Category: McCoy Fall 2016

While I was reading Percival Everett’s, Zulus, I had noticed that the government policies within this society resemble that of the Communist Soviet Union. Aside from the general oppression of the government on then people, the first thing that brought this to my attention were the cheese trucks. Back when my great grandparents still lived in Russia, they had to get food by waiting on line at these food depots. They were like stores Continue reading “Communism in Zulus?”

While blog posts tend to revolve around experiences within texts concerning intertextuality, I would like to discuss a rather terrifying moment in my life where I saw a man’s own take of what it meant to connect two different disciplines into his line of work. A few weeks ago, I chipped my two front teeth, and had to get it bonded by a dentist. I went to a dentist somewhere in Geneseo (won’t say who), and after a few words were exchanged about my insurance and the estimate for how much it would cost to fix my teeth, he took me by the chin and lifted my eyes to meet his, and he said: “Scott, dentistry is the marriage of art and science. I am the artist, and your teeth are my canvas. This drill is my brush, and these drill bits are my pallet. However, the only color I will be using is red, as gums tend to get bloody during this”.

While it was one of the more poetic explanations of how a job encompasses multiple disciplines, the way he described it was rather terrifying to say the least. I decided to write about the experience for one of my other classes, a creative writing class. I wrote about this dentist, and every detail down to what his kids looked like in a picture he had of them on a wall in the back left corner. As I wrote about this dentist, however, it had me thinking of the writing processes of Cane, Everett, and Walker. Did they experience traumatic or interesting experiences that led them to certain character sketches within their fiction? Looking back through Cane’s autobiography, quite a few of the characters he meant in real life were transcribed into his writing in certain ways.

Following this line of thinking, the creative writing class also had me write a piece of literary fiction, and in the piece I wrote, I pretty much gave the main character qualities that I possessed, down to the way he talked, acted, joked around, and even looked. While this may be an extreme example to use, I found it easier to write about myself rather than something completely made up out of thin air. While not every author would go to such lengths, it makes me think about what qualities authors such as Walker, Cane, and Everett give to their characters that they themselves have.

Perhaps even more interesting to try to envision is what qualities that Everett gave to his character, Alice. Did he give Alice qualities of himself, an African American Male writing in the 1990’s, or that of another woman in his life? It could even be said that the Alice in his story was much like Meridian Hill in Alice Walker’s story, perhaps making a homage to Alice Walker, with his character, Alice Achitophel. All of these questions popped up in my mind with ease, and it wouldn’t have been possible without a dentist’s startling depiction of marriage of the disciples. By writing about him and his odd tendencies, it opened a door to new questions to the authors that we have studied that I honestly never thought I would have before.

Since the first day of this semester, the definition and concept of “interdisciplinarity” has become more prominent in my academic life. Being a part of a liberal arts college, it’s almost essential to take ideas from previous experiences or studies and apply it to what is currently being taught.As students we can all relate to this, but I now know that the concept of being literate in multiple disciplines is critical to becoming aneducator. My education 215 class has multiple discussions that provide 3-D perspectives on ideas that span multiple topics. For example, the first thing my professor went over with our class was the definition of what it means to be truly “literate” in a field of study that people are eventually going to instruct others in. Continue reading “Interdisciplinarity And Education Go Hand In Hand”

I’ve never been one to get mad at a slightly used book. I am a proud owner of a library card and so it didn’t faze me when ordering books for this class when I had the option of a new $20 book or an $8 used book. But when I brought my copy of Zulus the first day of class I was shocked when I found messy pencil script across the blank spaces at the beginning of each new chapter. Continue reading “All because of a cheaper price”

It has been awhile since I have posted on the blog because I used to think that the ideas I had to post were not worthy of posting. I wanted to have everything connecting with Intertextuality clearly, to where my words in the text matched my observation. But, that’s not how it goes I’m afraid. We have to take route from our text and apply it to everyday situations.  Continue reading “Transitioning”

One of the most intriguing and applicable lines that I read in Interdisciplinary, by Joe Moran, but was coined by Leavis is the idea that interdisciplinary has “a limit and is based on the idea that cultural unity has been lost, and that an elite group needs to be formed to ensure that unity is recaptured (pg. 33).” Continue reading “30,000 Years Ago Vs. Now”

Everywhere that we look, there is evidence of archives at play. Whether it be on campus, where we saw the documentation and representation of the past as well as iconic moments in history, we also see the use of archives in much of the literature that we read. Archives are important because they tell us about a history of a culture, or an individual, and provide insight into stories and events that happened, or things that took place over a span of time. Continue reading “Strive to Archive”