Adventures in MFA Land

By Roberta M. Gubbins Authors of original works are passionate about their creations. Each word, brush stroke, or angle of camera lens is considered and re-considered before put in use. For that reason, since the first writers carved on a clay tablet, they don’t appreciate others making copies, claiming the work as their own, and selling it for a profit. Society, on the other hand, has not always agreed with the authors. Before the printing press, manuscripts were laboriously copied by scriveners to be bought and sold without any thought to paying the author. In those days, how would the author know his work had been copied unless he happened upon it in a church library or in royal’s home? The invention of the printing press didn’t help authors much at all. Printers would petition their governments for exclusive monopolies to print and sell manuscripts—in 1469 the Italian government granted such monopoly to a Johannes of Speyer, conceding a five-year exclusive right to print in ...

Let's say its a sunny day, 90 degrees hot and humid. And you see a guy walking around in a rain coat and he's sweating so much he's getting wet. You say to him, "That coat isn't working, its not going to keep you dry, its actually making you get wet. The best way for you to dry off is to take off the coat." He looks at you like you're crazy and says, "I'm not trying to be dry, I'm trying to sweat off five pounds."  Once you know the guy is trying to lose weight, then you could suggest better ways to do it. But if you assume you know what he is trying to do, you could give him advice that will be unrelated to what he was trying to do. Sure, it might be great advice--the best--but if it doesn't help him toward his goal then it isn't the best advice for him at that time. Also, it could ignore his goal altogether, which invalidates his intentions. I'm just thinking, sometimes you have to ask someone why they are doin...

Given that the purpose of the freshman composition course varies greatly from one institution to another, a one size fits all approach to what is appropriate reading for the composition classroom is not reasonable or desirable. The selection of literature may be appropriate. But does the reading of fiction have advantages over non-fiction? Louise Rosenblatt, author of Literature as Exploration , believes so. She pointed out that it is easy to think about complex human problems when emotions are not involved. This ease is a disservice to students as this type of setting, a non-emotional one, is not realistic. Students need the challenge that is supplied by emotion; fiction supplies that challenge as “literature offers an opportunity to develop the ability to think rationally within an emotionally colored context ” (p217). Rosenblatt notes that fiction provides students the opportunity to identify their emotions, test their assumptions, and consequently reject or revise their origi...

Throughout her discussion, Lindemann refers to teaching literature . This phrase is revealing and reflects Lindemann’s limited perception of literature, its uses, and its impact on the reader. Although she does briefly touch upon critical theory, she does not explore it with any great depth. Tate also examined literature as a source for analysis, something to be taken apart and examined and then subsequently written about. Steinberg’s addition to the conversation is a historical perspective; Gamer’s begins to explore the differences between fiction and non-fiction. Salvatori’s analysis goes a step further in that it explores the relationship of reader to text, acknowledging that readers engage differently with fiction than they do with non-fiction. It appears that the conversation stagnated and, for the most part, ended at that point. The stagnation occurred at the time when the question, why do readers engage differently with fiction than non-fiction , should have been raise...

Although the debate between Lindemann and Tate took center stage, others entered the conversation. Erwin Steinberg and Michael Gamer both had articles in the March 1995 issue of College English , the issue that featured Lindemann’s and Tate’s second installments mentioned above. Steinberg, in his article, “Imaginative Literature in Composition Classrooms?” focuses on the history of the use of literature in the composition classroom. He rejects Tate’s assertion that literature has recently been ejected from composition classrooms. Using Albert Kitzhaber’s 1963 report, “Themes, Theories, and Therapy,” he states that there is no typical composition classroom because the content of the courses varies so greatly from one institution to the next. Gamer, in his article, “Fictionalizing the Disciplines: Literature and the Boundaries of Knowledge,” rethinks Tate’s dilemma by replacing the concept of writing beyond the disciplines, writing from inside of the academy to outside, with his own a...