Monthly Archives: January 2012

We led off the Punctuation course this past Thursday with the following quotation from William H. Glass (found in Virginia Tufte’s lovely Artful Sentences): Simplicity is not a given. It is an achievement, a human invention, a discovery, a beloved belief. … Continue reading →

In this winter that so far has not been (winter), it’s another beautiful day. Walking to K-wing a few moments ago I saw physical plant workers planting evergreen shrubs in the new tree planters outside the new art gallery. There … Continue reading →

We were talking about sacred texts and Irish monks in two classes today. In Punctuation, I described early Irish monks who were new to both Christianity and Latin. They knew that they copied sacred texts in a language not their … Continue reading →

The internet has changed our access to books in many ways. I’ve been thinking about three of the more obvious ones: The internet has made interlibrary loan very easy. At Stockton, just go to the Interlibrary Loan Screen, found under … Continue reading →

In the punctuation course today we began sentence-level grammatical analysis — you need a base in grammar to discuss punctuation. In Research we discussed provenance written in an English Reader (printed in Albany, NY in 1834). In Medieval Ireland we … Continue reading →

Yesterday in Research I asked students to begin an analysis of Wikipedia. A student raised his hand and said, “Wikipedia is closed tomorrow in protest of SOPA.” Interesting. In many ways, the Research course is a class on information management. … Continue reading →

Were there any threads connecting Punctuation, Research, and Irish? Maybe one — I talk a lot and feel there is not enough time to cover the material. O how I long for 17-week semesters (at least at the start of … Continue reading →

This is an experimental blog — experimental may be too grand — it’s really just a meeting ground for the courses I’m teaching this term. I am teaching Punctuation: History and Craft, Introduction to Literary Research, and Medieval Irish History. … Continue reading →