourself gain a reputation."

I have made a rule like this for myself as well. I work nights a lot. I like to have my car keys in my hand before I even leave a building (and the people inside it) to go to my car. The thirty seconds to few minutes I spend rifling through my purse in the dark are the same thirty seconds to a minute or so it takes me to become vulnerable to any attack. An attack. At some point, someone with malicious intent will take advantage of my momentary distraction to snatch my purse, molest me sexually, rape me, or take my life. It's never happened before to me, but this is the precaution I take so that it never does.

One in four women in the United States is sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, most before the age of 21. In most cases, it's not by strangers lurking in dark parking lots. It's by friends, family members and acquaintances. People these women have chosen to put their trust in. And, only four percent of these women assaulted or raped will report it to authorities. Most do not think they can be aided or deserve to be aided.

Are you enraged yet? I am.

This week, two young men were convicted for raping a young girl in the small town of Steubenville, Ohio. Trent Mays, one of the boys who has been convicted of raping and photographing the sixteen year old girl, says in his apology, "No pictures should have been sent out, let alone taken." And a witness, a young man who had filmed Mays penetrating the girl's vagina with his fingers deleted the video because the video was wrong.

Please, please be enraged now.

They see wrongness not in the fact that they betrayed a person's trust and raped a woman who was unable to give consent of her body, but in the idea that evidence of the fact was taken and shared, that this ruins their reputation and their careers.

I pity their selfish, naive perspective.

What they should realize - what every man and woman should realize about this situation - is not that the sin will find you out, it's that violating the trust between people is beyond wrong. This girl had willingly been in the company of these boys, and they took advantage of her drunken, vulnerable state. They toyed with her body, bragged about it to their friends, and then denied it to her, her father and the world.

They are not sad or regretful of anything other than the fact that they were caught. They are not sad that they have tortured and traumatized this young woman; they're remorseful that they won't be playing football for the rest of their high school careers. They're sad that they'll be sitting in a jail cell until their twenty-first birthdays.

Do you want to know what I'm sad about? I'm sad that in four or five years when these boys are out of juvenile hall, they'll still get married. They'll still have children, and they will pass along this idea that people have entitlements to other people's bodies.

I'm sad that they are not the only people who will continue to pass this mindset and social structure to other generations. I'm sad that my mother passed this message on to me. In telling me to cover up my body, she has told me that when I step out of my house, my body is no longer mine in the eyes of others. When I show my body to others, it belongs to them. My reputation belongs to those that build it on what they see of me.

How sad is that?

This is my body, my mind, my dreams and hopes and goals. When I become a mother, this is what I want to teach my children: that their bodies belong to them, containing their hopes and dreams and goals. That each person belongs to their body, and that my sons or daughters should not believe they have a right to touch anyone without consent or in violence, except maybe in the protection of their own body.

I want my daughters to feel pride in their own skin, and for my sons to respect the rights of others. I want the idea of penetrating an unwilling partner to be unfathomable to my children. I want the results of this Steubenville incident to change the way we raise our children. I want for us all to make this world a place where we can trust others when we are too drunk to defend ourselves, or momentarily distracted looking for our car keys.

Source: CNN press release
Source: CNN report of mother's statement.
Source: The Women's Center, Inc. fact page
Source: One in Four USA statistics page
Source: Daily Mail UK
Source: NY Times