david foster wallace

Something I’ve just noticed: there’s a link on the “special pages” page of the wiki to a page called “Wanted Pages,” which lists all the pages that have been linked to within the rest of the site but that don’t yet exist. Seems like good territory for page-creation, if you’re seeking something to do…

Your first paper assignment is linked above. Please email or come see me if you have questions.

It occurs to me that it might be useful to some of you to see the John Barth essay, “The Literature of Exhaustion,” which Robert McLaughlin refers to in “Post-postmodern Discontent,” so it’s now available on Sakai.

A quick note: my regular office hours for the next two weeks (Jan. 26 – Feb. 6) have been completely taken over by job talks being presented by candidates for the positions in English and Media Studies. Because of that, office hours will be by appointment only until Feb. 9, when the regular drop-in hours will resume.

This site is yours to make of what you want, a space for further interaction, for exploration, for testing out some of the ideas that come up in our discussions or in your papers. You’ll be expected to post your responses to our class reading here on the blog, but I also want to see you trying things out here for yourselves, working actively to make this blog a useful space for discussing the texts we’re reading this semester.

So any number of things might provide a good topic for a blog post. Here are a few suggestions (slightly modified from a similar list my colleague Meg Worley gave a class of hers):

• Isn’t it interesting the way that passage X seems to predict contemporary phenomenon Y?
• I found this cool article online that you should all read!
• Does “jargonterm” mean P or Q — or something else entirely?
• Wow, Reading Z really reminds me of last week’s episode of Lost.
• I could use some feedback on this idea I’ve been wrestling with…
• Did she say A or B in class yesterday? I forgot to write it down.
• Hey, I’m in a play this weekend, and y’all should come!

You’ll no doubt find other things you want to post about, too — things you stumble across on the web that the rest of the class should see, things you find in your research that the rest of the class might be interested in. This kind of sharing is what makes group blogs exciting; I’ll look forward to seeing what you come up with.