EllenEinsporn

I thoroughly enjoyed all of my classmates presentations of their critical projects. Here's my reflection on a job well done by the entire class:

Greta & Katie: These two came up with a very practical and orginal idea. As a future teacher, I thought their experimental lesson was very helpful. Also, it was clear that the two spent a lot of time on their project in order to do a quality job.

Quinn and Sue: Hilarious!...What more can I say? Their creative exploration of author intent was both informative and entertaining.

Derek and Angela: Intense...I will admit that I couldn't look at Derek for much of our last class and didn't give him a goodbye hug because he creeped me out...haha. That said, I thought their presentation was great--It was clear that they spent a lot of time preparing for their acting debut. Also, having looked at their website earlier, I also credit them for a job well done on the intellectual level.

Erica and Jenna: I loved their topic and their presentation. A fan of Jane Austen myself, I thought these two approached their intertextual study of Pride and Prejudice in a very logical way and came to logical conclusions. Can't wait to see their movie! ;)

Kayley and Mara: These two did a good job of presenting the differences between earlier and later texts of The Boxcar Children. More of a Nacy Drew fan myself, I only read a few of the novels as a kid and didn't know that the later ones were written by ghost writers. Specifically, these two did a nice job of comparing their two chosen texts through close reading.

Michelle and J.R.: Another great idea. These two focused on an aspect of pop culture and analyzed a pertinent issue today. I thought Michelle's idea to post their issue on Yahoo answers was very pertinent to the class, considering our blogging efforts and I was surprised by the number of responses she received.

All around, the class did a great job on these projects: as a whole, I think we've learned to take literary criticism and apply it to our own interests, even making it fun.

Below is the last collection of blogs I will create for a class at SHU. I began my student blogging as a sophomore in Dr. Jerz's Intro to Lit class. Since then, I think I have steadily improved as an academic blogger, and I think this final collection is a good exhibition of my development. While I may not have fully embraced the concept of blogging in my Intro to Lit Study class, I think that my dedication is evident in my work listed below. Blogging in this class, Literary Criticism, has definitely helped me delve into diffucult concepts and detailed discussions. In fact, I think my understanding of the class content arose in a large part from creating my blogs and reading the blogs of my classmates. So, while I may not have needed to blog in order to comprehend the content of Intro to Lit, blogging for this class became a vital exercise in understanding for me. Because of its vitality, I embraced blogging this semsester yet another opportunity to learn. As shown in my work below, I think I made the most of this opportunity:

Here's a list of all the blogs I've posted since the last portfolio:

An archie deBunker
Lessons Learned
How do we compete?
Upholding the Satus Quo
Just one little hyphen doesn't matter..or does it?
Progress Report
An Optimistic Twist
A Little Art History Lesson
The Ugh of Exam Questions
War! Huh, What is it good for?

If you take a look at one of these blogs randomly, I'm sure the blog you pick will not dissappoint. On every blog, I tried to do a quality job: instead of just writing something to get the assignment done, I truly tried to create critically engaging comments and queries. While this method may not have been the best in terms of time management--reading the material, thinking of a response, and creating the blog were incredibly time consuming activities--despite this setback in my busy schedule, I value the time I was able to spend blogging because I feel that I have genuinely learned from my efforts.

Here's a few instances where I am particularly proud of my efforts:

An Art History Lesson I taught myself how to upload pictures this semester, and was able to tie in past knowledge with new learning in this blog.
An Optimistic Twist I was able to come to grips with an issue I've struggled on before this class even.
Progress Report In this blog, I interact well with my classmates in discussion.
The Ugh of Exam Questions I post a super-long explanatory comment in response to a classmates here.

Thus ends my academic blogging carreer at Seton Hill. WHile part of me wants to jump for joy when I think of the time I will no longer have set aside for blogging, ultimately, I've enjoyed the time spent blogging in this class because of how much I've learned from the experience.

To see my previous blog portfolios, click here and here.

To see my blog detailing my reactions to the class's project presentations, read my blog Post Presentation Perspectives.

Back to Course Page

Bethany and I have chosen to focus on the story of “Three Little Pigs” and perform an intertextual study by comparing several different versions of the text. The following is a list of the texts we have chosen to focus on:

• Joseph Jacobs version
o considered by many to be the original

• John Scieszka’s version
o This version twists the story to imply that the wolves actions resulted from a simple misunderstanding rather than malice

• “The Wolf and Seven Young Kids” by the Grimm brothers
o Still debating on this one…it’s more like “Little Red Riding Hood,” but it might be interesting to show how different tales overlap

• Eugene Trivizas’s “The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig”
o A cute twist on the classic where the roles of the pigs and the wolf are reversed

• Green Jello’s song, “Three Little Pigs”
o Hilarious…

• Disney’s song, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf”
o Part of a short film produced by Disney that retells the story in a more traditional manner

• “A Dairy Tale: The Three Little Pigs”
o Another Disney remake; interesting because it assumes the viewer’s familiarity with the story (like some of the other version above)

Obviously, we may not have time to cover everything in this list in our presentation, so we still have some narrowing down to go. This list is by no means finalized.

Continue reading "Term Project Progress Report: Intertextuality and "The Three Little Pigs"" »

...when one Caryatid was removed from the Erechtheum, those that remained lamented "their ravished sister" with wailing that could be heard throughout the town (Garson 454).

Continue reading "A little art history lesson" »

...different readings struggle with each other on the site of the text, and all that can count, however provisionally, as knowledge of the text, is achieved through this discursive conflict (Barker and Hulme 444).

Continue reading "War! Huh, What is it good for?" »

...despite our romantic cult of originality, most artists are themselves gifted creators of variations upon received themes. Even those great writers whom we regard with special awe, and whom we celebrate for their refusal to parrot the cliches of their culture, tend to be particularly brilliant improvisers rather than absolute violaters or pure inventors...Such borrowing is not evidence of imaginative parsimony, still less a symptom of creative exhaustion--I am using Dickens, Shakespeare, and Spenser precisely because they are among the most exuberant, generous, and creative literary imaginations in our language (Greenblatt 439).

Continue reading "An Optimistic Twist" »

Examination questions, the ultimate location of institutional power, identify the boundaries of the discipline, and define what is permissible to "discuss," as they so invitingly and misleadingly put it (Belsey 428).

Continue reading "The Ugh of Exam Questions" »

"I'm not, however, going to attempt even a sketchy summary of all the variant readings of the poem; instead I want to consider a point that none of the innumerable readings I've come across has made--at least, none has done so emphatically enough" (Guetti 386).

Continue reading "How do we compete?" »

According to Stephen J. Miko, Prospero's "exile is a consequence of both the natural evil in his brother and his own retreat fro ducal responsibilities into studies--magic and the liberal arts" (377).

Continue reading "Lessons Learned " »

...asked by his wife whether he wants to have his bowling shoes laced over or under, Archie Bunker answers with a question: "What's the difference?"... As long as we're talking about bowling shoes, the consequences are relatively trivial; Archie Bunker, who is a great believer in the authority of origins (as long, of course, as they are the right origins) muddles along in a world where literal and figurative meanings get in each other's way though not without discomforts. But suppose that it is a de-bunker rather than a "Bunker," and a de-bunker of the arche (or origin), an archie Debunker such as Nietzsche or Jacques Derrida for instance, who asks the question "What is the Difference"--and we cannot even tell from his grammar whether he "really" wants to know "what" the difference is or is he just telling us so we shouldn't even try to find it. (de Man 368)

Continue reading "An archie Debunker" »