Literature
The recent "Pirates of the Caribbean" films provided much fodder for discussing the subject of 'piracy' in the classroom. What does it mean to 'copy', 'cut', and 'paste'? (Are these mere aesthetic metaphors, or real acts of violence/creativity?) How does one come up with 'original' ideas out of a common language? Can an iPod distinguish between legally and illegally downloaded tunes? (Can the ear?) Personal computers and similar technologies allow networked citizens to hold a double status as everyday pirates. A modern mise en abyme: someone burning pirated DVDs of "Pirates of the Caribbean."
Today we read in the Times:
Meanwhile, a history class at George Mason University created a brilliant collaborative hoax called "The Last American Pirate." Part of their assignment was to compose a fictitious Wikipedia entry that would make it past the surveillance of the notoriously scrupulous (if also occasionally arbitrary) Wikipedia editors. (It passed, for a while?but now is prefaced by a meta-critical disclaimer of sorts.)
I would like to design a course in which we would confront the myriad specters of piracy that haunt the discipline of English?such as plagiarism, pastiche, and dissemination, to name a few. Are writers always pirates? Or, is writing automatically on the side of "the antipiracy campaign"? Either way, English classrooms would seem to be, unavoidably, "pirate-infested seas" indeed.
- Art And Commerce: A Lesson In Faking
A friend passed along a story about the artist JSG Boggs and his one-sided, hand-drawn dollars that he passes off as real money in stores?only to then sell the receipt, change, and whatever goods he bought as the ?art?. This would seem to function as...
- Wikipedia Assignment
Final two-part writing assignment for an early-21st-century introductory literature class: A couple weeks before the end of the term, each student chooses one text that they have read for the class, and posts it as a Wikipedia article. A complete entry...
- American(ist)s In London: The Sea, Ecs, And Beyond
Yesterday, I returned home to Brooklyn after twelve wonderful days in London where I attended two back-to-back affiliated conferences -- the first for the Society of Early Americanists (SEA) and then for the Early Caribbean Society (ECS) --...
- Teaching Eighteenth-century "atlantic" Literature, Part Two
In my previous blog post, I focused on the institutional context within which we imagine, experiment, and teach the literature and culture of the transatlantic eighteenth century. In this post, I will meditate on some of the metaphors that scholars often...
- Teaching Eighteenth-century "atlantic" Literature, Part One
Almost exactly a year ago, on a panel organized by the Society of Early Americanists (SEA) on the subject of pedagogy at the American Literature Association (ALA)'s annual conference, I gave a presentation about an undergraduate...
Literature
"A New Epoch of Piracy"
The recent "Pirates of the Caribbean" films provided much fodder for discussing the subject of 'piracy' in the classroom. What does it mean to 'copy', 'cut', and 'paste'? (Are these mere aesthetic metaphors, or real acts of violence/creativity?) How does one come up with 'original' ideas out of a common language? Can an iPod distinguish between legally and illegally downloaded tunes? (Can the ear?) Personal computers and similar technologies allow networked citizens to hold a double status as everyday pirates. A modern mise en abyme: someone burning pirated DVDs of "Pirates of the Caribbean."
Today we read in the Times:
More than 100 ships have been attacked in Somalia?s pirate-infested seas in the past year, but no hijacking has attracted as much attention as this one, in large part because the freighter was loaded with arms, including tanks. It stirred fears of a new epoch of piracy and precipitated an unprecedented naval response. Warships from China, India, Italy, Russia, France, the United States, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Greece, Turkey, Britain and Germany have all since joined the antipiracy campaign.
Meanwhile, a history class at George Mason University created a brilliant collaborative hoax called "The Last American Pirate." Part of their assignment was to compose a fictitious Wikipedia entry that would make it past the surveillance of the notoriously scrupulous (if also occasionally arbitrary) Wikipedia editors. (It passed, for a while?but now is prefaced by a meta-critical disclaimer of sorts.)
I would like to design a course in which we would confront the myriad specters of piracy that haunt the discipline of English?such as plagiarism, pastiche, and dissemination, to name a few. Are writers always pirates? Or, is writing automatically on the side of "the antipiracy campaign"? Either way, English classrooms would seem to be, unavoidably, "pirate-infested seas" indeed.
- Art And Commerce: A Lesson In Faking
A friend passed along a story about the artist JSG Boggs and his one-sided, hand-drawn dollars that he passes off as real money in stores?only to then sell the receipt, change, and whatever goods he bought as the ?art?. This would seem to function as...
- Wikipedia Assignment
Final two-part writing assignment for an early-21st-century introductory literature class: A couple weeks before the end of the term, each student chooses one text that they have read for the class, and posts it as a Wikipedia article. A complete entry...
- American(ist)s In London: The Sea, Ecs, And Beyond
Yesterday, I returned home to Brooklyn after twelve wonderful days in London where I attended two back-to-back affiliated conferences -- the first for the Society of Early Americanists (SEA) and then for the Early Caribbean Society (ECS) --...
- Teaching Eighteenth-century "atlantic" Literature, Part Two
In my previous blog post, I focused on the institutional context within which we imagine, experiment, and teach the literature and culture of the transatlantic eighteenth century. In this post, I will meditate on some of the metaphors that scholars often...
- Teaching Eighteenth-century "atlantic" Literature, Part One
Almost exactly a year ago, on a panel organized by the Society of Early Americanists (SEA) on the subject of pedagogy at the American Literature Association (ALA)'s annual conference, I gave a presentation about an undergraduate...