Author: Shannon Dengos

While home on thanksgiving break, I was talking to one of my closest friends about the recent election. She was expressing concern for one of her friends that was attacked in a residence hall by two other girls she was acquainted with. What was said to her was absolutely horrifying and shocking. Perhaps the most shocking part was that the perpetrators were active members of the Christian organization on campus.

I reflected back on what I have seen on campus here at Geneseo. Then I took a look at people’s reactions. What bothers me is that some people are choosing to ignore it all together. What really bothers me is people’s response to the poem on the gazebo.

“Why can’t they post something we can actually relate to?” This phrase and it’s sheer ignorance in response to the poem makes me cringe.  I assume the person who said this was referring to the possible incomprehensible format and word choice of the poem? Maybe they just don’t know how to read poems. Or maybe they just don’t care, and would rather label it an “overreaction” to a prank. Something I also heard.

The choice to ignore such a powerful response to hate speech requires a certain type of apathy that I see as violent. If you are a bystander, and you choose to ignore this conversation altogether instead of listening to people that feel unsafe on this campus, then you are doing a direct violence to your fellow community members. That is unacceptable and dangerous.

I challenge other members of this community to use their interdisciplinary knowledge, and read the poem. Acknowledge it’s voice. Even without having read interdisciplinary by Joe Moran, it should be plain to see that poetry is very relevant to communicating important ideas and messages. Especially at a time like right now, voices need to be heard.

A few weeks ago, I brought some basic grammatical error that I thought I had made to Professor McCoy. I was asking if I was supposed to start a new paragraph after I used quotations. She responded with a confused “No, did you learn that in your previous training?”. (I just had the urge to start a new paragraph) However, yes I did learn that in my previous training.

In fact, there are several grammatical errors and ways of writing that I have been struggling with in college. Much of it has to do with punctuation and grammar which to me is like the mathematics of writing (boring and kind of hard).  Continue reading “My Training as a Student”

In the conclusion of Interdisciplinarity, Joe Moran makes a point I find very relevant to this exact moment in history.

“People working within established modes of thought have to be permanently aware of the intellectual and institutional constraints within which they are working, and open to different ways of structuring and representing their knowledge to the world.” (page 187)

This idea speaks to rigidness of individual beliefs that have the potential to perpetrate an unconscious violence by not considering the other’s. I find that people that adopt one linear and “correct” way of thinking (as I am guilty of doing) often are vacuumed into a one-sided universe where it is them against the other. Continue reading “Keeping an Open Mind”

In film class the other day, I found myself fighting off sleep as we studied directors and stylistic techniques. I didn’t jolt back to consciousness until I heard the word “intertextuality”, which of course got me thinking about Reader and Text.

As my professor went on to ask for a class definition of the word “intertextuality” I found my hand flying up in the air. I felt I knew the term the best out of everyone (even though I have no idea of their academic backgrounds). As I went to answer, I told her that intertextuality is the conversation between two texts that work with and for each other respectively.

In film class, I link film with literature naturally. For instance when talking about Citizen Kane by Orson Welles, I mentioned Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. When speaking of Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock, I mentioned The Bacchae by Euripedies. 

As true in Interdisciplinarity, I see myself making these natural links between courses, especially within a given semester, let alone my entire academic career. It makes me wonder how intertextuality and interdisciplinarity work together as an idea and a novel.

In Interdisciplinarity Joe Moran mentions the growing impact that physical science has on literature and other areas of academe. We see a form of this in Alice Walker’s essay which we previously read last class, In Search of our Mother’s Gardens. She mentions her mother’s wide variety of flowers she planted in her garden, which may metaphorically be various creativities her mother had in life such as painting, poetry, music, and so on.

Exploring a particular flower, the Petunia with originated in South America I learned that it’s often connected to the phrase “not losing hope”. It also comes in various colors, one of the most common being pink which symbolizes a mother’s love, gentleness, and compassion.

We don’t know for sure whether or not Alice Walker or her mother know that a Petunia symbolizes these things. Perhaps it’s simply ironic that the flowers in her Mother’s Garden posses all these unique and important symbols that are relevant to her own life and even her own writing. Personally, I think it would be pretty amazing if Alice Walker’s mother was conscious of all the different meanings of each flower and planted them intentionally with meaning.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Petunia Flower Meaning.” Flower Meaning. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.

They say it’s always good to contextualize your essays and relate them to a larger theme that is relevant to the universe. While writing my essay I found an overwhelming urge to consider mentioning anthropology in the conclusion. Interdisciplinarity continues to creep its way into my life.

The thesis of my essay is observation and the effects it has on the observer rather than the observed. Observation is typically used in Anthropology in the form of ethnography. The anthropologist must submerge themselves into the culture completely to even get close to understanding it. The problem is that this feels so irrelevant to my essay and every time I try to write it it feels unnatural. My end result is a bunch of different conclusions that go various different ways and in actuality getting nowhere with my essay.

Very often we mention the presence of Interdisciplinary in class. Sometimes it may be in reference to Cane’s historical foreground or just in context to the reading. I was pleasantly surprised to note how often my textbooks reference other disciplines claiming that they tie in with their own.

I have an anthropology test in a few days, and while reviewing the textbook I noticed that it continually referenced how anthropology has a central role in linguistics, or archaeology, or biology, you name it really. Now, I’ve been on the look out for how many times a day I hear one of my professors mention another discipline within the class period.

Astronomy is full of physics (unfortunately). I see that English is largely occupied with history and music. Anthropology has roots in concrete sciences as well as social sciences. Film class we literally discuss all of the disciplines, although I see a particular connection with literature.

I think receiving a liberal arts education shapes a good scholar because it forces students to explore many disciplines that they would have ignored if they weren’t required. The way these subjects interact with each other is no coincidence. I think the key to a complete education is understanding that the disciplines are always in active conversation and are never completely irrelevant to each other.

I find myself frustrated not with the person who asked me “What are you going to do with an English B.A?” but with myself for understanding the question, yet not knowing how to answer. While reading Moran’s Interdisciplinarity I was forced to understand how this question became so cliche, but what I’m still wondering is why critics struggle to reword that question when asked “What do you mean?”

Moran’s Interdisciplinarity describes that the tension of this argument is hundreds of years old.  That’s something I might not have realized if I wasn’t taking this class. My generation was very much pressured to go into the “STEM” field since that’s where good money and jobs lie. That type of education is most valuable. Throughout high school, I jokingly described myself as “stupid with anything that involved numbers” and “only good at english, which isn’t a real subject”.

Why is it that I discredited myself and my major when it’s something that I know I believe in? I think when I make statements like that, I’m alluding to the fact that I see the argument that is presented in Interdisciplinarity. I see English as a second-tier subject, while  STEM reigns on the top. However, I believe there is equal value if not more in English and literature. It creates a foundation for effective communication, critical thinking and reading, well-rounded writing skills. Perhaps most importantly, English and literature help shape humanity.

When presented with this question again hopefully I will have some sort of an answer that is better than the last.