Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Twenty-First-Century Writing/Twentieth Century Teachers?, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Articles and Research

"My students are writing in their everyday lives—indeed, their everyday lives are written—but we (teachers—writing teachers, in particular--and education administrators, no doubt nudged by politicians and “the public”) have to a large extent failed miserably in embracing and capitalizing on that writing: email, text messaging, instant messaging, blogging, twittering, responding, video gaming, Second Lifeing. Andrea and Karen Lunsford’s recent longitudinal study of Stanford students has shown the lie to the given that students today don’t write as much as they used to (they are writing much more). Are we becoming the stodgy, ungenerous, rigid English teachers that we ourselves were …

Performing Masculinity In Paradise Lost, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

"In Female Masculinities, Judith Halberstam objects that critical and theoretical approaches to sex/gender systems have paid too much attention to anatomy. In particular, she faults studies of masculinity for focusing almost exclusively on the white male body and its effects. By delimiting masculinity in this way, Halberstam argues, we counterproductively confine ourselves to those manifestations of masculinity with which we are already intimately familiar. Urging an ampler vision, Halberstam calls for the examination of alternative masculinities, particularly those performed by agents who are not male by birth or biology.

When we read Milton with Halberstam in mind, we realize something …