Thinking of things to blog about, I was sidetracked thinking about how literature is never really complete. All of literature is just drafts, being revised over and over again and the work will never fully be complete because English is not a subject which always has concrete answers. Reading chapter 4 in Interdisciplinarity, I stumbled on a quote by Rene Wellek and Austin Warren that stated exactly what I was thinking, “…literature must be conceived as a whole system of works which is, with the accretion of new ones, constantly changing its relationships, growing as a changing whole” (page 105). Continue reading “Never-Ending Literature”
Frustration
I was sitting in my favorite study spot in the ISC, toiling away at my studies, when a group of very loud girls decided to sit on the couches next to me. It was bad enough they were distracting me from my homework, but then they began talking about English majors. They began to rant about how they were all science majors living in a house with an English major, and how it was completely ridiculous because English is so obviously a waste of time. That it couldn’t be used to do anything in the world. Continue reading “Frustration”
Feminism and Education
One thing I’m seeing a lot of as I begin my education classes is women. Most of my classes are female dominated. Where are the men? Though Geneseo is known to have a higher women to men ratio, I think my education classes exaggerate that difference. The exact female to male ratio is 57:43 (http://www.geneseo.edu/about/fast-facts). In education classes, it’s more like 80:20 (this is just an estimate). Continue reading “Feminism and Education”
Interdisciplinarity vs. Intertextuality as Pertaining to Education
Intertextuality and Interdisciplinarity are closely linked in my opinion. Intertextuality claims that all text comes from text that previously was in existence(Martinez Alforo). Interdisciplinarity is the mixture of separate subjects, thus making intertextuality interdisciplinary in that the concept of intertextuality sounds very much like the scientific concept of conservation of mass, which states that matter can neither be created nor destroyed (Antoine Lavoisier, 1789).
That being said, I believe that English is the most interdisciplinary subject. English covers material from many different subjects and is used every single day in every subject. You might read a book about science or history in English, and then you use English when you read and write for other classes. English is perhaps the most useful subject.
So why are people so confused as to why someone would choose an English major? To be honest, I’m not really an English major. I am an education major with a love of and concentration in English. When the time came to choose a concentration, English was the obvious choice for me. It covers the most bases and is the most useful, besides the fact that I absolutely love to read and write. Having English in my toolbox makes the most sense to me, as I can use it to learn about other subjects which i may have to teach. Why concentrate in science when I might need to teach history, or vice versa? English is the most logical choice for me.