m2h blogs by Marcia Hansen

(via dictionary.com) “The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect” (Isaac Bashevis Singer). I think we could say not just literature, but life. But, keeping to literature, let me note that I had an intense emotional reaction to reading Cecilia last week. I hated it; I don’t care if I ever [...]

In lit class tonight, I asked where does the saying “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” come from? Apparently, the phrase, “If you have a lemon, make lemonade” was coined by Howard Luck Gossage in the 50′s. It appears as if his text, The Book of Gossage, is out of stock. From James Sadler, [...]

cross-posted to 8010: Theory and Practice I found myself wanting to develop a writer’s checklist for myself and for my students after reading Bazerman’s article, ��A Relationship Between Reading and Writing: The Conversational Model.�� I find the information that Bazerman presents very compelling because I have a cousin who laments her high school students not [...]

trying to figure this out… register mixing: A register is using language specific to a rhetorical situation, so register mixing would be using language inappropriately to the situation or using different registers for a particular rhetorical situation. cosmology: general theory of the universe, or more specifically, here’s the definition from dictionary.com: “The study of the [...]

My brother gave me this little book called The Meaning of Life*, by Bradley Trevor Greive, a few Christmases past. At first I wondered why, because at first glance it’s rather silly, and I’m not usually a silly person (but, I do recognize that I need to laugh more…but, back to my first story). So [...]

in CCR 711, Network(ed) Rhetorics To quote, Edmonds, et. al.: “If the trends we identified above continue, the future will include virtually everyone using a technology evolved from today’s blog software to manage and share information about topics of their choice in a dense network of personal, corporate and aggregated information services.” To rif on [...]

in CCR 711, Network(ed) Rhetorics Mortensen and Walker review the use of weblogs in their research processes. Their thinking about blogging changed with use. At first, blogging was seen “mainly as tools for focusing, for exchanging information and being part of a discussion…” (250). As researchers and bloggers at once, they immersed themselves in their [...]

CCR 711, Network(ed) Rhetorics. Composing the Self: Of Diaries and Lifelogs, by Jose van Dijck I’m overwhelmed by all of the good summaries everyone has written. I wanted to do something a little different, so instead of summarizing, I have a list of questions and prompts that I have come away with from reading the [...]

Literature after Feminism by Rita Felski In LAF, Felski introduces readers to feminist literary criticism by way of four guiding questions with the purpose of showing how feminist criticism has changed how we read, think, and dialogue with texts: The 4 questions (corresponding to each of the four chapters) 1. How, I ask, does feminist [...]

One of the classes I’m taking this semester is 18th Century Women’s Literature. The first novel we’re reading is Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. I am sad to say that this is the first Austen I will read. Of course, I’ve seen some of the movie adaptations of her work. There is an article by Susan [...]