Two Feet In | Writing and the Institution

[ Part 1  where I introduce Peckham's discussion of argument and middle class "objectivity"] Di. "Spew" 10 October 2013. Flickr Creative Commons Objectivity, Redux  Peckham continues with the discussion of objectified pronouns, with the first person "I" largely permitted in most courses, though even there the first person must be objectified, "the writer in possession of her reason, language and stance" (69). Working-/ poverty-class students resist using the first person "I" in writing even in ethnographic or public discourse writing because of their secondary education training, even when it makes rhetorical sense with the project at hand. On the other hand, they tend to use the second person easily, naturally, as if somehow the first person has been drummed out of them but instruction about second person pronouns was overlooked. Something is happening, then, in secondary education about that author-as-expert vs author-as...

William Billings is one of the most important early American (British American) hymnal writers, yet is too often overlooked by believing and agnostic songwriters for his influence and his perception of the human condition as both depraved and simultaneously so divine. Billings was born in 1746 in Boston (which is why I claim he's British American) and was a tanner by trade. In those pre-revolution days, Billings new Adams and Revere and the other hot-heads, spending time in the taverns in their revolutionary public spheres, despite his bodily deformities. University of Houston's John Lienhard describes his appearance as a "gargoyle" and as a man addicted to tobacco, likely causing his early death at the age of 54 in 1800. His first psalter, New England Psalm Singer  (1770) was printed in Boston and engraved by Paul Revere. This is the first psalter entirely printed in the colonies -- Billings specifically waited to print the book until he could guarantee that th...

Project Row Houses, Houston A thought experiment, Round II [ For Round I, here ] I come from a working class background, or a lower middle class background perhaps. My father would claim the latter, though he never went to college, married my mother when she was in her first year of nursing school, and then dropped out when I showed up. My grandparents were largely working class, so I claim the former. Regardless, I was the first in the family to go to college and though I consider both my parents to be highly intelligent, without the formal higher education there is the chasm between them and me and my brother; it was their own respect of college -- though almost no one in either family had been to college -- that compelled me to go to a private school first. After that first degree, finances and personal preferences have me a public school and I prefer it there -- I consider myself middle class and I prefer working with/ learning with middle class students and professors. ...

"Indian School" from Memoirs, official and personal; with sketches of travels among the Northern and Southern Indians; embracing a war excursion, and descriptions of scenes along the Western borders. Second edition. (On the origin, history, character, ... wrongs and rights of the Indians, etc.) by McKenney, Thomas Loraine, 1846. (c) British Library The discussion of technology in the classroom disappoints me after the several successes I've had [ here  and here ], especially as folks confused technology with electronics, as if chalk and board are not technologies themselves. So recently, when addressing engagement with an educator, the issue of "devices" came up, as it inevitably does. I admit, I once had a no-phone policy in the classroom because -- as I argued to myself -- having the temptation of texting would keep the student from fully engaging, etc. That's the simple argument. But two years ago I removed that from my syllabus because I realized ...

First, a clarification. What many people consider to be the Confederate Flag is actually not the flag of the Confederacy. The national flags of the Confederacy started exempt from the Battle Flag, so the first and second iterations of the national flag (the Stars and Bars) looked like this: Stars and Bars "Victory or Death" c/o Museum of the Confederacy <http://www.moc.org/collections-archives/flags-confederacy> We rarely see this except at museums or battlefield exhibits, including those battlefields the national military parks such as Shiloh and Fort Pillow State Historic Park north of Memphis (site of a horrible slaughter of black Federal soldiers -- too lightly addressed at the History Channel site  and similar national and state Web sites. It's not a controversy. It was a massacre. Simple). What people normally take for the flag is the Virginia Battle Flag, which was never actually adopted by the Confederacy, but as faux-historians use symbols to frame ...