March122012
Carolyn Kellogg on the critic’s labors at NBCC awards time.
February252012
The link above will take you to a very interesting essay on Detroit’s regeneration as urban farmland.
1PM
I’m reposting Dano Mattingly’s essay, “Jazz > Society” because there are several very smart ideas here worth clarifying in order to improve the essay’s argument and construction. I think it is a useful exercise for us as a group to edit this post in terms of diction, rhetoric (in terms of audience), argumentative focus.
Use the comments section to offer suggestions for changes or adjustments, or cut and paste Dano’s post into your own blog editor and reblog it with your changes.
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February122012
Class this is another strong example of critical essay writing. Note how the author mixes personal essay and literary criticism to generate her critique.
lareviewofbooks:

We wanted to run something on Prop 8, as it’s called, one of the most notorious miscarriages of democracy in the ongoing disaster that is our state’s referendum system. Audrey Bilger, who teaches Victorian literature at Claremont…
(Source: lareviewofbooks)
February82012
A strong essay on literary parentage and the assertion of individuality:
“The mentor/protégé relationship should be a space for the pupil to learn as much from their superior as possible. The student is not supposed to develop into an exact replica of the mentor. In order to become adult, the young have to find their own way and sometimes this maturity is only attained from rebellion. Could it have been that Wright had taught Baldwin too well? Maybe once he was ready to usher two writers into the literary world, Wright had already forgotten about the ideals he had to questions in order to accomplish his own work.” — Nandi Comer