Category: McCoy Fall 2014

While reading chapter two of Moran’s Interdisciplinarity, the following passage caught my eye:

“He {Richard Hoggart} warns against the ‘hard-nosed unimaginativeness’ of a social science that claims to be ‘value-free,’ and argues that if we fail to recognize the unique value of certain kinds of text ‘we will sooner or later top talking about literature and find ourselves talking about history or sociology or philosophy–and probably about bad history and bad sociology and bad philosophy” (Moran, 51).

Continue reading “Why We Can’t Go “Value-Free””

The discussion in today’s class led primarily by the work of Alice Walker left an impression on me that I have carried all day. Reading her essay, “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” on my own before class stirred profound emotion, and I immediately felt a connection with the text. However, it was only during class, when the text was read aloud by fellow students as well as Dr. McCoy, that I felt truly enraptured by Walker’s message. My eyes could not be separated from the text, and I wanted to cry out for the women Walker spoke for. When it was mentioned by Dr. McCoy that it is thanks to writers such as Alice Walker that we, as English undergraduates, enjoy the freedom of expressing our interpretations of literature and feel that there is value in them, I was reminded of my admiration for literary study. Continue reading “The Wholeness in Arts and Literature”

In Interdisciplinarity, Joe Moran explains various viewpoints about the significance of pop culture in cultural studies, but what stood out to me was cultural critic John Frow’s explanation of “the commodification of high culture and the democratization of low culture” (Moran 69). Frow’s belief that both traditionally highbrow and lowbrow forms of literature have an impact on pop culture today challenges the stereotype of English majors as pretentious scholars who only place value on works they deem worthy of study. Continue reading “Pop Culture”

Stuart Hall once said, “A culture includes the ‘maps of meaning’ which make things intelligible to its members… but it is also the way those shapes are experienced, understood and interpreted” (Moran 56). In making this comment, Hall points out that only members of a certain culture can have a shared value system, because culture is learned; it is not in one’s nature to adapt to French culture if they have French parents but lived their entire life in America. Through the members’ shared value system, they interpret the world from their personal beliefs that can sometimes differ from another group’s. Hall’s theory of culture is extremely useful because it boils down to cultural relativism, or the idea that all cultures are of equal value and can only be understood within their own cultural context. An example of cultural relativism would be the varying interpretations of tattoos. As found by the Pew Research Center, Tattoo Finder, and Vanishing Tattoo on December 11^th, 2013, the total percentage of people with tattoos who say their tattoo makes them feel rebellious is 29%; feeling sexy because of a tattoo goes up to 31%, while only a meager 5% say that their tattoo makes them feel more intelligent. While rebellion and sexuality are associated with tattoos for some, outside of the United States tattooing is a sign of maturity or a rite of passage, where a child moves onto adulthood. In Greenland, it is a sign of status to have a tattoo, particularly for women. This proves that the symbolism behind a tattoo isn’t universal.  Continue reading “Cultural Relativism in Literature”

My oldest sister is a landscape architect. When this is brought up at family gatherings, a wayward (and often intoxicated) aunt or uncle will laugh, “You spent all that money on school to plant grass?” or “I’ll give you a dollar to mow my lawn.”

Contrary to the ideas of drunken relatives, landscape architects deal with space. Specifically, they work to actively shape and develop spaces to work and function in certain ways. They directly remind us of what Moran affirms, that space is “culturally produced,” and is “produced by a whole range of different agents and practices,” “specifically by forging links between geography and other links” such as sociology (Moran 150).

Continue reading “Cultural Cultivation of Space”

In “Literature into Culture” by Joe Moran, Richard Hoggart’s perspective is raised for his attempt of a “new field of contemporary cultural studies… the historical-philosophical; the sociological; and the literary-critical, the later being ‘the most important’” (Moran 50). Hoggart’s project endeavored to stop the separation in Britain between high culture and “real life”, he himself a scholarship boy from a very poor home in Leeds who always had to see the Americanized mass culture of tabloid newspapers and more, according to “Richard Hoggart- Obituary” on the Telegraph. Though Hoggart urged the literary-critical for Britain in 1982, it can be applied to any day and place. Hoggart believed literary criticism, or “the evaluation, analysis, description, or interpretation of literary works” (“Literary Criticism”), was the most important because people have to be analytical. It is imperative that people keep an eye out for exaggeration. Without any disparaging judgment, people would walk around naïve and blind, all like Oedipus only they have seen too little of the world. Without the literary-critical aspect of cultural studies, the world would believe that the life portrayed glossy and perfect on magazines is the life everyone should live. Continue reading “A Grain of Salt”

Yesterday was the fateful day on which I received my first – and so far only – exam grade of the semester. It was naturally nerve-wrecking to me, as it was for my environmental science class. Science has always been a subject that I have struggled in, although I have a surprising amount of interest in many of its concepts, especially when it comes to sustainability and conservation. While I was satisfied with my grade, it reminded me of the countless hours I had spent preparing myself for that exam and I can remember, amidst the haze of caffeine-defiant exhaustion, one particular reading. Continue reading “Environmentally Interdisciplinary”