Category: McCoy Fall 2014

As I was re-reading Moran’s Interdisciplinarity, I came across something that I found very interesting; according to how the Greeks organized subjects into a hierarchy, the lowest subjects included “the fine arts, poetics and engineering” (Moran, 3).  I assumed before reading that the fine arts would be on the bottom, but I could not believe that engineering was too!  As mentioned in one of my previous posts, my sister is praised by many for going to school for aeronautical engineering-everyone thinks she is very intelligent for doing so.  Engineering is one of the fields that everyone thinks highly of, so I found it very interesting that engineering was on the bottom of the list, according the Greeks.  I didn’t see this the first time through reading Interdisciplinarity, but I am glad that I picked up on it this time around.

Throughout this class, I have been reading Moran’s Interdisciplinarity somewhat religiously. Religiously, but, to be brutally honest, resentfully. I didn’t connect to what he was saying and thought he was making things too complicated in his discussion. I thought that he was taking decently simple ideas and turning them into ungraspable theories, or relying too heavily on historical context that I was immediately bored by. Then, I read the conclusion.  Continue reading “Interdisciplinarity As a Web”

As the year has gone on, I’ve watched our class’s blog grow into a home for interdisciplinarity, for musings on our texts and for thoughts on the experiences of an English major. I’ve watched people argue with themselves and grapple with their own opinions on English as a major and the opinions of those around them. I’ve watched conversations take place between family members, suitemates, patrons of Geneseo regarding the discipline of English. I’ve watched ideas take form, as well as arguments. I’ve watched revelations in motion.

And I have not participated.

Continue reading ““I’ve Been in a Different English Class””

Some of my facebook friends of color have been posting statuses voicing their disgust towards the decisions not to indict both Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo.  The news about the separate cases have come out less than a month apart, deepening a very raw wound for many people.  As I read through these posts, I am initially overcome with guilt.  I think about my privilege as a white person in America.  I am a woman, but the breadth of oppression I face is no where near that of a person of color in America.  Part of my privilege is that I don’t think about these extrajudicial killings like black people have since racism took root during the times of slavery.  Jean Toomer writes about what it’s like as a black man in the south to know that death looms over you in Cane.   Continue reading “An Ally’s Stance Against Racism”

One of the many perks of being an English major is that most of the time, our finals are essays!  Some people may say that that is worse, but I would rather write a thousands essays than take a final exam for a class (not that I necessarily would like to write a thousand essays either).  That being said, I am dreading the two written finals that I have to take for this semester.  It is just so stressful and you just hope and pray that your mind doesn’t go blank on the day of the test.  Although essays are stressful to write, you aren’t put on the spot, and that is why I will always prefer essays over tests.

Joe Moran can summarize what I argued in the Part One of this two-part blog post in various chapters from Interdisciplinarity. In Part One, I took what was one idea given to me by Doctor McCoy from our November 3^rd class regarding A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin and then used crosschecking and secondary sources to learn more. This led me to the self-discovery that A Song of Ice and Fire draws from history, books published before A Song of Ice and Fire was published, mythology, and anthropology. I wasn’t impressed, at first, that my favorite series could so clearly be compared to these topics. But Interdisciplinarity helped me sort out what to do with all this newfound information. Moran explains not only are authors “engaged in a kind of psychic struggle with the great authors of past generations” (105), but that these authors also draw on other experiences from subjects such as anthropology and mythology to accurately portray what they are writing about. As for acting as a reader, Moran explains that I was just trying to consolidate A Song of Ice and Fire’s own “separateness and uniqueness” (Moran 103) from history. Continue reading “Part Two: Interdisciplinarity”

In class on November 3^rd, Doctor McCoy raised the point that one of the seven new gods, the Stranger, from A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin is not a novel idea that Martin came up with alone. Rather, the idea that there is a supernatural being that represents death is an idea that has occurred many times in literature. While Doctor McCoy related this to the books we read in class I sat there, baffled at what to me was a mind-boggling concept. There was one of my favorite book series, the very basis of my favorite television show, under the radar for what felt to me was a claim of being unoriginal. I can’t even begin to explain how much this new idea got to me. All those times I had talked about the originality and creativity of A Song of Ice and Fire flashed in my mind.  Continue reading “Part One: Crosschecking and Secondary Sources”

I’d like to share my latest experience of the fine arts interrelating with the sciences. Lately in my Environmental Science class, we’ve been able to enjoy many guest lecturers. However, one lecturer from a couple weeks ago was undoubtedly my favorite. Continue reading “Our Local Mountain Man”

Thanksgiving brought the usual: family, friends, food, and questions about your life from relatives you haven’t seen since the last big holiday.   Continue reading “Stereotypes”

While working on my paper, I’ve been attempting to use the many typos in Zulus as an example of the novel resisting attempts to be analyzed with guidebooks or archives. Every time I type a sentence, however, I get caught up in wondering what the purpose could have been at all. I’ve assumed there’s some thematic meaning to the typos; in class, we brought up the possibility that they are purposeful results of Alice endlessly reliving the story. No matter how many great theories we think of, however, it’s likely that we will never know for sure what Percival Everett’s purpose was in writing in all of these typos. Continue reading “Uncertainty”