Welcome to the online forum for continuing and extending the conversations and investigations conducted in the classroom for LIT 733.01: Arthurian Legends, a graduate course in the Department of Literature at American University in Washington, DC. I hope that this blog will enable all participants in the course to follow their individual Arthurian interests outside our time together in class while still benefiting from the support and critiques of their classmates. For that to happen, we'll need to cultivate a spirit of fellowship and shared enterprise that involves active reading and commenting on each other's posts as well as dedicated creation of our own posts. If our class is to emulate the Arthurian ideal in any way, let it be in the beneficial spirit of shared values that animate and give meaning to our more solitary pursuits (even if those pursuits are scholarly and artistic rather than martial or chivalric).
Ideally, an entry posted to this blog should both record an interesting thought on the part of its author and strive to provoke further thought on the part of its readers. An entry should be clear and concise, and when appropriate it should make use of the Web-based resources available to blogs (for example, links to specific other pages under discussion or to sites hosting texts or forums of interest, and images or clips that illustrate relevant points of interest).
Posts can vary in length. A paragraph can suffice, provided it offers a complete idea or raises an interesting problem in a fully intelligible way. But a post may also constitute a brief essay in itself, if you are moved to pursue the thread of a particularly interesting topic. Given the screen-based interface, however, you should avoid posting lengthy entries that would require scrolling down for more than a few screens. If you want to sustain an argument that's longer than that, you should really break it down into a series of separate posts. That will both ease readability and help to ensure that comments are focused on discrete points of interest.
As for the topics of your posts, all I ask is that they relate to the subject of our course. How they relate is up to you! You may choose to write a response to a current text under discussion, or you may prefer to continue an argument about a broader theoretical approach. You may also use this space to solicit feedback on your own research interests, or to explore other aspects of our topic that couldn't fit into our syllabus or in-class discussion. Reviews and recommendations of other texts (including articles and books of criticism) are also appropriate, but make sure to avoid mere plot summary or paraphrase—give your readers a sense of the work's value and tackle its claims.
The main purpose of these blog entries is to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information among participants in our class. The exchange can be as lively and as wide-ranging as you want it to be, as focused and as deeply-considered as you can make it, though it should always remain respectful and thoughtful, even at moments of disagreement or in attempts at humor (Monty Python and the Holy Grail is one of the best Arthurian films ever in part because it's so knowledgeable about the material it's spoofing). I expect that we'll all learn what posts work best by simply continuing to post, read, and comment regularly. I look forward to following the progress of our blog!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment