Duality in Humanism- Draft

Prospero: The Original Jekyll & Hyde

For years The Tempest was seen as the closing masterpiece of Shakespeare’s career as a playwright Many scholars initially read it as Shakespeare’s swan song, but over time an awareness of the effects of colonialism was born and as a result people began to read this text through what is called “postcolonial lenses.” The relationship Prospero has with characters such as Caliban, Ariel, or even Miranda came under fire as scholars saw him as an executor of slavery and patriarchy.

The Conflict of The Scholar

When scholar Robert B. Pierce originally critiqued The Tempest he expressed a sympathetic view toward Miranda and Prospero. Yet the rise of the postcolonial interpretation forced him to re-evaluate his original sympathetic reading. Instead of taking sides or discrediting the new lens completely, Pierce decided to accept that there was merit to the new interpretations of Prospero. Pierce’s conflicted understanding of The Tempest lead him to conclude that maybe we needed to redefine the way we understood  the meaning of the play. In a rather bold academic move, Pierce accepts both as valuable and necessary to his understanding of the play. Prospero and Miranda’s exile is worthy of sympathy, but at the same time the colonialist relationships that permeate the work give rises to a less than friendly view of Prospero.

While it can be argued that Prospero is justified in demonizing and belittling Caliban for his attempted rape of Miranda, it is nevertheless curious that Prospero keeps Caliban around as a servant rather than banishing him from the island—or even killing him since Prospero probably has the power to do so. For Prospero there is a profit in keeping Caliban around. When we first meet Caliban, Miranda expresses her deep dislike to her father by saying, "’Tis a villain, sir, I do not love to look on." Miranda has reason to loathe Caliban; throughout the play we know that Miranda's ultimate characteristic is her virtue, her untainted purity, and Caliban nearly robbed her of this. Prospero replies to Miranda's complaints by saying, "But as ’tis,/We cannot miss him; he does make our fire, /Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices/That profit us" (1.2:310-314 emphasis added). So while, Prospero may have reason for mistreating Caliban, he finds a way to benefit from it, but this does not change the fact that Prospero is still a victim of an usurpation plot that left him dethroned and outcast from society.

The Reconciliation of Victim vs Perpetrator

These two intertwined ideas of victim and conqueror may seem difficult to reconcile, but we don’t have to. Prospero can be both a victim and a perpetrator of the evil that exists in his world. A modern application of this can be seen with pedophiles and domestic violence perpetrators. It is often the case that those who were abused as children or witnessed abuse in their home, grow up to inflict the same type of violence upon others. The fact that perpetrators in scenarios like these were once victims too does not change, despite their own partaking of such abusive acts. In fact, knowing the history of an abuser can lead to a better understanding of the development of such a character. Similarly, as we look at the rejection Prospero experiences we may gain some insight into the type of servitude he thrusts upon Caliban, making it so that The Tempest ceases to be a text solely about a betrayed ruler or solely about a self-interested conqueror, but rather both. If Prospero is both a victim and a perpetuator then we are forced to ask ourselves how or if other characters, like Caliban and Miranda, may likewise be the embodiments of seemingly opposite characteristics.

Works Cited:

Pierce, Robert B. "Understanding "The Tempest"" New Literary History 30.2, Cultural Inquiries

(1999): 373-88. JSTOR. Web. 27 Sept., 2015.

"Statistics on Perpetrators of Child Sexual Abuse." Reporting on Child Sexual Abuse. The

National Center for Victims of Crime, n.d. Web. 05 Oct. 2015.  
<https://www.victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child-sexual-abuse/statistics-on- perpetrators-of-csa>.

The Yin & Yang of Human Nature

For years The Tempest was seen as the closing masterpiece of Shakespeare’s career as a playwright, and some critics have looked at it through a postcolonial lens. The problematic relationships Prospero has with Ariel, Caliban, and Miranda have raised questions about the political and social dynamics of colonizers vs. colonized. 

When scholar Robert B. Pierce originally critiqued The Tempest he expressed a sympathetic view toward Miranda and Prospero. Yet the development of academic discourse on Shakespeare’s final play, most specifically the New Historical and anti-colonial readings, forced him to re-evaluate his original sympathetic reading. Pierce’s conflicted understanding of The Tempest lead him to the conclusion that we need to redefine the way we understand the meaning of the play.Rather than rejecting one reading over the other, he accepts both as valuable and necessary to his understanding of the play. Prospero and Miranda’s exile is worthy of sympathy, but at the same time the colonist relationships that permeate the work give rise to a less than friendly view of Prospero and Miranda. 

These two ideas may seem difficult to reconcile, but we don’t have to. Prospero can be both a victim and a perpetrator of the evil that exists in his world. With Prospero as a character that embraces both the virtuous and questionable aspects of human nature I realized that while the "Brave New World" theme is easily identifiable in Shakespeare's The Tempest, our theme of "What a Piece of Work is Man" also emerges as a necessary companion. If Prospero is both a victim and a perpetuator then we are forced to ask ourselves how characters like Caliban or Miranda may likewise be the embodiment of seemingly opposite  characteristics. 

Works Cited: Pierce, Robert B. "Understanding "The Tempest"" New Literary History 30.2, Cultural Inquiries (1999): 373-88. JSTOR. Web. 27 Sept., 2015. 

Is Caliban a Man?

Who is Caliban?

I think this question is intentionally fascinating. We may be tempted to think that, for Shakespeare, Caliban is just a savage. But anyone who has read Hamlet or Othello knows that none of Shakespeare's characters are intentionally simple. So what is Caliban's complexity?

Let's look back on Hamlet's famous statement, "What a piece of work is a man!" Like most of Shakespeare's most striking lines, this one is usually taken out of context. Hamlet speaks this line, and the ones that follow, with a definite tone of uncertainty and possibly sarcasm. The praise is written like a rote prayer without heartfelt meaning. Shakespeare's concept of man, we see, isn't as clear cut as good and evil, black and white. If there are any doubts in this regard, all we need to do is consult Othello.

So is Caliban just a black savage with no redeeming qualities? You could argue that, but it would be an uphill battle. It's more likely that Caliban represents a side of man that most people in Shakespeare's time weren't comfortable speaking about; thus the relegation to a native creature, a seemingly unsympathetic fish-man whose only desire is to betray Prospero. He is uncultured, angry, and lustful. A piece of work, indeed.

I'm convinced that Shakespeare's "What a piece of work is man!" deserves to be read with a structural question mark. All of his best characters spring from the page wielding a difficult balance of darkness and light. And if any character in The Tempest begs our study in this context, Caliban does.

The Paragon of Animals

            Where did humanism start in the renaissance? My research pointed me to the introduction of Greek and Roman literature that became more well-known and widespread during the 15^th to 16^th century. Petrarch is named the “father of humanism” by many scholars. This title for example appears in a review for Carol Quillen's Rereading the Renaissance. He is significant because he was the first of many scholars who did the necessary work of transcribing and reading the great works and discussing them with his contemporaries. This thought of humans being good is a bit obvious to me in our time and day. Inequality is bad, every American deserves their god given rights, every human being should be given an equal chance at their right to live.

            In the Renaissance, this thought of human right and place in the world was different to the prevailing thought of the day, which was that God came first and that all men by nature are sinful and require a redemption. Steven Kreis in his online lectures describes that a normal Renaissance man “lived, as it were, between two worlds. The world of the medieval Christian matrix, in which the significance of every phenomenon was ultimately determined through uniform points of view [or] he had not yet found in a system of scientific concepts and social principles stability and security for his life. In other words, Renaissance man may indeed have found himself suspended between faith and reason.” I would not go far as to say that Humanism is anti-religious, but for that time and age, questioning what your priest was saying and supplanting it with your own ideas was a novel concept. Ironic that this “revolutionary” take on life was gleaned off reading books several centuries older. If the Renaissance man had to choose between science and faith, that may well be true of the modern day man as well.

            Some of our most humanistic writings in America came during the early 19^th century. The transcendentalists attempted to logically explain their transcendental views and opinions while walking the line between the absolute ideal and the scientific reality of our world. Men of this group were Johann Fichte, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Edgar Allan Poe. Another man who would be considered outside this category would be Joseph Smith. But we see in his “King Follett Sermon” a claim that is distinctly humanistic, “ We say that God himself is a self-existing being…It is correct enough; but how did it get into your heads? Who told you that man did not exist in like manner upon the same principles? Man does exist upon the same principles…” Though Joseph Smith is not considered one of the great writers, the idea he expresses is on the mind of all the other writers of his time. I don’t provide an answer to the question, but wish to point out that this question holds relevance in our day and can help us understand our place here on this earth. Today in our Post-Modern literature we see several authors and intellectuals still struggling with the same questions that were coming up in the Renaissance.

Works Cited

Kreis, Steven. "Renaissance Humanism." Www.historyguide.org. Steven Kreis, 13 Apr. 2012. Web. 14 Sept. 2015. <http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/humanism.html>.

Smith, Joseph. "The King Follett Sermon." The King Follett Sermon - Ensign Apr. 1971 - Ensign. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 4 Apr. 1971. Web. 14 Sept. 2015.

I Might Call Him a Thing Divine

When Miranda sees Ferdinand for the first time she can't help but exclaim, "I might call him A thing divine, for nothing natural I ever saw so noble." She stands in awe at seeing another being so similar to herself and yet so wondrous. I used to read this moment as one of those cliché moments from romantic films where two characters see each other and experience love at first sight, until I considered the following: Miranda has never seen another human being besides her father.

As I've contemplated how limited Miranda's human interactions were, I realized had I been in a similar situation I too would find myself in awe to see another creature so alike and yet so different from myself. At first Miranda thinks Ferdinand is a spirit/ fairy similar to Ariel, before seeing him for the flesh and bone man that he is, which is perhaps a great parallel to the way the humanities view humankind; the human spirit is primary while the body is secondary. The human spirit is what makes our bodies vessels worthy of thoughts and philosophy, capable of seeking progress, and deserving of awe and wonder.

The definition of the human spirit is hard to pin down. A simple google search led me all over the place, with no satisfying answer whatsoever. It's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in modern pop culture, but is rarely defined. For Pico della Mirandola it might be defined as the power of choice humans possess, while for Hamlet it may be the almost God-like elements of the human form, mind and reason.

But most importantly, what does the human spirit mean to me? I am both perplexed and intrigued by this question and I hope to discover the meaning by living a life of wonder and awe.


Works Consulted:

Sell, Lorenz. "The Human Spirit." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 13 Apr. 2013. Web.         13 Sept. 2015. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lorenz-sell/the-human-spirit_b_3016651.html>.

Hope for Humanity

When I first enrolled in the class, I was expecting new techniques of pedagogy, some digital components of coursework and a project-based structure--but I never expected a non-structured, seemingly non-focused curriculum, the daily panic-attack of a surprise homework load and the inability to plan ahead due to the non-presence of any syllabus at all. "I should drop it," I remember thinking, "I can't handle this in my last semester of school--and my first semester married--and my first semester working--and the semester when I'm in a hardcore capstone class." I stayed, because I've seen the potential for creativity in learning fluidly, with group members, in projects, and in a new medium--and I've seen the results without such encouragement... 

I made this myself. All rights out the window. 
Also, I just noticed this zombie could be in the middle of the Thriller dance. 

My mom just wrote a post for her parenting blog reflecting on her experience with pedagogy in home school with my little brother. She was amazed at the change she's seen as he's been allowed and encouraged to direct his own learning and become invested in that process: "In the past year, our Zombie child morphed into a more self-directed teenager with greater confidence in his own talent and abilities—a transformation nearly as incredible as that in the movie [Warm Bodies]!" She claims that several aspects of public schooling are "Zombie Makers," including low sleep, high stress, inefficient, focused-on-the-squeaky-wheel/overburdened teachers and, especially, a one-size-fits-all curriculum. You can read more of her essay on education-created zombie teens here. 

Albert Einstein quothe: "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its
ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life thinking it's stupid."

Humanism in the English Renaissance was intensely concerned with returning to classic education techniques, which, if followed together, would enable humanity like never before in history (except of course ancient Greece, haha), and create the perfect "Renaissance Man," able to speak, write, reason and make clever conversation. Erasmus of Rotterdam said famously, "It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is," but the next happiness, of course, was extending the mental and logical facilities of man to make him, as Hamlet says in Shakespeare's play, a "piece of work:"
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals...

Hamlet ends his speech, as usual, vacillating between opinions, "—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" but the vantage point of humanism is already established. The potentiality of man, enabled through education and speech/writing training, was almost limitless. In Erasmus's treatise on rhetorical strategies entitled de Copia, he comes up with 100+ variations on just one, boring sentence: "Your letter pleased me greatly."  To see some, click here.

What does this have to do with zombies? The emphasis of humanism was on the potential of human creativity, and through its course, our class has taken a necessary pulse in that vein of thought in order to arrive where we are now: not passified, individually grade-grubbing zombies, but an enlightened (if still amateur) team of Renaissance men and women (Sprezzatura), seeking out (Brave New Worlds) sources and ideas from previous centuries (ad fontes) and repackaging, refreshing and revitalizing (Humanism) them through our new media (Typographia), relying on our faith in God (Ploughboys and Bibles) and in each other (Humanism again!) as we go.


I found myself praying for unity and a sense of purpose, along with the strength to just carry on. 

It was partially a primary text and partially an assignment that answered my prayer, I feel, and changed my experience of the course--a video introduction of Michel Montaigne's Of Cannibals. In re-vamping the situation but retaining the original themes of the piece, I found new inspiration in the Renaissance artist and writer's take on previous centuries. It was exhilarating to find that with a webcam, , dark eye shadow, creativity and a little ketchup, I could do it, too--I could excite and inspire and amuse with the rest of youtube (the modern printing press, making public and simple what had previously been elite and closed to amateurs). The results of the class's video debuts launched us into a whole new aspect of pedagogy: getting the information to the masses in formats they were comfortable with (as in Plough Boys and Bibles) and working fluidly, in teams and as a class, as we did so (just like courtiers).


Though at the beginning of the semester I was ignorant about Erasmus or humanism's claims, I did recognize the stagnant signs of zombi-fied learning in myself. I don't think such drastic measures as we took are necessary to avoid the zombie'd student--and indeed, at the beginning, I found myself slipping into a stupified, anxious sphere from the inability to plan homework assignments ahead of time--but when I started really getting to know my teammates and trusting their creativity, I felt a change in the spirit of learning that enabled real scholarship ...in the form of puppet shows. Go figure, huh?

Script for Cannibals

Scene: cannibal hut/desert island, complete with human body parts on a spit]
[enter Sailors]

Sailor 1: Arrrr, a real cannibal island! Now, I remember reading an essay by some French guy...
Sailor 2 Marner: Michel Montaigne. You didn't read it, you just used Spiff Notes.
Sailor 1 Jonas: Bark Notes, actually, and it's all the same anyway. OK, I'm trying to remember if he gave us any clues about how not to get eaten.
Sailor 2: Just stay cool, man. I read the whole essay, and we just have to remember that just because people are different doesn't make them wrong. Steady, [other sailor is deep breathing] steady as she---
[enter Cannibal]
Cannibal: Boooooo!
[Sailors screech like girls and start shaking]
Cannibal: Haaa, teeny sailor girls screech like stuck pig! Welcome to our island, sailor sandwiches!
Sailor 2 Marner: Look at me, I'm shaking like we're still in that tempest!
Sailor 1 Jonas pirate: Um... I don't think it's sea legs anymore.
Cannibal: No need be frightened!  [switch to normal side] See, we offer you welcome! Rest, help, food! Anyone care for some delicious... Lady Fingers?
Sailor 1 Marner: Sailor 2!!! I mean, Jonas!!!
Sailor 2, nervously, Jonas: Ha! ...I bet they're ...finger-lickin' good! Arg.
Cannibal: HA! No worries, sailor sandwich man, I no eat you, you a comedian!
Sailor 2 Jonas: Well, why not?
Cannibal: Comedian taste funny!
Sailor 2 Jonas: HAA! See, [Marner], they're not so bad! Oh, oh, I got another one: what do you and a HR rep have in common?
Cannibal: What HR rep mean?
Sailor 2: You're both... fed up with people! (snare drum snap)
[Both laugh until Cannibal abruptly stops.] [switch to scary side]
Cannibal: ...all this laughing make me hungry.
Sailor 1: DON'T EAT ME!
Cannibal: Well, we humanists so we like (to eat) humans. I give you TEST. You can answer few question right, we no eat you. You answer wrong... and we helps you find out where you funny bone be.
Sailor 1 and 2: HELP US!

Help the sailors and work toward your own Exploring Brave New Worlds Badge:

option 1: I've already read Michel Montaigne's Of Cannibals. I'm ready for the challenge!
option 2: I need a refresher first! Take me to some texts!

Quiz:
1. Michel Montaigne's writing looks like...
            a. a personal essay
            b. a chapter from a book
            c. a speech to Parliament
            d. both a and b
            e. all of the above

*** 2. Michel Montaigne likes to get his information from...
            a. a famous explorer of the period, Thomas Heriot
            b. the wisest, most experienced explorers on the ocean
            c. Long John Silver, the ship's cook.
            d. a simple, ignorant crew member

3. According to Montaigne, cannibals are savages in the same way...
           a. fire is hot: they will always be that way
           b. a mean dog is ornery: it's been taught to bite back
           c. fruit is wild: it's still in its natural state
           d. heaven is cloudy: it's actually better that way

***4. Montaigne believes cannibals are no more savage than...
           a. Wild apples (since they actually taste better out of the orchard)
           b. Europeans (since they torture their prisoners alive)
           c. Zombies (since they really don't have a choice in what they eat)
          d. Pocahontas (since she ...wasn't around yet)

***5. What are the two chief values of the cannibals?
           a. valor to their enemies and love to their wives
           b. peace and plenty
           c. careful seasoning and perfect barbeque techniques
           d. drinking and dancing

6. Why does M. use so many allusions to older myths and civiliations in history? Name one such nation and do some background research on what the inclusion would have meant to his day. (ad fontes)

7. Humanism

Avatars by Amber

Well I just spent several hours of the night making avatars for the Ad Fontes and Humanism groups just to have them not upload properly or save. So. I will just explain what I had set up. I used the xtranormal site to make them, but found that a lot of the stuff to make videos with you had to pay for (like different characters or backgrounds) so hopefully you guys have more luck finding a material site for our avatars. I didn't find any other digital sources that seemed good enough for what we're trying to pull. Anyway. My characters:

Alfonso is an old man, Italian scholar (with an office/library looking background) who firmly believes in the idea of ad fontes: referring back to ancient sources to bring about inspiration for new work. He loves history, especially reading sermons and translations of texts because everyone can learn so much from them.

Walter is an English apprentice philosopher trying to discover who he is. He attends school (classroom was in the background) with the best teachers the world has to offer. He is one of a kind though, challenging his professors with deep and imaginative questions about the established order and doctrines. He is creative and fresh with a thirst for something more, for independence.

Both of these characters would have talked about the theme (including the one liner sentences we have for each of our themes) and given their strong opinion about how important ad fontes or the question of "What piece of work is man."

Man and HIS Magic in the Tempest

In the Renaissance, humanists championed the power and intricacies of mankind. In the Tempest, Shakespeare explores what makes a human, what makes education worthwhile and why language and learning is so powerful.

This extract from BBC's The Tempest shows the characters Prospero (sorcerer and Miranda's father, now ruler of the island), Miranda (Prospero's daughter, shipwrecked with him as a baby), Ariel (air/water spirit, good, native of the island) and Caliban (earth/fire spirit, evil, child of a sea witch, Sycorax who was left on the island by sailors and whose evil rule was later overturned by Prospero). Watch the clip with these ideas in mind:

Level One (Adventurer):
How do Prospero and Miranda deal with Caliban? 
What does he say "his only profit" of learning to speak is (at 5:57)?
Do you see any other good things about learning about other people or other languages?

Level Two (Explorer): answer the previous questions, plus...
How is Prospero able to control Caliban? 
How do knowledge and language indicate power and station? 
Thus, how does learning make a man?

Level Three (Courier?): answer the previous questions, plus...
Was Prospero right to enslave Caliban, and how does the answer depend on different interpretations of the actors' lines?
Just from these short minutes, what might be some contrasting views of mankind, learning, colonialism and slavery in the Renaissance?

START AT 4:01

START AT 4:01

Connecting Old and New: Humanism

Old Themes, New Genres

My Handsome Grandpa

So this is my awesome grandpa back in the ...70's? He was a country grass rock star. No one could play the gee-tar like grandpa--or the mandolin, or the banjo, or whatever else had strings and would sit still long enough for him to play it.

Now grandpa's getting on in years, but he hasn't lost a lick of spunk. Last year he finished building his own motor home so he could take long weekends down to Las Vegas, and he just barely got a bicycle for Christmas so he can take long bike rides down to the drug store.

What has my grandpa got to do with our class? Well...

my own picture of my own grandpa

We have some cool old themes, some fun new genres and plenty of creative kids to work on a fusion between the two.

This is my brainstorm for how we can bring them together. Think of it as turning the hearts of the children to the Renaissance, if you will--we've got to find cool connections to today to catch people's interest (just like Jerrick was saying here--though adaptations can lose the specifics of the piece, it incites interest, which may be worth it!). 

First I'll try to synthesize the theme into a little bit more modern summary...

Humanism: This is the stuff of Les Mis's "Can you hear the people sing?" and Aragorn's "A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship... when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day!" Whenever you've been moved by a speech or a movie scene or even song lyrics, humanism was probably at work. As we've reviewed before, humanist principles quietly put into place such glorious stuff as "I have a Dream" and even "I'd like to buy the world a Coke." Whenever rhetoric championed intellect and reason, looked back to earlier masters of logic and debate or found mistakes in the original score (think "digitally remastered for better sound"), humanism reigned. We're talking  1776,William Wilberforce, evangelicals of 1830 and our own presidential debates. 

So how could be get this into a feasible video introduction? Remember our tweethis:

Humanism threw down established orders and doctrines in favor of the fresh, new worlds of individual imagination, claiming, “What a Piece of Work is Man.”

...and my grandpa.  Turns out you can teach an old theme new tricks, as he shows here.

receiving instruction from another granddaughter on how to work his very own cellular de-vice back in 2004

On Cannibals and Zombies: Montaigne in 2800 AD

journal entry 1: 

journal entry 2:

journal entry 3

journal entry 4

journal entry 5:

I would've polished this much more if I'd had time, but I think it does accomplish some things I'd like you to consider while you watch: How has the personal "essay" genre changed through time? What has a "journal" meant through time? How should literature incite our own experiences, whether that's exploring our own world or making a video? What is Other, and how do we deal with it? What role has the unknown or the monster played through British lit/ cultural history? How does our contact with the Other start to dissolve our own cultural concepts or boundaries? Can it strengthen them instead? Why zombies? Why cannibals? How do you get ketchup out of your hair? Who in your life trusts you enough to let you bite their finger?

A "Lack of Non-Verbal Cues" in our Action-Packed, Balanced Breakfasts Society

A "Lack of Non-Verbal Cues" in our Action-Packed, Balanced Breakfasts Society? I'm torn.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/69462973@N08/6310785636/
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License

One the one hand, I've seen the deadened-eyes, the twitching fingers seemingly still curved around a mouse or joystick and the mindless drip of drool stringing from chin to floor, all signs of one, horrible monster: the computer zombie. My mother strictly regulated online gaming, video game consoles and all electronic entertainment for years, but my little brothers still did and still do find every opportunity to get their "fix." I've experienced myself the pointless drivel and real-life-sucking falseness of cyberspace: cyber friendship, cyber chatting, cyber sharing, and now the issue before us, cyber creativity and cyber academia. Can we really have any kind of real discussion without human forms and beings and breath and a physical context for the situation?

I'm a literature student, and emerging participant in the academic conversation about literature, so I guess I have already given in to this idea. I conduct almost all of my "conversations" on paper, through decades, in online library indexes and in databases. I don't even have to talk to a librarian anymore (yes, those light-sensitive library moles previously considered the climax of anti-sociality have been one-upped by ME!) to do my research, write my papers and have my "conversation." I've never met one scholar (except a few professors from my own university) that I've cited in a paper. To exaggeratedly quote from one of my husband's letters to me on my mission "Everywhere you go, you talk to people. You teach people, contact people; you always have your companion to talk to and even argue with. I live in a faceless, heartless pit of words and symbols, working out my meaningless Masters degree in a world of strangers." (Don't worry, it wasn't really that bad... although we did get engaged less than a month after I stepped off the plane!)

His letter continues, "BUT at least I still have in-class discussion."

Or do we? College classes are quick to follow college students' tendencies, and college students are on the web, talking in forums and instant messaging boxes and on walls and through pictures and in comments but anything but in person. Colleges are moving the conversation to the web.

So how do you even know you aren't reading a robot's words right now? :^P

However, the chapter I read in the e-book on online forums did have something important to say on the opposite hand: "Studies of individual personality and internet behavior have revealed that introverted students tend to be more able to communicate with others in an online environment than face-to-face." The author makes a pathos-sprinkled point that as an introvert herself, she has taken advantage of the unbound social hierarchy in an online environment which allows for more democratic and even portrayal of ideas.

So see, I don't know. Is it worth the ease of accessibility, the democratization of debate, the interest of the students and the convenience of onlin-id-iness to lose the person-to-person interaction, the lilt of voices, the actual people participating in the conversation?

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
 Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Can't we have the hard-as-rock, health-paranoid grit of Grape-Nuts with the fluffy pink marshmallows of Lucky Charms?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lencioni/3321229570/sizes/m/in/photostream/
 licensed under the creative commons license

Of eBooks, Fan Fiction, and Scholarly Work

What I'm about to write may incur the wrath of half of the readers and writers on this blog, so I would just like to ask that as you read my comments, hear me out. I was assigned to read over two chapters regarding Fan Fiction, as well as the advantages of the blogosphere in the realms of academics. Each of these writers raises wonderful points. Ashley Nelson in Chapter 2 discusses how Fan Fiction opens up untold possibilities to stories that we know and hold dear to our hearts that are reopened and explored when taken on by other readers. As we seek to disseminate the knowledge we have gleaned from this project, certainly we want to make it available to others and give them the opportunity to take that information and use it to their own advantage. If we are not seeking to make our research more readly avaliable, then really, what is the purpose of the eBook?

Bri Zabriskie concludes the book by devoting a chapter to the importance of using the new modes of digital technology to reach more audiences and make the reading/research process a more colloborative and collective experience than an isolated one. This too is a great goal to have in the class as part of creating this eBook, and we certainly couldn't complete the work we have to accomplish without those efforts. 

All that being said, I think this raises some serious issues within the realm of creating this eBook. Dr. Burton points out that the creation of a typical research paper is isolated and does not allow for a great deal of outside influence or colloboration. He also argues that the minute things turn academic I certainly don't argue with this statement, but I feel that this really goes against everything we are taught to do in academia. Obviously we want people to be thinking about the ideas we present and we don't just want them to be kept to us. However, when it comes to doing research for other classes, I find it difficult to accept that we are all eventually going to be using blogs and eBooks in lieu of the typical term paper. Academia is academia. It will always require the use of scholarly sources and formal papers. If students are unwilling to explore these sources as a means of obtaining information and becoming experts on their desired field, then they don't deserve to be part of the academic community. 

I'm sure people will disagree with some of what I've written, so by all means, add your thoughts to what I've written.

Welcome to the eRenaissance Project

a mockup cover
for our prospective eBook

Let's create an eBook that explores the connections between the European Renaissance of the 15th-17th centuries and the current digital renaissance. After all, doesn't one good renaissance deserve another?

That's the premise for this project, launched by students of a Renaissance literature course at Brigham Young University in early 2013. The embedded picture is a mockup cover for our prospective eBook. As we think through our book's content and form, we will make that process public on this blog.

Already we have been using the Open Renaissance Wiki to collect and organize our content and ideas. But with the blog we can interact better among ourselves and with potential readers of our finished book.

Six Themes
We have already identified six themes, lenses by which we can understand Renaissance literature. These have proven to be handy concepts for understanding our present day, and also for conceptualizing our own project: