Welcome to the space set aside for posting student responses to the
weekly reading assignments and for making comments on and raising
questions related to those responses and the course readings.
For information on the course, including the schedule of readings and assignments, please go the course web site at http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/jgarret/560eco/.
Each response is a 500-750 word (about 1-2 page) response to the readings assigned for the week. You can focus on a particular text or texts, raise questions about critical methods, or even connect our reading to current news stories and controversies. Check the syllabus for details on the number of postings required. Check also for information on serving as a weekly discussion moderator.
The first response is to the second week readings (Blake and Wollstonecraft and background on the "Rights of Man" debate) assigned for April 11. For this first response, focus your attention on any aspect of Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, or Wollstonecraft's Vindication. If you prefer you can also write in response to any of the supplemental readings. Consider focusing on what you find interesting, troubling, provocative, or just plain weird and consider your postings as part of our ongoing investigation and interrogations of Romanticism and "nature".
To post on this blog you must be listed as a blog author. If you have (or are willing to create a Google account, send me the email address you use to access your Google account and I will invite you to become a blog author. (If you were enrolled in ENGL 501 in the Fall term (with me!), then you are already an author. Now the only problem is how did you log in?
If you do not have and do not wish to have a Google account, send me an email and I will respond with a generic username/password that you can use to post responses to the blog.
For information on the course, including the schedule of readings and assignments, please go the course web site at http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/jgarret/560eco/.
Each response is a 500-750 word (about 1-2 page) response to the readings assigned for the week. You can focus on a particular text or texts, raise questions about critical methods, or even connect our reading to current news stories and controversies. Check the syllabus for details on the number of postings required. Check also for information on serving as a weekly discussion moderator.
The first response is to the second week readings (Blake and Wollstonecraft and background on the "Rights of Man" debate) assigned for April 11. For this first response, focus your attention on any aspect of Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, or Wollstonecraft's Vindication. If you prefer you can also write in response to any of the supplemental readings. Consider focusing on what you find interesting, troubling, provocative, or just plain weird and consider your postings as part of our ongoing investigation and interrogations of Romanticism and "nature".
To post on this blog you must be listed as a blog author. If you have (or are willing to create a Google account, send me the email address you use to access your Google account and I will invite you to become a blog author. (If you were enrolled in ENGL 501 in the Fall term (with me!), then you are already an author. Now the only problem is how did you log in?
If you do not have and do not wish to have a Google account, send me an email and I will respond with a generic username/password that you can use to post responses to the blog.
For this week's blog posting I chose to focus on Evelyn Fox Keller's article, "Gender and Science: Origin, History, and Politics." At first read I had the impulse to scoff--what with all the talk of the "autonomy of the egg cell as an active participant in the process of human conception" and such (as opposed to some fluid-filled organic orb that passively floats from one place to the next, waiting to be unceremoniously "assaulted" by the insensitive sperm cell); but then I opened my mind a bit (a rare occurrence, to be sure)and realized that, while I feel it is a bit over the top to take the gender wars to the level of scientific terminology, a valid point is still being made. Historically, phenomena in science that exhibit strength, assertiveness, power, or dominance in any way have been characterized as male. Likewise all that is weak, passive and assault-able, if you will, is deemed feminine. Sometimes these designations are accurately assigned, but at times they are not. Keller feels that these are sociocultural constructs that have been presented as "the natural order of things" and have existed as such for so long that many take them for fact. Some may argue that her time is better spent on more crucial concerns like the real oppression of women in various volatile parts of the world instead of nit-picking at whether or not female reproductive cells are portrayed as having agency, but I would say to them words have power. Keller believes there is an ideology behind these patriarchal-flavored terms, and this ideology is attempting to present itself as the "natural" order by way of scientific legitimacy. This made me think about our class, in a way, because the way I see it, one of our major aims in this course is to define a term: nature. We are going to attempt to dissect and examine all the ways the term has been used and what that term means to us today. Keller's article was a helpful primer for me to get into that frame of mind.
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