Blog Forum 3: Rap About What You Like, Due Nov. 21/24

For your third and final blog assignment, you will all be creating one post and making one comment. Everyone must post an audio recording this time. Comments may be written or recorded, as you wish. Posts are due Friday, November 21, by midnight. Comments are due Monday, November 24, by midnight.

The Assignment Sheet and Evaluation Rubric for the Blog are attached here and still posted on T-square under the Assignments menu in the left nav:

1101 Blog Assignment
Blog Forum Rubric Fall 2014

Blog Forum 3: Rap About What You Like
This forum is a chance for you to collectively explore further some of the topics we’ve covered since the last forum while practicing speaking conversationally and naturally for the microphone. (You may find helpful the reading by Kristin Linklater about “freeing the natural voice” helpful.) Feel free to draw on any of the texts (readings, films, music, etc., Pascoe to Horowitz) that we’ve discussed in class or to introduce relevant readings from your personal archive.

TOPICS
Audio posts should be roughly two (2) minutes long and be accompanied in the post window by a one- to two-sentence caption that identifies the topic for your listener. You may also want to include links, as necessary, to contextualize any references you make in your recording. For example, if you choose Option A, you will probably want to include the video screen grab your post refers to. Don’t forget to come up with a title that piques the interest of your potential commenters!

Option A
Now that you are masters of analyzing the relationship between sound and image, you may return to the screen shot from the music video that you uploaded to the T-square Drop Box way back when and talk about what argument the image makes with and without the music/sound that accompanies it.

Option B
Now that you’ve had some time to think about your vernacular and the “dialect of your nurture,” take this opportunity to reflect on your accent, verbal mannerisms, regional vocabulary. Is there anything you understand better about your identity for having thought about the characteristics of your speech? Or pick a fight with any point made by Smitherman or Dante or the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Ira Glass (or another reading).

Option C
If you’re up for an adventure and don’t mind spending the money, there is a sound sculpture on exhibit right now at the High Museum of Art (Peachtree at 15th Street: a nice walk from Tech Square actually) titled The Forty Party Motet, by a Canadian artist named Janet Cardiff. Visit the exhibit and then reflect on how the sound defines the space (not the other way around) and how you experience the music (not necessarily the sound) as you move through the space. Or make any spectacular observation you want about the exhibit.

COMMENTS
For this forum, you need only write (or record!) one comment, of roughly 150 words. You are free to comment directly to the post or to one of the other commenters or both, but, as in the other forums, you should address the person you are responding to, so other readers better understand the context of your response. Again, your comment should respond to your classmates’ observations, descriptions, or reasoning and advance the thread of the conversation. You may respectfully disagree, suggest another line of thinking, or raise a question for discussion by later commenters.

Schafer’s Listening Walk Sound Map

Here’s a link to the .pdf that includes the sound map for Schafer’s “Listening Walk”: Schafer_End Matter. Page through to get to the sound map.

Blog Forum 2: Listening to Poetry, Due Sept. 29/Oct. 1

The second blog forum begins this week. If you were a blogger last time, then you are commenting this time and vice versa (i.e., Group B is now blogging; Group A is commenting). Group B’s blog posts are due a week from today, on Tuesday, September 30, at midnight. Comments are due a week from Wednesday, on Wednesday, October 1, at midnight.

The Assignment Sheet and Evaluation Rubric for the Blog are attached here and still posted on T-square under the Assignments menu in the left nav:

1101 Blog Assignment
Blog Forum Rubric Fall 2014

Blog Forum 2: Listening to Poetry
This forum requires you to observe yourself engaging in some of the kinds of listening described in the readings (Marshall, Chion, Siddons) and to pay attention to the culture of listening as represented by a poetry reading in the twenty-first century (as opposed to those Judith Pascoe describes in the early nineteenth century).

Bloggers and commenters alike will have to attend the Poetry@Tech Bourne Poetry Reading, featuring Richard Blanco and Jericho Brown, at 7:30pm on Thursday, September 25, in the Kress Auditorium at the Paper Museum on west campus, 500 Tenth Street NW (here is a map). I hear it gets crowded, so arrive early!

If and only if you have a conflict with the reading Thursday night, be you blogger or commenter, you should instead watch the ABC News broadcast of Richard Blanco reading the inaugural poem in 2013 (about 6 minutes) as well as Jericho Brown’s 2013 reading at James Madison University (about 45 minutes).

BLOGGERS:
As in Forum 1, posts should run about 300 words or be a 2.5-minute audio response (remember: one of your blog posts needs to be an audio recording of your response to the prompt).

Option A
In discussing Gilbert Austin’s Chironomia and its attempt both to “make it possible for future generations to witness a facsimile of a dead actor’s performance” and to document “that speech and gesture are inextricably intertwined,” Judith Pascoe cites a number of contemporary critics who observed Siddons’s “strategic use of the sustained pause” that accompanied the dramatic gestures she used (74–7). In the world of poetry, we call this sustained pause, or strategic silence, a caesura. Whether you attend the live reading or watch the recordings of Blanco and Brown posted online, identify one dramatic gesture and one strategic silence that seem particularly significant and explain their significance in relation to the recurrent themes of the poems read on that occasion. The gesture and caesura don’t necessarily have to occur together. They can be within the poems or part of the evening’s larger proceedings.

Option B
You will remember that Michel Chion makes a distinction between semantic listening, in which one listens for the message or code formed by the sounds one hears, and reduced listening, in which one listens to the sounds themselves. Poetry’s heightened attention to sound and sense ought to afford a special occasion to experience pleasure from reduced listening. Whether you attend the live reading or watch the recorded readings online, use reduced listening to hear one poem each by Blanco and Brown—that is, listen to the sound independent of the meaning of the words—then describe, compare, and contrast the sound of each poet’s voice. Does this attempt at reduced listening give you any greater sense of what, according to Kathryn Lynn Guerts’s research, the Anlo-Enwe people call a “feeling type of hearing”?

COMMENT WRITERS:
As in Forum 1, comment writers should write three responses, each approximately 100 words: two must comment on primary posts and one must respond to someone else’s comment. I will write a comment on one post for each section, so the first comment writer has a comment to respond to. You should carefully read your classmates’ work first. Your comment should then respond to your classmate’s observations, descriptions, or reasoning and advance the thread of the conversation. You may respectfully disagree, suggest another line of thinking, or raise a question for discussion by later commenters.

Thesis Performance, September 22, 24, 26

I’m so excited to see your performances next week! Good luck with your preparations, and feel free to contact me about them.

Here I just wanted to post the final version of the assignment sheet (including the reflection requirements), in addition to posting it under the Assignments tab in T-Square, where you will upload your visual documentation and reflection.

1101 J5G1P2 Thesis Performance Assignment

Here also is the schedule of performances on each date for each section:

Monday, September 22
J5: Surina, Sydney, Kayla, Ariel, Drew
G1: Rebekah, Prerak, PJ, Scott, Franklin, Imani, Jimmy, Charles
P2: Other Blake, Phil, Wade, Daniel, Hatless Blake, Sai, Edu

Wednesday, September 24
J5: Winston, Christian, Ryan, Jack, Ben, Rishav, Jake, Allison
G1: Matt, Alanna, Kelsey, Christopher, Nifemi, Jason, Dave, Teju
P2: Alex, Tom, Prachi, Kevin, Neha, Aditya, Sibyl, Nikki

Friday, September 26
J5: Meagan, Brendan, Austin, Jae, Yongmin, Jighar, Admir, Janet
G1: Ludwika, Draven, Anush, Siyan, Jay, Caleb, Katherine, Jesse
P2: Jamie, Likhit, Priyank, Annabel, Tanvi, Shan, Shyam, Soojin

Blog Assignment and Prompt No. 1, Due Fri., Sept. 5

As discussed in class today, the first blog posts are due a week from today, Friday, September 5, at midnight. Those who volunteered to take the plunge and blog first (Group A) will post by Friday. Those who volunteered to comment first (GROUP B) will comment by Monday, September 8, at midnight.

The Assignment Sheet and Evaluation Rubric for the Blog are attached here and posted on T-square under the Assignments menu in the left nav:

1101 Blog Assignment
Blog Forum Rubric Fall 2014

You can link to your section’s satellite blog by clicking on your section number in the menu above or on one of the following links:

• J5 (MWF 10:05am): blogs.iac.gatech.edu/hearhearj5 
• G1 (MWF 12:05pm): blogs.iac.gatech.edu/hearhearg1
• P2 (MWF 1:05pm): blogs.iac.gatech.edu/hearhearp2

The following prompt will also be posted on the home page of each satellite site:

PROMPT NO. 1 BLOGGERS (GROUP A):
Post a 300-word written or 2.5-minute audio response to one of the following prompts related to the podcasts we discussed in class on Friday, August 29. Audio prompts should be accompanied by a brief caption that introduces and situates the recording:

Option A:
Radiolab hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich banter a lot on their show, often taking different positions on the topic of the episode or segment. You should select one of these “arguments” between Jad and Robert and pick a side. You should state your position clearly, supplying sound-based evidence to support your position and then adding something to the complexity of the side you chose.

Option B:
Choose a musical tag that brands something you hear regularly (a consumer product, a television show, a movie, etc.). Describe how that tag “touches” you (“Sound is touch at a distance”), how it shapes your experience of the thing it brands, and finally how well your experience of the sound corresponds to the experience of the product, show, etc.

PROMPT NO. 1 COMMENT WRITERS (GROUP B)
Comments should be approximately 100 words and respond to three of your classmates’ responses, two of which must be posts (i.e., not comments), one of which must be a comment. I will write a comment, so the first commentor has a comment to respond to. You should carefully read your classmates’ work first. Your comment should then respond to your classmate’s point, evidence, or reasoning and advance the thread of the conversation. You may respectfully disagree, suggest further reading or another line of thinking, or raise a question for further discussion.

In both posts and comments, I encourage you to incorporate or embed links, videos, recordings, or images to substantiate your position and illustrate your presentation.

Welcome to ENGL 1101!

Welcome to ENGL 1101 (J5, G1, P2): “Hear! Hear! Composition by Ear.” As you might guess, this course highlights the role of sound and listening in Georgia Tech’s multimodal approach to teaching composition and communication. We will be listening to podcasts and blogs and films and one another. We will be listening to music videos — on mute. We will read about one scholar’s quest to recover a famous voice that reportedly moved audiences to tears in the age just before sound recording, pause to take stock of the soundscapes around us, and consider how our inner ear hears what we read and write — and then assigns social value to it.

The syllabus for the course is organized into four sections, outlined in the menu just above:

• Course Overview
• Policies
• Assignments
• Schedule

We will read the syllabus together in the second week of class, but you should read each section again carefully on your own, following the link to the Writing and Communication Program’s common policies, and bring any questions you have to class on Wednesday, August 27. When you feel confident that you understand the course policies and expectations, print and sign this acknowledgment that you have read and understood your responsibilities for the fall 2014 semester, as well as the accompanying statement, allowing or forbidding my use of your work from this class for future presentation or publication. You should return your signed acknowledgment and permission statement to me no later than Wednesday, August 27.

I’m looking forward to getting to know all of you and your voices in the coming months. In the meantime, think about how these three presentations of the same event in the history of sound differ:

• RadioLab, “Escape!” episode, Voyager Out blog post
• NASA ScienceCast: “The Sounds of Interstellar Space”
• The Daily Epic, “NASA Probes Record Sounds in Space — and It’s Terrifying”

Question No. 1 might be, in the immortal words of the Beastie Boys, “Where you get your information from, huh?

And on that note, see you in class!