You should prepare a 5-7 minute presentation (the buzzer--err, bizzer?--will ring at 7 minutes and you'll be cut off) on your blogging experience over the last 16 or so weeks. This is your time to reflect on what blogging--self-narrating, self-creating, self-editing--has meant for you. I would like you to focus on one or two key moments that reveal something important/interesting/engaging about your process. How has the work of blogging shaped the way you read published life writing? How has the work of blogging changed the way you live your life (Gillian's inquiry)? Is it something you can imagine continuing? Why or why not? What has been your experience of reading other blogs and engaging in a textual community online? How have your graphic strategies corresponded to your textual ones?
These are questions to get you started. You could approach this presentation from any number of angles. The goal is for you to reflect critically on the work you've been doing--and we'll all been observing--over the semester. I'd love to hear larger claims about how blogging both challenges and perhaps consolidates a study of the history of women's life-writing....
Good luck and have fun with this.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
respond to a response
Prepare a one-paragraph response to Sidonie Smith's characterization of Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior. Smith called it "an autobiography about women's autobiography." What do you think about this? If it is, in fact, an autobiography about autobiography, what does it tell us about the genre? Choose one moment in the text and offer a close reading that supports your claims.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Blogging Ideas
You have roughly four more weeks of blogging for this course. If you have fallen behind, take the time to catch up with these prompts. They may inspire something else, something similar, or something wholly unexpected...
1. Write a "Day in the Life of..." Include pictures from your various daily routines (digital cameras may be checked out of the library)
2. Analyze one of your classmates blogs
3. Write about what you've learned about yourself and others through blogging
4. Write about one of your body parts and your relationship to it
5. Recount a memory of a childhood moment in the third person
6. Write about the most important relationship in your life
7. Describe your relationship to music
8. Describe your relationship to art
9. ...to writing
10. ..to blogging
11. ..to family
12. Describe your component parts
13. Think through your relationship to physical space
14. Write about a social issue that drives you mad
15. About what are you most afraid?
15. ....most excited?
16. What qualities do you detest in others? Illustrate with vivid examples
17. What do you most admire in others?
18. Link to a blog post that gets at something you find most true, most real, most engaging
19. Describe a moment of revelation
20. Describe a moment when feeling overwhelmed you
21. Describe a process that you undertake everyday and that reveals something about your core being
1. Write a "Day in the Life of..." Include pictures from your various daily routines (digital cameras may be checked out of the library)
2. Analyze one of your classmates blogs
3. Write about what you've learned about yourself and others through blogging
4. Write about one of your body parts and your relationship to it
5. Recount a memory of a childhood moment in the third person
6. Write about the most important relationship in your life
7. Describe your relationship to music
8. Describe your relationship to art
9. ...to writing
10. ..to blogging
11. ..to family
12. Describe your component parts
13. Think through your relationship to physical space
14. Write about a social issue that drives you mad
15. About what are you most afraid?
15. ....most excited?
16. What qualities do you detest in others? Illustrate with vivid examples
17. What do you most admire in others?
18. Link to a blog post that gets at something you find most true, most real, most engaging
19. Describe a moment of revelation
20. Describe a moment when feeling overwhelmed you
21. Describe a process that you undertake everyday and that reveals something about your core being
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
20 Years
Jane Addams's Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes is our book for next week. I love this text and it changed--and continues to change--the way that I thought/think about autobiography, myself, my world, the world. It may seem a bit dry at first glance, but give it time and put in the effort. I'd like you to make your way through it in its entirety, but focus especially on the following chapters (you can "read in" the others):
Chap. 1 Earliest Impressions
Chap. 2 Influence of Lincoln
Chap. 3 Boarding School Ideals
Chap. 4 Snare of Preparation
Chap. 5 First Days at Hull-House
Chap. 6 Subjective Necessity...
Chap. 7 Some Early Undertakings...
Chap. 8 Problems of Poverty
Chap. 11 Immigrants and their Children
Chap. 15 The Value of Social Clubs
Chap. 16 Arts at Hull-House
Chap. 18 Socialized Education
I'll be interested to hear about what you think that this text does, how it works, and how it resonates even today. What is the relationship between the autobiography (or "autobiographical notes") and her work toward social justice for immigrants in Chicago.
p.s. Jane Addams had a long history of affiliation with Bryn Mawr. She was the commencement speaker in 1912 and she maintained a working relationship with M. Carey Thomas for many years thereafter.
Chap. 1 Earliest Impressions
Chap. 2 Influence of Lincoln
Chap. 3 Boarding School Ideals
Chap. 4 Snare of Preparation
Chap. 5 First Days at Hull-House
Chap. 6 Subjective Necessity...
Chap. 7 Some Early Undertakings...
Chap. 8 Problems of Poverty
Chap. 11 Immigrants and their Children
Chap. 15 The Value of Social Clubs
Chap. 16 Arts at Hull-House
Chap. 18 Socialized Education
I'll be interested to hear about what you think that this text does, how it works, and how it resonates even today. What is the relationship between the autobiography (or "autobiographical notes") and her work toward social justice for immigrants in Chicago.
p.s. Jane Addams had a long history of affiliation with Bryn Mawr. She was the commencement speaker in 1912 and she maintained a working relationship with M. Carey Thomas for many years thereafter.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Mary Antin Introduction
Consider Antin's introduction to The Promised Land:
I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over. Is it not time to write my life's story? I am just as much out of the way as if I were dead, for I am absolutely other than the person whose story I have to tell. Physical continuity with my earlier self is no disadvantage. I could speak in the third person and not feel that I was masquerading. I can analyze my subject, I can reveal everything; for she, and not I, is my real heroine. My life I have still to live; her life ended when mine began.
A generation is sometimes a more satisfactory unit for the study of humanity than a lifetime; and spiritual generations are as easy to demark as physical ones. Now I am the spiritual offspring of the marriage within my conscious experience of the Past and the Present. My second birth was no less a birth because there was no distinct incarnation. Surely it has happened before that one body served more than one spiritual organization. Nor am I disowning my father and mother of the flesh, for they were also partners in the generation of my second self; copartners with my entire line of ancestors. They gave me body, so that I have eyes like my father's and hair like my mother's. The spirit also they gave me, so that I reason like my father and endure like my mother. But did they set me down in a sheltered garden, where the sun should warm me, and no winter should hurt, while they fed me from their hands? No; they early let me run in the fields—perhaps because I would not be held—and eat of the wild fruits and drink of the dew. Did they teach me from books, and tell me what to believe? I soon chose my own books, and built me a world of my own.
In these discriminations I emerged, a new being, something that had not been before. And when I discovered my own friends, and ran home with them to convert my parents to a belief in their excellence, did I not begin to make my father and mother, as truly as they had ever made me? Did I not become the parent and they the children, in those relations of teacher and learner? And so I can say that there has been more than one birth of myself, and I can regard my earlier self as a separate being, and make it a subject of study.
A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession. A true man finds so much work to do that he has no time to contemplate his yesterdays; for to-day and to-morrow are here, with their impatient tasks. The world is so busy, too, that it cannot afford to study any man's unfinished work; for the end may prove it a failure, and the world needs masterpieces. Still there are circumstances by which a man is justified in pausing in the middle of his life to contemplate the years already passed. One who has completed early in life a distinct task may stop to give an account of it. One who has encountered unusual adventures under vanishing conditions may pause to describe them before passing into the stable world. And perhaps he also might be given an early hearing, who, without having ventured out of the familiar paths, without having achieved any signal triumph, has lived his simple life so intensely, so thoughtfully, as to have discovered in his own experience an interpretation of the universal life.
I am not yet thirty, counting in years, and I am writing my life history. Under which of the above categories do I find my justification? I have not accomplished anything, I have not discovered anything, not even by accident, as Columbus discovered America. My life has been unusual, but by no means unique. And this is the very core of the matter. It is because I understand my history, in its larger outlines, to be typical of many, that I consider it worth recording. My life is a concrete illustration of a multitude of statistical facts. Although I have written a genuine personal memoir, I believe that its chief interest lies in the fact that it is illustrative of scores of unwritten lives. I am only one of many whose fate it has been to live a page of modern history. We are the strands of the cable that binds the Old World to the New. As the ships that brought us link the shores of Europe and America, so our lives span the bitter sea of racial differences and misunderstandings. Before we came, the New World knew not the Old; but since we have begun to come, the Young World has taken the Old by the hand, and the two are learning to march side by side, seeking a common destiny.
Perhaps I have taken needless trouble to furnish an excuse for my autobiography. My age alone, my true age, would be reason enough for my writing. I began life in the Middle Ages, as I shall prove, and here am I still, your contemporary in the twentieth century, thrilling with your latest thought.
Had I no better excuse for writing, I still might be driven to it by my private needs. It is in one sense a matter of my personal salvation. I was at a most impressionable age when I was transplanted to the new soil. I was in that period when even normal children, undisturbed in their customary environment, begin to explore their own hearts, and endeavor to account for themselves and their world. And my zest for self-exploration seems not to have been distracted by the necessity of exploring a new outer universe. I embarked on a double voyage of discovery, and an exciting life it was! I took note of everything. I could no more keep my mind from the shifting, changing landscape than an infant can keep his eyes from the shining candle moved across his field of vision. Thus everything impressed itself on my memory, and with double associations; for I was constantly referring my new world to the old for comparison, and the old to the new for elucidation. I became a student and philosopher by force of circumstances.
Had I been brought to America a few years earlier, I might have written that in such and such a year my father emigrated, just as I would state what he did for a living, as a matter of family history. Happening when it did, the emigration became of the most vital importance to me personally. All the processes of uprooting, transportation, replanting, acclimatization, and development took place in my own soul. I felt the pang, the fear, the wonder, and the joy of it. I can never forget, for I bear the scars. But I want to forget—sometimes I long to forget. I think I have thoroughly assimilated my past—I have done its bidding—I want now to be of to-day. It is painful to be consciously of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness. I am not afraid to live on and on, if only I do not have to remember too much. A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run. And I have thought of a charm that should release me from the folds of my clinging past. I take the hint from the Ancient Mariner, who told his tale in order to be rid of it. I, too, will tell my tale, for once, and never hark back any more. I will write a bold "Finis" at the end, and shut the book with a bang!
I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over. Is it not time to write my life's story? I am just as much out of the way as if I were dead, for I am absolutely other than the person whose story I have to tell. Physical continuity with my earlier self is no disadvantage. I could speak in the third person and not feel that I was masquerading. I can analyze my subject, I can reveal everything; for she, and not I, is my real heroine. My life I have still to live; her life ended when mine began.
A generation is sometimes a more satisfactory unit for the study of humanity than a lifetime; and spiritual generations are as easy to demark as physical ones. Now I am the spiritual offspring of the marriage within my conscious experience of the Past and the Present. My second birth was no less a birth because there was no distinct incarnation. Surely it has happened before that one body served more than one spiritual organization. Nor am I disowning my father and mother of the flesh, for they were also partners in the generation of my second self; copartners with my entire line of ancestors. They gave me body, so that I have eyes like my father's and hair like my mother's. The spirit also they gave me, so that I reason like my father and endure like my mother. But did they set me down in a sheltered garden, where the sun should warm me, and no winter should hurt, while they fed me from their hands? No; they early let me run in the fields—perhaps because I would not be held—and eat of the wild fruits and drink of the dew. Did they teach me from books, and tell me what to believe? I soon chose my own books, and built me a world of my own.
In these discriminations I emerged, a new being, something that had not been before. And when I discovered my own friends, and ran home with them to convert my parents to a belief in their excellence, did I not begin to make my father and mother, as truly as they had ever made me? Did I not become the parent and they the children, in those relations of teacher and learner? And so I can say that there has been more than one birth of myself, and I can regard my earlier self as a separate being, and make it a subject of study.
A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession. A true man finds so much work to do that he has no time to contemplate his yesterdays; for to-day and to-morrow are here, with their impatient tasks. The world is so busy, too, that it cannot afford to study any man's unfinished work; for the end may prove it a failure, and the world needs masterpieces. Still there are circumstances by which a man is justified in pausing in the middle of his life to contemplate the years already passed. One who has completed early in life a distinct task may stop to give an account of it. One who has encountered unusual adventures under vanishing conditions may pause to describe them before passing into the stable world. And perhaps he also might be given an early hearing, who, without having ventured out of the familiar paths, without having achieved any signal triumph, has lived his simple life so intensely, so thoughtfully, as to have discovered in his own experience an interpretation of the universal life.
I am not yet thirty, counting in years, and I am writing my life history. Under which of the above categories do I find my justification? I have not accomplished anything, I have not discovered anything, not even by accident, as Columbus discovered America. My life has been unusual, but by no means unique. And this is the very core of the matter. It is because I understand my history, in its larger outlines, to be typical of many, that I consider it worth recording. My life is a concrete illustration of a multitude of statistical facts. Although I have written a genuine personal memoir, I believe that its chief interest lies in the fact that it is illustrative of scores of unwritten lives. I am only one of many whose fate it has been to live a page of modern history. We are the strands of the cable that binds the Old World to the New. As the ships that brought us link the shores of Europe and America, so our lives span the bitter sea of racial differences and misunderstandings. Before we came, the New World knew not the Old; but since we have begun to come, the Young World has taken the Old by the hand, and the two are learning to march side by side, seeking a common destiny.
Perhaps I have taken needless trouble to furnish an excuse for my autobiography. My age alone, my true age, would be reason enough for my writing. I began life in the Middle Ages, as I shall prove, and here am I still, your contemporary in the twentieth century, thrilling with your latest thought.
Had I no better excuse for writing, I still might be driven to it by my private needs. It is in one sense a matter of my personal salvation. I was at a most impressionable age when I was transplanted to the new soil. I was in that period when even normal children, undisturbed in their customary environment, begin to explore their own hearts, and endeavor to account for themselves and their world. And my zest for self-exploration seems not to have been distracted by the necessity of exploring a new outer universe. I embarked on a double voyage of discovery, and an exciting life it was! I took note of everything. I could no more keep my mind from the shifting, changing landscape than an infant can keep his eyes from the shining candle moved across his field of vision. Thus everything impressed itself on my memory, and with double associations; for I was constantly referring my new world to the old for comparison, and the old to the new for elucidation. I became a student and philosopher by force of circumstances.
Had I been brought to America a few years earlier, I might have written that in such and such a year my father emigrated, just as I would state what he did for a living, as a matter of family history. Happening when it did, the emigration became of the most vital importance to me personally. All the processes of uprooting, transportation, replanting, acclimatization, and development took place in my own soul. I felt the pang, the fear, the wonder, and the joy of it. I can never forget, for I bear the scars. But I want to forget—sometimes I long to forget. I think I have thoroughly assimilated my past—I have done its bidding—I want now to be of to-day. It is painful to be consciously of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness. I am not afraid to live on and on, if only I do not have to remember too much. A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run. And I have thought of a charm that should release me from the folds of my clinging past. I take the hint from the Ancient Mariner, who told his tale in order to be rid of it. I, too, will tell my tale, for once, and never hark back any more. I will write a bold "Finis" at the end, and shut the book with a bang!
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
required blog post
Forget the immediacy of your lives for a moment and trace the genealogy of one of your sensibilities. Choose something about yourself -- your preference for root vegetables or your belief in social justice -- and reconstruct its lineage. What are the first traces of this inclination? How did it develop over time?
slight scheduling changes
Feb. 22 mailing a self
1. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "The Female World of Love and Ritual" [BB] [Lauren presents]
2. Konstantin Dierks, “The Familiar Letter and Social Refinement in America, 1750-1800,” in Letter Writing as a Social Practice, in David Barton and Nigel Hall, eds., pp 31-42 [BB] [Dawn presents]
3. Letters of M. Carey Thomas to Mary Elizabeth Garrett, on BB. Note: most of these are handwritten and will take a good deal of time to decipher.
~Optional: David M Henkin, The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America, pp. 93-118 [BB]
~Optional: Lucille Schultz, “Letter-Writing Instruction in 19th Schools in the United States,” in Letter Writing as a Social Practice, in David Barton and Nigel Hall, eds., pp 109-130 [BB]
24 “This is my letter to the World / That never wrote to Me--”
1. Emily Dickinson, selections on BB
2. Elizabeth Hewitt, “Dickinson’s Lyrical Letters,” Correspondence and American Literature, 1770-1865, pp. 142-172 [BB]
3. William Decker, “A Letter Always Seemed to Me Like Immortality,” from his
Epistolary Practices, pp. 141-175 [BB]
March 1 the one that went unwritten
1. M. Carey Thomas, Before They Could Vote, pp. 219-232
2. Margo Culley, “Introduction” to her A Day at a Time: Diary Literature of American
Women, from 1764 to 1985, Smith and Watson, Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, pp. 217-221 [BB]
1. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "The Female World of Love and Ritual" [BB] [Lauren presents]
2. Konstantin Dierks, “The Familiar Letter and Social Refinement in America, 1750-1800,” in Letter Writing as a Social Practice, in David Barton and Nigel Hall, eds., pp 31-42 [BB] [Dawn presents]
3. Letters of M. Carey Thomas to Mary Elizabeth Garrett, on BB. Note: most of these are handwritten and will take a good deal of time to decipher.
~Optional: David M Henkin, The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America, pp. 93-118 [BB]
~Optional: Lucille Schultz, “Letter-Writing Instruction in 19th Schools in the United States,” in Letter Writing as a Social Practice, in David Barton and Nigel Hall, eds., pp 109-130 [BB]
24 “This is my letter to the World / That never wrote to Me--”
1. Emily Dickinson, selections on BB
2. Elizabeth Hewitt, “Dickinson’s Lyrical Letters,” Correspondence and American Literature, 1770-1865, pp. 142-172 [BB]
3. William Decker, “A Letter Always Seemed to Me Like Immortality,” from his
Epistolary Practices, pp. 141-175 [BB]
March 1 the one that went unwritten
1. M. Carey Thomas, Before They Could Vote, pp. 219-232
2. Margo Culley, “Introduction” to her A Day at a Time: Diary Literature of American
Women, from 1764 to 1985, Smith and Watson, Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, pp. 217-221 [BB]
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