Tag: baldwin

Class, Mon, 9/30

Baldwin and Obama

In what ways does Obama build on, revise, or disagree with Baldwin?

Deborah Brandt, Sponsors of Literacy

Sponsors, as I have come to think of them, are any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way. Just as the ages of radio and television accustom us to having programs brought to us by various commercial sponsors, it is useful to think about who or what underwrites occasions of literacy learning and use.

Brandt (166)
Fastwrite

Let’s try to build on Brandt’s thinking. The University of Delaware is sponsoring your literacy. It is—in some way and to some degree—marketing you, as a (soon-to-be-credentialed) graduate, to prospective employers, as well as to the State that it serves as a flagship university. So if you—again, in some way and to some degree—are the “product”, what is it, exactly, that the University is selling? What kind of literacy is it sponsoring?

To Do

  1. Mon, 9/30, 4:00 pm: Group A responds to Heller.
  2. Tues, 10/01, 4:00 pm: Everyone else reads Group A’s responses and comments on at least two.
  3. Wed, 10/02, class: We will use those responses and comments to structure our discussion of Heller.
  4. Wed, 10/02/4:00 pm: Group B responses to Solnit.
  5. Thurs, 10/03, 4:00 pm: Everyone else reads Group B’s responses and comments on at least two.
  6. Fri, 10/04, class: We will use those responses and comments to structure our discussion of Solnit.
  7. Mon, 10/07, class: Read Jamaica Kinkaid’s “A Small Place”. I will lead our discussion.
  8. Mon, 10/07, 4:00 pm: Group C responds to Roxane Gay.
  9. Tues, 10/08, 4:00 pm: Everyone else reads Group C’s responses and comments on at least two.
  10. Wed, 10/09, class: We will use those responses and comments to structure our discussion of Gay.
  11. Thurs, 10/10, 4:00 pm: Everyone emails me a one-page proposal for their final project.
  12. Fri, 10/11: Fall “Break”.
  13. Mon, 10/14, and Wed, 10/16: No class meeting. Individual conferences with me.

Baldwin and Buckley Response

In the video of the debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, it talks a bit about the possibility of one person’s sense of reality being eliminated for another. In a quote from James Baldwin, “whatever one’s reaction to this proposition is, has to be the question of whether or not civilizations can be considered, as such, equal, or whether one’s civilization has the right to overtake and subjugate, and, in fact, to destroy another”. 

I feel that this is somewhat similar and different from Gloria Anzaldua’s piece How to Tame a Wild Tongue. The similarity I feel is the clashing between two different civilizations and between two languages in Anzaldua’s case. Baldwin is speaking of the possibility of one person’s way of life or civilization overtaking someone else’s. The difference I see from Anzaldua is that she speaks of the combination of her two cultures and how they make a culture of their own. Baldwin’s comment about domination is a lot more bleak as well.

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