Conferences

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.

Chair: Bonnie Noonan at Xavier University
Secretary: Joe R. Christopher, professor emeritus, Tarleton State University

Joe R. Christopher (retired) from Tarleton State University
“JRR Tolkien’s Literary Influence on Narnia”

Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens of the Imagination of C.S. Lewis
casual dismissal of Christopher’s (speaker’s) Tolkien’s influence on Narnia

Lewis’ indebtedness

Tolkien told Lansling Green “Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe just won’t do”

parallel situation: When Lewis wrote his Ransom trilogy, Tolkien pointed out some borrowings in a series of letters. Suggests that several names are from his own unpublished works. Lewis’ references to Tolkien’s character in This Hideous Strength–Tolkien says it was plagiarism.

“Lewis was a very impressionable man…” Tolkien is regretting that Lewis was borrowing from Williams.

Critics:
Ward was discussing works that influenced the structure of Narnia.
Christopher said “internal chronology” was probably indebted to Tolkien.
Also influence of Nesbitt in plot patterns.
Tolkien influenced Narnian cosmos (is speaker’s point).
Hutter said Narnia is a biblical parallel.

Tolkien’s structure: (not reading proper reading order)
ch. 8 Narnian creation story The Magician’s Nephew
singing is creating the world
from book of Job “when the morning stars sang together”

The tuneful Voice was heard from high,
Arise ye more than dead.
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And MUSICK’s pow’r obey.
From Harmony, from heav’nly Harmony
This universal Frame began;
From Harmony to Harmony
Through all the compass of the Notes it ran,
The Diapason closing full in Man. (“St. Cecilia’s Day” by John Dryden)

Ainur made first.

Spoke to them of themes of music.
…
It came to pass that he called together and unfolded a mighty theme. The ainur sing together. The creator brings them to see the model of their song, a flat-world universe.

In Tolkien ainur = middle earth cosmos.
In Narnia creation account is from singing.

Is there something unique matching Tolkien in Lewis?
In the creation, Uncle Andrew is “two half sovereigns, two half crowns, and a sixpence” fell from his pocket. The larger pieces created gold and silver tree. Similar to Tolkien’s angelic figures’ tree, caused to grow by her song in a limited recapitulation of her song.

Tolkien is creating a myth and Lewis is writing a children’s story. The trees are both destroyed. Lewis is punning on the names of the coins (sovereigns and crowns) since the trees are smithied into crowns.

Tolkien’s Silmarrillion becomes an adventure. Lewis’ works are a series of adventures.

Killing of Aslan and return to life is a retelling of Jesus. Why does he think he can get away with this retelling?

Could the story be both Jesus and Gandalf (death and resurrection)? Tolkien’s work was not yet published when Lewis’ Narnia story is published.

Gandalf the Great was sent back by a spiritual entity.

Geographic references are very similar.
African and places (such as those with elephants, Two Towers)
Lewis echoes something in Tolkien’s geography
Lewis sent the ship east in Prince Caspian, so he didn’t have to follow actual

Prince Caspian has trees coming to war. (Shakespeare uses it in Macbeth about a medieval poem that gives a discussion of the battle of the trees: Cad Goddeu or The Battle of the Trees.)
Tolkien uses the word for giants, applying them to trees.
Lewis calls the trees by the classical discussion: wood goddesses and wood gods. When they march they are birch girls, etc. accompanied by Bacchus.
In the Silmarillion, voyages go west (as in England), not east.
The end of the world and Aslan’s country are beyond the island of the star, just as Tolkien’s spiritual realm is beyond the western star.

Narnian part begins on top of tall mountain and ends there, the mountain of Aslan.
Tolkien’s cosmos, when it was flat, had the highest mountain west and the folks looked over the world there. Tolkien’s mountain has ice and snow.

Giants live in north in Lewis.
Tolkien mentions stone mountain giants in north.

1st group in Narnia throw rocks as a game.
In Hobbit throw rocks as a game.

Both use “land of giants.”
Gnome = dwarves
The Silver Chair uses classical view of gnomes, miners.
Tolkien uses the mining gnomes.
Narnia: “dragon-like salamanders swimming” like Tolkien: innocent barnards (?)

Second Prophecy of Nandis similarity (from Tolkien)

4 references to “day of death” in Lord of the Rings, evil will be cleared in “the last battle”
Narnia has the Last Battle.

Most of references are not conclusive individually, but taken together there is an impression of Tolkien.

Bonnie Noonan says she is convinced. (I was less convinced.)

Mark Hall at Oral Roberts University
“‘Carrying the Fire’: Images of Light and Darkness in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road”
co-editing a work on science and science fiction

Most in the room had already read the book. Many had seen the movie.

Paper prepared for those who had not read the work prior. (Full disclosure: I have not read the book.)

The tale is set in a post-apocalyptic world, bleak, barren, few humans remaining.
There is little punctuation (doesn’t like semi-colons, he told Oprah).
Only done three interviews in life and only one television interview with Oprah.
few contractions
unnamed main characters: boy and his father

disturbing and unforgettable tale as folks struggle to survive

carrying the fire is a central motif in the novel
The Road is essentially a spiritual journey.

Morning:
first gray light
gunmetal gray light
swirling ash
birdless
dead trees
barren

Father and boy
Father realizes he has one sacred responsibility.

“He knew only that the child was his warrant. If the child is not … God, then…” never God.

“You wanted to know what the bad guys look like. Now you know. … I will kill anyone who touches you. I have been appointed by God…”

“Are we still the good guys?”
“Yes, and we always will be.”

Father talks to God. Whispers. “Are you there? … Have you a neck to throttle?”

Father is sick the entire journey. He is trying to do everything for his son to prepare his son.
When they meet an old man Eli (who says it’s not his name later), he marvels at the boy.
(Similar to The Book of Eli.)

“When I saw that boy, I thought that I had died… I never thought to see a child again… What if I said he is a god? … Where men can’t live, there is no god. … To be on the road with the last god would be a terrible thing. … There is no god and we are his prophets.”

Boy realizes the future is in his hands.

“Yes, I am (the one who has to worry about everything). Yes, I am. I am the one.” (Reminds you of The Matrix.)
Boy seems to exhibit a messianic consciousness.

Observe all kinds of human depravity, especially cannibalism.
So vivid on the imagery. It is quite shocking.
See people holed up in a basement, being kept there as food for other humans.

Man struck by lightning.
Boy wants to help, but Father doesn’t.

A discussion about how to kill themselves and if the father would ever kill the boy.

Both father and son near starvation.
But the boy continues to want to help others.

“carrying the fire”
1. security for boy
2. hope to find another family
3. deathbed of father, encouraging son to go forward
4. son questions a new-found family’s beneficence

Cannibalism must be abjured.

“We wouldn’t ever eat anybody, would we?”
“No.”
Not even if we were starving?
No.
Because we are the good guys?
Yes.
And we are carrying the fire?
Yes.
Okay.

The man and the boy reach the beach, would they ever see a ship again?

“What’s on the other side?”
“Nothing.”
“Maybe there’s a boy and his father and they are sitting on the beach. They could be carrying the fire, too.”
“Yes.”
“But we don’t know so we have to be vigilant.”

Where is the fire? I don’t know where it is!
Yes, you do. I can see it. It is inside you.

Father confirms that son is the good guy.
“You’re the best guy. You always were. The best guys carry the fire.”

Carrying the fire: What does this mean? Some options include:
1. carrying seeds of civilization
2. intentions towards others
3. civility as honorable behavior
4. hope for the future

Hall does think McCarthy tells us what he means by carrying the fire.
As father faces impending death, he gives his final words to his boy.

“Do you remember that little boy? … Do you think that he’s all right? … Do you think that he was lost?”
I don’t think he was lost.
I think he was lost.
No, he’s all right.
But who will find the little boy if he is lost?
“Goodness will find the little boy. It always has.”

This revelation of the father to this little boy gives credence and meaning to the hopeful conclusion of this little boy. Goodness will find the little boy and give him a future.
Carrying = goodness motivated by human decency

People of the fire don’t eat other people.
They reach out to others, even when they are dangerous.

Boy stayed with his father for three days, after his dad dies.
arises out of the ashes of his father’s death
looks down the road

Meets a benevolent family who are willing to take him in.

“How do I know you are one of the good guys?”
“You don’t…”
“Are you carrying the fire?”
“Yes. We are.”
“Do you have any kids? We do.”
“Do you have a little boy?… You didn’t eat them?… And I can go with you?”
“Yes, you can.”
“Okay then. Okay.”

Bleak and terrible book and a hopeful ending.
Kennedy says: “The father was right about goodness. It arrives on cue as a deus ex machina that has been following …”
“redemption of the father and his child… holy”
“will bring goodness to the next generation”

The woman put her arms around him when she saw him.
She talked to him about God.
He didn’t talk to God, but he did talk to his father.
The woman said that was all right.

“He walked back to the woods beside his father. He was wrapped in a blanket as the man had promised. … I’ll talk to you everyday and I won’t forget no matter what. … Then he rose and turned and walked back out to the road.”
(end of book)

Jonathan Himes at John Brown University
“On Lewis’ The Dark Tower“
produced the critical edition of The Old English Epic of Waldere

CS Lewis’ work less familiar to those than Tolkien.
The question of whetehr Lewis wrote The Dark Tower is a posthumous discussion. It was not published until 1977.
Men use chronoscope to see across universes.
Handwriting is indistinguishable from Lewis’, so it is not fake.
One may conclude that he worked on it in stages. Lack of polish and crudity is reasonable, because it was a draft and abandoned.
Himes said he was trying to write an allegory against sexual addiction.
Abortive attempt by Lewis to portray deviant and self-centered sexuality.

Notorious episodes of “stinging man” or “unicorn lord.”
Butting his head into the minds of victims.
McFee character (from That Hideous Strength, statements from both are the same) plays a major role and assists Lewis afterward in narrating them.
Scudamore is the assistant to the chronoscope’s views. He sees a double in another dimension and gradually grows a sting of his own. He has a headache in sympathy while waiting for his fiancee. The double of S- sees the double of his fiancee (admirable, old fashioned double), who tells what happened. They grew up together until he went to become a stinging man/unicorn lord.
People could either become a stinging man OR a minion.

The stinging man looks through his chronoscope at the Cambridge man.
Watches Lewis, Ransome, and McFee “while stroking his forehead’s appendage” for ten minutes
“They’ve got one of our buildings and hundreds of our people… It’s all mixed up with us somehow.”

Ransome: “contains these replicas… there may be any number of others”
McFee: “It’s long odds against particles … in the same body… got the boy and the girl…”

Lines of dialogue explains how they can find themselves in another universe.

Sting used to produce more replicas, while observing, and creating minions.

Lewis says the many-bodied idol can’t be described without endangering others…
Idol matches with the unicorn’s stinger
Scudamore finds that human brains are powered by chronoscopes in their alternate/evil universe.
Exchange twisted minds with happy, normal people.
Decent earth folk have their psyches erased while the evil folks have taken their place on our earth.

Near the end of the fragment McFee and Ransome realize that it is another time and it is coming closer to us. Eventually they won’t need a chronoscope to corrupt our world.

“deviant solitary” = masturbation

Lewis’ interpretation might be “just say no to sex.”
Spenser and others say Christian chastity is beautiful married sex. Not the absence of sex.

Lewis’ conservative view of normative sex: “full of goodwill, not forgetful of God… embraces…” and then next time may regard the person as a thing, a way to get a feeling

Radcliffe equates stingings with sex warned against.
BUT private sexual fantasy uses the other person as a sexual object without the other person’s permission, thus breaking their relationship in the masturbator’s psyche.
The stinging man is at the mercy of his own horn, but it grows wearisome and doesn’t want it.

Radcliffe believes Scudamore may castrate himself “handing over their stings”
BUT Lewis’ presentation introduces the option of sacrificial release
Stings are objectification, but

Warning against dangers of totalitarianism and sexual addiction.
Both have in common treating other people as objects.
In Dark Tower the semi-obscene literature is too crude to discuss totalitarianism and sexual addiction.
Scholars in Cambridge are watching Scudamore play with his sting.
Male or female victims– Their sex is immaterial to the unicorn man. “I am your son and your daughter,” says one of the drones/jerkies/minions.
Scholar is older and a bore. He sees the alternate universe as art. He isn’t shocked or titillated anymore by watching the unicorn man.

Thomas Hubbard’s Homosexuality in Greece and Rome
Plato has Socrates refer to their life as “much to be pitied”
Homosexual promiscuity and heterosexual XXX were similar.
Hubbard adopts word “pervert.”
Stoic philosophy was profoundly against any sexuality against nature.
refers to Romans

Lewis was well-read in these texts.
His ideas were influenced by the texts.
Long term vices, indulged without restraint, are worse.
If Christianity is true, an individual is very important because his vices are stronger, more, and thus become hell. (So a pederast becomes even more pederastic. How would that happen in Hell?)

Adjectives applied to The Dark Tower by Bonnie Noonan:
violent
obscene
crude
atrocious
heinous
lascivious
repugnant
smutty
pornographic
sickening
unwholesome

Questions:

For Himes, some answered by Christopher and some by Himes.
Dark Tower was abandoned earlier in Lewis’ life? Yes.
Surpised by Joy was written in 1944. Is it the fact that he is getting married that causes him to abandon him?
He re-wrote the bulk of the Dark Tower in This Hideous Strength.

There are corrections on the Dark Tower in blue ink and the blue ink didn’t come into existence until after 1944. It came in later. So if Lewis’ work, he definitely worked on it two different times.

Alistair Fowler was shown a typed version when he was working under Lewis. We don’t know what that looked like, but it was in existence.

Dark Tower is poorly written. A bad rough draft.
Lewis normally wrote good first drafts.

Christopher thinks that Lewis wrote something like this. But Dark Tower was probably changed/padded by Hooper. (Had the tumult of his editing died down in the US? Hooper asked recently. Supposedly Lewis’ work was burned and Hooper took it out. The man who supposedly burnt the papers said he doesn’t remember any fire.)

Fowler said he doesn’t remember the white riders at the back, but they aren’t as interesting as the things in the first part, so he might not remember. (In letter to Christopher.)

Was Lewis reacting to any kind of Freudian psychology?
Yes. Says Scudamore has read his Freud.
Narrator admits this could be read in a freudian way.
Narrator says they would have been appalled to see this depravity in a back alley too.

Idea of depravity of man and yet the books are hopeful. Lewis is making a moment of critique. McCarthy is offering a possibility of hope.

For Hall
No Country for Old Men the sheriff has a dream where his father is carrying the fire.
Is there some kind of arc on carrying the fire in all three novels? Is there a McCarthy reaction against modernism and postmodernism in this?

Answer: I almost put that in. Do you think it has the same meaning as it does in this book?
Response: Maybe not a meaning, but insistence upon a functioning moral order.
Answer: He is interested in something that is worth carrying on in humanity.

For Christopher
Mentioned the story of resurrection in cannonical gospels, curious of how Lewis would have viewed that and how it might have shaped his thinking.

Answer: Lewis makes negative comments on the whole de-mythologized thing.
Hall says: Myth “dying god who without ceasing to be myth comes down from heaven to earth. … This myth is fact. It actually happened.”
Lewis saw myth and fact coming together in birth and resurrection.
Myth is fact.
Christopher: That is what Tolkien was arguing. B/c Lewis responded to myths where gods were reborn and Tolkien says “the Christian story is a myth and a fact.”
Lewis later stated that the resurrection myths were earlier prefigurings of Jesus. (responding to The Golden Bough.) They are marvelous myths and one time myth became fact.
Hall: Baldar the Beautiful is dead. That is one thing that attracted him to Christianity.

For Christopher
Are you advocating creative plagiarism?
So Lewis was plagiarizing from Tolkien?
Christopher: Yes, Tolkien would have thought it was plagiarism.
Tolkien children had the books. But Tolkien must not have read them, because he would have been writing to Lewis or others complaining of Lewis’ use of his work. Lewis was a magpie. At the end, Tolkien decided that no one should borrow or have ideas from others and so he denied all the influences on his own work.

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.

Brian Blackburne at Sam Houston State University
“An Xtra-Special Use of New Media in the Technical Writing Classroom”

motivation:
We use it in our own lives: blogs, fb, Google Docs, YouTube, social media…
Students are using social media but not using it in a good way.

Industry follows popular trends:
Geico and Toyota used Xtra.
Toyota let them “make your own story.”
6-8 companies have asked Blackburne to spearhead their social media campaigns
relevant in field of tech comm

Employers seek “social media” experts:
1000+ jobs
83 looking for social media in marketing

Students need us to:
bridge gap
encourage them in how to practice rhetorical analysis
apply traditional rules to new media

overview of software:
What is Xtranormal?
text-to-video
all online
non-linear
3-D modeling
100+ actors
multilingual
socially integrated- can post to YouTube, Twitter, etc
Hundreds of characters. Can have one or two characters.

Flash-based
Can do your own cuts or let them do

Why use Xtranormal?
Serves as an icebreaker
Teaches students new skills
Remediates typical writing
Engages students as creators, testers, and editors (Software doesn’t cooperate with everything they do.)

Use it as:
Introductory assignments
rhetorical analysis and audience awareness
team development
in-class workshop early on (great way to get them excited about the class)

What are the goals?
Involve students in everyday business scenarios
Use “fun” tech in a meaningful way
Foster team work
Engage students as critics and evaluate

The assignment:
One assignment: Had them create the plagiarism policy for the university.
In a possible scenario
work for the university
teach a policy to incoming students
competition
They choose the winner.

Challenges (& fun):
synthesizing information
professionalizing the tool: tone, idiom, and formality
managing roles: writer, editor, and evaluator

Outcomes:
knowledge (define the policy)
comprehension (understand the meaning of the policy and be able to rephrase/reframe it)
application (translate writer/editor/manager into group work)
analysis (what parts of the plagiarism policy are most important, do the students not understand)
synthesis (putting the plagiarism policy into a coherent discussion between two characters in an interesting and informative way)
evaluation (how well was the video done)
Note: The parts in the parentheses are my additions.

New version launched Oct. 26th.
Just launched yesterday.
“The New Teacher’s Pet”
$10/mth and $.50 a student in each class
Allowing grading within the version
Use it focusing on teachers teaching students, but I use it the other way.
Learning can be hard (the studetns realize).

What’s next with the research?
working with students
collecting data: perceptions and performance
sharing research

Deb Williams at Abilene Christian University
“To Google Docs or Not: Making More Informed Choices with Technology”

Students leave classroom without an understanding of when to use what and exactly how to use it.
I am using business writing because tech writing is not being recognized by university.

Business Writing Issues:
thoughtful use of tech
application of course principles and theory
rhetorical issues

Our Issues:
knowledge of or willingness to learn the tech
appropriate assignments
appropriate pedagogies

Premise:
A combination of pedagogies, especially service learning when used in learning teams frames the classroom with a “work-place” perspective, helps students to have a stronger sense of how to use what kinds of technology, how to generate documents, etc.

Part of the problem is the delivery system.
Apple-focused university.
Not everything they can do in their workplace.
WebX account- for distance education program, but can’t present work of English. Excellent, expensive.

Free trial sections. But they often use credit cards.

One of best sites is “the vyew” for team work. Free option. Don’t have to put in a credit card.
Students and teachers can work together, especially to work with teams. Can carve out time online for group meeting.
You can make different folks the main presenter, with uploading capabilities.
They can take this into the workplace.
helps write collaboratively
easier version of WebX
team running

Google Docs
Employers are saying students don’t write together well.
We have Gmail and Google Docs (PowerPoints, spreadsheets, documents). Share with a few a lot, give different levels of accessibility.

Google Docs is still clunky, doesn’t support a lot that their documents are going to have to do.
Spacing is set by Google Docs.

Or do you email around a Word document with reviewer toolbox?
That works very well within academics and workplace.

Students need to understand when to use the technology.
Students need to think about
audience (do they know, will they understand, can they access)
purpose: needs for the document

Why should students care?
Service learning
–prepares students to be responsible citizens
–offers a course-based service experience that produces the best outcomes
We want them to have sensitivity about constraints. They get that with service learning.

Problem with service learning:
If you send them to the client, they will often take lots of time the client doesn’t have and not create something that the client can use.

Quality control:
Learning Teams (Larry Michaelsen; Dee Fink)
Individual accountability for tehory (occurs outside class)
Individual accountability to the team
Teacher-observed application of theory/principles creates more learning opportunities

Go with an entire fiction in the classroom, creating a technical firm that is being hired by the various nonprofits. Present professor as senior writer and students as teams of other writers. This helps establish the pattern of approval and questions tend to go to the professor rather than the client (and thereby helping the client rather than overwhelming them with a rash of student requests for information).

Teams must be thoughtfully formed and managed.
Students must be made accountable.

The Keys
No technology for its own sake. There must be a reason for its implementation.

Offer rhetorical context(s) through pedagogy(ies) and assignments. Make these explicit.

Learn from/with students. Don’t isolate yourself from the learning experience your students are having. As you try new things, you can learn as well. Share that learning experience with the students.

Michael Charlton at Missouri Western University
“One Font, Two Fonts, Red Fonts, Blue Fonts: Teaching Design Software to Technical Communications”

Claims
1. Tech comm has long recognized doc design choices matter.
2. Tech comm students need to understand and apply basic principles of doc design as part of professionalization.
3. Students often don’t see design as important.
4. Sometimes they resist because of the design of the software itself.

Teaching Desktop Publishing
EPR 326 (English Public Relations)– required
BS in Speech Comm with a public relations concentration
also master’s in Public Relations
taught spring semester (20-25 students) All the computer labs can hold.
is a design class
Required software: Adobe Creative Suite, mostly teach in design

textbook: Robin Williams The Non-Designer’s Design

Learn professional grade design software:
applicaton of commonly accepted design choices
practice working for a “real world” client
making connections between the visual document and its overall meaning
professionalization

Major assignments:
Business stationery (business card, letterhead, envelopes)
newspaper (later web-based)
flyer
postcard and brocuhere
newsletter (client project)
poster (ethics assignment: poster offering credit cards to freshmen)
final assignment:

Problems:
tech comm students were struggling with the class–
particular signal error problem
Look of doc would be sloppy
Students had difficulty making initial choices in graphics, colors, etc
When asked to defend choices, would concentrate on words, the verbal text.

Pressed to use “white space” or “eye relief” in defense, didn’t do that. Contextually they use different words to explain their texts:
cohesive (visual) v. coherent (verbal)
arrangement (visual) v. paragraphing (verbal)
proximity (visual) v. sequence (verbal)
etc

Survey:
How important is the look of doc to the reader?
How do you think you did with the look of the document?
There is bias. I’m the “visual rhetoric nerd.”
Only 12 students.

All but one said:
doc design choices are unimportant
OR
doc design choices are separate from the text

Unimportant:
“I take care of the words”

Separate:
“Everybody knows what really matters is what you have to say”
“I’m good at words, not pictures.”

Students enjoy the class but do not understand.

The only outlier
“I get the feeling that what it says and how it looks are kind of the same thing.”
An improvement on a simple form/content binary.

Causes:
Tech comm students don’t connect at least partially because of the software.
Preconceptions and cultural bias toward text as more “meaningful.”
Problems with structure and instructure
Lack of scaffolding in the degree as a whole.
Need to serve multiple audiences and disciplines.
Problem with the software itself.

Software:
CS4 (In design’s menu)
Content choices separated from design choices.
Little attention paid to copy. Everything is about layout and design. That would be fine, except it is supposed to balance layout and composition.
Stressed (by menus) = spacing, font choice, color choice
5 color backgrounds, can create your own color
BUT very few ways to edit text.
A text box and that’s all.
Even in that, there are font selection, emphasis of font, weight of font. No spellcheck in the software.
–Adobe has completely ignored the textual component.
Something else: no review menu (no preview), no overall check.
Menus are all visual issues.
Software reinforces their idea that text and visuals are separate.

Software reinforces their idea that text and visuals are separate.

Everything in the program is about layout.

Conclusions:
recognize the limitations of software and communicate the RHETORICAL effects of doc design
explain how the software exacerbates problems
ironic programs of bad design
Stress the software as something STUDENTS use.

Elizabeth Tebeaux from Texas A&M
“Technical Writing and Social Media: A Contradiction of Terms and Realities”

Honors: about half class cannot write a good squeaky clean sentence

In groups, bad habits get reinforced.
Classes are enormous so lots of collaborations are being done.
I’m trying to make sure they are ready for the workplace– mostly engineers.

Essentials of Technical Communication: Nobody Wants to Read What You Write
little book by Elizabeth Tebeaux and Sam Dragg
5×7, fits in backpack
less than $50 on Amazon (why we haven’t revised)

Students think people want to read what they write.
Teachers are the only people who read what they write.

Security
One of my real concerns is security.
Social media is not safe and not secure.

Collects news on security issues.
Talk about them in class.
Students don’t understand or get security rules.
They can get fired for fb over lunch.

A teacher in Texas gave the answers to the TAKS test and put that on fb.
She was out of a job within a week.
You never know who is looking at what you write.

Secure social media is a contradiction of terms.

Third world countries are looking at fb as much as US.
They are looking at and paying attention to stuff.

Out there and stays there:
No telling who is going to read what they upload.
Bright students, but they have never thought about this.
I tell them to stop spilling your guts on fb. Think about it: 20 years from now, do you want this out there?

Remind students that if they violate security protocols, that is a major crime.
The same rules that protect us (FERPA) protect everybody else.
Sometimes we are only 8 hours ahead of the hackers.
You know about the breeches the Chinese have done with our Dept of Defense computers.
“Anonymous” is the group of hackers that give things on the cloud to EVERYONE.
Students need to be careful.

Rhetoric of fear
Need to think about the audience…

HIPPA won’t let you fax or email your health information.
Because the information can get out if they are sent over the net or the phone.

The intellectual property of the firm IS the organization.
You cannot separate it.
“If somebody gets hold of this, what can they do with it?”
Don’t ever talk about your company online.
There will be rules about what you can do with telephones and computers.
If you have a company cell phone, your phone discussions.

Google: Detroit mayor and text messages
They are online.
Lurid text messages between mayor and his aide

Every text message you send can be used legally.

Use a separate credit card for online.
Only one card for online stuff.
W/ City Bank. (They are the best for hinky stuff.)

Our students have to use company browsers appropriately.
A&M fired a guy for his lunch-hour browsing of porn sites.

Spend a lot of time on the security and safety issues.

Pair in Mexico sent out tweets with false information about murders.
Some people died because of that false tweet.
30 years prison sentence for those tweeters.

More and more companies (police organizations and towns) are tracking what people are doing on facebook.

That’s a rhetorical situation.

We can take several papers and look at them.

—What if we went on facebook and looked at someone’s information? What could we find out about them? What if we were someone who was looking to hire them? What if we were someone looking to smear them?

HomeDepot.com The ad goes out to 15 companies, if you click on something 15 folks know what you are clicking on.

Maine:
email sent about “not going to waste money on that little town”

Social media thing from town.

Read your paper… Or ask students to bring things to class about breaches. … We have 20 minutes between classes and several students bring things to class.

“Rhetoric of Fear”

Discussion:
Fb pages for employers. Brian gives out a list of questions that the students have to answer using their own social media.

FB: Student groups have been shut down, unfunded, or suspended for inappropriate actions.

One prof every semester: “How many of you would like to share your facebook page with us?”
No one has ever said yes.

The engineering firms have someone who checks the social media specifically.

Teach hardline graphics, because there is a need for this.
Work on basic, foundational correspondence.
Email etiquette.

Set up a case:
Students had to write a group of people and tell them they weren’t going to have jobs.
The president agreed to look at them.
The students don’t know how to be tactful.

FBI didn’t like fb because of security level.

When I teach tech writing, the students love the visual design things, but not on the words. I teach graphic designs students.

Having students do it on MSWord helps students focus on design and yet words are strong.

Newsletters are often taught in Word because that is common and available.

Service Learning: Must connect to course. So you could have them work in food bank, but then they write a reflection page about their experience.

How would someone who is teaching first year comp adopt the principles of writing for a client?
FYC students could write the inquiry letters.
Newsletters could be written by the first year students. Data is gathered, but a matter of arranging it. So perhaps they could take on the writing.
Fund-raising letters.
Gather and write info for grant writing, if nonprofits could articulate ideas.
One thing I had them do was to rewrite the materials for student orientation. (They worked with HR and it changed.)
Look at the work your university is doing and how to improve the docs.

Looked at websites as visual and verbal rhetoric. Websites had a huge impact on my applying there.
Need a rhetorically appropriate website. Otherwise people will be turned off.
Technical design and rhetoric websites specifically should have excellent websites.

Working in industry keeps you fresh and current.

Teach Humanities classes, so many future graphic artists and animators.
Have students who devote their lives to graphic design and a lot of times they are sad that it is already out there.

Look for the gap.

We are not developing technical writers at A&M but they know how to write so they end up writing it.

Troubled personally and professionally about my senior English majors who could not write a grammatically correct sentence.

Will pull the awful sentences out of the paper, put them online, and we edit them together.
The students’ sentences get better.
Part of the problem is that our colleagues lack abilities to mark.
People quit teaching grammar.

Contextualization of grammar.

I have presented 33 conference presentations in the last three years. But I’ve learned a new term: “lightning shorts.”

Apparently “lightning shorts” are the humanities equivalent of the social science poster presentation.

The Digital Humanities Caucus of the XXX solicits conference attendees to present their newest digital projects or related work in “lightning shorts”. These 3-5 minute presentations, held XXX from 10-11:45 am at the annual conference at the XXX, allow any attendee to present their on-going or completed work in the digital humanities, receive community feedback, and participate in a culminating discussion of issues raised by the presentations.
…
We are seeking participants to offer lightning talks related to current projects, papers, proposals, publishing, teaching, or related activities: just about anything digital in XXX. We want to know what you’re working on–but briefly! There’s no need to write a mini-paper. Extempore speaking from PowerPoint slides, a Web site, or your own memory are all encouraged. We will have a computer/projector in the room with PowerPoint loaded and live Internet access available.

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.

Travis Frampton
Hardin-Simmons University

“Dueling Discourses: Spinoza’s Contribution to Biblical Interpretation, Literary Criticism, and Scientific Methodology”

early modern science brought new theological problems
Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo took apart Platonic and Aristotelian science

Was the biblical world the same as what was unfolding?
What would tribes in the Americas and Africa, not listed in Genesis, mean?
How would a heliocentric worldview change?

Three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism… Really?

Spinoza said:
Bible spoke of God imaginatively. Prophets wrote according to their own understanding.

Wanting to study the text with fresh eyes, wanted to show that Bible was historical and contingent. That it was a canon. Very core was rooted in and formed by history. A compendium of works from different vantage points, languages, cultures…
Created the Bible as a natural thing.
Protestant view that Bible would interpret itself was false.
Reader passive or active?
Bible, authors, readers, interpretation were all caught in the web of history.
Reading history was a thoroughly human affair.
No reader can escape history.
Interpretation must appeal to universal reason.
Revealed knowledge is possible, but it cannot be spoken to or about. (Gorgias again)

Those who made use of reason could not be called prophets.
Their form of communication allowed audience to accept or reject what they read.
Accepting the meaning of another = dogma
Adopting views of others (Aristotle, Calvin, etc) is bad.
Reader must engage the text itself.

Circular reasoning (Bible true b/c God’s word. God’s word b/c true.) bad.

Biblical writers had a lack of understanding about nature. Natural knowledge poor.

Spinoza’s method= “Since Bible is concerned with things that cannot be seen in nature, Biblical meaning must be seen in the Bible alone.”

Secularized the study of Scripture.
Chapters 7-12, does a Biblical study.
Rejected Mosaic author of Pentateuch.
Genesis through II Kings—late date.
Saw Bible as one historical work among many.

Called one group of interpreters skeptics. They were cautious about reason’s ability to understand Scripture. Word of God was over reason.
This was the most common and orthodox during 17th C.

Dogmatists= Accommodated Scripture to reason.
No conflict between faith and philosophy, both were true.

Reason and Scripture might not be in harmony.
Reason = truth
Scripture = meaning
Those are not necessarily the same.

Philosophy should not interpret the Bible. (philosophy = natural science in the 17th C, metaphysics and/or natural studies)
Truth is the way you see the world operate. It is what it is. You don’t have a text explaining it. Nature never explains itself.
Before the Protestant Reformation, Nature was a way of giving meaning to human lives. (What would this do with OE works?)
Truth is modernistic, reason able to arrive at based on nature and human mind.
Meaning is not from philosophy.

Meaning is the way people might talk about things: hearsay evidence, historical studies, culture.

Spinoza was afraid that commoners would not be able to read the Bible if philosophy gained a foothold.

“The rule of interpretation must be nothing other than the natural light of reason that is common to all men…” –Spinoza

Sometimes a passage might not make sense just because it did not make sense.

Two different forms of discourse: theology and philosophy.

Revelation of God = book of Scripture and book of Nature (common belief for centuries)

For Spinoza, book of Nature was true.
Book of Scripture was a historical, cultural, imaginative work to discuss the world they saw.

Scripture and theology described God’s work with a beginning and an end.
Spinoza does not think Nature has a beginning and an end. Has no purpose.
Humans speak anthropomorphically.

By loving God and loving one’s neighbor…

Philosophy = reason, the way to speak about the world as it is, explaining nature
Theology = speak about the world metamorphically, the world as it could be or as it ought to be

Theological discourse needed to be kept separate from philosophy.

Not confident in social progress.
Not everyone thought rigorously and soundly about the world.

Moral thinking contributing a great service to society. Truth was not a final end or goal for society. Ethics were.
For Spinoza to suggest as much, how one lived was more important than why one lived that way. Actions were better than beliefs. (This is a common sci fi/fantasy belief system. Valdemar/Lackey does this.)

True religion is a reasonable religion.

17th C context
Lot of people speaking on God’s behalf.
Trying to find out true matter of God on earth was bad, because was leading to war, etc.
Deeds prioritized over talk (from book of James).

Questions and answers:
His most famous work is The Ethics.
His work is very awkward.
Trying to write ethics as math.
Worth reading because a lot of his final principles that he believed could be arrived at in the same way that Jesus’ understanding of the way we should act. Jesus’ text show how we can get along best period. Can also find this same example from nature and social relationships, if you have more time.

Spinoza sees salvation here and now. A good Sadduccee.
Not a good Jewish person, excommunicated because he denied the immortality of the soul.

How might he be used to critique worldview thinking? Truth isn’t the final end.
Jamie Smith at Calvin College—cognitive limited

Understanding Midrash is key to understanding Jesus’ parables. Really need to get this.

Fascinating idea. Look at the Jewish translations.
Robert Alter on Biblical Language
These two things don’t quite line up but very generous reader to the background.

*SWCCL = Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.

Philip Mitchell
Dallas Baptist University

“realistic biography… reveals about a man the precise points which are unimportant” (G.K. Chesterton)

In the early persons, he began to develop an unsystematic approach to biography. Rejected historiography. Without a sense of the emotional tone, the purposes of bio were aborted. Picturesque, comic, and heroic show the person.

Discovered that a life can sum up an era or an attitude.

Nothing of the formalist fear of the ______ fallacy. Told what a person was thinking and why.

It’s a call for sympathy from the readers’ part. (1895-1905)

Has an arresting strangeness in each biography.
Coins counter-intuitive terms to explain the periods.
Written originally for newspapers.
Particular order in books shows care.

Opening essay presents the ideas.
Next five are aesthetic.
Three are prophetic.
Sandwiched by essays on normal.

Essays on humor (Bret Harte)
Then heroic v. weak national memory
Then four Victorian cases

12 Types, starts with Charlotte Bronte and ends with Sir Walter Scott.

Point/counterpoint pattern.

Model Chesterton’s wisdom methodology.

Critic: Don’t put all the folks together the way he does.

Instead, Mitchell says, it’s a presentation. Positive and weak power. Chesterton’s judgments have a powerful immediacy.
1. awaken reader to other worlds worth arguing with
2. reader gains wisdom by joining with

Bronte:
The real that is worth recounting is the “indestructible germ,” even when it is minor.
Locating the essence of someone is the important thing.
Can’t concentrate on the comic or shocking.
Life is invested with sweetness.
All houses are houses of joy and terror.

Chesterton extends an argument for narratives, not fiction, but human narrative sets.

Extends this principle to William Morris, “Wm Morris and His School.” Rightfully forced Victorians to face up to their ugliness. Morris did not understand the “human figures in the round.” Could not love the “fabulous monster of industrial London.”
Art did a world of good for Victorian homes, but not for humanity.

Morris, the lover of fairy tales, should have known better.

Experience sympathy with past eras that they would be tempted to slough off.

“Optimism of Byron” unconscious buoyancy v. real pessimism
Everything has once belonged somewhere, including the affective pessimism.
True pessimism is different.

“Pope and the Art of Satire” is on the nature of true wit.
Challenges readers for the lack of their understanding of the 18th C.
What the modern reader lacks is what Pope possesses.
True hatred requires full awareness of what is hated (thus satire is better).

St. Francis essay.
Hopes to awaken audience to “sensual excitement that is present in the practice and goals of the Franciscans.”
Asceticism, too, is staggering optimism, fit to put all people capering.

Rostand essay.
Heroic comedy, Cyrano de Bergerac, love of love and love of death are two passions of humanity.
Poetry is great.

These four historical pieces, psychological and spiritual centers of the world view.
“romance of civilization” (see list on handout)

More nuanced historical judgment.
Charles II is open to and not engaged with religion and science.
Aspects of human beings remain unaccounted for in every system.
Charles II gains sympathy, but more pity. Epicurean of a lesser type in a protected polity.
“Strange unreality broods over the period.”
“Our restraints are larger than their liberty.”

Robert Louis Stevenson:
Critics are unable to see optimism of heroic violence.
Love of the good and the beautiful for its own sake. This includes an imaginatively lived experience.
Loyalist to the world’s physical goodness and humanity’s dramatic explorations.

Carlyle, able to love God and the great, but not the regular person.
“cosmic irony”
To understand Carlyle you must distinguish him from later philosophers.
Says he comes close to Christianity when he sees a leader who is loving and magnanimous.
Seed of Carlyle’s madness (which lead to Nietzche) came from his inability to recognize the evil of slavery.

Tolkien

Savonarola as an iconoclast was needed to cleanse them to aspire to something beyond taste.

Sir Walter Scott- romantic imagination to tell us what life really is
Loves oratory. But a poor person’s voice can speak well.
Modernist realism cannot imagine attributing good speech to the poor.
“false cosmos, a lying and horrible perfection” = what others say (biographies?)

Hopes to open contemporaries to the past.
Not in distance, but in empathic manner.

Romance and adventure, and other genres, to make sense of other lives.

Question:
How did idea for this paper develop?

Chesterton’s approach to history. In middle of a book on…
Broad model for the thing.
Looking at individual texts more closely.
Each essay has the pattern.

Was curious if this happens in the book too.
Not just getting the audience to look at the past but also a pattern to build a case.

The only real difference is the second part (twenty total) is humility and inaction.
Queen Victoria’s strategic inaction gave her the strength to influence the masses.
He calls her attitude a raging humility, made it possible to keep the excesses of the British system in check until Edwardianism.

*SWCCL= Southwest Conference of Christianity and Literature

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.

Ginger Stelle
Morthland College (in Illinois, new college)
PhD from St. Andrew’s University, Scotland

“Saving Poppie: Social Outreach in George MacDonald’s Guild Court”

Lecture designed to explode students’ preconceived notions about Victorian.
There is no such thing as a typical Victorian.
Attitude toward technology, women, etc, underwent changes throughout Victoria’s time on the throne.

Attitudes toward social reform also changed.

Poverty was huge.
Social reform was organized. “potentially doing more harm than good.”

George MacDonald gives his view of social reform through his character of Poppie. Non-fantasy novels, almost without exception, include salvation and often economic salvation as well.
Unrealistic to expect folks living in squalor to listen to those who are well-dressed and full.
Can satisfying immediate needs really equip them for living? No.

Octavia Hill, GMacD shared her views of social reform.

Only way to improve a person’s life is to change both physical and spiritual help.

Social workers, two main characters.
No desire for the betterment of the masses can make up for the lack of faith in an individual.

Indiv relationships built with those he wants to help. Through those relationships, works to make changes that will last.

Focuses on different approaches that are taken to help in Guild Court.
Lucy’s grama, Thomas’ employer, Thomas’ family, bookseller and daughter, Poppie

Poppie “as odd a character as any of MacDonald’s grotesque”

“a little girl… perhaps 10 years old… wild as any savage in Canadian forest… dress was a fright… ribbons that fanned her legs… shoes that afforded more room for the snow”
No parental supervision. No training. Everything she does is instinctual. Uninfluenced by societal norms.
Real is only what she experiences. Nothing else matters.
For all that she is a “human animal,” she has an imagination. Imagination begins as instinctual.
Lucy’s red cloak catches her imagination.
Cries over the rose bush.

She goes to a Wax museum and thinks it is how the wealthy dispose of their dead.

Recognizes love.
Gives Lucy a piece of shiny red glass. Present.
Lucy kisses Poppie.
Poppie breaks down and cries, for the first time since babyhood.

Lucy: bath, social education, clothes, takes her to a party…
Poppie goes. She has been clean at least once. Might serve as a type of something better.
Poppie grabs something and ducks under the table to eat it. Then when the door opens, she makes her escape.
Poppie preferred all London to the largest house.

The spontaneous kiss does more.
Bond between two.
Despite the unpleasant recollections of the party, Poppie looks for Lucy.
Poppie says she will take something, if Lucy will kiss her.
Lucy says she will kiss her, if Poppie will keep her face clean.
Poppie turns away sad. Poppie does take the letter anyway.
Lucy could not bear it.
Ran after her and kissed her.
Poppie runs away.
Delivers letter. Returns with a clean face, looking like a “little saint, except with dirty hair.”
Underscores that the kissing for a clean face was for Poppie’s growth.

Mr. Spelt the tailor:
Sees her on the square.
Poppie is about the right age of Spelt’s lost child.
5 minutes of thinking, believed or desired to believe it.
Decides to adopt Poppie.
Begins subtly.
Leaves candy in the street.
Does this for a few days.
It becomes part of her reality.
After that, he adds a string to the candy and pulls it towards him.
Continues.
Usually runs away. But do talk.
When she is injured, she runs to Spelt. She became sick and Spelt took care of her.
“the humanity of the child had an opportunity to … love Mr. Spelt”
He had a chance against her prior experiences.
Allows a safe environment and time.

She begins to see him as home.
Calls him Daddy.
Begins to adapt civilized behavior.
Becomes cleanly.
Wants better clothes.
Mr. Spelt makes her clothes that she likes, not that culture wants.
She finds work. Two kinds of work.
Loves her as she is and encourages her to find her own way.

She begins to grow in the love and understanding of God through Spelt’s sacramental approach to Poppie.

She had no conscious understanding of God, but her essential humanity is encouraged.

Her first prayer is for victory in a fight.

Mr. Fuller, local preacher, education
Gets to know indiv Poppie before deciding to educate her.
All her impressions were through her senses.
He doesn’t tell her stories, but shows her pictures of Jesus. Tells the story with art.

Poppie is almost unrecognizable.
Lucy found Poppie washing cups and saucers…
“the real woman in her had begun to grow” (and become a house cleaner)

her acquisition was not great but she learned to think with some of the most valuable characteristics of childhood.

“sign of redemption”
not brought about by formal education, strict religious training, or anything else
focused on individuals who responded to Poppie individually.
Provided for bother her spiritual and physical needs.
Started her on the journey of faith.

Advocated an approach through kindness and human affection to activate the natural and God-ward channel…

Questions:
Used the word “sacramental”
Is that his word?
That is a word that the vast majority of the critics use to describe him. The idea that all life is a means of drawing closer to God. Nature incredibly important to MacDonald and every inch of it sacramental.

Similar, relational approach to redemption is in ALL of MacDonald’s works

F. D. Morris and Christian socialist movement influenced him.
Own experience with church and outside of the church.
Own experiences with constant money problems, gotten through those by individuals who helped them.
He got in trouble with the church for his universalism.
Saw the church was unhappy with him for saying they had to do more than give money.

*SWCCL = Southwest Conference of Christianity and Literature

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.

Carole Logan Carroll
Lubbock Christian University
“The Bible and the Qur-an: Creating a Questing Faith in the Literature Classroom”

Showed pictures of granddaughter, Madison.

Come at students differently when teaching sacred texts.
Experiences and things you see in classroom.
Teach sections of sacred texts.
My point is to look at these at literary texts, but in a way that will hopefully get them out of their bubble. Want them to start questing.

“I expect you all to be independent, innovative, critical thinkers who will do exactly as I say…” – move past this model

Beginnings:
Sophomore lit class students are confused
Interest and delight from Bible majors, because have already read some of this
Most seem uncomfortable or even wary
That is a good thing.

Questing faith begins in discomfort.
My personal pedagogical philosophy hinges on creating “possibility spaces for generating and testing ideas” (Holmes Rolston, III) and is thus founded on the very notion of questing.

When the secular collides with the sacred, non-bible majors are given the opportunity to grapple with a well-known story from two quite divergent texts, they experience a naturally occurring questing faith outside of a regular Bible class.

Old questions, new answers

Middle-ings:
Begin a questing faith for them.
the readings
PowerPoint
Have everything online with Moodle.
2-3 page journal entry comparing or contrasting the two versions

Presenter doesn’t talk first. Has them look at the PP and read.
“My goal is to help begin rather than end a questing faith.”

Several times within the reading, she interrupts and says, “Look at me. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”

Endings:
Students don’t know that Jesus is in the Qur’an
Not aware that the Muslim faith is Abrahamic

They are complexed and I do a happy dance.

Class Discussions:
The changing face of Jesus—‘Breck girl with pretty hair and blue eyes,’ to other images, older and newer, but different for the students.

Proof-texting:
This is a problem the students don’t see.
Matt. 10:34 and Sura 4:34
–women who don’t mind can be beaten Sura 4:34
Don’t think that I came to bring peace, but a sword. Matt. 10:34
Don’t take one thing out and use it for proof.

Myth-making: Core
Which is true? How do they find them?

Story-telling and oral tradition
Story-telling main point in class.
Talk about it a lot.
How did they get so different?
Dev. of stories over time

PowerPoint gives background of the three monotheistic faiths.

Tradition and truth
Difference between what they know and what is true.

OT God and Allah
Is Allah the OT God? Where do they converge/separate?

Let the questions come up.
Sneeches version… (No one getting anywhere.)

Bible majors who will begin a discussion that get rest of student’s involved.

Walked in class. “Look up 5 Pillars of Islam.”
They are going to have to read through other things.
Exposure to a religious system they aren’t aware of before.

First pillar: One God, Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.
- Jesus is a Muslim prophet.
- …
Second pillar: Prayer.

Students are amazed because they seem very familiar.
Can’t tell if those are OT or from Qur’an.

Very first Sura that talks about God sounds just like something from the Bible.

I don’t give them the answers. I don’t have all the answers.
I do know what I believe and why and I want them to know what they believe and why.
I’ve been teaching this class since the late 90s.
These two texts seem to create this idea of questing faith.
I am very blessed to have the opportunity to teach this in the classroom that isn’t a Bible class.

*SWCCL = Southwest Conference of Christianity and Literature

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.

Chris Holland
from Hardin-Simmons University

“Inciting Ethics: Entrapment Rhetoric in Amos’ Oracles Against the Nations”

II Samuel 1-15
Nathan confronts David over his affair with Bathsheba.
Nathan tells story.
David is filled with righteous outrage.
Then Nathan reveals the truth.
David is the rich man.

“Entrapment Rhetoric”
Invites audience to indite a group in a story.
Then shows the parallel between audience’s actions and that group.

Amos I and 2 “Oracle Against the Nations”
Modern rhetorical criticism, needs to be viewed within the text, rhetorical situation, and rhetorical problem (G. Kennedy)

BCE—Why use this? Why not BC?

Amos’ oracle presentation, post exilic date would give you a more complex rhetorical situation.

Intro to book of Amos, first 2 verses, all 3 Aristotelian proofs (ethos, logos, pathos)
Ethos:
Fall of Israel and earthquake show ethos
Many things Amos spoke have already come to pass.
Amos is a prophet.

Enthymeme = logos

These two verses set tone of danger to the entire book.
Amos then declares God’s judgements on 8 nations.
1:3, 6, 9, 11, 13, 2:1, 2:4, 2:6

Outlined formula in the bold. (on the handout)
Each pattern begins with “thus says the Lord.”
Reinforcement of the ethos.
Says 3 wrong, and 4. (Hebrew poetry pattern)
Uses this point with only one crime for each nation.
Similar to “how much more so.”
Specific crime listed at each sequel is probably the pinnacle.
A rhetorical move to keep audience engaged in speculation.

Grammatical construction altered for clarity.
“I will not revoke the punishment”
but “punishment” is additional
“I will not revoke it” (real language) but what is it?

Audience must supply the punishment themselves. A grammatical enthymeme.

Listing of specific crimes would immediately have caused the audience to be angry. Would have affirmed the Lord’s judgment with increasing joy.
(Burning the bones of the king is a transgression against God. Why?)

Arrangement
Each nation reads from geographic and ethnical distance.
Far away, close, and then sister.

Judah is actually given with 3. Judah actually gets more of the points.

But the oracle to Judah is a false indication of conclusion.
Judah only has 3 points.

Israel’s crimes and debts are listed.
Judgment is described at greater length.
Own people and God
Specific infractions of God’s law broken by Israel.

There is some parallelism between other nations’ and Israel’s transgressions:
1:6, 9 and 2: 7
1:13 and 2:7

From celebration to shame…

Poetic form of the personal pronoun.
Usually the I is subsumed into the verb.
But in this instance it is also in the sentence as a pronoun, too.
“I delivered them. But they betrayed me.” (God actually adds the I/me into the sentence.)

God says he will judge. They will be unable to save themselves.

Israelites must have been given opportunity to respond well or poorly to prophet’s word.

Judah has seen the Israelites punished as Amos said.
Actual effect of Amos’ rhetoric is difficult to determine.
7:12 Amos is forced out of Israel.
Written record of Amos may or may not have conformed to Josiah’s reformation.

Amos creates entrapment rhetoric, encouraging the audience to judge the nations and then showing how they are going to be judged as well.

Amos relies on pathos particularly, especially in Israel.

Entrapment is built on the incitement of his audience.
Amos incites and satisfies his audience and keeps them in suspense with the 3 and 4, but only giving one.
Amos guides them to ethical reflection BEFORE their own judgment is given.

The more they agree/see/understand God’s judgment elsewhere, the more they are struck by their own sin.
Before this experience, the ethical implications of their actions are in the backs of their minds.

Question: What translation?
Used NRSV sometimes. There is a flair to the KJV language.
Have you used Alter’s translations? No. Used only his book on Hebrew rhetoric.

*SWCCL = Southwest Conference of Christianity and Literature

In live blogging this conference, I am following the conventions for conference blogging.

Susan Bruxvoort Lipscomb
Of Houghton College
Teaching Doubt at a Christian College: Tennyson’s “Lame Hands of Faith”

BA Calvin College
MA U of Chicago
PhD U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Avid vegetable gardener

Less than 1100 students. Uniformity in faith. Evangelical subculture. Clear narrative, testimony after crisis.

College changes them.

Spring, interviews seniors who explain what they are best at and who they are.
Books they have read: Lewis and Tolkien are always on the list.

College changes them in ways they do not expect.

They learn that the process of forming the biblical canon was messy.
Intellectual history of Western culture shows Protestant Reformation as harbinger of breakdown between faith and reason.

Some leave the faith.
Some become Catholic.
Some change denominations.

4-year institution
Students from stable, affluent families. First life-time experiences change them.
The literature classroom is one of the places where students process these changes.

When a liberal arts college is functioning at its best, but lit class is particularly situated to help students understand the changes as narrative of transition rather than a narrative of crisis.

Teaching texts that wrestle with the themes of suffering and pain, and texts that raise questions about faith, is particularly helpful for the students.

In Memoriam
Teach in 200 level, Lit and Wisdom, core requirement for lit and philosophy
Read classics of lit and philosophy
Chronological march from Ecclesiastes to 1993 play Wit
Classroom becomes a community over the semester.
Other teacher is her husband.
Title for the week in which we teach Tennyson is “An Unquiet Faith.”
Read The Brothers Karamotzov, In Memoriam by Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach.”

Characteristic ways that eras have examined faith.

“Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night..” –M. Arnold “Dover Beach”

“ The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.” –M. Arnold “Dover Beach”

Seriousness of loss of faith.
But narrator is also comic.
Dover Beach is a popular honeymoon site. Probably wrote it on his honeymoon.
How did his bride feel about that?
Not to mock the Victorian crisis of faith, but to see the affectation of the crisis of faith.

One discussion period on Dostovesky.
One on Tennyson.

Written over 17 years.
College friend, engaged to his sister, died in Italy of a brain aneurysm.
Each section can more or less stand alone.
We make very careful selections among the sections.

The early sections represent Tennyson in grief.
“Ah, sweeter to be drunk…
But all he was is overworn.” In Memoriam 1. 9-16

Section 7, stands outside the house and feels his absence.
“Dark house, by which once more I stand
…
A hand that can be clasp’d no more.”— VII

Versus another time when he is there CXIX, 1-4, 11-12.

“So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch’d me from the past,
And all at once it seem’d at last
The living soul was flash’d on mine.” XCV.33-36

Tennyson struggles with how to come to terms with the loss of friend but also with a world which biologically requires death.

Are God and Nature then at strife, LV.5-8

“red in tooth and claw”

Nature finding that of fifty seeds, only brings one to bear.

LVL.1-4

LV.16-20 “I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.”

T.S.Eliot, from Essays Ancient and Modern
“In Memoriam can, I think… a very intense experience.”

In its day, it was seen as a poem of strong faith.
“…a priceless but much neglected means of spiritual improvement, the efficacy of which not even the most sceptical [sic] can deny.”

“a priceless benefit to many an earnest seeker in this generation” –Charles Kingsley

Encounter with a poet who is hanging onto faith while wrestling with his doubts. They don’t care as much about his theology. It is enough that he is asking the same kind of questions they are asking.

“That God, which ever lives and loves…
To which the whole creation moves.” Epilogue, 141-144

Wrote the last before the rest? Really?

Students trust Tennyson. From his strong conclusion they are confident that he reaffirms his faith.

Read authors who are strong in their faith. (X, X)
Read authors who reject faith. (Eliot, Arnold)
Not as much thought about reading about a journey of faith.

Most poetry is the “luminous particular,” the one moment narrative.
But Tennyson opens up a lifetime of doubt.
One continuous process of reflection and even questioning.

Students come to college understanding about their faith.
In teaching In Memoriam I also hope to teach them about doubt.

Questions:
How did the students do with the nontraditional ending of Tennyson, where he says his friend is mixed with God and nature?

Curious… with Brothers Karamatzov “greatest attack on Christianity ever”… Overwhelming. Caused depression. Prof said, “Keep reading. It’s not the end of the story.” Do you let them know “The Grand Inquisitor” is not the end of the book?

Crisis of Modernity.
Nietsche taught the next week.
Week 15 present Flannery O’Conner, at people who are putting together with faith post-modern answers.

Was there a bit of Hebrews’ “though he is dead, continues to speak”?
Is there a sense in which the friend is actively speaking these?
Yeah. There’s a kind of a resurrection. It’s mystical. But it is a strong statement of faith and the students see it that way.

*SWCCL = Southwest Conference of Christianity and Literature