Phoebe’s Site

In Reflection of my workshop day in class. I honestly I thought I was going to get yelled at for grammar. Most of which minus the mixed verb tense and other habits from my learning difference, I did on purpose. I think that I will comb through it and set the verb tenses so its not weird and mixed up. From after I switched the person tense. I do not really know where I want to take my story. I still feel like I’m walking through a room in the dark and I keep hitting my toe on a cabinet, it isn’t the right cabinet I want to bump into. I feel constrained in literally fiction and I am not sure how to approach the genre. I would totally take this piece into sci fi dystopian type but I’m not sure if I can do that. I am not sure how to come down from the high tech make up I made. I originally was trying to make the clay a metaphor and have it be normal make up. But I guess my descriptions where too vaguely mystical non realistic in detail, and gave readers a more like sci fi feel. This story is about not being distracted from your path to go after someone who in the end and has come to want the best for someone. I found it interesting that the reviews from my peers where very opposite. Some people liked Genevieve feeling bad for her, and others hated her all the way through. Some people liked the crossing I did with descripting her in the start through her eyes and then through Judith eyes while others didn’t. I found that interesting. My goal with Genevieve as a character was to make you hate her and then not and then become in that grey area of oh she’s human too, even after everything she had done. I think I will keep writing this piece I did feel rushed in some points and I feel like it shows, on various levels of stress I had that day of writing this story.

Prize Fiction Reading Log 5

Name:_Phoebe Carrona_   Date:_9/29/24 Entry # _5_

PART 1: PREPARING FOR DISCUSSION

SOURCE IDEAS:

“If he can create a deep enough impression of this Delano, like tracing his name until what lies beneath bears the indent, perhaps at some point he’ll find his way back.” (202)

“Your girl Jelly moved in this past september and has already come to loathe living here, due in no small part to your’s brothers antics; his instance you not clear the ivy thats ripping into the roof; his 3:00am sing-alongs with strays he rescues from this or that shithole bar; the dish towers he constructs on the kitchen counter and stove top and in the sink.”(205)

SYNTHESIZING COMMENT/ANALYSIS:

 Delano sounds pretty depressed and out of it from the perspective of his brother and his own perspective. It’s like he’s trying to find himself away from his family and defining himself by pulling away and doing dangerous and risky behavior. He’s changing throughout the book but in to what?

QUESTION:

Why is it that he is acting like this? Is it because of his relationship with his brother or family that is causing this? How does this help the plot of this book? What parts of him change his views or how he lives?

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Part 2: In-class Writing Response (NAME:__________________)

Name:_____Phoebe Carrona_____   Date:____9/20/24_____       Entry # _____4____

 SOURCE IDEAS

“Your newness left you ignorant of the beef, but you’re told these rivals hail from an island just two over from Puerto Rico: Jamaica. Osvaldo supplies this information as a parting gift. You are no longer welcome at his table.”(13). 

“You attempt to befriend your Jamaican classmates. These attempts involve enduring humiliations…till it becomes obvious they will never accept you among their ranks, especially not after you spent time with the browns. Members of both go out of their way to trip you in the halls or knock over your lunch tray.”(14).

“With your fathers guidance, he is rebuilding: rebuilding the house, the life Andrew washed into oblivion. He is constructing manhood.(15)

SYNTHESIZING COMMENT/ANALYSIS:

 There is  a construction being presented by the author in this book about how racial relations in the usa is constructed based on racism, gender and nationality. I’m seeing a lot of this in this book. It is a personal single written narrative in this first chapter that talks about different areas and family relations as well as gender ideals. When the main character’s older brother leaves to live with their father but not him because he is a boy.

QUESTION:

 Is this book showcasing how much the undertones of racism and nationality tie into each other in the United States? Could it have been chosen because of these topics of interest as they are very much needed to be looked at in the United States and have been ignored for so long?

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Part 2: In-class Writing Response (NAME:__________________)

Prize Fiction Reading Log

Name:_Phoebe Carrona__ Date:___9/5/2024___ Entry # ____2_____

PART 1: PREPARING FOR DISCUSSION

SOURCE IDEAS:

1 “Martha J. Cutter (1995: 133) tells of one student at the University of Connecticut who complained, “Everyone keeps telling me that Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a noncanonical writer, but so far this is the third course in which I’ve read ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’!” One of the unintended ironies of the canon wars has been the reformation of the imaginary canon. Gilman may not yet be part of the imaginary canon as defined by the likes of George Will, but her recent critical and pedagogical popularity certainly makes her a viable candidate, and many might argue that she has indeed ‘made it.’ “(56)

“With traditionalists, such as William J. Bennett and Lynne V. Cheney, on the one hand, and multiculturalists, such as Thomas Sobol and Jane P. Tompkins, on the other, the discussion frequently takes on a militaristic either-or quality. James Atlas terms the fray “the battle of the books,” while Gerald Graff calls us to move “beyond the cultural wars.” Although what takes place in the classroom is at stake in these skirmishes, the grounds on which these battles are fought are usually ideological, with competing definitions of common, value, and American hotly contested, often by critics who have long since abandoned the day-to-day practices of pedagogy” (53).

2 “It is obvious that (with a few possible exceptions) a work must become a material object by means of publication before it becomes a candidate for a pedagogical canon. When it comes to African texts, the means of production are especially decisive. Christopher Miller (1990: 285) has noted the way in which the African literary canon is more crucially linked to the material conditions governing publication than the American canon. Due to economic and educational scarcities, there is little to no market of general readers in Africa, so publication is even more closely linked to pedagogy than in the United States.”(57).“Dangarembga wondered whether the publishers’ diffidence was prompted by a negative assessment of her writing abilities or by the fact that an editor was afraid of the controversial issues the novel raised regarding the role of women in African society. Was her opportunity to be considered for the pedagogical and imaginary canon a matter of aesthetics or ideology? Fearing the latter, Dangarembga decided to submit the manuscript to a feminist publishing house. …The unsolicited manuscript might not ever have received even an initial reading were it not for Dangarembga’s personal advocacy. Another boost might have come from the fact that the director of the Women’s Press at that time was Ros de Lanerolle, an expatriate South African who wanted to publish more works by African women. “ (58). 

“The material production of a text is a necessary but not sufficient guarantee of its place in the pedagogical canon. Texts may be published many years after they are written; out-of-print texts may be revived due to critical attention and pedagogical demand; texts published by small presses may eventually make their way into the mainstream. In the United States, with its vast publication, marketing, and distribution system, there is a huge numerical difference between the corpus (what is printed) and the canon, both imaginary and pedagogical. Consequently, works and authors must slug it out on the critical battlefield before they are admitted to any canon” (60)“ Teachers search out such works and add them to their syllabi. To what extent do ideology, aesthetics, and issues of representation enter into these decisions? Once again the story of Nervous Conditions demonstrates the complexity of such influential factors. The content of the text itself is extremely important. Put most simply, Nervous Conditions is highly teachable. Put most skeptically, it is politically correct.”(61)

SYNTHESIZING COMMENT/ANALYSIS:

1/ There is this new form of “almost” made it to pedagogical could it be that these authors in this section are not quite but almost there are what is making people change society. Making it the process of being within society as an ideological thought and holding value for you. 

2/ publication helps bring light to different authors. Which plays a big role in which ones are used in pedagogical canons. It takes time for pieces to circulate and it really seems to depend heavily on where you get it published. Like for Dangarembga. She had to get her work published in London, because of different social and cultural views. Her going to interviews and talking about having advocate for the piece is a big deal because it is pushing her ideas and why she wanted the text published so badly. The works and authors must have something that society wants or needs to read to be considered a canon. 

QUESTION:What is the difference between society and culture in this ideal of pedagogical canons? What is pedagogical awareness in this to describe works of authors?  What makes a ‘made it’ work to be a pedagogical canon? 

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PART 2: IN-CLASS WRITING RESPONSE (NAME:__________________)

Prize Fiction Reading Log

Name:_Phoebe Carrona__ Date:___8/31/2024___ Entry # ____1_____

1. Choose two key ideas from two different sources from our daily reading assignment (These could be chapters in the novel, selections from the novel AND the contextual materials in our assigned edition, from the novel AND the assigned secondary criticism)

2. Synthesize these two ideas: How do they speak to one another? What are you seeing in their relation? You’re making text-text and text-world connections here. 

3. Raise an open-ended question that follows from your synthesis. Given what you’re seeing/thinking, explain also what you’re wondering. What do you think is important we discuss in class?

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PART 1: PREPARING FOR DISCUSSION

SOURCE IDEAS:

1. “This year marks the fifth Booker Prize sponsored by billionaires Michael Moritz and Harriet Heyman, who asked that their charity not be appended to the prize name, unlike previous sponsors the Man Group. This act of linguistic modesty has saved commentators and critics from being forced to write “The Crankstart Booker”—a tuneless, steampunk appellation”(pg 5)

“The closeddoor talks have been historically nothing of the sort: jurists’ exit interviews are often conducted with a member of the British press, guaranteeing much gossip and a bit of tawdriness. In 1974, Elizabeth Jane Howard pushed for Ending Up, which happened to be written by her husband Kingsley Amis.”(pg 4).

2. “Harding’s book doesn’t want respect; it wants a pat on the back. And the overreliance on real-world events is both suspicious and fraught. That much-abused phrase “Based on a True Story” should be incidental to the work, not its fundament, and it clouds Harding’s novelistic judgment. A novel isn’t an op-ed. I’m aware that books with good politics have many readers. But let’s not give them the Booker.”(pg 18)

“His stated inspiration for the Prophet Song is telling. Syria’s tragedies are entwined with religious extremism, history, and geography. They can’t be airlifted to the Republic of Ireland. And by withholding any policy, politics, or individualized antagonists from his novel, Lynch prevents any engagement with the why of such human destruction. It’s a three-hundred-page melody played with every knob turned to ten.”(pg 21)

SYNTHESIZING COMMENT/ANALYSIS:

How do they speak to one another? What are you seeing in their relation? You’re making text-text and text-world connections here. 

1/ A lot of the judges seem to be in the literary world as well as receiving the prize themselves. Does being awarded based on what the judges wanted help the author get some criteria of their own, and just move ideas along in a similar light without making it much different. The current sponsors especially asked that their charity not be added to the prize itself. Charity means the sponsorship so they don’t want their interests to be involved in the choosing of who wins the prize. That would be different according to the author of this article. As prefuse sponsors wanted to be involved in some way with who wins it. ITs like a marketing name that is well known enough that sponsors want to sometimes in past years send messages it seems. Appearly in the past people have pushed for their spouses to win. 

2/ This critic definitely has some critiques toward the prize. Which is staying away from detailed politics. It seems that this award isn’t according to this author not deserving of the booker in their own criteria. In comparison with The Prophets Song which isn’t detailed political strife compared to Harding’s book which is detailed and specific in political and social issues.  

QUESTION:

How much has the Booker’s Prize changed over the years with who is judging it? Do personal interests of the individual judges fall into how the criteria is formed? How are they selected to judge? 

What are some of the personal/business interests that fall into the prize? 

What do people want to read? 

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PART 2: IN-CLASS WRITING RESPONSE (NAME:__________________)

Profile 

Running a Program and beyond: Using past experiences, and knowing what is right for you. 

The University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. In an office on the 3rd floor of Decary Hall, Professor Kenneth Courtney the coordinator for the Global Studies programs and an associate teaching professor of Political Science according to the UNE website. Talks about how he drove through a road of his own education, through maintaining and getting degrees, to becoming a head of a small and unique program in a university that is STEM based. 

Professor Courtney shared that he had gone to get an undergraduate degree in Computer Science at Montana State University. “I realized that Computer Science wasn’t the major for me, and in the meantime I started taking literature and philosophy courses, and doing well in them. So I became a double lit-philosophy major as an undergrad.” Said Courtney, as he continued on about his school roadwork. “I went to grad school the first time in New Zealand, University of Canterbury and I was doing my Masters in ancient philosophy and platonic ethics and I finished that. Then I started a PHD at the University of California in ethics still with some ancient greek component and then that didn’t fit either. I left the University of California: Davis and traveled around for a couple more  years, started and finished my PHD at the city University of New York City in political philosophy.” This is just a little bit of Courtneys background which helps lay out how he ended up becoming the coordinator for the Global Studies Program at UNE. 

Courtney had some hardships that helped play into how his classes are set and the way he teaches as well as getting a empathy and sympathy mindset similar to his as he was an undergraduate and graduate student and traveling around in study of the global world. “ So in between Montana State where I did my undergraduate and finishing in New York was about ,almost a 17 year old path there and a 20 year path at the start of my undergrad. In the meantime I traveled with a film crew in Southeast Asia. I taught English as a foreign language in New Zealand, and then in Taiwan and then in Malaysia. I went back round the world with a friend and lived in India briefly and other parts of Southeast Asia and Central Asia. Travel became this kinda break.” Courtney said as he talked about his background and experience through traveling the world mainly in Asia. He went into how the Global studies program at UNE was started Where he stated “But I was always writing and reading and thinking about academics and it sort of fell in my lap. When I came here the former Dean Jeanne Hey wanted to start a Global Studies program here. She and I had talked. She was a political scientist by training, and so she knew me and I knew her, and she said ‘So it sounded like you’ve traveled a lot, and you sound like you’re interested’, and so I said ‘Yes I am interested in international politics,’ and she said ‘I want to start a global studies programs and I want you to run it,’ And that’s how the program started”.  

One of the hardships Courtney went through helped him come to the mind set he has now with students from his own experiences that help him give advice in order to help guide students to what they feel is best suited to them.  He talked about his experience at the PHD program he had finished  “I took a course called semantics, (At the City University of New York) not an intro to like just semantics. I thought oh this sounds cool and interesting and it was worse than my undergraduate computer science experience, and everybody in there really knew things that I did not know anything about, so I was completely out of my depth. I didn’t take the advice that I give to students now, which is if something is a terrible fit and you’re really not understanding it and you have had a reasonable opportunity to consider taking a different course. Consider backing out. I struggled really badly and I worked incredibly hard for like a B minus in this class, which in graduate school you’re not supposed to get.” It is ok for students to be completely out of their depth, it helps them learn about themselves Courtney also says what he learned. “I took away two things from this experience, don’t be a friend to back out, don’t be afraid to change, like actually appraise weather this is the right fit for you, change is good sometimes, and the other larger thing, oh right life isn’t fair and you just have to roll with it. Jesse was going to get a better grade in that class no matter how hard I worked, no matter how many more assignments I did then him, he still did better than me in the class. And that’s fine in the big picture it doesn’t matter.” 

Courtney’s teaching style has changed his class teaching format based on how previous classes he had in graduate school, and how students he is teaching now work in needing to understand how classes are run. To help make the courses he teaches more understandable for students to work with even after a while maybe it’s not the best fit for them. As well as how much the  influence on the  format has changed overtime from teaching. “Honest answer they have evolved, I’ve been teaching at UNE for over 10 years now. First as a visitor and then starting in 2015 full time. I think I sort of taught classes like all my students were grad students and made them read all the books I had just read. And I also wasn’t doing as much as global studies international relations stuff as I am now. “ But that has changed when Courtney spent more time etching and developing a program. “I think it’s sort of evolved over time, I thought, what’s the best way to sort of get students interested in this material, it’s not making them sit down and read like the history of Paleo-Phoenician war cover to cover. It’s giving them a half dozen articles about these conflicts that you’re vaguely aware of; like let’s talk about Russia and Ukraine and lie let’s talk about the different perspectives on Israel and Palestine, and even more abstract things like let’s build off ideas that I worked with in graduate school.” It is important to get an education, and know what is right and worth it for what students want to be educated with. A switch of majors sometimes helps students find a direction and make them more confident when specializing in something they like and enjoy doing. Some major that fits them and isn’t a terrible and horrible experience helps bring a calmer and more enjoyable quality to life.