The book I am reviewing is Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James, which began life as a Twilight fan fiction called "Master of the Universe" by Snowqueen's Icedragon. I want to focus on the phenomenon of how something so derivative of another author's work could be reincarnated as a published book of its own, and also how erotica e-book sales are growing so rapidly because people can read them on gadgets, and not be embarrassed by risque cover art.
As far as publication goes, I would either play up the pop culture aspect of it, and submit it to something similar to but less prestigious than the Onion AV Club, or I could track down local readers and interview them, and turn it into a human interest profile piece. I am still looking into my options.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Blog Assignment #4
Ira Glass starts out on the human interest angle and never really abandons it. The first five minutes of the podcast tell us who Lindsey Dills is, including that she is currently in prison, but don't tell us why. This humanizes her; she talks about all the things she did well in school, talks about her rebellious teenage phase, but there is nothing going on that sounds different from anyone else. My response to the intro was, "Hey, she sounds like me."
When Ira does start talking about Amanda Williams and the Glenn Country Drug Court, he is very careful about his language. In past shows, he's always tried to stay neutral about topics, not telling the audience whether the person or program he is profiling is right or wrong. Ira mostly does the same thing in this story; he says things about how the program "violates the basic philosophy of all drug courts" and "no other drug court judge in the country is running a program like Judge Amanda Williams." The connotations are that Ira disapproves of William's methods, but he never openly condemns them. In fact, by titling the story "Very Tough Love," the overall implication is that Williams is doing what she thinks is best for Lindsey and the other Drug Court participants, and that she very much wants them to succeed. Ira uses interview segments with other legal professionals in Georgia, who are not as worried about appearing neutral. Phrases such as "complete insanity" and "kafkaesque" are clearly intended to sway the audiences' sympathy in Ms. Dills' favor.
When Ira does start talking about Amanda Williams and the Glenn Country Drug Court, he is very careful about his language. In past shows, he's always tried to stay neutral about topics, not telling the audience whether the person or program he is profiling is right or wrong. Ira mostly does the same thing in this story; he says things about how the program "violates the basic philosophy of all drug courts" and "no other drug court judge in the country is running a program like Judge Amanda Williams." The connotations are that Ira disapproves of William's methods, but he never openly condemns them. In fact, by titling the story "Very Tough Love," the overall implication is that Williams is doing what she thinks is best for Lindsey and the other Drug Court participants, and that she very much wants them to succeed. Ira uses interview segments with other legal professionals in Georgia, who are not as worried about appearing neutral. Phrases such as "complete insanity" and "kafkaesque" are clearly intended to sway the audiences' sympathy in Ms. Dills' favor.
Personally, I wanted very much to completely side with Judge Williams, based on my own perceptions of the legal proceedings that take place in rural South Georgia court circuits. When I shared the summary of the story with my mother, her response was "sounds like she ended up leaning on the wrong person in court". I would venture a guess that anyone who has been brought up on charges in front of Judge Williams, or is related to someone, or even acquaintances with someone who had faced down the judge, has a story to tell of how Judge Williams was mean and abused her power. But that's how authority figures work; they can punish you if they think you have done wrong, and they don't care if that hurts your feelings. And, despite being in a position of authority, Judge Williams is still human, and can make mistakes sometimes. My mother offered up a story of a Judge who once awarded custody of a young girl to her biological mother, because the mother had successfully completed all the state mandated programs, and seemed so sincerely to want a second chance that it just melted everyone's hearts, and really, shouldn't a little girl be with her mother? Fortunately, about a week later, when the police had to come shut down the meth lab that the mother was running in her back room, they were able to call that child's father to come pick her up right away.
I was particularly struck by this passage from a related news story*:
A 2006 study by the Glynn drug court says 5.5 percent of its graduates had been rearrested on felony charges within three years of leaving the program. A 2003 National Institute of Justice study of 17,000 drug court graduates nationwide showed that 25 percent of those participants had been rearrested on felony charges within two years of graduation.
While Williams' success rate may be "below the national average," results like this suggest that the program has been very successful for some people.
If any one else is actually reading this, and is curious, here's the open letter that Judge Williams' attorney sent to Ira Glass in response to the airing of the story, and here is Ira's reply.
*Rankin, Bill. "Glynn Judge's Bench Now a Hot Seat." Jacksonville.com. The Florida Times-Union, 30 Apr. 2011. Web. 23 Feb. 2012. <http://jacksonville.com/news/georgia/2011-04-30/story/glynn-judges-bench-now-hot-seat>.
A 2006 study by the Glynn drug court says 5.5 percent of its graduates had been rearrested on felony charges within three years of leaving the program. A 2003 National Institute of Justice study of 17,000 drug court graduates nationwide showed that 25 percent of those participants had been rearrested on felony charges within two years of graduation.
While Williams' success rate may be "below the national average," results like this suggest that the program has been very successful for some people.
If any one else is actually reading this, and is curious, here's the open letter that Judge Williams' attorney sent to Ira Glass in response to the airing of the story, and here is Ira's reply.
*Rankin, Bill. "Glynn Judge's Bench Now a Hot Seat." Jacksonville.com. The Florida Times-Union, 30 Apr. 2011. Web. 23 Feb. 2012. <http://jacksonville.com/news/georgia/2011-04-30/story/glynn-judges-bench-now-hot-seat>.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Potential Graduate Programs
- Cognitive Science
- Education
- General
- Math
- Peace Corps
- Interdisciplinary Studies
- Comparative Studies
- Liberal Arts/Studies/Humanities
- Logic and Philosophy of Science
- Social Work/Nonprofit Organizations
- Other
- International Relations/Studies
- Library and Information Science
- Museology
- Really Crazy Ideas
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Blog Assignment #3
Assignment: http://jordancofer.blogspot.com/2012/02/what-are-major-research-sources-in-your.html
The field that my paper falls under is philosophy - more specifically, classical/ancient philosophy, platonism, feminist theory, and protofeminism (which refers to a philosophic idea of feminism that existed before the advent of the modern feminist movement).
Databases:
When researching philosophy, the most popular academic database is the Philosopher's Index (http://secure.pdcnet.org/pri) maintained by the Philosophy Documentation Center. The database contains over 800,000 sources, dating from the year 1460, in multiple languages, which are automatically translated for the user. According to the EBSCOhost, the Philosopher's Index is "considered the most thorough index" of scholarly research in all areas of philosophy. It is supposed to be available under EBSCO, however:
The field that my paper falls under is philosophy - more specifically, classical/ancient philosophy, platonism, feminist theory, and protofeminism (which refers to a philosophic idea of feminism that existed before the advent of the modern feminist movement).
Databases:
When researching philosophy, the most popular academic database is the Philosopher's Index (http://secure.pdcnet.org/pri) maintained by the Philosophy Documentation Center. The database contains over 800,000 sources, dating from the year 1460, in multiple languages, which are automatically translated for the user. According to the EBSCOhost, the Philosopher's Index is "considered the most thorough index" of scholarly research in all areas of philosophy. It is supposed to be available under EBSCO, however:
Accessing EBSCO through Galileo does list two databases that cover philosophy; Religion and Philosophy Collection and Academic Search Complete.
update: I finally figured out the simple solution that solves most of the problems I've encountered in this course so far. As I mentioned in class, I was able to access the UGA version of Galileo, and it...
it's glorious! I had no idea how much information could be accessed through Galileo that ABAC is too cheap to pay for.
Journals:
If you do a general web search for the "best philosophy journals", you receive a multitude of results by various people who may or may not know anything about the subject. However, I did find a few links that seemed credible. Brian Leiter, the Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values at the University of Chicago (which implies he has some authority in the field), invited his professional colleagues to participate in a poll ranking the quality of general philosophy journals. The results can be found here. Thom Brooks, Reader in Political and Legal Philosophy at Newcastle University, UK, also hosted a poll, the results of which can be found here. The same five journals top both lists.
Journal of Philosophy (2nd and 1st)
Noûs (3rd and 2nd)
Mind (4th and 5th)
Philosophical Review (1st and 3rd)
Philosophy & Phenomenological Research (5th and 4th)
This is how I chose the Journal of Philosophy as the focus for my Issue Analysis paper.
For my comparison paper, I am going to compare three student journals:
Dialogue - the official journal of Phi Sigma Tau, the International National Honor Society in Philosophy
The Dualist - published by the Philosophy Department of Stanford University
Logos - published by the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University
And two of the professional journals; probably the Journal of Philosophy and either Noûs or the Philosophical Review.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Blog Assignment #2
Before I start, I reserve the right to brag. The newest edition of Lake Oconee Living magazine has hit newsstands this week, and includes a short essay I wrote about the retirement of R.E.M. Unfortunately, Professor Cofer has ruled this does not meet the final requirements of the course, so I will be continuing to dominate conversation with pedantic sidebars in class :)
One of my favorite papers I wrote during my undergraduate career was a bit of a fluke. That's not really the right way to describe it, but I'm having trouble coming up with the right description. There are two reasons why this paper should not exist. The first reason has to do with the fact that I spent two consecutive summers in England. The first summer I spent in England, I was a guest of my grandfather, who, upon semi-retiring from Georgia Tech, had decided to teach various study abroad courses, in different countries each term. He spent several years teaching a summer term at Worcester (pronounced Wooster) College in Oxford, which was basically rented out to Georgia Tech every summer, as Oxford is a ghost town during that term anyway. As a massive anglophile, I was immensely grateful to my grandfather for hosting me, and assumed that would be my official "study abroad in college" experience, despite not actually taking any courses. Consider it a period of independent study. The funny part happened when I returned to Oregon for fall semester; I began to notice the posters on the wall listing the various programs and courses being offered the next summer by my university. And one particular course stood out: C.S. Lewis and the Inklings. I cannot even begin to express how this course seemed to be targeted directly at me. It combined several of my obsessions, and haunted my peripheral vision every time I walked past a memo board on campus. Now we come to the second reason this paper should not exist. I was slated to graduate that Spring, yet the Inklings class was taking place over the summer. This was not such a big obstacle. I went to my adviser, bounced around to a few other administrator types, queried financial aid to see if I had any money left (I didn't), picked up some scholarship applications, and charmed the heck out of the Study Abroad coordinator. In the end, I pushed my graduation to the summer, and scraped together enough money to take two classes over the summer at King's College, London, with extensive travel around the UK. As a side note, the second class I wanted to take was a history of the English Monarchy, which seemed appropriate since my sister's History undergrad was focused on the Tudor and Stuart dynasties, but they canceled that class, so I ended up taking one on Shakespeare, which was also quite lovely.
Exposition managed:
The essay I am 80% sure I am going to stick with is a dissection of Plato's shadow cave analogy from The Republic, and how C.S. Lewis used this analogy to illustrate his view of the Christian afterlife. The most well-known example of this appears at the end of The Last Battle, when the children realize they have died and are now allowed to stay in Narnia forever. Of course, being a Narnia book, even one as dark as TLB, this is a very simplistic idea, designed for a child to grasp, but you again see this theme in The Great Divorce, Lewis's homage to the book of Revelations. In many ways, The Great Divorce is the adult version of The Last Battle. My first task will be to go back to the points and inferences I already have in the paper, and substantiate them with research and better supporting arguments, because, like most of my undergrad papers, when forced to write, I waited until the last minute and b.s.'d a large portion of them. I haven't decided whether I'm going to dig deeper into Lewis's own work; sermons and correspondence, or look for modern writers who have been highly influenced by this concept. I recently finished a pair of books that were hugely and obviously inspired by the Narnia series, and once again, I found characters being offered a chance to leave their mundane real lives for a sparkling new "Narnia."
And that, for the one person who actually reads this all the way through, is my current plan for this course.
One of my favorite papers I wrote during my undergraduate career was a bit of a fluke. That's not really the right way to describe it, but I'm having trouble coming up with the right description. There are two reasons why this paper should not exist. The first reason has to do with the fact that I spent two consecutive summers in England. The first summer I spent in England, I was a guest of my grandfather, who, upon semi-retiring from Georgia Tech, had decided to teach various study abroad courses, in different countries each term. He spent several years teaching a summer term at Worcester (pronounced Wooster) College in Oxford, which was basically rented out to Georgia Tech every summer, as Oxford is a ghost town during that term anyway. As a massive anglophile, I was immensely grateful to my grandfather for hosting me, and assumed that would be my official "study abroad in college" experience, despite not actually taking any courses. Consider it a period of independent study. The funny part happened when I returned to Oregon for fall semester; I began to notice the posters on the wall listing the various programs and courses being offered the next summer by my university. And one particular course stood out: C.S. Lewis and the Inklings. I cannot even begin to express how this course seemed to be targeted directly at me. It combined several of my obsessions, and haunted my peripheral vision every time I walked past a memo board on campus. Now we come to the second reason this paper should not exist. I was slated to graduate that Spring, yet the Inklings class was taking place over the summer. This was not such a big obstacle. I went to my adviser, bounced around to a few other administrator types, queried financial aid to see if I had any money left (I didn't), picked up some scholarship applications, and charmed the heck out of the Study Abroad coordinator. In the end, I pushed my graduation to the summer, and scraped together enough money to take two classes over the summer at King's College, London, with extensive travel around the UK. As a side note, the second class I wanted to take was a history of the English Monarchy, which seemed appropriate since my sister's History undergrad was focused on the Tudor and Stuart dynasties, but they canceled that class, so I ended up taking one on Shakespeare, which was also quite lovely.
Exposition managed:
The essay I am 80% sure I am going to stick with is a dissection of Plato's shadow cave analogy from The Republic, and how C.S. Lewis used this analogy to illustrate his view of the Christian afterlife. The most well-known example of this appears at the end of The Last Battle, when the children realize they have died and are now allowed to stay in Narnia forever. Of course, being a Narnia book, even one as dark as TLB, this is a very simplistic idea, designed for a child to grasp, but you again see this theme in The Great Divorce, Lewis's homage to the book of Revelations. In many ways, The Great Divorce is the adult version of The Last Battle. My first task will be to go back to the points and inferences I already have in the paper, and substantiate them with research and better supporting arguments, because, like most of my undergrad papers, when forced to write, I waited until the last minute and b.s.'d a large portion of them. I haven't decided whether I'm going to dig deeper into Lewis's own work; sermons and correspondence, or look for modern writers who have been highly influenced by this concept. I recently finished a pair of books that were hugely and obviously inspired by the Narnia series, and once again, I found characters being offered a chance to leave their mundane real lives for a sparkling new "Narnia."
And that, for the one person who actually reads this all the way through, is my current plan for this course.
Friday, January 13, 2012
ENG 4500: First Post
in re: http://jordancofer.blogspot.com/2012/01/welcome-to-engl-4500-writing-for.html
Ok.
My name is Sarah Gibbs. As most of you figured out in class, or knew already, I am not actually a Rural Studies student, though I kind of wish I'd had this option back when I was getting my A.S. from ABAC in 2001. I've always been an avid fan of liberal arts and humanities type classes, despite spending most of my college experience hopping around within the engineering and science tracks, before settling on a Math Education degree, and then altering that to a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Studies with an emphasis on Math and Natural Sciences and Social Sciences (phew) because I wanted to take a bunch of random Socialism, Anthropology and Literature courses for fun. Yes, I fit in well with the Rural Studies crowd because I take classes for fun. (Yay nerds!)
I haven't chosen my specific research area/track yet, but I am kicking around a few ideas. During one of my study abroad terms, I took a class on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the rest of the Inklings and I wrote a short paper that I particularly enjoyed on Plato's shadow cave analogy, and how Lewis used it to illustrate his understanding of the afterlife. It was very Christian-y, but I approach all things from a very Christian perspective, and I love the ideas of the adult fairy tale to illustrate our understanding of theology. On the other hand, I occasionally write magazine articles about musical topics, and there is always the chance I could expand one of those articles into a breakdown of the whole "indie" identity within popular music and whether it can be manufactured (i.e. the Lana del Rey controversy) or how each generation identifies itself by creating a genre of music that represents individualism and rebellion against the parent generation's music, yet the music itself basically does not change, or at least, recycles heavily from the previous generations.
In other words, at this point, I'm just b.s.-ing a topic, and cheapening every one else's research plans, but hopefully, we'll all end up enjoying the semester anyway.
Ok.
My name is Sarah Gibbs. As most of you figured out in class, or knew already, I am not actually a Rural Studies student, though I kind of wish I'd had this option back when I was getting my A.S. from ABAC in 2001. I've always been an avid fan of liberal arts and humanities type classes, despite spending most of my college experience hopping around within the engineering and science tracks, before settling on a Math Education degree, and then altering that to a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Studies with an emphasis on Math and Natural Sciences and Social Sciences (phew) because I wanted to take a bunch of random Socialism, Anthropology and Literature courses for fun. Yes, I fit in well with the Rural Studies crowd because I take classes for fun. (Yay nerds!)
I haven't chosen my specific research area/track yet, but I am kicking around a few ideas. During one of my study abroad terms, I took a class on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the rest of the Inklings and I wrote a short paper that I particularly enjoyed on Plato's shadow cave analogy, and how Lewis used it to illustrate his understanding of the afterlife. It was very Christian-y, but I approach all things from a very Christian perspective, and I love the ideas of the adult fairy tale to illustrate our understanding of theology. On the other hand, I occasionally write magazine articles about musical topics, and there is always the chance I could expand one of those articles into a breakdown of the whole "indie" identity within popular music and whether it can be manufactured (i.e. the Lana del Rey controversy) or how each generation identifies itself by creating a genre of music that represents individualism and rebellion against the parent generation's music, yet the music itself basically does not change, or at least, recycles heavily from the previous generations.
In other words, at this point, I'm just b.s.-ing a topic, and cheapening every one else's research plans, but hopefully, we'll all end up enjoying the semester anyway.
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