pjholcomb

 

I haven't posted here for a very long time. However, I keep getting emails that so and so has a bday coming up or so and so has joined your page. Sooo, I'm back. I 'm surfing online booksellers tonight and I am thoroughly amazed that Amazon's site seems to be down. At least, I can't get it to load, which makes me very sad because I love the --you might also like these books function of amazon.

I've been preparing to write a proposal for my dissertation. I have a rough outline and I've got a partial reading list put together, but I need some works that connect Habermas's ideas concerning the public and private sphere with technology. So far I've read Jenkins' Convergence Culture, Rheingold's The Virtual Community, Turkle's Life on the Screen, and Wendy Chun's Control and Freedom. I really like how Chun utilizes Habermas briefly in her work. That is how I got turned on to Habermas. Well, Chun's work and an article that uses Habermas to look at voting on the internet.

During the break I've also read Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, most of Jurgen Habermas on Society and Politics: A Reader edited by Steven Seidman, A couple works by Lisa Delpit,  a couple Geneva Smitherman works, bell hooks' Teaching to Trangress, I.A. Richards The Philosphy of Rhetoric, and quite a few works of popular fiction. I couldn't help myself! I read a Grisham (The Associate), an Anne Rice (Blackwood Manor), Laurance Shames (Mangrove Squeeze--his work always makes me laugh), Ayn Rand's Anthem (I love that book), and Julia Reed's The House on First Street (this work was written by a wealthy New Orleans resident. It is her  story re: Katrina. I thought it might be useful to use it in the classroom someday in contrast with a more touching Katrina story, but I don't think Reed's work would fit into the classroom). It is Thursday, well at least it was until about 20 minutes ago, and I've got one more book on my list. I picked it up at Half Price Books today while looking for more Freire or works that would work for my reading list (I didn't find anything). Any way this last work is From Socarates to Sartre: the Philosophic Quest by T.Z. Lavine. I know that none of these books may lead me in the direction I'm going in my dissertation. But with the exception of the one I bought today, I already had the rest in my library (I tend to horde books. Most of the time they do come in handy!) or I checked them out of the university library.

Anyway, I would be really grateful for any tips on books about technology, wikis, public versus private sphere through technology, and how to connect technologies students already use everyday to teach argument, such as linking websites as support for an argument made in a comment on any website. I think this can be built on to teach students to make and understand compelling arguments in freshman composition.


More later. I'm actually very tired. I got up early to hear Obama's speech live in Cairo this morning.

I think I'll go bang my head against the wall a few times! I've spent the last 3 hours getting mother set up in myspace. She has many friends (3 daughters and about 12 grandchildren so far) in Myspace. We talked via cell phone Illinois/Texas for a looong time, but we got the job done. At one point, when I realized just how limited she is on the web, I thought I might give up. I didn't and she is set. I was very suprised to find she did not know what google was. I learned that when she said ohh that is what google is, see Janie this Myspace is driven by google. It's right there on the page. I thought, Oh my how has she been navigating the web? Later I found she has been using Yahoo's search engine. I didn't feel quite so bad. Well, I've converted her to the dark side. She's 87, googling and communicating via MySpace now!

One of my daughters is going to pimp (as in decorate) mom's Myspace tomorrow. I wonder how that will turn out?