Month: September 2018
Looking for Purloined Letters
Last week, I explored the benefits of mastery when approaching a text — namely the meanings that are made possible to those who know what to look for. While I mentioned that those who didn’t know what to look for are likely to “miss out,” this week I am interested in the ways in which
Recognizing Heroic Domesticity
An article in the most recent issue of The Atlantic draws attention to the varied ways in which Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is read. The main suggestion is that knowledge of Alcott’s biography can drastically change a reader’s interpretation of the text. This knowledge about the author’s biography, one of many types of topic
The Joy of Recognition; or, The Occasional Dangers of Mastery
A bit of an open secret exists in academia for graduate students. We sometimes experience frustrations with teaching. While most of us view teaching as perhaps the most rewarding thing that we do, we love to complain about our students (it is usually good-natured, I promise). After spending the past year without any teaching responsibilities,
A Season for Changes
From the Editors: Welcome to Broadly Textual Pub, the publication formerly known as Metathesis. From its origins in 2014, this online blog space has always been about sharing ideas with a broader audience. The blog began in a meeting of graduate students with a mission: to connect the public with ideas and conversation usually contained