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Pottermore

anitaderouen

I got an account for Pottermore yesterday. I shouldn’t be quite so giddy about that, but getting up before the crack of dawn to search through descriptions of Quidditch matches in books you haven’t read in a while to find the answer to a riddle will sort of do things to a girl.

The account just means that I get to be part of the site beta (so I’m going to be one of a million testing the thing). I’d be lying, though, if I didn’t say that I’m curious as a fan of the books (although not active at all in HP fandom, so from that perspective I’m a total newb) AND as an academic person who’s been talking about identity with her classes for a while.

In a June 2011 press conference about the site, J.K. Rowling said the following about the Sorting process that the site will use (source):

So, developing these vast pool of questions that are randomly selected for a user – so you wont get the same questions as your friend necessarily – I thought it was quite important that people didn’t get to second guess what meant Gryffindor, for example. But the exciting thing for me is that if you’re not sorted into Gryffindor, if you’re sorted into one of the other three houses you will effectively get an extra quarter chapter because you will go off to your on common room. If you are sorted into Gyrffindor you just follow Harry. But if you’re sorted into Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw or Slytherin, you go to your own common room, you meet your own prefect, who will tell you about famous people who were in your house and what the true nature of your house is.

I’m particularly anticipating a lively discussion about the whole Sorting process; fans of the series care deeply about the house to which they’d belong, many having constructed internet identities around belonging to a particular house. Sorting quizzes have been around for a long time, but now we’re going to have a Sorting experience developed by the creator–and owner–of the concept, which can’t help but change the game up a bit, no?

I’m also curious about the reception/perception of all of the additional content Rowling intends to make available through the site; participatory culture (I’m thinking here of fan-created content and conversations in particular) exists partially to imagine what isn’t told in the presented tale, to inhabit and give life to the unwritten and imagine the improbable. Pottermore has a real potential to joss a canon that’s been “closed” since the first copy of the last book was read.

And, for the record, I am not at this time conducting any academic studies on fandom, Harry Potter fandom, or Pottermore. I just can’t be anything other than what I am, which is a person who thinks about stuff in an academic sort of way.

Which makes me, I’m pretty sure, a Ravenclaw. I can live with that.

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A Few Words On Lurking

anitaderouen

I’m a lurker.

I don’t know why I am, exactly, although I have a strong suspicion that my lurking behavior is indicative of a fundamental cowardice in my nature. Back in my astrological study days, I would have said it was the dark part of my Libra-ness; I might still say that. I might not.

Lurking is safety and comfort, but it’s also stagnation and fear. Lurking lets me listen in on the conversation without having to put myself out there and on record as being part of the conversation.

I lurk everywhere, in places personal and professional. I read fora, listservs, blogs–I rarely comment, and when I do, I feel odd because no one knows me, but I feel as though I know everyone.

There may have been a time when I felt that lurking was wise, that by so doing I was saving myself for the “right time,” as though I had a limited number of words to share. How ridiculous.

Work

Personal and Public

anitaderouen

In Turning Composition Toward Sovereignty, John Schilb discusses the lack of publicly-oriented rhetorical scholarship in the English and Rhet/Comp journals (as editor of College English he would have some sense of what’s going on out there). He theorizes that our use of Foucault’s shift of the discussion of power from sovereignty allows us to place our emphasis on agency instead.

I think he’s spot on regarding the lack of attention to the use of rhetoric in the public sphere, but this is ground I believe we long ago ceded (through passivity, I would wager) to our colleagues in communications in favor of focusing our resources on the first-year composition enterprise, an endeavor that is much more greatly helped by considering agency as a fundamental concern. I find his use of “Composition” in the title interesting as it suggests the producing, not analyzing, side of the discipline.

I’m energized as I consider Schilb’s piece, though, because the use of rhetoric in public discourse is of interest to me, so much so that I wandered over to the Communication department at UGA to audit a doctoral seminar on Kenneth Burke during my doctoral studies; I was hungry for a discussion of the frameworks governing conversations. The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether it would be good for me to dip my toes into that water professionally.

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. . . and again

anitaderouen

I’ve not had a truly public blog for a couple of years now. When we moved to Jackson, something in me wanted safe spaces for writing and thinking. My old blog was primarily focused on my knitting; this one will just have to feel its way to being.

It’s strange to be in a fresh new space. I’ve got to put some paint up on the walls and hang photos, maybe get a comfy chair.

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Notebooking

anitaderouen

Yesterday I spent $2.99 on a notebook to be used solely for my current Big Research Project (BRP). As I type that, it seems absurd that I spent so much money for what is essentially 80 sheets of recycled paper sewn together between two recycled cardboard covers (I suspect the recycling upped the price a fair bit). I can only say that I felt a strong urge to have a notebook to hand yesterday, as if I were about to erupt with words that urgently needed recording.

The notebook sits in my handbag, blank–but waiting.

After reading Scott McLemee’s piece on The Notebook, I feel a bit more at ease with both this notebook and the growing collection I have of such receptacles, including this blog.

Now to prepare for some oral examinations. Comps are done tomorrow.

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Nostalgia

anitaderouen

Proctoring comprehensive examinations always reminds me of the day I passed my doctoral exams. Once I realized that I’d finished taking the Very Last Test I’d ever have to take, I drove straight over to the yarn shop and purchased a gorgeous and expensive hank of undyed silk lace-weight yarn.

Today’s test-takers are undergraduates, some of whom I’ve had the pleasure to teach, and it occurs to me that I might want to make something with that yarn before one of THEM gets a doctorate.

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Directionally Challenged?

anitaderouen

The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Ms. Mentor weighs in on the question “Why won’t my students follow directions?”

They Scoff at Your Piddly Rules

In other news, Robyn Foster, a student at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, was arrested for refusing to leave class after being instructed to do so; she allegedly had thrown a water bottle at another student in the room. Another student (who apparently is an intern for a local television station as reported in this HuffPo post) videotaped the event (on an iPhone). For your viewing convenience, I’ve embedded a link:

I found the video through The Chronicle here. The conversations in the commentary on the three linked pages is as popcorn worthy as the video itself.