Tag Archives: Interpretation

Wikis and Hypertexts, Oh My!

I’m really not sure what to say here. I recognize the value of reflection. It forces us (hopefully) to look closely at what we have done in an effort to improve or understand. The problem with this reflection is that I really like the wiki/hypertext assignment. I tried to explain, more in the paper than in class, the pedagogy that I think supports the assignment, so I guess I’ll start there.
Students learn better when they are actively involved.
Students are actively involved in the annotation, small
group discussions, and the web creation.
Collaboration encourages learning.
Collaboration is necessary to format the web page.
The discussion involved in negotiating ideas leads to deeper
understanding.
Negotiation takes place when the differing ideas are
discussed.
Students are more attentive when the learning is fun.
Most students view web pages and wikis as fun
Learning should be student centered
The students are responsible for their own knowledge
with only guidance from me.
Diverse opinions are valued.

I believe the assignment is pedagogically sound and helps students meet the stated objective.

Now to turn to the actual presentation. I felt very short of time. This is obviously an assignment that takes more than one class period to complete. However, I knew that when I decided on this lesson. But… I didn’t expect the time to pass as quickly as it did. I should have planned that a little better.

This is not the way that I actually teach this assignment. Though I do tell students what the goals are for an assignment, they are not usually voiced in the way that I did last night. I would not tell my students that I want them to negotiate and articulate. I would tell then to discuss and come to a workable solution, to agree to disagree.

I would have prepared the students ahead to use the technologies. These would be practiced in class. The wiki work and class discussions would take place well in advance of the due date for the assignment so that students have the time to become familiar with the web authoring. I did not make this clear last night.

I wish I had a copy of a student web page that I could have shown as an example. I used to have an absolutely beautiful one but cannot find it. (Must be that absent minded professor thing.)

Overall, I am pleased with the presentation. I made a couple of mistakes, but I think that I did explain and demonstrate the assignment.

Now I have a question for you. Should I offer an option for students who don’t want to/feel they can’t create a web page?

Please make lots of comments/suggestions!

Edith

An Argument: How “Being Jewish” Influenced Graff More Than He Admits

Gerald Graff says briefly and in passing in Clueless in Academe that he is Jewish and that others (presumably his classmates and teachers) therefore regarded him as intelligent. Graff says, “In my case being Jewish already carried a presumption of being smart that I did not entirely disavow” (p. 216). Graff then attributes his “hidden intellectualism” to a number of factors such as his interest in sports and movies (p. 217). However, I argue (you like that?) that Graff’s being Jewish carried much more weight and had a greater influence on Graff’s value system than he admits. I contend (ha!) that if Graff is like most Jews, being Jewish predisposes him to valuing education, argumentation, and interpretation of texts.

In our last class session, I mentioned that argumentation and interpretation of texts has been the primary pedagogical tool used in formal religious studies since ancient times. Yeshiva boys and rabbinical students read portions of text, considered them deeply, and toyed with how they might be applied in various situations, hypothetical and real. To put it in modern literary terms, they did close readings of texts, sometimes consulted secondary sources (the Talmud), interpreted them, and created arguments. They would often be paired with other students to argue their position, then switch positions and argue the opposite point. This ancient pedagogical practice is still part of rabbinical training today.

Text interpretation and argumentation is not a technique exclusive to the rabbinate; it is embedded in Jewish life for all practicing Jews. The most obvious place we see text interpretation and argumentation is in the synagogue service. Jews read the Torah during particular synagogue services each week and then look for ways to connect the text they have just read to their lives, usually with the guidance of the Rabbi’s sermon. That is why a key component of the modern Bar of Bat Mitzvah service is the reading of a portion of Torah by the child, who then shares his or her interpretation of the text before the congregation.

Interpretation and argumentation also occurs for most Jews outside of the synagogue service. Children who attend Hebrew school, for instance, do close readings of texts, interpret them, and formulate arguments about how that text can be applied to various ethical questions. Recently, for example, my daughter’s religious school class discussed how Torah can be used to argue for or against stem cell research, homosexuality, and various environmental initiatives. Furthermore, home-based Jewish rituals such as the Passover service provide further opportunities for Jews to read texts, interpret them, and formulate arguments. The Hagaddah (the text read aloud at a Passover service) describes the story of Exodus but also offers commentary on that primary text.

One must remember, too, Jews have always held education and the asking of questions in high regard. For example, the most revered person historically in Jewish communities was neither the wealthiest nor the most powerful person in the community; it was the Rabbi. This was so not because the Rabbi was considered to have special powers or to have a special connection with God; it was so because the Rabbi was generally the most educated member of the community and the one who could guide others in their own learning. The word rabbi, in fact, translates as teacher.

Graff, as a Jew, would be predisposed to valuing education, text interpretation, and argumentation. He attributes his status as “closet nerd” to other factors such as in interest in sports and movies. “Being Jewish,” as Graff puts it, no doubt carried at least as much weight as sports and movies in Graff’s pathway to intellectualism, and probably much more. — Laura Hills

This One’s for Holland-Dozier-Holland…

You’re going to have to indulge me for a moment. I promise this post is relevant…

The lyrics below were written by Stephen Merritt, the impetuous darling of the indie-geek songwriting scene and frontman for the Magnetic Fields. Since the mid-90s, Merritt has rightfully earned a reputation for his hyper-literate love songs. As I read Scholes’s comments on deconstructionist criticism, I got out my ipod and pulled up “Ferdinand de Saussure.”

I met Ferdinand de Saussure
On a night like this.
“On love,” he said “I’m not so sure
I even know what it is.
No understanding, no closure,
It is a nemesis.
You can’t use a bulldozer
To study orchids.”

He said:

“So, we don’t know anything
You don’t know anything
I don’t know anything
About love.”
“But we are nothing, (Whoa-oh, whoa-oh)
You are nothing
I am nothing
Without love.”

I’m just a great composer,
And not a violent man.
But I lost my composure,
And I shot Ferdinand,
Crying, “It’s well and kosher,
to say you don’t understand,
but this is for Holland-Dozier-Holland!”

When I first encountered this song during my first year at college, I’d never heard of de Saussure. In an interview, Merritt claimed the song was about the universality of love and a challenge to academics (like de Saussure) that assert we can never truly “know” anything. Love, claimed Merritt, was a universal that could be understood by everyone; it was the only appropriate subject matter for the “perfect” pop song.

We must have a certain degree of cultural knowledge to fully understand the song. First, we must know about Ferdinand de Saussure. Second, we must know that Holland-Dozier-Holland was a songwriting team for Motown during the 1960s. The trio penned some of the era’s greatest pop songs, often on the subject of love [such as, “(Love is like a) Heat wave,” “How Sweet It Is (to be Loved by You),” and “Where did our Love Go?”]. These two bits of knowledge clarify the song’s narrative. In the first verse, de Saussure suggests that writing about love is like using “a bulldozer to study orchids.” In the second verse, the composer shoots de Saussure, with the desperate cry: “this is for Holland-Dozier-Holland!”

So what does all of this have to do with Scholes and textuality? Though I’ve never read de Saussure, I have read Derrida and Foucault. Simply put, reading deconstructionist theory usually makes me feel like the composer in “Ferdinand de Saussure.” I’m as frustrated by the theoretical claim that we can never know anything as I am by the nonsensical nature of the actual words on the page. De Saussure, apparently, is so convoluted that many of his texts require an “expositor” (Culler) to explain to us idiots what in the hell it is that he’s talking about.

My main question regarding deconstructionist theory and criticism is simple: how is this useful to us, as teachers? I understand that Scholes is using a deconstructionist approach to break down assumptions about the structure of literary scholarship. However, he also states that he wants to use critical debates to help students develop their own interpretive skills, specifically their ability to express themselves in writing (15-16). I’m sorry, but what teacher would encourage students to produce ridiculously vague Jamesonian statements such as: “…human sexuality is thus something like a fixed capital” or “The dialectic of desire is thus…something like a negation of a negation”? (Jameson in Scholes, 83). Is anyone else with me here?

I agree with many of Scholes’s points, and I believe it is important for literary educators to have this theoretical background knowledge—if only because it means they’re “keep[ing] up” with their field. However, I do question the basic usefulness of much post-Modern, post-structuralist, and deconstructionist writing. Scholes’s discussion of de Saussure et al immediately brought me back to my undergraduate frustrations. In fact, the following quotation from Derrida’s Speech and Phenomenon prompted me to throw Scholes across the room:

In affirming that perception does not exist, or that what is called perception is not primordial, that somehow everything “begins” by “re-presentation”…and by reintroducing the difference involved in “signs” at the core of what is “primordial”…we are here indicating the prime intention—and the ultimate scope—of the present essay (93).

Excuse me? What? Gee, thanks for clearing that up, Derrida!

I suppose my post can be boiled down to one question: How are we supposed to engage students in critical academic debates (as suggested by Scholes, Graff, and others), when this is what they are going to be faced with?

-Sara

Ben Jonson’s “On My First Son” Actually About His Third Daughter

As I read through this week’s posts so far, I started to feel a bit like the odd woman out. I did NOT love Crosman’s article. For me, the most troubling aspect of this article was Crosman’s tone and obvious disdain for Hirsch’s perspective. Isn’t it odd that Crosman (so intent on pluralism) penned an article that is at times arrogant, “hipper than thou,” and decidedly firm in its own correctness? Is it just me, or could this article be subtitled “Why E.D. Hirsch is a Giant Fascist”?

Granted, I haven’t read Hirsch’s writings on the topic of interpretation and where meaning lies. And true, Crosman’s discussion of Hirsch’s terminology (for example, “verbal meaning vs. “significance”) reveals an overemphasis on semantics–though not necessarily the “contradiction” claimed by Crosman (151).

The specific section of Crosman’s analysis that most bothered me was his insistence that Hirsch’s perspective was the literary equivalent of Hobbes’s Leviathan. This analogy follows a short passage in which Hirsch comments on the development of modern approaches to interpretation:

When critics deliberately banished the original author, they themselves usurped his place, and this led unerringly to some of our present-day theoretical confusions. Where before there had been but one author, there now arose a multiplicity of them, each carrying as much authority as the next….If a theorist wants to save the idea of validity, he has to save the author as well. (Hirsch 5-6, quoted in Crosman 157).

Now, this passage strikes me as an entirely logical way to approach literature. Sure, Hirsch uses the language of politics—but is that not appropriate to a discussion of interpretive “authority”? More importantly, would any of us argue that the author isn’t an authority on what he or she intended?

Crosman takes Hirsch’s political language and runs with it. In Hirsch’s world, asserts Crosman, “meaning is either singular or absolute, or it does not exist (the author = the king)” (157). This statement is inflammatory not only because it misrepresents Hirsch’s comments, but also because it alludes to a political text that is commonly read as a justification for absolute, ruthless, dictatorial rule.

But Crosman does not stop there. He continues to portray Hirsch and his ilk as the old guard, wary of “ignorant” and “arrogant” usurpers of authority—and not just of the literary kind. According to Crosman, Hirsch longs for a world in which there is only ever one Truth, a world in which “decent [decent!!!] regard for hierarchy and order is maintained and the state is at peace” (158). As a writer concerned with words, meaning, and connotations, Crosman clearly knows what he’s doing here. He might as well have called Hirsch a “square.”

Despite Crosman’s insinuations and exaggerations, Hirsch’s perspectives on interpretation struck me as entirely appropriate and well-suited to most poetry written before the 20th century.

By Crosman’s own admission, “the convention that authors make meaning arose from a desire to think of truth as single and univocal” (161). For much of history, this was the main frame through which scholars in all fields perceived the world. Most poems were written with a specific plan, purpose, or with “philosophy” in mind. Would anyone honestly argue that there are multiple valid interpretations to a poem like Jonson’s “On My First Son” or Dryden’s “Song for St. Cecilia’s Day”?

Despite what I’ve written above, I do not completely reject critical theories that locate meaning with the reader. I especially liked Crosman’s point that “authors make meaning…in the sense that we all do—as interpreters, as readers” (162). Likewise, the final stretch of Crosman’s argument against Hirsch (during which he drives home the point that “we make the author’s meaning!”) is very compelling.

In a larger, more philosophical sense, Crosman is also entirely correct that we live in an era in which few people except or believe in one singular truth or authority—in anything, never mind literature.

It makes sense, therefore to read most modern poetry with a pluralistic approach. I’d even venture to say that it should be applied (sparingly) to older texts. That being said, those who overuse such tactics run the risk of missing out on interesting and pertinent historical and biographical factors that can bring a deeper understanding to most texts.

Then again, maybe I’m just a square.

Sara