Students, please find below a draft of an example of the kind of writing expected from you in your literacy narrative, as discussed here. When formatted for submission as a paper (which it currently is not, owing to the differences in media), it is of approximately three and a third pages in length, comfortably within what is acceptable for your own submissions.
One of the things expected of those in the professoriate is that they will publish books, the first of which for those professing in the humanities is usually revision and expansion of the dissertation. It might seem counter-intuitive to need to do so; the dissertation is supposed to be a capstone experience in which a scholar demonstrates the ability to make an original contribution to human knowledge. It is supposed to be a highly polished product of years of intensive study and research, thoroughly vetted by several already-established professors, and defended in an open forum from the attacks of colleagues and the occasional departmental enemy. To think it is not good enough boggles the mind--yet it is the case that dissertations need revision.
I have been at slow work on my own, poring once again over the pages that I pored over for years on the way to earning my doctorate, reading again the words I have written. In doing so, it occurred to me that I ought to follow up on one of the footnotes in my dissertation. The note seemed to be a good idea for a paper, and I need to get more papers written so that my students appear the better for having studied under my kind tutelage, and so I began to do a bit of research to see if the idea voiced in it, an idea proceeding from one of the major assertions of the analysis underlying my second dissertation chapter, would work. And I found to my dismay that it did not; I had used something fundamentally wrong to support a full chapter of my dissertation.
The realization embarrassed me greatly, and in that shame, I began again to question my worth. Had I wasted the years spent in study (a question already too much prevalent among those who study the humanities)? Had the time reading deeply and putting words together well and revising those words against the sometimes harsh comments of my committee members been for nothing? Had I been promoted out of pity or out of political concerns rather than because of my merits as a scholar? Was I a fraud to think that I have any expertise in literature? Did I deserve to get to do what I do, to enjoy what is still in some senses a privileged position as a professor of the humanities? My head reeled with such questions and began to range to darker ones yet, and hope began to flee from me.
The development of new knowledge begins with questions, however, and those I asked myself in a frenetic approach to despair began to lead me to other ideas. Perhaps, if my receipt of the degree was political, I was used, but used to an end worth achieving. Perhaps my committee had not noticed the error because even my faulty knowledge in the field surpassed their own--and they are mighty among scholars, so that it is no small thing to stand above them in even so small a way and so limited a set of circumstances. Perhaps the error had escaped attention because it was overshadowed by the other points of proof in the chapter and in the dissertation as a whole, and if it is the case that my other work was so good, I have every right to take pride and be confident in it.
That pride, though, ought to motivate me not to rest easy upon success, but to build upon it and thus come to enjoy more success. If my dissertation is deficient, I have a place in which to improve. If the avenue through which I had thought to develop new knowledge and understanding is closed, its pavement torn up to expose the pipes as corroding away, I can turn to find an alternate route, one that may well offer better scenery or a shorter trip than that to which I had become accustomed. Exploring it will help me to better know the geography of the texts I study, and that cannot but improve my ability to conduct work in the field.
Emboldened by such thoughts, I considered the matter further (although I note with some chagrin that the consideration interfered with my work on revising the dissertation). In recognizing the error, I was reminded that no work of human writing is ever truly finished; there is always more to be said, always more to be discovered, and so no statement of learning ever truly concludes. Even if I cease to work on a project, another may take it up, responding to what I write as my writing responds to that which others do. Improvement is always possible, and there is some comfort in recalling that. Certainly, such comfort upbuoyed me as I regarded my dissertation.
Too, I found a strange solace in the reminder to be humble. I exulted in the completion of my dissertation; I shouted for joy when I sent the final draft of it to my committee members, and I danced in jubilation when they said to me over the phone (for I defended my dissertation remotely from New York City to my graduate school in southwest Louisiana) "Congratulations, Dr. Elliott." It was fitting that I do so; I had labored on it long, and the labor was not easy, for I had to secure the approval of four professors, and their opinions were neither kindly couched nor always in accord with one another. Yet I needed to remember that the dissertation is only one thing, one small part of the human knowledge I had advanced; more was already known than I will ever know, and certainly there is more to add to it. And against that awesome truth, even while celebration is at times warranted, humility is appropriate.
As I think on the matter again while I write about it, a notion related to that of humility occurs to me: the error is a useful piece of my teaching. Since my earliest childhood, I have known that I am supposed to be in the classroom, whether in the seats or standing in front of them. There are times as an instructor that I have looked out over my students and felt the power my hard-won knowledge gives me over them. I fall too easily into condemnation of them because I approach the world from the perspective of my study; the recognition of error serves to remind me that I am still very much learning, and so I ought to have a little more compassion for those who have not struggled to do so for so long as I have and are therefore not yet where I now stand. It also serves to show my students that the process of revision is one all who will write must perform. I am not exempt from it despite my graduate degrees in English and years of experience teaching writing, so they who have yet to do such things should not think that they are themselves removed from the need to improve their work. And it allows me to model one of the many things I hope my students learn from my instruction; with luck, my doing so may at some point serve as a guide for their own labors in that regard.
Even in its deficiency, then, the dissertation has worked to better me as a scholar. I have a focus for the development of new knowledge because of it, and I can improve upon how I disseminate that knowledge. Thus, I address both of the scholar's tasks and hopefully make things better for those who will follow after me.
Showing posts with label Literacy Narrative. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literacy Narrative. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Sample Literacy Narrative: A Professor Professes _Profession_
Students, please find below a draft of an example of the kind of writing expected from you in your literacy narrative, as discussed here. When formatted for submission as a paper (which it currently is not, owing to the differences in media), it is of approximately four and one-quarter pages in length, easily what is acceptable for your own submissions.
As a scholar working in English studies, I do quite a bit of reading. Much of it is in academic journals, which I use to further the research I do and to improve the way in which I teach. The journals thus speak to both parts of my duty as a scholar, even though it is not seldom the case that the articles are somewhat dry and may not speak to my specific set of interests as a literary generalist with an emphasis in late medieval English literature and in contemporary fantasy writings of the United States and the United Kingdom. They are not always dull, however; some stick out in my mind, becoming common points of reference for me and exerting significant influence on the way in which I conduct myself as a scholar. Perhaps most notable among these for me is Mark Edmundson's contribution to the 2009 issue of Profession, "Against Readings."
In the article, Edmundson, amid some unfortunately problematic comments, asserts that those involved in teaching texts, people such as myself, "need to befriend the texts we teach" (63). They are, in his words, "the testaments of human beings who have lived and suffered in the world. They too deserve honor and respect" no less than the people who have produced them (63). This is true even of the driest piece of technical documentation; someone went to the trouble of putting together the words, and the ideas which the words represent in fleeting bits and ill-defined glimpses, offering in doing some evidence of the writer's existence even if there is no author credited. It is true of the criticism in which I and my fellow scholars of literature and other writings which may or may not deserve the title perform, examining texts to find out what they reveal about the ideas and attitudes of their writers and the contexts in which they live; in doing such things, we create our own texts that reveal much of who we are and what sort of world it is in which we live. And the texts we analyze are themselves such testimonies, as our analyses reveal and as the experiences of readers attest.
I initially read the article while I lived in New York City, likely on the subway and probably on the Q train as I traveled from the Parkside Avenue station to that at 57th Street and 7th Avenue. As is common practice for me, I read with a pencil in hand, marking up the pages as I went along; I know this because the copy I read and annotated sits on a small shelf in my office even now. Some of the marks are of things with which I take issue in the text, and that is not infrequent in my reading. But the comments near the end of the article, comments in which Edmundson encapsulates his vision, resonated within me, echoing in my thoughts ever since. They recalled to me--and still recall to me--something fundamental to my study of English languages and literatures, something rooted deeper within me than the reason I began formal study of the material; they recalled to me the joy in which I began the work and which I had too often neglected under the burdens of teaching while trying to write a dissertation and continue to present research at conferences and publish articles in other academic journals, and of living in New York City, generally.
The joy soon manifested in my writing. It is frequently the case that those who newly feel joy are eager to share it, to proselytize to others about that thing which has produced the joy, and I was very much in that mood. In conversations with my co-workers, I repeatedly brought up the article and recommended it to their reading, knowing that the school's library did not have access to the publication, but that the New York Public Library very much did and does. "Did you read the recent Profession?" I am sure I asked more than one of my fellow instructors, and I am sure I followed up with something like "Did you read Edmundon's article? You need to read it." I am sure also that I annoyed them with my insistence, much as many people are annoyed by a small child exulting in the delight at being able to do a new thing or young adults flaunting before wide audiences what they perceive as evidence of their ability to enjoy the sensuality of their bodies.
Like both child and young adult, I did leave off the open and overt rejoicing in my newfound wonder. But I did not set aside the joy entirely, instead subsuming it into my work. Aside from in some initial comments I published about the article, my more formal writing works to evidence my befriending the texts I examine. One way in which friendship is shown is in familiarity, not just in knowing well, but in being able to relax away from formality and the strict dictates of etiquette that ease interactions among those who do not know one another or whose relationships involve much of the critical--as scholarship tends to with its objects. My writing manifests both types of familiarity, the deep knowledge that is expected of intellectual, academic work in any event, and the transcendence of mannerly barriers of separation. The acknowledgements page of my dissertation contains two or three quips that would not have appeared had I not held to at least one of the things "Against Readings" says (iv). Other papers I have given have deployed litotes, a device not seldom used by older Germanic writers as a means to put across a joke, and at least two works I have in the slow process of drafting treat forms of humor as they appear in places where they are not currently recognized. In putting in and searching out jokes, finding sources and outlets for my giddy joy, I continue to display the echoing effect of "Against Readings" on me.
It is not only therein that I act upon what Edmundson asserts, showing its influence upon me. The ebullience Edmundson's comments had provoked from me manifests in my scholarly service. Part of what I have done as a scholar for some years is promote the scholarship of others through proposing special sessions at research conferences. The happiness, the attempt to befriend my material, that Edmundson asserts is vital to work in the academic humanities, appeared in my doing so as I proposed to one conference a special research session treating taruoscatology--and when the conference organizers contacted me to ask after the proposal, seeking more details, I did not hesitate to note, amid grounding the panel in publications from Princeton University's press and several major academic journals, that "Against Readings" and its thesis that evidencing a personal engagement with the materials being studied informed my putting forth the proposal. That the proposal was accepted and the session offered to much favorable comment, confirms for me that Edmundson is correct, validating my reliance upon his article's core tenet.
Further validation came in the process of my being hired to teach at a major institution in the middle of the country. While I was being interviewed for the position, one of the faculty conducting the interview referred to my curriculum vita--indeed to the very tauroscatological panel I had successfully proposed--and asked after my motivations for putting forward such an idea. The other faculty chuckled a bit at the question, and I smiled deeply before answering much as I had earlier answered the conference organizers. Once again, in addition to the more formal academic underpinnings of treating the subject matter of the panel itself, I referenced the need expressed in "Against Readings" to recall, and to demonstrate recall, the elation which brings people into the study of the academic humanities as justification for my having proposed such an unorthodox session. It evidently served me well, for I was offered the position for which I had applied; through the article and what it encouraged me to do, I was able to further my career in academe, enabling me to do more to read and write well and, hopefully, teach others to do the same.
Reading Mark Edmundson's "Against Readings" in the 2009 issue of Profession has been a major influence on my work as a scholar. It has changed the way in which I work to disseminate information and understanding of how language works. It has more importantly reminded me that I got into doing so for the joy of it, something that I had neglected to recall and that many of my colleagues in the academic humanities would do well to bring to mind. Doing so and showing that they are doing so would do much to combat the perception, too often held by people in the world, that what I and my comrades do is a dry, dull, detached thing, devoid of life and joy and not at all worth doing.
Works Cited
As a scholar working in English studies, I do quite a bit of reading. Much of it is in academic journals, which I use to further the research I do and to improve the way in which I teach. The journals thus speak to both parts of my duty as a scholar, even though it is not seldom the case that the articles are somewhat dry and may not speak to my specific set of interests as a literary generalist with an emphasis in late medieval English literature and in contemporary fantasy writings of the United States and the United Kingdom. They are not always dull, however; some stick out in my mind, becoming common points of reference for me and exerting significant influence on the way in which I conduct myself as a scholar. Perhaps most notable among these for me is Mark Edmundson's contribution to the 2009 issue of Profession, "Against Readings."
In the article, Edmundson, amid some unfortunately problematic comments, asserts that those involved in teaching texts, people such as myself, "need to befriend the texts we teach" (63). They are, in his words, "the testaments of human beings who have lived and suffered in the world. They too deserve honor and respect" no less than the people who have produced them (63). This is true even of the driest piece of technical documentation; someone went to the trouble of putting together the words, and the ideas which the words represent in fleeting bits and ill-defined glimpses, offering in doing some evidence of the writer's existence even if there is no author credited. It is true of the criticism in which I and my fellow scholars of literature and other writings which may or may not deserve the title perform, examining texts to find out what they reveal about the ideas and attitudes of their writers and the contexts in which they live; in doing such things, we create our own texts that reveal much of who we are and what sort of world it is in which we live. And the texts we analyze are themselves such testimonies, as our analyses reveal and as the experiences of readers attest.
I initially read the article while I lived in New York City, likely on the subway and probably on the Q train as I traveled from the Parkside Avenue station to that at 57th Street and 7th Avenue. As is common practice for me, I read with a pencil in hand, marking up the pages as I went along; I know this because the copy I read and annotated sits on a small shelf in my office even now. Some of the marks are of things with which I take issue in the text, and that is not infrequent in my reading. But the comments near the end of the article, comments in which Edmundson encapsulates his vision, resonated within me, echoing in my thoughts ever since. They recalled to me--and still recall to me--something fundamental to my study of English languages and literatures, something rooted deeper within me than the reason I began formal study of the material; they recalled to me the joy in which I began the work and which I had too often neglected under the burdens of teaching while trying to write a dissertation and continue to present research at conferences and publish articles in other academic journals, and of living in New York City, generally.
The joy soon manifested in my writing. It is frequently the case that those who newly feel joy are eager to share it, to proselytize to others about that thing which has produced the joy, and I was very much in that mood. In conversations with my co-workers, I repeatedly brought up the article and recommended it to their reading, knowing that the school's library did not have access to the publication, but that the New York Public Library very much did and does. "Did you read the recent Profession?" I am sure I asked more than one of my fellow instructors, and I am sure I followed up with something like "Did you read Edmundon's article? You need to read it." I am sure also that I annoyed them with my insistence, much as many people are annoyed by a small child exulting in the delight at being able to do a new thing or young adults flaunting before wide audiences what they perceive as evidence of their ability to enjoy the sensuality of their bodies.
Like both child and young adult, I did leave off the open and overt rejoicing in my newfound wonder. But I did not set aside the joy entirely, instead subsuming it into my work. Aside from in some initial comments I published about the article, my more formal writing works to evidence my befriending the texts I examine. One way in which friendship is shown is in familiarity, not just in knowing well, but in being able to relax away from formality and the strict dictates of etiquette that ease interactions among those who do not know one another or whose relationships involve much of the critical--as scholarship tends to with its objects. My writing manifests both types of familiarity, the deep knowledge that is expected of intellectual, academic work in any event, and the transcendence of mannerly barriers of separation. The acknowledgements page of my dissertation contains two or three quips that would not have appeared had I not held to at least one of the things "Against Readings" says (iv). Other papers I have given have deployed litotes, a device not seldom used by older Germanic writers as a means to put across a joke, and at least two works I have in the slow process of drafting treat forms of humor as they appear in places where they are not currently recognized. In putting in and searching out jokes, finding sources and outlets for my giddy joy, I continue to display the echoing effect of "Against Readings" on me.
It is not only therein that I act upon what Edmundson asserts, showing its influence upon me. The ebullience Edmundson's comments had provoked from me manifests in my scholarly service. Part of what I have done as a scholar for some years is promote the scholarship of others through proposing special sessions at research conferences. The happiness, the attempt to befriend my material, that Edmundson asserts is vital to work in the academic humanities, appeared in my doing so as I proposed to one conference a special research session treating taruoscatology--and when the conference organizers contacted me to ask after the proposal, seeking more details, I did not hesitate to note, amid grounding the panel in publications from Princeton University's press and several major academic journals, that "Against Readings" and its thesis that evidencing a personal engagement with the materials being studied informed my putting forth the proposal. That the proposal was accepted and the session offered to much favorable comment, confirms for me that Edmundson is correct, validating my reliance upon his article's core tenet.
Further validation came in the process of my being hired to teach at a major institution in the middle of the country. While I was being interviewed for the position, one of the faculty conducting the interview referred to my curriculum vita--indeed to the very tauroscatological panel I had successfully proposed--and asked after my motivations for putting forward such an idea. The other faculty chuckled a bit at the question, and I smiled deeply before answering much as I had earlier answered the conference organizers. Once again, in addition to the more formal academic underpinnings of treating the subject matter of the panel itself, I referenced the need expressed in "Against Readings" to recall, and to demonstrate recall, the elation which brings people into the study of the academic humanities as justification for my having proposed such an unorthodox session. It evidently served me well, for I was offered the position for which I had applied; through the article and what it encouraged me to do, I was able to further my career in academe, enabling me to do more to read and write well and, hopefully, teach others to do the same.
Reading Mark Edmundson's "Against Readings" in the 2009 issue of Profession has been a major influence on my work as a scholar. It has changed the way in which I work to disseminate information and understanding of how language works. It has more importantly reminded me that I got into doing so for the joy of it, something that I had neglected to recall and that many of my colleagues in the academic humanities would do well to bring to mind. Doing so and showing that they are doing so would do much to combat the perception, too often held by people in the world, that what I and my comrades do is a dry, dull, detached thing, devoid of life and joy and not at all worth doing.
Works Cited
- Edmundson, Mark. "Against Readings." Profession (2009): 56-65. Print.
- Elliott, Geoffrey. The Establishment of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as the Standard Text of English-Language Arthurian Legend. Diss. U. of Louisiana at Lafayette. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2012. PDF file.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)