Dissertation Debris
Friday cat blogging:
Night. In my work area, Tink knows where to recline: atop 222 pages of committee-submitted dissertation. She's idly pawing at the thumb drive that holds my backup copy.
Day. The other side of the office. Again, Tink's got the paw out. Zeugma grooms herself between my empty reading rack, my full to-do file, and some photocopied essays on class, along with Benkler's "Coase's Penguin" and Gibson-Graham's A Postcapitalist Politics.
Form, Space, and Synchronicity
Shelly at UFO recently raised some really interesting points about length and form and how we manage/regulate information and attention in texts. As powerful a template as the five-paragraph theme may be, Shelly suggests that it's only useful up to a certain length, and I'm inclined to agree. As a template for writers, the five-paragraph theme makes the question of form-as-organization one less thing a struggling writer has to worry about. But for readers, once you get up over 800 or 900 words, the five paragraph theme no longer offers much help navigating the essay's form-as-coherence.
A couple days later, Spencer pointed out a discussion of the relation between coherence, the form of the five-paragraph theme, and students' attention to other aspects of writing. And again, the implicit argument in the passage Spencer points to seems to be that the five-paragraph theme is a tool for managing the resources of attention. For me, seeing Shelly's and Spencer's posts within the space of two days was an interesting bit of synchronicity that got even more interesting when I read Peter Elbow's latest (June 2006) CCC essay on "The Music of Form: Rethinking Organization in Writing" in conjunction with the preface to Richard Lanham's 2006 The Economics of Attention. For one thing, you've got to love Peter's reference to the five-paragraph theme as "a kind of 'slam bam thank you ma'am' organization" (632). But to be a bit more serious: in The Economics of Attention, Richard Lanham begins with the assertion that "information is not in short supply in the new information economy" (xi). Rather, "what we lack is the human attention to make sense of it all" (xi). We don't have enough time to devote to all this information and sort it out. Like our students, we as teachers "are short of time" (Elbow 631). And time and attention are central concerns for Elbow.
Now: one more connection to add to the pile. According to Elbow, "the most common way that writers bind words and pull readers through a text" is in narrative (634).
In 2001, I wrote a review essay called "The Ends of Narrative Inquiry" for a methods seminar and wound up being entirely too proud of myself for what I saw as my own stylistic
On Error
I'm looking for good sources on student error in writing to share with a colleague. Joseph Williams on "The Phenomenology of Error" is an obvious choice, but I'd also like to share a piece that condenses Mina Shaugnessy's extended point in Errors and Expectations about how the incidence of error goes up as students learn new concepts -- in other words, how error itself can be an indication of learning. I remember reading a shorter piece (was it one of Bartholomae's, maybe?) that made this argument, with some data to back it up, but don't recall what it was. Help me out?
Raising a Glass
Rumor has it that congratulations are in order: apparently, there were some nuptials in Atlanta today. Here's to Clancy and Jonathan: congratulations!
My Date
July 7, 2006, at 2:30 in the afternoon. 316 Bartlett Hall.
(Click on the image for a bigger version.)
And yes, that would be me in the stainless-steel boob-cups.
So yeah, it's a wig. Big deal. I mean, you know me, right? You know I'm bald. Can I be not embarassed now and just admit that, you know, sometimes I like to have hair?
Regarding Today’s Date
I've gotta confess that my boots, much as I love them, got nothin on these.
(Via BoingBoing, natch.)
Study Break
I can't stop watching this video. Kitten, computer, cuteness: dear reader, it's like happy YouTube crack, with fur.
And I love the kitten's tiny thin-furred rat-tail. Somewhere in the Atlantic Northeast, my attorney -- who has a similarly-endowed skinny-tail cat named Bird -- is smiling.