By despecializing the occupation, Barbauld not only demystifies pedagogy but delaborizes it: chil... more By despecializing the occupation, Barbauld not only demystifies pedagogy but delaborizes it: child-rearing is not a job to be hird out for wages, but the prerogative of every mother. Child-rearing is not the exclusive domain of trained pedagogues but a skill that any mother can learn.
Daniel Defoe's Colonel Jack (1722) employs an episodic structure described by Gabriel Cervantes a... more Daniel Defoe's Colonel Jack (1722) employs an episodic structure described by Gabriel Cervantes as "heterogeneous." Its first one-hundred pages depict the protagonist Jack's destitute childhood. Jack is thrust out on the streets when his "nurse" dies and must learn how to exist in an early eighteenth century London. Charles Lamb describes this opening section "the most affecting natural picture of a young thief that was ever drawn." Scholars have approached this famous section from a variety of angles. In my essay, I look at Jack's childhood in the context of pedagogy. I argue that the novel presents an alternative to the dominant educational narrative of the time, which focused on privileged children. Defoe, employing a three-stage structure, creates a homeless, impoverished child who has no access to formalized education, and depicts his adult failures as a cautionary exhibit of what happens when a child receives no religious education.
French poet and wunderkind Arthur Rimbaud (very serious at seventeen) had a natural affinity for ... more French poet and wunderkind Arthur Rimbaud (very serious at seventeen) had a natural affinity for Latinate sounds and word-structures. I believe that he would have been fascinated with the wild Anglo-Saxon unpredictability of the English language.
A woman throws herself on the ground in a fit of passion; she has seen the moon and the sun toget... more A woman throws herself on the ground in a fit of passion; she has seen the moon and the sun together in the same sky, and bemoans – or rather, a garrulous and quixotic narrator bemoans for her, in florid, generous language – an earthquake-like trembling of the delicate system of axioms with which she interprets the world. This woman is in a graveyard, of course. After wandering among the tombs in a state of heightened sensibility, she returns to her antagonistic and ineffectual husband. He is the moon to her own sun; he existence is as necessary as her own, and yet they cannot be together in the same sky.
ChatGPT represents a leap forward in teaching technology akin to the introduction of calculators ... more ChatGPT represents a leap forward in teaching technology akin to the introduction of calculators into math classes in the 1970s and 80s. Novel technology brings both novel dilemmas and novel opportunities. Teachers of college English find themselves at a moment in history between the introduction of a paradigm-shifting technology and the solidification of a set of a standards and practices that can guide them in its use (or rejection). Brent Anders' creation of an AI literacy multi-part definition can situate a plethora of ChatGPT-based activities and lessons in a pedagogical framework that upholds common student learning objectives across English classes.
Daniel Defoe’s Colonel Jack (1722) employs an episodic structure described by Gabriel Cervantes a... more Daniel Defoe’s Colonel Jack (1722) employs an episodic structure described by Gabriel Cervantes as “heterogeneous.” Its first one-hundred pages depict the protagonist Jack’s destitute childhood--Jack is thrust out on the streets when his “nurse” dies and must learn how to exist in an early eighteenth century London. Charles Lamb describes this opening section “the most affecting natural picture of a young thief that was ever drawn." Scholars have approached this famous section from a variety of angles; Aparna Gollapudi examines Jack’s childhood in a framework of eighteenth century capitalism, postulating that the currency of Jack’s education not reason or virtue but wealth. Stephen Gregg considers Jack’s education in masculinity: as Jack discovers what it is to be masculine, he strives to attain agency - only to fail time and time again. These approaches help fill in our understanding of Colonel Jack, but most seem to approach the novel as the work of a quasi-savant whose grasp of English society and culture is more that of a journalist than a theorist. In my essay, I look at Jack’s childhood in the context of pedagogy. I argue that the novel presents an alternative to the dominant educational narrative of the time, which focused on privileged children at the expense of the ubiquitous, numerous, nascently Dickensian London youth. Defoe, employing a three-stage structure, creates a homeless, impoverished child who has no access to formalized education, and depicts his adult failures as a cautionary exhibit of what happens when a child receives no religious education.
By despecializing the occupation, Barbauld not only demystifies pedagogy but delaborizes it: chil... more By despecializing the occupation, Barbauld not only demystifies pedagogy but delaborizes it: child-rearing is not a job to be hird out for wages, but the prerogative of every mother. Child-rearing is not the exclusive domain of trained pedagogues but a skill that any mother can learn.
Daniel Defoe's Colonel Jack (1722) employs an episodic structure described by Gabriel Cervantes a... more Daniel Defoe's Colonel Jack (1722) employs an episodic structure described by Gabriel Cervantes as "heterogeneous." Its first one-hundred pages depict the protagonist Jack's destitute childhood. Jack is thrust out on the streets when his "nurse" dies and must learn how to exist in an early eighteenth century London. Charles Lamb describes this opening section "the most affecting natural picture of a young thief that was ever drawn." Scholars have approached this famous section from a variety of angles. In my essay, I look at Jack's childhood in the context of pedagogy. I argue that the novel presents an alternative to the dominant educational narrative of the time, which focused on privileged children. Defoe, employing a three-stage structure, creates a homeless, impoverished child who has no access to formalized education, and depicts his adult failures as a cautionary exhibit of what happens when a child receives no religious education.
French poet and wunderkind Arthur Rimbaud (very serious at seventeen) had a natural affinity for ... more French poet and wunderkind Arthur Rimbaud (very serious at seventeen) had a natural affinity for Latinate sounds and word-structures. I believe that he would have been fascinated with the wild Anglo-Saxon unpredictability of the English language.
A woman throws herself on the ground in a fit of passion; she has seen the moon and the sun toget... more A woman throws herself on the ground in a fit of passion; she has seen the moon and the sun together in the same sky, and bemoans – or rather, a garrulous and quixotic narrator bemoans for her, in florid, generous language – an earthquake-like trembling of the delicate system of axioms with which she interprets the world. This woman is in a graveyard, of course. After wandering among the tombs in a state of heightened sensibility, she returns to her antagonistic and ineffectual husband. He is the moon to her own sun; he existence is as necessary as her own, and yet they cannot be together in the same sky.
ChatGPT represents a leap forward in teaching technology akin to the introduction of calculators ... more ChatGPT represents a leap forward in teaching technology akin to the introduction of calculators into math classes in the 1970s and 80s. Novel technology brings both novel dilemmas and novel opportunities. Teachers of college English find themselves at a moment in history between the introduction of a paradigm-shifting technology and the solidification of a set of a standards and practices that can guide them in its use (or rejection). Brent Anders' creation of an AI literacy multi-part definition can situate a plethora of ChatGPT-based activities and lessons in a pedagogical framework that upholds common student learning objectives across English classes.
Daniel Defoe’s Colonel Jack (1722) employs an episodic structure described by Gabriel Cervantes a... more Daniel Defoe’s Colonel Jack (1722) employs an episodic structure described by Gabriel Cervantes as “heterogeneous.” Its first one-hundred pages depict the protagonist Jack’s destitute childhood--Jack is thrust out on the streets when his “nurse” dies and must learn how to exist in an early eighteenth century London. Charles Lamb describes this opening section “the most affecting natural picture of a young thief that was ever drawn." Scholars have approached this famous section from a variety of angles; Aparna Gollapudi examines Jack’s childhood in a framework of eighteenth century capitalism, postulating that the currency of Jack’s education not reason or virtue but wealth. Stephen Gregg considers Jack’s education in masculinity: as Jack discovers what it is to be masculine, he strives to attain agency - only to fail time and time again. These approaches help fill in our understanding of Colonel Jack, but most seem to approach the novel as the work of a quasi-savant whose grasp of English society and culture is more that of a journalist than a theorist. In my essay, I look at Jack’s childhood in the context of pedagogy. I argue that the novel presents an alternative to the dominant educational narrative of the time, which focused on privileged children at the expense of the ubiquitous, numerous, nascently Dickensian London youth. Defoe, employing a three-stage structure, creates a homeless, impoverished child who has no access to formalized education, and depicts his adult failures as a cautionary exhibit of what happens when a child receives no religious education.
Uploads
Papers by Eric Dovigi
Drafts by Eric Dovigi