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Congratulations! You have just become the safety manager for Podunk University. Your position is at the campus in Podunk, Colorado, and your predecessor left the job a year and a half ago. There has been nobody in the position during that interval. The commitment of the institution to safety is dubious at best, but you are looking forward to starting your new position and making a positive change. After introducing yourself to the secretary you share with a half dozen other, more senior, people, you decide to focus on hazardous material and hazardous waste issues since you just completed a great college course on those topics. You tour the campus and discover that the following departments and programs are yours to deal with:

The biology department has animal dissection, human dissection, a microbiology lab, and a medical laboratory education program that uses small quantities of a lot of chemicals.

The chemistry department has chemicals that have never been inventoried and a new forensics program (as in CSI, not in college debate).

The physics department has high-voltage equipment, lasers, and LEDs.

The English department has lots and lots of books and papers, as well as photocopiers.

The math department has lots of computers and whiteboards.

The automotive technology department has everything pertaining to auto repair, including solvents, asbestos brake linings, pneumatic tools, waste oil, and cutting and grinding tools.

The Massive Arena is one of the original buildings on campus and has a variety of interesting problems, including asbestos insulation, and the building is undergoing a massive renovation.

1. Where do you start?

2. Where should you focus your initial HazCom efforts? In what order do you tackle the rest of the departments? 3. What are the HazCom issues in the automotive technology department?

4. What are the hazardous waste issues in the automotive technology department?

5. What are the HazCom issues in the chemistry department?

6. What are the hazardous waste issues in the chemistry department?

7. With the Massive Arena renovation, who are the people to whom you need to communicate hazards?

8. What are your main concerns with the physics department?

9. What are the hazardous material/waste spill response issues for the university, and how should you prepare for them?

10. Is any HazCom training needed for the English and math departments?

11. What are some resources for finding out how to solve the HazCom issues?

12. You must choose technology or trainers to do the needed training. What are some issues to consider when selecting these?

13. Due to budget cuts, you have to do the training yourself, and you will use PowerPoint. What are some considerations when developing your PowerPoint Presentation?

14. How can you evaluate your training to ensure that it is accomplishing your goals?

15. One of the chemistry professors working with some of the automotive technology faculty members, invents a new nonflammable compound that will render obsolete the need for solvents to degrease auto parts. She wants to market the stuff. What needs to be done before it can be marketed, and who should do it?

16. The University decides to partner with the chemistry professor and market this new compound. Due to the lack of flammability, it is a great hit nationwide. They then decide to market it worldwide. What concerns need to be addressed?

17. It turns out that this wonderful new compound makes a really great explosion when used in conjunction with another chemical. As the University is manufacturing the compound in large quantities and storing it on the grounds, what concerns do you now have? What experts should you consult?

18. The biology department has been busy as well. The little microbiology lab is large now, and they are working with stronger pathogens. How would you determine the new hazard communication requirements and things that you should do beyond that minimum?

After a tough five years, you have the Podunk University campus running smoothly. Everybody is trained, and your successor will not have nearly as much of a challenge as you did. Congratulations, and best wishes on your next challenge! Your submission must be a minimum of four pages double-spaced, not including the title and reference pages, and in APA format. Support your answers to the questions with appropriate references and in-text citations.

Aspects of the beat generation aesthetic college essay help free: college essay help free

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Record: 1 `After All, What Else Is There to Say?’ Ed Sanders and the Beat Aesthetic. Herd, David Review of Contemporary Fiction. Spring99, Vol. 19 Issue 1, p122. 16p. Poetry Review INFLUENCE (Literary, artistic, etc.) — History — 20th century SANDERS, Ed V.F.W. Crawling Contest, The (Poem) BEAT poetry GINSBERG, Allen, 1926-1997 The article examines some poetic works by poet Ed Sanders to know whether his literary aesthetics were influenced by beat poet Allen Ginsberg. It addresses Sander’s poetic manifesto, measures Sander’s poetic development, and provides details on Sanders’ long narrative poem “The V.F.W. Crawling Contest.” 1290 5588 0276-0045 1571188 MasterFILE Premier

`AFTER ALL, WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO SAY?’ ED SANDERS AND THE BEAT AESTHETIC

Among the more telling stories in the first volume of Ed Sanders’s Tales of Beatnik Glory is “A Book of Verse.” The story opens with a sharp image of provincial life in the tranquilized fifties. It is 1957 and a “carload” of “graduating seniors”–among them the unnamed young man from whose perspective events are narrated–drive from their small town on the Missouri-Kansas border for a fraternity weekend at the state university. Dressed for the occasion, “he,” the central character, “wore his forty-five dollar R.H. Macy flannel suit with the pink and blue flecks he and his mother had bought for the homecoming dance in 1956.” Unextravagant, off-the-peg, conventionally distinctive, the suit bespeaks a conformist sensibility. As does the weekend that consisted of an “afternoon beer and barbecue party” and “was otherwise uneventful except that he threw up into the waterfall of a local fancy restaurant when drunk,” an act of socially acceptable rebellion that “guaranteed him an invitation to pledge the fraternity” (Tales 280-84).

While at the University, the young man buys a copy of “Howl,” distantly aware that the title poem has caused controversy. Its impact is explosive.

Howl ripped into his mind like the tornado that had uprooted the cherry tree in his backyard when he

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was a child. He began to cry…. He walked down the stairs in the middle of the night to wake his parents and read it to them. His mother threatened to call the state police …. Over and over he “howled” the poem, till much of it was held in his mind and he’d close his eyes and grab the book, almost tearing it, and shriek passages, stamping the ground. “God! God!” he yelled, “God!”…

Gone were the days of shoe polish, clean shirts, and paste-on smiles. He began to spend almost all of his time writing poetry…. For days he worked on a howling masterpiece. He typed various versions and gradually the poem evolved into the rageful shape he desired. (Tales 280-81, 284)

The purpose of “A Book of Verse” is to measure the impact of “Howl” on a young mind–Sanders’s– conditioned by a small American town in the 1950s. The story thus serves two functions. It testifies to the poem’s importance in twentieth-century poetic history. It also poses a problem. Sanders, so the story goes, became a poet because he read Ginsberg’s poem. The problem arising is thus one of influence. How does the poet react to such a transformative early reading experience? Or more specifically, how does the poet whose way of seeing has been fundamentally revised by “Howl” proceed to write without reproducing Ginsberg’s point of view?

The question can be more instructively, if more obliquely formulated, if one considers Sanders’s poetic manifesto Investigative Poetry, published in 1976. The heart of the manifesto is Sanders’s exhortation to fellow poets “to describe every aspect…of the historical present…for this is the era of the description of the All” (1). In so exhorting, Sanders has recourse to a familiar rhetoric: the rhetoric of inclusion. “Inclusion,” it would seem fair to say, had been the watchword of every significantly innovative body of American poetry produced since the 1940s, so much so that by 1976, the notion of “inclusion” had solidified into the official idiom of experimental postmodern poetry. How else could Sanders write of “the era of the description of the All”? And not least among the significantly innovative American poets who had emphasized the value of poetic inclusion was Sanders’s dedicatee, Allen Ginsberg, “who sets for all time the example that rebel poets not allow themselves to be driven into isolation.” Ginsberg, indeed, had been feeling out the implications of this rhetoric of inclusion since early 1949. Witness “After All, What Else Is There to Say?”

When I sit before a paper writing my mind turns in a kind of feminine madness of chatter; but to think to see, outside, in a tenement the walls of the universe itself I wait: wait till the sky appears as it is, wait for a moment when the poem itself is my way of speaking out, not declaiming of celebrating, yet, but telling the truth. (29)

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Clearly Ginsberg had not “yet” managed (as John Ashbery puts it) to “put it all down” (Three Poems 3). The intention, however, is there. Ginsberg is prepared to “wait till the sky / appears as it is.” After all, what else is worth telling if not the truth? And what is truth, after all, if not all there is to say?

In 1949, one imagines, Ginsberg’s title would have read like a challenge: challenging the poet to a sublime response. Had Sanders reread Ginsberg’s poem in 1976 as he prepared Investigative Poetry, its title could, or should, have read much more like a problem. Thus, in the first place, it is possible that Ginsberg has already said all that Sanders himself might want to say. What can Sanders add after Ginsberg, by whom he is so impressed, has commented on the historical present of which they are both a part? This is a serious but not a devastating difficulty. Sanders can evade the obsolescence the problem implies if he can eke out areas of his own experience for which Ginsberg, for all his capaciousness, has not accounted. A second, much more serious possibility is that the very rhetoric of “All” has itself, by 1976, some twenty-seven years after Ginsberg began to feel for its contours, become hollow. Arguably, that is, the poet who speaks of the “era of the description of the All” is no longer, in any real sense, issuing a sublime challenge but is settling instead into a kind of shorthand (a catchall if you will) that serves no longer to sharpen but actually to dull the attention. Glossed in this way, Ginsberg’s question, echoing ironically down the years, comes to seem ominous indeed: “After All, What Else Is There to Say?”

The purpose of this essay is to answer that question. I want to consider what else Sanders has found to say, consider how he has advanced an aesthetic (the Beat aesthetic) that he finds so deeply compelling. To do this, I must start with Ginsberg and in particular with an appreciation of how he came to write with the impact he did. The nature of Ginsberg’s poetic achievement, I will suggest, predicts the nature of Sanders’s.

For all its characteristic spontaneity, “Howl,” as James Breslin has observed, was a long time in the making (77-109). Ginsberg himself claimed he first had an inkling that he might write a poem in that style when, while reading Blake, he had a hallucinatory vision in which the poet spoke to him (Breslin 79-83). More prosaically, one can perhaps identify three phases in Ginsberg’s early poetry, each constituting a stage in development of the aesthetic that finally found utterance in “Howl.” These phases can be characterized, following John Muckle, in terms of the act of naming.

Consider the closing lines of “In Society,” the first poem in Ginsberg’s Collected Poems. The narrator is at a cocktail party (in the society of the “In Society”):

She glared at me and said immediately: “I don’t like you,” turned her head away, and refused to be introduced. I said, “What!” in outrage. “Why you shit-faced fool!” This got everybody’s attention. “Why you narcissistic bitch! How can you decide when you don’t even know me,” I continued in a violent and messianic voice, inspired at

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last, dominating the whole room. (3) Early as it is, and for all its crudeness, this passage contains many of the elements from which Ginsberg would come to fuse his Beat aesthetic. Its angle of vision is telling. Whereas Prufrock was happy to observe the comings and goings of society women from outside and so to accept both his own exclusion and the principle of exclusion, Ginsberg’s narrator blunders in uninvited, determined to become involved. Indeed, one can already see his rhetoric beginning to congeal around the principle of exclusion: the woman’s refusal to be “introduced” stimulating the narrator’s “outrage.” And as he negotiates the ins and outs of polite society, one can hear Ginsberg feeling toward a name for his attitude to that society and toward a theme through which to examine it. Thus, in the woman’s refusal to speak to the narrator, one glimpses Ginsberg’s reciprocal refusal of the values she articulates, his subsequent social status as a refusenik, and his Baudelairean fascination with the garbage (the refuse) of American society. In “In Society,” then, Ginsberg can be observed struggling to name elements that will become crucial to his mature style.(n1)

The second phase of Ginsberg’s early career finds the poet moving beyond the nomination of a general category and beginning to identify those elements in American culture that are refused: that which America has made abject. The shift is entirely self-conscious. “Stanzas: Written at Night in Radio City” urges,

No more of this too pretty talk, Dead glimpses of apocalypse: The child pissing off the rock, Or woman withered in the lips, Contemplate the unseen Cock That crows all beasts to ecstasy…. (28) The word apocalypse is carefully chosen. Ginsberg is declaring an intention to devastate American society by revealing that which it would choose to conceal: “child pissing,” “woman withered,” “unseen Cock.” Advances in Ginsberg’s aesthetic are thus increasingly marked by a naming of things conventionally unspeakable. “Paterson,” written in 1949, is exemplary. Refusing “rooms papered with visions of money,” Ginsberg wonders what will happen

If I put new heels on my shoes, bathe my body reeking of masturbation and sweat, layer upon layer of excrement dried in employment bureaus, magazine hallways, statistical cubicles, factory stairways ….

Instead of settling for the “dumbbells of the ego with money and power,” Ginsberg would rather jar my body down the road, crying by a diner in the Western sun; rather crawl on my naked belly over the tincans of Cincinnati; rather drag a rotten railroad tie to a Golgotha in the Rockies …. (40)

“Paterson” is the first poem in which Ginsberg begins to find a truly distinctive measure for contemporary America. In certain respects, of course, that measure is familiar. The long, inclusive lines are Whitman’s, and the journey west is the stuff of national mythology. But without attempting to obscure either inheritance, Ginsberg twists form and content into contemporary shape. Instead of loafing along Whitman lines, Ginsberg crawls, and where the journey west signaled progress and the new Jerusalem, now it implies Golgotha. With “a mouthful of shit, and the hair raising on my scalp,” “Paterson” finds a new set of terms through which to interpret the American way, a set of terms novel and powerful enough

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to require a name.

The third phase of Ginsberg’s early career is a search for that name, and it is with “Sakyamuni Coming out from the Mountain,” written in 1952, that he begins to define his vision:

He drags his bare feet out of a cave under a tree, eyebrows grown long with weeping and hooknosed woe, in ragged soft robes wearing a fine beard, unhappy hands clasped to his naked breast– humility is beatness humility is beatness–(90) Bearded, barefoot, clothed only in “ragged soft robes,” Ginsberg cuts a recognizable figure here. He has begun to find a form of self-definition, through his researches into Buddhism, with which he can feel comfortable. And with self-definition comes aesthetic definition, the mantra–“humility is beatness”– formulating an attitude that had been evolving in his poetry for some years, but with a simplicity that has hitherto exceeded his grasp. It is with “Malest Cornifici Tuo Catullo,” however, one of the last poems written before “Howl,” that Ginsberg finally achieved an aesthetic formulation strong enough to underpin an influential work of art:

Ah don’t think I’m sickening. You’re angry at me. For all my lovers? It’s hard to eat shit, without having visions; when they have eyes for me it’s like Heaven. (123) “Howl” is an exploration of the contention that “It’s hard to eat shit, without having visions.” Following a memorably simple structure, the poem first presents the refuseniks, then that which they refuse, then envisions a new world, the keystone of which, as the refrain “I’m with you in Rockland” makes clear, is solidarity. Crucially, the poem is not a straightforward celebration of Beat values but rather a measure of the cost of refusing. The Beats refuse, are refused, and so are left among the garbage. Better, the poem proposes, to be among the garbage hallucinating angels than sacrificing the next generation to Moloch. Better still, however, to be in Rockland, “where we hug and kiss the United States” (133). This sense of the cost of Beatnik choice is crucial to Ginsberg. To be Beat is not simply to drop out (as Timothy Leary’s later, weaker definition suggested). Rather, it is to make a sacrifice, Ginsberg himself having seen the best minds of his generation sacrifice themselves to a refusal of the values incorporated by Moloch. “Howl” names the cost of this sacrifice. It names, that is, the cost of living in contemporary America. That poem proved a defining moment in American literary history, and that it redefined otherwise nonliterary lives in the way Sanders’s story shows, testifies to a simplicity of vision born of Ginsberg’s ongoing effort to name all that he saw.

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In “A Book of Verse” Sanders described how “Howl” “ripped into his mind like the tornado that had uprooted the cherry tree in his backyard when he was a child” (Tales 281). The question, arising from this order of influence was, how does the poet for whom Ginsberg proves such a transformative early reading experience proceed to write without simply reproducing Ginsberg’s point of view? John Muckle has indicated one way out of the impasse this question would seem to imply. In his essay “The Names: Allen Ginsberg’s Writings,” Muckle notes that Gertrude Stein “speaks of poetry as naming, prose as telling how the names became names. From an original unity of these functions in epic, poetry and narrative have developed a cleavage in which one names and the other tells” (14). For Muckle, therefore, Ginsberg is an important poet because, like Whitman before him, he shows an awareness of “America’s need for new nomenclatures” (14). Following this imaginative application of Stein’s formulation to the context of Beat writing, one can usefully conceive of Sanders as a poet caught between functions. If the force, and so the impact, of Ginsberg’s writing lies very largely in its willingness to dare a new nomenclature, then it should not be surprising to find Sanders, on occasion, also engaged in the act of naming, in the Adamic act of carrying the Beat idiom into new areas of experience. Yet precisely because that idiom precedes him, Sanders is aware that the need to name is less pressing than it was. Accordingly, and prudently one might think, Sanders chooses to contribute to the Beat aesthetic in large part by “telling how the names became the names.” This might explain the narrative drift in Sanders’s poetic manifesto: “Investigative Poetry: that poetry should again assume responsibility for the description of history” (Investigative Poetry 3). It might also explain the characteristic poem: narrative in form; prosy in texture; concerned, invariably, to tell the story of the emergence of the Beat sensibility. Sanders, then, can be understood as a poet poised between the compulsion to name and the obligation to narrate. To understand what it means to be so poised, I will explore his relation to the Beat aesthetic through three categories central to his writing: controls, histories, and journeys.

“Poem from Jail,” the first work in Sanders’s Selected Poems, was written during his imprisonment (for seventy-five days) following his participation in the protest against the commissioning of the Polaris nuclear submarine Ethan Allen (Thirsting 238-41). This direct contact with a confining social institution proved foundational to Sanders’s poetry, giving rise to a sustained (career-long) meditation on forms of social control. The experience of jail was, of course, Sanders’s own.(n2) Control, however, was a theme already much explored by Beat writing, “Howl” in particular, making it its business to name the mechanisms of social control (Moloch). It is in his variation on this theme that Sanders registers most clearly the difficulties of writing after Ginsberg.

This is not to deny that in certain respects Sanders extends and deepens the Beat analysis of control. His outstanding volume in this respect is Egyptian Hieroglyphics (1973). The volume is not without its measure of strain, casting as far back as “Ab-Mer: A Love Story of 1985 B.C.” and as far forward as “A.D. 20,000” in an attempt to find new poetic territory. As these temporal extremes indicate, however, Egyptian Hieroglyphics is Sanders’s most experimental volume, and through these experiments he advances the Beat appreciation of social control. In particular, he develops a nuanced idiom for the description of forms of surveillance.(n3) Starting with “The Singer” and concluding with “Report: Council of Eye-Forms Data Squad,” Sanders devotes a series of poems to this question, the aim of which is to render what might be termed a post-Watergate sensibility, the outcome being a poetry derived from the idiom of the case report:

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Dimensional Adjustment Procedures enabled the Eye-Form Surveillance Team to observe the Princess arriving in the first sections of the Underworld. (Thirsting 115)

Sanders’s response, in turn, to the fact of surveillance is the rhetoric of “investigation.” “The Age” opens with the declaration that

This is the Age of Investigation, and every citizen must investigate! For the pallid tracks of guilt and death, slight as they are, suffuse upon the retentive electromagnetic data-retrieval systems of our era. (Thirsting 137) Investigation is Sanders’s big idea: witness his confident proclamation of it here and his extended exploration of its implications in his manifesto. And it is, in fact, a skillful development of Beat rhetoric. The effect of the term is to adjust the spirit of avant-garde inquiry to the demands of an environment in which state power is increasingly intrusive. Investigative Poetry is therefore an act of naming, Sanders endeavoring to name the aesthetic procedure by which poetry can usefully engage with modern forms of social control. With his rhetoric of investigation Sanders can confidently be thought to have achieved a way of writing after “Howl.”

By the same token, it is hardly deniable that it is in his endeavor to advance the Beat inquiry into the thematics of control that Sanders demonstrates most clearly the difficulties of his position. His attempts, for instance, to continue the testing of taboos and his efforts to extend the language of excess invariably result in a form of poetic utterance that serves only to parody the Beat achievement. “Elm-Fuck Poem” is a case in point:

The ba ba lanolin fur-ears sex Trembling Lamb where I enter the matted meat of trembly sheep and the cunt warm & woman sized offered by the lamb. (Thirsting 47) No doubt the justification for such a poem has to do with organicism. It does not seem humorless to suggest, however, that poetry of this sort is much more likely to entrench gender oppression than it is to liberate its reader from sexual constraints. And if the desire to continue to test the limits of social control can find Sanders producing the kind of gratuitous poetry that gives Beat a bad name, so his analysis of the mechanisms of social control too often results in a distorted sense of the poet’s role. Thus in Investigative Poetry Sanders urges the reader not to “forget for one microsecond that the government throughout history has tried to suppress, stamp down, hinder dissident or left-wing poets” (12). There is more than a whiff of paranoia here, and arguably that intense anxiety has as much to do with the

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compulsion to find ways of writing about control after “Howl” as it has to do with the post-Watergate climate in which the poem was written. Either way it is a paranoid vision that generates a dismayingly partial view of the poet’s function. Thus Blake is observed to “back away from historical poetry and to retreat, if that is the word, into a poetry of symbols” (Investigative Poetry 12). As if symbolism had nothing to do with poetry–as if it had nothing to do with Beat.

To recall Stein’s formulation, Sanders’s efforts to develop the Beat nomenclature measure the difficulty of coming after. After all, what else is there to say? His investigation of the theme of control, though marked by a certain deepening, has tended to lead him down blind alleys, exploring corners of experience and writing that have gone unnamed precisely because they are of peripheral significance. His response to this difficulty, as Muckle’s equation and Ginsberg’s achievement predict, has been increasingly to tell the story, one way or another, of the emergence of the Beat sensibility, of how the names became the names. This should not be thought to represent a falling off. Sanders, as Tales of Beatnik Glory shows, tells a good story. He is also intimate, as his anxious relationship with Ginsberg makes clear, with the inner workings of the Beat aesthetic. Arguably, the story of the aesthetic is his proper subject. In telling that story, Sanders sometimes dwells directly, as in his Tales, on his part in the history of the Beat period. The poem “Ramamir,” for instance, relates a late-fifties love affair, whereas “Sappho on East Seventh” recalls the visions of an ambitious young poet. Invariably, though, his more ambitious intention is to contextualize the Beat way of being. What such contextualizing amounts to is an ongoing study of historical subcultures and bohemian milieus. These studies start with “Egyptian Hieroglyphics,” which, as Sanders observes, were “inspired by researchers into possible artistic rebellion in the rather totalitarian milieu of ancient Egypt. I was looking for Lost Generations, for sistra- shaking Dadaists in tent towns on the edge of half-finished pyramids, for cubists in basalt, for free- speech movements on papyrus” (Thirsting 244). He was looking, that is, for a genealogy of dissent, for a historical angle of vision that shows the Beat project to be not a momentary aberration but a further eruption of a vibrant radical tradition. “Yiddish-Speaking Socialists of the Lower East Side” traces that genealogy closer to home, telling how the arrival of East European emigres in the first decade of the century radicalized the quarter the Beats would later make their own. More recently, Chekhov, Sanders’s extended verse biography of the Russian writer, amounts to a study of dissent in czarist Russia. With the names already named, the second generation of Beat writers was allocated the more prosaic task of telling how the names became the names. Sanders’s histories of poetic dissent constitute an effective strategy for writing after Ginsberg.

It is, however, in his development of the trope of the journey that Sanders has dealt most effectively with his particular anxieties of influence. The journey is, of course, pivotal to the rhetoric of Beat inquiry, affording an opportunity both to critique and to revitalize the American experience. In both On the Road and Naked Lunch progress west is displaced by an itinerant, unsettled lifestyle, whereas the idea of the frontier is transformed from a colonial limit to a pragmatic encounter with the new. For Ginsberg in particular, the journey thus carries religious overtones, Beat becoming a pilgrimage by which the revelation is perpetually earned. In “The Green Automobile” the car proves a form not just of transportation but of transport, in which

we’d batter up the cloudy highway where the angels of anxiety

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careen through the trees and scream out of the engine. (Ginsberg 83) Broadly speaking, then, Sanders’s poetic journeying locates his writing in the Beat tradition. There is a more precise sense, however, in which the idea of the journey comes to enable Sanders to explore his relation to the Beat aesthetic. The journey affords his poetry a structure, but one which is loose enough not to restrict inquiry. Formally speaking, it enables the poet both to relate a story (of how one traveled from a to b) and to digress into areas of his own experience. It permits him, in other words, to mediate the differing functions of narrating and naming. Accordingly, it is through the trope of the journey that Sanders is most able to negotiate his relation to his immediate predecessors, is most able to sustain the momentum of the Beat movement while arriving at observations distinctively his own.

In the note to “Poem from Jail” Sanders observes that “It was my first work, after years of search, that I felt fit in with the best of my generation” (Thirsting 241). Sanders’s reflection betrays an anxiety. The poem is a product of both years of search (so by implication the desire to find something differentiating to say) and a desire to fit in with the best of his generation. The anxiety of influence that results from these competing compulsions is apparent in the rhetorical texture of “Poem from Jail.” A passage from the first part of the poem recalls how

we have seen denied Mao’s creation, And we have denied van Gogh’s crow shrieking on the horizon, and Rouault’s Jesus. Chant Chant O American! lift up the Stele anti bomb. (Thirsting 5) Despite the “shrieking” and chanting, one would not mistake this for a passage from Ginsberg. The collage of sources is Ginsberg-like, but the sources themselves are not. Yet if this is not Ginsberg’s rhetoric, one could not confidently say that it was Sanders’s either. The passage is characterized not by an identity of its own but by a determination not to be subsumed by another’s identity. This explains the wilfully eclectic range of sources: Mao, van Gogh, Rouault. It also explains the fact that those sources do not combine to generate anything one could reasonably call a style.

That Sanders should be so determined for the surface of his poem to mark an evasion of Ginsberg’s influence comes, I would suggest, from his nagging awareness that at a structural level “Poem from Jail” is heavily indebted. The poem takes its form from the opposition between two forms of journey, undertaken by two kinds of traveler. The first is of mythic proportions, his journey being the wanderings of a visionary:

O American O Traveller.

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The Sun boat enters the Vastness Anubis stomps with the sun shafts, & the man awaits, the sun, the eye of the Trembling Lamb.

In the second journey the road “twisted / like a knife / across the desert” while

I crawled, onward, clutching guts and coughing blood, scrawling poems on rocks with a charred log.

The poem aims throughout for a resolution of these two forms of motion, achieving it, finally, at “Goof City” where the reward for the journeying is revelation:

Bristling in the bat black, mind spews out to Nebulae; balling the All; Darkness; swivelled into the Mountain; Shriek it All! Wand waved over the thigh! Sucked to the Vortex, Universal hole. (Thirsting 9, 24, 27) All that this apocalyptic scene really reveals, however, is quite how conditioned Sanders is, at this early stage in his career, by Ginsberg’s way of seeing. The howl has become a shriek, but as the poem is sucked into the “Vortex,” the idiom reveals that Sanders’s “All” is in fact Ginsberg’s “All.” The poem arrives at such a neo-Ginsberg scene because of its means of travel. The process whereby spiritual and destitute journeys–pilgrimage and crawl–come to terminate at Goof City so exactly reduces the passage through “shit” and “visions” that takes Ginsberg to “Rockland” (and which forms the structure of “Howl”) that the outcome can hardly be different. For all its seeming mobility, then, “Poem from Jail” is,

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in fact, another static poem, caught, one might say, in the wheel ruts of another poet’s “Green Automobile.” It does represent, however, a breakthrough of sorts, as Sanders’s annotation indicates, insofar as it does at least identify the journey as a means of engaging the Beat aesthetic.

One measure of Sanders’s subsequent poetic development is precisely the degree to which he has proved able to adjust the trope of the journey to his own perceptions. “The Pilgrimage,” for instance, opens by tracing a route:

There is nothing on the wet morning grass not even a mound to mark the grave. I have started in the shade of the walnut tree & walked up the hill to make my proskynesis at thy altar O daughter of Ra. (Thirsting 40) This is an altogether less anxious piece of writing than anything to be found in “Poem from Jail.” Thus, for all the echoes in the title, Sanders does not here reproduce a Ginsberg journey but uses his familiarity with Ginsberg’s forms to appreciate his own experience. This is explicitly Sanders’s pilgrimage, and he arrives at a voice much more his own, not out of the need to distinguish himself, but out of the need to detail the private significance of the visit he has made. The poem thus finds Sanders using Beat forms to get close to his own experience. And yet in a dialectical (rather than a contradictory) respect the poem also shows how deeply informed Sanders’s thinking has become by the rhetoric of the journey. Intensely lyrical as it is, the graveside contemplation is a potentially static experience. Sanders’s imagination, however, has been mobilized by his encounter with the Beat aesthetic. The journey (if only from the walnut tree to the hill) has become the form of his experience.

“A Flower from Robert Kennedy’s Grave” marks a further development in Sanders’s handling of the trope of the journey. Addressing the occasion of Nixon’s second inauguration (20 January 1973), the poem observes both how “Richard Nixon / oozed down Pennsylvania Avenue / flashing V’s from a limousine” and how the poet, after having demonstrated against the proceedings, walked

past the guardhouse circling circling around the Catholic henge

coming finally to pick

a yellow petal

from thy grave

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Mr. Robert Kennedy. (Thirsting 80-81) Here again the poem follows Ginsberg in its formal dependence on the idea of the pilgrimage. But here more than ever Sanders’s confident handling of that idea signifies an independent poetic intelligence. By visiting Bobby Kennedy’s grave, Sanders crosses the line that divides private feelings from civic protest, signaling an intimacy with a public figure that shows in turn that politics is a matter not of distant institutions but of individual lives. And if Sanders shows here that he has succeeded in adapting a Ginsberg motif to his own purposes, the confidence this gesture signifies is perhaps measured by his self-conscious allusion to “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” So far has his engagement with Ginsberg developed, that he is now willing to risk comparison with Whitman.

It is Sanders’s long narrative poem “The V.F.W. Crawling Contest,” however, that most marks the development, through the trope of the journey, of his engagement with the Beat aesthetic. Describing the poem’s history, Sanders notes how “For years I had wanted to write this poem of the long, groaning road. It was sort of a secular version of the more mystic crawl at the end of `Poem From Jail’” (Thirsting 243). Ginsberg, it will be recalled, was crawling long before Sanders–on his “naked belly over the tincans of Cincinnati.” But if the crawling in “Poem from Jail” showed the tentativeness of imitated behavior, Sanders in “The V.F.W. Crawling Contest” makes so bold with the central metaphor as to sever any connection to Ginsberg. The poem narrates a journey, made on hands and knees, through the United States. If its commentary on contemporary American ways recalls any Beat predecessor, it is probably Burroughs. Comparison seems inappropriate, however, because the sustained tone of wry disgust this poem manages is more than ever Sanders’s own:

As I approached the drive-in restaurant

saliva began to drip from my crust-cambered lips

No automobiles parked silently full of potato-eating families did leave the lot as I rounded the bend out of a clump of ditch weeds

“a hot dog & baked beans please just drop it in the tar.” (Thirsting 68) With “The V.F.W. Crawling Contest” Sanders arrives at a genuinely persuasive way of writing after “Howl.” In dealing ironically with the same abjection that fueled Ginsberg’s rage, he finds a way of referring again to aspects of American life the older poet has already named. It might be argued that such a recourse to the doubleness of irony marks a falling off from the grace of Ginsberg’s original,

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beatific vision. Possibly also, however, it provides a means of continuing the Beat journey beyond the point at which pure outrage is spent.

NOTES (n1) The result is damagingly unrefined. Seeking rather than commanding attention, Ginsberg draws on the language of misogyny to make his presence felt, an act of self-contradictory idiomatic exclusion that is compounded by his unreflective willingness to dominate the whole room. Ginsberg’s misogynist rhetoric is not, of course, merely a function of his youthfulness, Beat writing generally being marked by masculinities of one sort or another. Sanders, as I indicate below, provides no exception.

(n2) This experience is vividly represented in Sanders’s Chekhovian story “The AEC Sit-In” (Tales 223- 34).

(n3) Sanders’s task here is perhaps to advance Burroughs’s insights rather than Ginsberg’s, Naked Lunch being a handbook of observational techniques of all kinds.

WORKS CITED Ashbery, John. Three Poems. New York: Ecco, 1972.

Breslin, James. From Modern to Contemporary: American Poetry, 1945-1965. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1984.

Ginsberg, Allen. Collected Poems 1947-1980. New York: Harper, 1984.

Muckle, John. “The Names: Allen Ginsberg’s Writings.” The Beat Generation Writers. Ed. A. Robert Lee. London: Pluto, 1996.10-36.

Sanders, Ed. Investigative Poetry. San Francisco: City Lights, 1976.

—–. Tales of Beatnik Glory. 2 vols. New York: Citadel-Carol, 1990.

—–. Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century: Selected Poems 19611985. Minneapolis: Coffee House, 1987.

~~~~~~~~ By David Herd

Copyright of Review of Contemporary Fiction is the property of Dalkey Archive Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Visual analysis essay guidelines for visual analysis essay assignment overview a level english language essay help: a level english language essay help

Your next major essay in this course will be a visual analysis essay. In this essay, you will be expected to apply the concepts covered in Units 1-4 as you analyze an image to show some of its larger meanings. This includes knowledge of the writing process, rhetorical situation, formal register, essay structure, and visual analysis. This essay also requires you to cite at least one credible source.

Due Dates

Refer to the assignment calendar for due dates. Remember, peer reviews are graded separately and have their own due dates in the assignment calendar.

Purpose and Learning Objectives

In this assignment, you should practice analyzing visual texts, using the writing process, and developing a well-constructed essay in formal register. The essay should show how an analysis of the visual components of an image leads to a better understanding of the image.

Process for Completion

The first step in this process will be to choose an image. Browse the images available through the Gordon Parks Foundation Archives. The link is available near the end of Unit 3. Choose an image that you find engaging and that you feel offers ample opportunity for analysis. Some images are interesting, but theyre difficult to talk about. The image you choose will be the subject of your essay.
After you have chosen your image, you should engage in someprewritingactivities using the ideas and terms presented in Unit 4. First, take stock of your initial reactions to the image. What emotions did you feel as you first looked at the photograph?What aspects about the image lead viewers to react a certain way?
Before you begin writing, you will want to perform some research. This assignment requires at least one source (print or web). If you’re choosing an image about the Civil Rights Movement, you might want to research the movement. If you’re choosing an image about Flavio in Rio deJaneiro, you might want to research how Gordon Parks met Flavio. You’re welcome to use more than one source, but be sure to keep track of the information you gain from your source so that you can cite the source appropriately.
Next, analyze the image by looking closely at the content, framing, composition, focus, color, lighting and context. What interesting or unique features do you notice about the image? What is the cultural or historical context of the image? You should record all of these activities. Some of them will become important pieces of your final draft.
Next, it will be time to find your focus and begin generating a working thesis statement. For this assignment, your thesis will make a claim about themeaningof the image. In other words, what message does the image communicate? Remember, every image tells a story and an image may tell a different story depending on who is looking. Once you have decided what idea or story the image communicates to you, you will need to explain how content, framing, focus, color, angle and lighting come together to create that story or convey meaning. Your thesis will be more specific if you show which visual elements your essay discusses and what they do to create meaning. So, an example thesis might be something like this: Through content, framing, and angle, the image demonstrates how segregation affected not only adults but also the children of black families in the South.
After completing the previous steps, it will be time to begin drafting your essay. The following outline might help you to structure your initial draft.

Introduction:Identifyand describe the image. It is so very important that you identify the image very clearly. Use the name of the photographer and the image: for example, you might say, In Gordon Parkss photograph titled American Gothic, a woman stands in front of a flag with a broom in her hand and a mop in the background. In the introduction, you might show why the image is important or relevant or provide some background information about it.Please embed the image into the body of your essay somewhere so that the readers can see it.One way to embed the image is to put your mouse on the image and right-click, and then select copy. Next, go to your document and right-click on your document, and then select paste.
Thesis: Tell your readers what idea or story the image communicates. Be sure the thesis shows the result of your analysis. (See the above discussion in #4 under Process for Completion.)
Supporting paragraphs: Explain how the visual elements come together to create meaning. In multiple body paragraphs, discuss the effect of content, framing, composition, color, focus, angle, lighting and/or context. You should not discussevery oneof these elements, but you should discuss enough of them so that your reader understands how the visual elements work together to create a story and to create meaning. You may have three or more body paragraphs dedicated to this task. It would be a good idea to discuss just one or two elements in each paragraph.
Conclusion: At a minimum, your conclusion should remind your reader how the visual elements convey meaning.

Minimum Requirements

The final draft of your essay should be between 600 and 900 words in length (about 2 -3 pages long).
The essay should meet the expectation of an academic rhetorical situation. You will be expected to use formal register English. Your audience will be a general audience of educated adults.
The image you have chosen as the subject for your essay should be linked to orembedded in the body of the essay.
The essay should be written in MLA format, with a proper header, page numbers, title, and font. See the MLA guidelines in the unit.
The essay should discuss two or more visual elements from the lessons.
The essay should cite at least one source. The source should be cited in MLA format, so there should be an in-text citation for the source and a works cited page. Books, journals, magazines, and web sources are all acceptable for this assignment, but you should be sure to consider the reliability of your sources. You should not use Wikipedia.

If you do not meet the minimum requirements for the essay, you should not expect to earn more than a 60% on the assignment.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is using someone elses words or ideas without giving credit and is a serious academic offense. It can range from:

Turning in a paper any part of which you did not write,
Cutting and pasting a paper together from various sources without attributing the sources correctly,
Changing a few words but basically keeping most of the words and sentence structure of the original,
Using the ideas of another without giving credit to the person who originally had the idea.
Using the exact words of the source without using quotation marks even if you give the name of the source.

Refer to the syllabus for consequences of plagiarism in this class. For more information, seehttp://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/

Submission Protocol

Your assignment must be submitted as a .doc, .docx, or .rtf attachment. Microsoft Word is available to students for free. Let me know if you need help gaining access to it.

http://www.gordonparksfoundation.org/

This link will take you to an archive of photographs by Gordon Parks. Choose one image from the archive to be the subject of your visual analysis.

Peer Review: Visual Analysis

To earn credit for peer review, you must submit a draft to the peer review discussion board by the due date and comment on one of your classmates drafts by the second due date (the schedule lists two due dates: the first is when you must submit your draft; the second is when you must submit your responses to others).You must submit a draft AND comment on someone elses draft to earn any credit for peer review. Just submitting a draft OR just commenting on someones draft will not earn credit.

Posting Your Draft

To post your draft, go to the discussion board for peer review included within the unit.
Create a new thread and post your draft as an attachment. Your attachment must be saved as a .doc or .docxdocument. Please ensure that your draft uploads correctly.

Responding to Classmates

Select a classmates thread and download his/her attached draft.
Reply to his/her thread to indicate the draft is under review (i.e. John Dow is currently reviewing the document).Do not select the paper if someone else is already reviewing.
Read the draft carefully and respond to the questions listed below, either in a new document or at the top of your classmates document. At the very least, you must answer the questions, but you can also use the Comment function in Microsoft Word to write comments to your classmates within the essay (put your cursor where you want the comment, go to the Review tab in Microsoft Word, and select New Comment).
Complete the review and save the document to your computer.
Once you have completed the review, reply to your classmate’s thread and upload the review.

Questions for Peer Review

1. Read your peers essay from beginning to end just to let its ideas wash over you. What are your initial thoughts? Did your peer satisfy the requirements of assignment? Please explain in detail.

2. Review the essays title as well as its introduction and conclusion. Think about the relationships among these three components. Do they match or do they disagree? Make note of strengths or weaknesses in these crucial areas. Please explain in detail.

3. Like other essays, a visual analysis essay should have a thesis. Find the essays thesis. Is it clear? Does it make some claim or statement about the image? Paraphrase (put in your own words) the thesis of the essay to check your understanding. Review the assignment guidelines to ensure that your peers thesis is on target. Make note of strengths or weaknesses in this area. Please explain in detail.

4. Evaluate the quality of the visual analysis. Does the writer use some of the vocabulary introduced in Unit 3? Focus, Color, Framing, Context, etc.

5. Focus on the individual paragraphs of the essay. Does each paragraph have a topic sentence that previews the ideas of the paragraph? Observe the essays development of paragraphs. Does each paragraph have a single main idea that relates to the thesis? Are there any paragraphs that seem disconnected or out of place?

6. Consider the essays use of the English language. Are sentence structures, grammar, spelling, punctuation and mechanics employed effectively, or do errors distract the reader from understanding and enjoying the writers analysis? Make note of strengths and weaknesses in this area. Please explain in detail.

Remember: When in doubt about how to do the peer review, be honest, helpful, and constructive. Saying Great job! Dont change a word! never helped anyone to be a better writer.

Now, go to the discussion board and find the forum for the visual analysis peer review and complete the peer review process.

Conclusion only for this topic high school essay help: high school essay help

Nuclear power, bio-energy, and hydroelectric power essay help app

DQ 5

CH20

1. How much of our global energy supply do nuclear power, bioenergy, and hydroelectric power contribute? How much of our global electricity do these three conventional energy alternatives generate?

2. Describe how nuclear fission works. How do nuclear plant engineers control fission and prevent a runaway chain reaction?

3. List several concerns about the disposal of radioactive waste. What has been done so far about its disposal?

4. Describe two biofuels, where each comes from, and how each is used.

CH 21.

5. What factors and concerns are causing renewable energy use to expand? Which two renewable sources are experiencing the most rapid growth?

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CH.22

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Discussion forum main post – 1 – A+ work required college admissions essay help: college admissions essay help

Using critical theory by Lois Tyson 2011. gp essay help

USING CRITICAL

THEORY How to Read and Write About Literature

S E C O N D E D I T I O N

L O I S T Y S O N

Using Critical Theory

I know of no other book on critical theory for beginning and intermediate students that offers the same depth and breath. It offers thorough and clear applications of each theory while its rhetorical tone puts students at ease as they attempt to think about the world in new and different ways [this] is the perfect text for students new to critical theory and stands in a league of its own.

Gretchen Cline, Muskegon Community College, USA

Explaining both why theory is important and how to use it, Lois Tyson introduces beginning students of literature to this often daunting area in a friendly and approachable style. The new edition of this textbook is clearly structured with chapters based on major theories that students are expected to cover in their studies. Key features include:

coverage of all major theories including psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, lesbian/gay/queer theories, postcolonial theory, African American theory, and a new chapter on New Criticism (formalism)

practical demonstrations of how to use these theories on short literary works selected from canonical authors including William Faulkner and Alice Walker

a new chapter on reader-response theory that shows students how to use their personal responses to literature while avoiding typical pitfalls

new sections on cultural criticism for each chapter new further practice and further reading sections for each chapter a useful next-step appendix that suggests additional literary examples for

extra practice.

Comprehensive, easy to use, and fully updated throughout, Using Critical Theory is the ideal first step for students beginning degrees in literature, composition, and cultural studies.

Lois Tyson is Professor of English at Grand Valley State University, USA. She is the author of Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide (2nd edition, Routledge, 2006).

Using Critical Theory

How to read and write about literature

Second edition

Lois Tyson

First edition published as Learning for a Diverse World 2001 by Routledge

This edition published as Using Critical Theory 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2001, 2011 Lois Tyson

The right of Lois Tyson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Tyson, Lois, 1950- Using critical theory: how to read and write about literature / Lois Tyson. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Criticism. 2. Critical theory. I. Title. PN98.S6T973 2011 801.95 dc22

2011008274

ISBN: 978-0-415-61616-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-61617-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-80509-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

For Mac Davis and the late Stephen Lacey, who both know that a good teacher is one who remains a good student.

Contents

Preface for instructors xiv Acknowledgments xviii Permissions xix

1 Critical theory and you 1

What does critical theory have to do with me? 1 What will I learn about critical theory from this book? 3 Critical theory and cultural criticism 6 Three questions about interpretation most students ask 9

My interpretation is my opinion, so how can it be wrong? 9 Do authors deliberately use concepts from critical theories when

they write literary works? 10 How can we interpret a literary work without knowing what

the author intended the work to mean? 11 Why feeling confused can be a good sign 11

2 Using concepts from reader-response theory to understand our own literary interpretations 13

Why should we learn about reader-response theory? 13 Response vehicles 15

Personal identification 15 The familiar character 15 The familiar plot event 15 The familiar setting 15

Response exercises 16 Personal-identification exercise 16 Familiar-character exercise 18 Familiar-plot-event exercise 21 Familiar-setting exercise 23

How our personal responses can help or hinder interpretation 26 The symbolic leap 27 The difference between representing and endorsing

human behavior 28 Using our personal responses to generate paper topics 29 Food for further thought 31

Thinking it over 31 Reader-response theory and cultural criticism 32

Taking the next step 35 Exercises for further practice 35 Suggestions for further reading 36

3 Using concepts from New Critical theory to understand literature 38

Why should we learn about New Critical theory? 38 Basic concepts 41

Theme 41 Formal elements 41 Unity 43 Close reading and textual evidence 44

Interpretation exercises 45 Appreciating the importance of tradition: Interpreting

Everyday Use 45 Recognizing the presence of death: Interpreting A Rose

for Emily 51 Understanding the power of alienation: Interpreting

The Battle Royal 57 Respecting the importance of nonconformity: Interpreting

Dont Explain 63 Responding to the challenge of the unknown: Interpreting

I started EarlyTook my Dog 69 Food for further thought 74

Thinking it over 74 New Critical theory and cultural criticism 76

Taking the next step 78 Questions for further practice 78 Suggestions for further reading 80

4 Using concepts from psychoanalytic theory to understand literature 81

Why should we learn about psychoanalytic theory? 81 Basic concepts 83

viii Contents

The family 83 Repression and the unconscious 83 The defenses 83 Core issues 84 Dream symbolism 85

Interpretation exercises 86 Analyzing characters dysfunctional behavior: Interpreting

Everyday Use 86 Exploring a characters insanity: Interpreting A Rose

for Emily 91 Understanding dream images in literature: Interpreting

I started EarlyTook my Dog 95 Recognizing a characters self-healing: Interpreting Dont

Explain 99 Using psychoanalytic concepts in service of other theories:

Interpreting The Battle Royal 103 Food for further thought 104

Thinking it over 104 Psychoanalytic theory and cultural criticism 106

Taking the next step 108 Questions for further practice 108 Suggestions for further reading 109

5 Using concepts from Marxist theory to understand literature 110

Why should we learn about Marxist theory? 110 Basic concepts 112

Classism 112 Capitalism 113 Capitalist ideologies 114 The role of religion 116

Interpretation exercises 116 Understanding the operations of capitalism: Interpreting

Everyday use 116 Recognizing the operations of the American Dream: Interpreting

The Battle Royal 119 Analyzing the operations of classism: Interpreting A Rose

for Emily 124 Resisting classism: Interpreting Dont Explain 128 Learning when not to use Marxist concepts: Resisting the

temptation to interpret I started EarlyTook my Dog 131

Contents ix

Food for further thought 133 Thinking it over 133 Marxist theory and cultural criticism 134

Taking the next step 137 Questions for further practice 137 Suggestions for further reading 138

6 Using concepts from feminist theory to understand literature 139

Why should we learn about feminist theory? 139 Basic concepts 141

Patriarchy 141 Traditional gender roles 142 The objectification of women 142 Sexism 143 The cult of true womanhood 143

Interpretation exercises 144 Rejecting the objectification of women: Interpreting

The Battle Royal 144 Resisting patriarchal ideology: Interpreting Dont Explain 147 Recognizing a conflicted attitude toward patriarchy:

Interpreting Everyday Use 151 Analyzing a sexist text: Interpreting A Rose for Emily 155 Understanding patriarchys psychological oppression

of women: Interpreting I started EarlyTook my Dog 162 Food for further thought 166

Thinking it over 166 Feminist theory and cultural criticism 167

Taking the next step 169 Questions for further practice 169 Suggestions for further reading 170

7 Using concepts from lesbian, gay, and queer theories to understand literature 172

Why should we learn about lesbian, gay, and queer theories? 172

Basic concepts 175 Heterosexism 175 Homophobia 175 Homosocial activities 176 The woman-identified woman 176 Homoerotic imagery 177 Queer theory 177

x Contents

Interpretation exercises 178 Rejecting lesbian stereotypes: Interpreting Dont

Explain 178 Analyzing homophobia: Interpreting The Battle

Royal 182 Recognizing the woman-identified woman in a heterosexual text:

Interpreting Everyday Use 185 Using queer theory: Interpreting A Rose for Emily 191 Drawing upon context: Interpreting I started EarlyTook

my Dog 194 Food for further thought 198

Thinking it over 198 Lesbian, gay, and queer theories and cultural criticism 200

Taking the next step 202 Questions for further practice 202 Suggestions for further reading 204

8 Using concepts from African American theory to understand literature 206

Why should we learn about African American theory? 206 Basic concepts 209

African American culture and literature 209 Racism 211 Forms of racism 211 Double consciousness 213

Interpretation exercises 213 Analyzing the overt operations of institutionalized racism: Interpreting

The Battle Royal 213 Recognizing the less visible operations of institutionalized racism:

Interpreting Dont Explain 217 Understanding the operations of internalized racism: Interpreting

Everyday Use 222 Exploring the function of black characters in white literature:

Interpreting A Rose for Emily 228 Learning when not to use African American concepts:

Resisting the temptation to interpret I started EarlyTook my Dog 234

Food for further thought 237 Thinking it over 237 African American theory and cultural criticism 239

Taking the next step 242 Questions for further practice 242 Suggestions for further reading 244

Contents xi

9 Using concepts from postcolonial theory to understand literature 245

Why should we learn about postcolonial theory? 245 Basic concepts 248

Colonialist ideology 248 The colonial subject 249 Anticolonialist resistance 250

Interpretation exercises 251 Understanding colonialist ideology: Interpreting The Battle

Royal 251 Analyzing the colonial subject: Interpreting Everyday Use 257 Exploring the influence of cultural categories: Interpreting A Rose for

Emily 264 Appreciating anticolonialist resistance: Interpreting Dont

Explain 268 Recognizing the othering of nature: Interpreting I started

EarlyTook my Dog 273 Food for further thought 277

Thinking it over 277 Postcolonial theory and cultural criticism 279

Taking the next step 282 Questions for further practice 282 Suggestions for further reading 284

10 Holding on to what youve learned 285

A shorthand overview of our eight critical theories 285 A shorthand overview of our literary interpretation exercises 286

Everyday Use 287 The Battle Royal 288 A Rose for Emily 290 Dont Explain 291 I started EarlyTook my Dog 292

A shorthand overview of the range of perspectives offered by each theory 293

Critical theory and cultural criticism revisited 297 Critical theory and an ethics for a diverse world 300

Appendices

Appendix A: I started EarlyTook my Dog (Emily Dickinson, c. 1862) 302

Appendix B: A Rose for Emily (William Faulkner, 1931) 303

xii Contents

Appendix C: The Battle Royal (Ralph Ellison, 1952) 311 Appendix D: Everyday Use (Alice Walker, 1973) 323 Appendix E: Dont Explain (Jewelle Gomez, 1987) 330 Appendix F: Additional literary works for further practice 338

Index 344

Contents xiii

Preface for instructors

If youre planning to use this book in your undergraduate classroom, then you know that critical theory is no longer considered an abstract discipline for a select group of graduate students, as it was fifteen or twenty years ago. Personally, I dont think critical theory should ever have been limited to that mode of thinking or to that audience. In its most concrete and, I think, most meaningful form, critical theory supplies us with a remarkable collection of pedagogical tools to help students, regardless of their educational background, develop their ability to reason logically; to formulate an argument; to grasp divergent points of view; to make connections among literature, history, the society in which they live, and their personal experience; and of special importance on our shrinking planet, to explore human diversity in its most profound and personal sense: as diverse ways of defining oneself and ones world. From this perspective, critical theory is an appropriate pedagogical resource not only for advanced literature courses, but for the kinds of meat-and-potatoes courses that many of us teach: foundation-level literature courses; introduction-to-literary- studies courses; diversity courses; and composition courses that stress critical thinking, social issues, or cultural diversity.

Creating pedagogical options

For most of us who see the pedagogical potential of critical theory, the question then becomes: How can I adapt critical frameworks to make them useful to students new to the study of literature and to the social issues literature raises? That is precisely the question Using Critical Theory attempts to answer by offering you: (1) a reader-response chapter to help students recognize and make interpretive use of their personal responses to literature; (2) seven carefully selected theoretical approaches to literary interpretationintroducing the fundamentals of New Critical, psychoanalytic, feminist, lesbian/gay/queer, African American, and postcolonial theoriesfrom which to choose; and (3) five different ways to use each of these approaches through the vehicle of our Interpretation exercises, the step-by-step development of sample inter- pretations of the five literary works reprinted at the end of this book. Now,

the key word here is choice. I think we do our best teaching when we adapt our materials to our own pedagogical goals and teaching styles. For example, you can employ Using Critical Theory to structure an entire course, to create a unit or units on specific theoretical approaches, or to supplement the teaching of specific literary works with an increased repertoire of possible interpreta- tions. To provide maximum flexibility, each chapter is written to stand on its own, so you can choose which of the selected theoretical frameworks you want to use. Each interpretation exercise is also written to stand on its own, so you can choose which of the selected literary works you want to use. I hope the structure of these chapters will facilitate your own creation of

classroom activities and homework assignments. For example, students can work in small groups to find the textual data required by a given interpretation exercise, and that activity can be organized in a number of ways. Each group can work on a different section of the same interpretation exercise, thereby each contributing a piece of the puzzle to a single interpretation. Or each group can work on a different interpretation exercise from a single chapter, thereby using concepts from the same theory to complete interpretation exercises for dif- ferent literary works. Or if students feel they fully understand a given inter- pretation exercise, you might invite them to develop one of the alternative interpretations suggested in the Focusing your essay section at the end of each interpretation exercise or to develop an interpretation of their own. Finally, once the class has become acquainted with a few different theories, different groups of students can use different theoretical approaches to collect textual data from the same literary work, thereby getting an immediate sense of the ways in which concepts from different critical theories can foreground different aspects of the same literary work or foreground the same aspect of a literary work for different purposes. Similarly, the Basic concepts sections of Chapters 3 through 9 can be used

to generate activities by having students apply these concepts to short literary works other than those used in this book. For example, students can be givensingly, in pairs, or in small groupsone of the basic concepts of a single theory and asked to find all the ways in which that concept is illustrated in or relevant to any literary work you assign. Or you might allow students to select one of the basic concepts of a theory the class is studying and explain to their classmates how an understanding of that concept helps illuminate the lyrics of a song of their own choosing, a magazine advertisement, a video game, or some other production of popular culture. To whatever uses you put this book, I think youll find that the seven

theoretical approaches it introduces, taken in any combination, provide a comparative experience, a sense of how our perceptions can change when we change the lens through which were looking. In this way, these theories, all of which are in current academic use, can help students develop a concrete, productive understanding of the diverse world in which we live. Our five literary worksEmily Dickinsons I started EarlyTook my Dog (c. 1862),

Preface for instructors xv

William Faulkners A Rose for Emily (1931), Ralph Ellisons The Battle Royal (1952), Alice Walkers Everyday Use (1973), and Jewelle Gomezs Dont Explain (1987)were chosen because each lends itself to our selected theories in ways that are accessible to novices and that are typical of the kinds of perspectives on literature each theory offers us. Thus, each interpretation exercise serves as a template for future literary analysis. In addition, our five literary works are heavily weighted in favor of fiction because I have found that most novices respond most readily to stories and, indeed, most of the drama and much of the poetry we offer our introductory-level literature and compo- sition students have a perceptible narrative dimension. Thus, the interpretive skills and strategies students learn here will carry over to the interpretation of works from other literary genres, genres which are represented in each chapters Questions for further practice and in the Literary works for further practice provided in Appendix F.

Responding to pedagogical challenges

Of course, Using Critical Theory is not intended as a complete introduction-to- literature textbook: for example, it does not define such basic literary vocabulary as plot, character, setting, stage directions, rhyme, or meter. Nevertheless, the book addresses several common problems encountered by students new to the study of literature, problems which I suspect youve encountered in the classroom many times. For example, Chapter 1, Critical theory and you, explains, among other things, the difference between an opinion and a thesis, the purpose of a literary interpretation, and how we can analyze the meaning of a literary work without knowing what the author intended. Chapter 2, Using concepts from reader-response theory to understand our own literary inter- pretations, includes an explanation of the difference between a symbolic interpretation justified by the literary work and a symbolic interpretation arbitrarily imposed by a readers personal response to the work. This same chapter also explains the difference between a texts representation of human behavior and its endorsement of that behavior, which students personal responses to a literary work often lead them to confuse. Chapter 3, Using concepts from New Critical theory to understand literature, aims to solidify students understanding of thesis-and-support argumentation, which remains an area of pedagogical frustration for many of us. Moreover, the interpretation exercises provided in Chapters 4 through 9, in addition to their primary function as sample literary applications of our remaining selected theories, are all lessons in close reading, for each exercise guides students through the process of collecting textual evidence to support the interpretation at hand. Students are thus encouraged to see the equal importance of two aspects of current critical practice that they often mistakenly believe are mutually exclusive: (1) that there is more than one valid interpretation of a literary text; and (2) that every interpretation requires adequate textual support. The goal here is to

xvi Preface for instructors

correct a misconception youve probably encountered in the classroom all too often: once students have accepted that there is no single correct interpretation of a literary work, they frequently conclude that their own interpretations do not need to be supported with textual evidence. Finally, Chapter 10, Holding on to what youve learned, in addition to its other functions, brings students back to the kind of personal connection that opens Chapter 1: how their study of critical theory can help them understand, develop, and articulate their personal values within the context of the changing world in which they live. Perhaps you will find, as I have, that this last connectionbetween students

sense of themselves as individuals and the cultures that shape themis the most valuable connection the study of critical theory can help students make. For it is a connection that has the capacity to spark imaginative inquiry in every domain of their education. And it seems to me that few things motivate students more thoroughlyif we can just find the keys that open those doorsthan their own imaginations.

Preface for instructors xvii

Acknowledgments

My sincere gratitude goes to the following friends and colleagues for their many and varied acts of kindness during the writing of this book: the late Forrest Armstrong, Kathleen Blumreich, Brent Chesley, Patricia Clark, Dianne Griffin Crowder, Michelle DeRose, Milt Ford, Roger Gilles, Chance Guyette, Michael Hartnett, Avis Hewitt, Rick Iadonisi, Regina Salmi, Christopher Shinn, Gary Stark, Veta Tucker, and Brian White. Special thanks also go to Dean Frederick Antczak; to Grand Valley State

University for its generous financial support of this project; and to my editors at Routledge, Emma Nugent and Polly Dodson. Finally, the deepest appreciation is expressed to Hannah Berkowitz, Jeremy

Franceschi, Gretchen Cline, and, especially, Mac Davis for service above and beyond the call of friendshipand to Lenny Briscoe for his untiring and invaluable support.

Permissions

I started earlytook my dog by Emily Dickinson Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of The Estate of William Faulkner, Copyright William Faulkner 1931.

Rose for Emily, copyright 1930 and renewed 1958 byWilliam Faulkner, fromCollected Stories of William Faulkner byWilliam Faulkner. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.

A Rose for Emily. Copyright 1930 & renewed 1958 by William Faulkner, fromCollected Stories of William Faulkner byWilliam Faulkner. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Battle Royal, copyright 1948 by Ralph Ellison, from Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.

Everyday Use from In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women, copyright 1973 by Alice Walker, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.

Every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright holders. The publishers would be pleased to hear from any copyright holders not acknowl- edged here, so that this acknowledgements page may be amended at the earliest opportunity.

Chapter 1

Critical theory and you

If youre reading this textbook, then youve probably got a lot on your plate right now. You might be preparing to enter college. Or you might be in your first or second year of undergraduate studies. Perhaps youre taking your first literature course. If youre specializing in literary studies, at this point you might be a bit concerned about what youve gotten yourself into. If youre not specializing in literary studies, you might be wondering if you can get away with skipping this part of the course or putting forth a minimal effort. After all, you might be thinking, What does critical theory have to do with me? As I hope this book will show you, critical theory has everything to do with you, no matter what your educational or career plans might be.

What does critical theory have to do with me?

First, most of my students find that the study of critical theory increases their ability to think creatively and to reason logically, and thats a powerful com- bination of vocational skills. You will see, for example, how the skills fostered by studying critical theory would be useful to lawyers in arguing their cases and to teachers in managing the interpersonal dynamics that play out in their classrooms. In fact, as you read the following chapters I think you will find that critical theory develops your ability to see any given problem from a variety of points of view, which is a skill worth having no matter what career you pursue. As important, if not more important, than your future role on the job

market is your future role as a member of the global community. Many people are coming to realize that the numerous and diverse cultures inhabiting planet Earth each has its own history of struggle and achievement as well as its own part to play on the modern stage of national and world events. However, while each culture has its own unique heritage, we share the need to learn to live together, to learn to work with and for one another, if we want our planet to survive. And the issue becomes more complex when we realize that cultures dont occupy tidy bins determined by race or ethnicity alone. In reality, cultures consist of patchworks of overlapping groups that define

themselves in terms of many factors, including race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic class. Its easy for each of us to think ourselves tolerant of cultural groups other

than our own, to believe that we are unbiased, without prejudice. But its not meaningful to say that we are tolerant of groups about which we know little or nothing. For as soon as our tolerance is tested we might find that the tol- erance we thought we had doesnt really exist. For example, take a minute to think about the schools you attended before you entered college. Didnt the student population of at least one of those schools, if not all of them, divide itself into social groups based largely on the kinds of cultural factors listed above? If your school had a diverse student body, didnt students tend to form close bonds only with members of their own race? Didnt students from wealthy, socially prominent families tend to stick together? Didnt students from poorer neighborhoods tend to stick together as well? Didnt students with strong religious ties tend to be close friends with students of the same religion? If your school environment was safe enough for gay students to identify themselves, wasnt there a social group based on gay sexual orientation, which may have been subdivided into two more groups: gay male and gay female students? You can see the strength of these cultural ties if your school had athletic teams made up of students from diverse backgrounds. The athletes may have bonded with their teammates at school, but how many of them formed close out-of-school friendships with athletes of a different race, class, or sexual orientation? Of course, it seems natural for us to form close ties with people who share

our cultural background because we have so much in common. The unfor- tunate thing is that we tend to form only superficial relationships, or none at all, with people from other cultural groups. And worse, we tend to classify other groups according to misleading stereotypes that prevent us from getting to know one another as individuals. We might even find ourselves looking at members of another group as if they were creatures from another planet, not like us and therefore not as good, not as trustworthy, and in worst-case scenarios, not as human. One solution to this problem is to begin to under- stand one another by learning to see the world from diverse points of view, by learning what it might be like to walk a mile in another persons moccasins. And though it might sound like a big claim, that is precisely what critical theory can help us learn because it teaches us to see the world from multiple perspectives. Naturally, critical theory has specific benefits for students of literature. For

example, critical theory can increase your understanding of literary texts by helping you see more in them than youve seen before. And by giving you more to see in literature, critical theory can make literature more interesting to read. As youll see in the following chapters, critical theory can also provide you with multiple interpretations of the same literary work, which will increase the possibility of finding interesting essay topics for your literature

2 Using critical theory

classes. Finally, a practice that is increasing in popularity in literary studies is the application of critical theory to cultural productions other than literature for example, to movies, song lyrics, and television showsand even to your own personal experience, which will help you see more and understand more of the world in which you live.

What will I learn about critical theory from this book?

So now that Ive been trying to convince you of the value of critical theory for the last several paragraphs, perhaps its time to explain in some detail what critical theory is. If youve looked at the table of contents of this textbook, youve probably discovered that what is commonly called critical theory actually consists of several critical theories. And what is most interesting, each theory focuses our attention on a different area of human experienceand therefore on a different aspect of literatureand gives us its own set of concepts with which to understand the world in which we live and the literature that is part and parcel of our world. Think of each theory as a different lens or a different pair of eyeglasses through which we see a different picture of the world and a different view of any literary text we read. To help you get a feel for how each critical theory changes what we see in a literary work, heres a brief overview of the theories from which well draw in this book. Reader-response theory focuses on how readers make meaningon what

happens to us as we read a particular literary work. It asks us to analyze how, exactly, we interact with a given text as we read and interpret it. In Chapter 2 well use concepts from this theory to help you understand some of the per- sonal sources of your own individual interpretations of literaturethat is, to help you understand why each of us tends to interpret particular literary texts the way we do. For this reason, Chapter 2 wont show you how to analyze literary texts; instead, it will help you understand the ways in which we bring our own beliefs and experiences to our literary interpretations. In addition, Chapter 2 will offer you ways of dealing with the personal, subjective nature of interpretation. Once youre in touch with the personal factors influencing your interpretations, youll be ready to bring that awareness to subsequent chapters in which we use concepts from different critical theories to analyze literary works. Whereas reader-response theory focuses on the experiences of the reader

during the act of reading, New Critical theory focuses exclusively on the ways in which language operates in a literary text to make meaning. Chapter 3 will provide concepts from New Critical theory to help you interpret literature thematicallythat is, in terms of a literary texts meaning as a whole con- cerning general topics about human experience, such as love and hate, tradition and change, the initiation into adulthood, conformity and rebellion, and the like. And in order to help you analyze how a texts meaning is linked to its language, this chapter will help increase your understanding of such literary

Critical theory and you 3

devices as, for example, setting, characterization, point of view, ambiguity, imagery, symbol, and metaphor. Many of you will be familiar with this approach because it resembles the way we are usually taught to interpret lit- erary works in high-school or preparatory-school literature classes. In addition, Chapter 3 will help you improve and expand your ability to generate a thesis (a debatable opinion that forms the main point of your interpretation) and to support your thesis with evidence from the literary work you are interpreting. Taken together, then, Chapters 2 and 3 should help you develop both the self-awareness and interpretive skills that will serve you well as you move on to the critical theories offered in the following chapters. Chapters 4 through 9 introduce you to a range of critical theories that

I believe you will find very interesting as well as very helpful to your study of literature. In Chapter 4, well use concepts from psychoanalytic theory to interpret literature. Psychoanalytic theory asks us to examine the emotional causes of the characters behavior and to view a given story, poem, or play as the unfolding of the characters personal psychological dramas. In contrast, Marxist theory, as well see in Chapter 5, asks us to look at the ways in which characters behavior and plot events are influenced by the socioeconomic conditions of the time and place in which the characters live. From a Marxist perspective, all human experiences, including personal psychology, are products of the socio- economic systemwhich is usually some sort of class systemin which human beings live. In Chapter 6, well see how feminist theory asks us to look at the ways in which traditional gender roles, which cast men as naturally dominant and women as naturally submissive, affect characters behavior and plot events. Lesbian, gay, and queer theories, as Chapter 7 demonstrates, ask us to examine the ways in which literary works reveal human sexuality as a complex phenomenon that cannot be fully understood in terms of what is currently defined as heterosexual experience. In Chapter 8, well see how African American theory focuses our attention on the many different ways in which race and racial issues operate in literary texts. Postcolonial theory, as well see in Chapter 9, asks us to look at the ways in which literature offers us a view of human experience as the product of a combination of cultural factors, including race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and cultural beliefs and customs. Finally, Chapter 10, Holding on to what youve learned, offers shorthand

overviews both of the critical theories you encountered in Chapters 2 through 9 and of the interpretation exercises provided to help you learn to use these theories. In addition, Chapter 10 revisits the relationship between critical theory and cultural criticism discussed later in this chapter. Chapter 10 closes by examining a question implied by our use of reader-response concepts in Chapter 2, which is also a question raised whenever any critical theory attempts to promote cultural understanding and the appreciation of cultural difference: How can critical theory help us understand, develop, and give voice to our personal values, particularly as those values affect and are affected by the values of others?

4 Using critical theory

Of course, there are many more critical theories than those introduced here. For example, in addition to the theories we draw upon in this book, courses in critical theory may include units on structuralism, deconstruction, new historicism, rhetorical criticism, or Jungian theory, among others. The theories Ive chosen for you were selected because I believe you will find them most helpful as you develop your understanding of literature and most relevant to your life. And these theories will lay a strong foundation for further study in critical theory, should you choose to pursue your education in that direction. Analogously, the five literary texts that appear at the end of this book

(Appendices AE) and are used for our interpretation exercises were chosen for specific reasons. Each text shows you something useful about our selected theories. And collectively, these literary works offer a range of authorial voices in terms of race, gender, and sexual orientation. These works include Emily Dickinsons poem #520, I started EarlyTook my Dog (c. 1862); William Faulkners story A Rose for Emily (1931); Ralph Ellisons The Battle Royal, which is the first chapter of his well-known novel Invisible Man (1952); a story by Alice Walker entitled Everyday Use (1973); and Jewelle Gomezs story Dont Explain (1987). Although, as you can see, we focus primarily on fiction, our theories can be used to interpret any genre of literature. For like short stories and novels, most plays and poems contain a narrative elementthey tell a storyand stories usually offer us the best starting places for learning to use concepts from critical theory. One secret for developing a good initial relationship to critical theory is to

not expect of yourself more than you should at this stage of the game. For example, although you should be able to understand the interpretation exercises I offer you in each chapteror be able to ask questions about those exercises that will allow your instructor to help youyou should not expect yourself, at first, to come up with similar interpretations completely on your own. At this point in your acquaintance with theory, it is quite natural that you should need some guidelines to help you develop your own theoretical interpretations. The Interpretation exercises found in Chapters 3 through 9 offer those guidelines: each interpretation exercise demonstrates a different aspect of the theory at hand and thus serves as a model for analyzing literature on your own. In addition, to help insure that you take one step at a time, each chapter

presents only the basic concepts of the theory it addresses. This will help you get a firm grasp of the theory at hand without overwhelming you with the kind of full-blown explanations of each theory you would need in a course devoted exclusively to critical theory. If you want to learn more about a particular theory, I suggest you try Taking the next step at the end of any chapter that especially interests you. There you will find Questions for further practice, to help you gain experience using the theoretical concepts youve learned in that chapter by applying them to additional literary works, and a selected bibliography, Suggestions for further reading, to guide you to additional discussions of the critical theory at hand. Finally, Appendix F, Additional

Critical theory and you 5

literary works for further practice, recommends a range of specific titles that lend themselves readily to our selected critical theories. To customize Using Critical Theory for your own purposes, you can study

just those theories that interest you or that your instructor selects for you. Each chapter is written to stand on its own and will make sense without requiring you to read other chapters. Once you have read the chapters youve selected, it might also be useful to read across those chapters, so to speak, by rereading the different interpretations of the same literary work offered in different chapters. See what happens, for example, as Alice Walkers Everyday Use is interpreted through the successive lenses of the theories youve studied. You will notice, especially if you look at all of the interpretation exercises offered for any one of our literary pieces, that some theories work better than others for analyzing a particular text. Indeed, literary works tend to lend them- selves more readily to interpretation through some theoretical frameworks than through others. For this reason, our interpretation exercises analyze our sample literary works in the order in which those works are most accessible to the theory being used in that chapter. Clearly, the ability to pick the appropriate theory for a literary work you want

to interpret, or to pick an appropriate literary work for a theory you want to use, is a skill worth developing. For most of us, its a question of trial and error. We experimentally apply different theories to a piece of literature we want to analyze until we find one that yields the most interesting and perhaps the most thorough interpretation. Of course, the ability to use any given theory to analyze any given text differs from person to person, so the key is to find the combination of theory and literary text that works for you. In fact, you might see some of the ways in which different readers can use the same theory to come up with different readings of the same literary work if you or your instructor interprets any of our five literary texts in ways that differ from the interpretation exercises I offer you.

Critical theory and cultural criticism

One of the most eye-opening and enjoyable features of critical theory is the way it can be used to practice cultural criticism. Contrary to what you might be thinking, cultural criticism does not refer to the evaluation of works of high culture, such as opera, ballet, symphonic music, or Renaissance painting. Rather, cultural criticism sees works of high and popular culture as equally important expressions of the societies that produce them. Indeed, cultural criticism often crosses the line between the two, for instance, by analyzing a work of high culture alongside a popular version of that work in order to see what similarities and differences the two can reveal about the societies from which they emerged. Think, for example, of ShakespearesRomeo and Juliet (c. 1595) andWest Side Story (directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961), a musical film adaptation of Shakespeares play set amidst New York City gang rivalry in the late 1950s.

6 Using critical theory

Cultural criticism focuses primarily, however, on works of popular culture, on productions intended for popular consumption, such as movies, television and radio shows, song lyrics, pulp fiction, cartoons, games, toys, television and magazine ads, fairy tales, urban legends, childrens books and curriculum materials, self-help books, beauty contests, professional sports, state fairs, and the like. And as this list indicates, cultural criticism also crosses the line between forms of entertainment and information. So lets think of cultural criticism as any analysis of any production of popular culture that seeks to understand what that production is saying to members of the culture that produced it. Let me explain. As you develop your ability to interpret literature using concepts from different

critical theories, youll probably catch yourself noticing new thingsrelated to one or more of these conceptsabout your favorite television program, about a movie youve recently seen, or even about a comic strip in the newspaper or a magazine ad. That is, youll probably start practicing cultural criticism with- out realizing that youre doing so. For as weve just seen, television shows, movies, comic strips, advertisements, and just about any other cultural production intended for the general public are all examples of popular culture. They all grow out of a particular set of customs and values generally shared by a par- ticular population. Therefore, they all reveal something about the culture that creates them, whether they intend to do so or not. One way to discover what popular-culture productions reveal about the

culture that creates themthat is, one way to practice cultural criticismis to analyze the cultural messages these productions send to the members of that culture or, as cultural critics put it, the cultural work these productions perform in reflecting, reinforcing, or transforming the values, beliefs, and perceptions of the culture that produces them. And concepts from the critical theories well study in this book can help us do just that. For as well see shortly, in addition to sharpening our interpretive skills, concepts from each critical theory provide a foundation for asking specific questions about cultural productions, questions that will help us decode, so to speak, the cultural messages being sent by those productions. Let me offer you two brief examples of cultural criticism suggested by my students. Although you may be familiar with these examples, you may not have thought of them as instances of cultural criticism. Suppose I want to analyze the availability of a certain doll intended for pre-teen

American girls; offered with a variety of hair colors, eye colors, and apparel; and extremely popular nationwide: the doll of the year, so to speak, which every girl owns or wants to own. If I pay particular attention to the dolls physical features in terms of their apparent race or ethnicity, I can use concepts from African American, postcolonial, and psychoanalytic theories to help me answer questions like the following. Do most or all of these dolls have white skin and Anglo-European facial features? Do most of them have blond or light-brown hair and blue or light-colored eyes? If the toy company that makes these dolls has produced a version intended as an African American doll, does that version have tan rather than medium-brown or dark-brown

Critical theory and you 7

skin? Does that version have the same Anglo-European features as the white dolls? Can the African American version of the doll be found as readily in storesespecially in stores located in racially integrated regionsas the white versions? Can Latina, Asian American, or Native American versions of the doll be found readily in stores located where these Americans live and shop? How does a parent of color decide, when there are no ethnic versions of the coveted doll available locally, whether or not to give his or her child a white version of the doll? What does it mean if a young girl of color prefers a white version or would reject a medium- or dark-brown version of the doll? In short, what cultural message does the racially based limited availability of

these dolls send to the doll-purchasing and doll-receiving members of the community concerning the value of certain kinds of dolls? And what message is being sent concerning the value of certain kinds of little girls? What dangers to childrens self-image and self-esteem are inherent in racially or ethnically biased marketing? Ideally, of course, children of all races and ethnicities would want to play with dolls of all races and ethnicities. How does the limited availability of anything but white dolls discourage this ideal? Can you find a brand of doll, or of any kind of childrens plaything, that offers more equitable multicultural representation and availability? It might be interesting to analyze the cultural messages sent by two such different toys. For, as noted earlier, although productions of popular culture often reflect and reinforce the values, beliefs, and perceptions of the culture that creates them, those productions also can transform the values, beliefs, and perceptions of the culture that creates them. Similarly, I can use concepts from postcolonial and Marxist theories to help

me examine video games intended for teenaged boys and marketed in many countries. I might analyze, for instance, video games in which players try to accumulate some form of wealth or social rank by shooting as many as possi- ble of the enemy figures that appear on the screen. The following questions might help me discover the cultural messages being sent by such games. What do the enemy figures look like? Do their physical features or apparel make them look less than or other than human? In other words, is the enemy dehumanized in some way? Why are the accumulation of great wealth and the acquisition of high social rank such motivating rewards? Why is competition against other players often an important part of the game? People who are not interested in cultural criticism would probably respond to these questions by saying, Its human nature to dehumanize our enemies, to be strongly motivated by the prospect of accumulating great wealth and acquiring high social rank, and to enjoy competition. If you are interested in cultural criticism, however, you will want to know how concepts from postcolonial and Marxist theories can offer you ways of responding to these questions quite differently by showing you the connections between the rules governing a given video game and the values supporting the culture that creates and plays that game. To approach this kind of video game from a different perspective, we might use

concepts from feminist theory and from gay, lesbian, and queer theories to analyze

8 Using critical theory

the definition of masculinityand perhaps the definition of femininity promoted by these games. What masculine qualities does a player need in order to play the game successfully? What masculine qualities seem to be valued in the world created by the game? What personal qualities are devalued or seem to be irrelevant? Are female figures present in the game? What do they look like, and how are they dressed? What kinds of behavior do they exhibit? How do male and female figures relate to figures of the opposite sex? How do they relate to figures of the same sex? What seems to be the role of the female figures in the game? The issue here isnt whether or not we play any particular kind of video

game or whether we approve or disapprove of any particular kind of video game. Rather, the issue here is our ability to notice and interpret the messages we receive every day from video games and from all the other modes of popular entertainment and information that are so much a part of our culture that we may not give them a second thought. These examples might seem, at this point, rather simple. As you become

acquainted with concepts from our critical theories, however, youll see how the everyday products and practices we take for granted are, in fact, much more complex and interesting than most of us realize. To that end, each chapters Food for further thought section includes an extended example of the ways in which cultural criticism relates to the critical theory addressed in that chapter. You will also find, included in the list of Questions for further practice that closes each chapter, an opportunity to apply the theory at hand to a production of popular culture in addition to the literary works to which these questions primarily apply. Chapter 10, the final chapter, offers further discussion of the relationship between critical theory and cultural criticism and includes guidelines for a cultural analysis of an episode from an old television series still popular today. When you reach the final chapter, I think youll be in a position to appreciate that the cultural analysis suggested there is somewhat more complicated than it might appear to the uninitiated eye.

Three questions about interpretation most students ask

By this point, I hope Ive answered most of the questions you have about our reasons for studying critical theory and the ways in which this book can help you get started. However, there are three questions that seem to come up whenever students interpret literature and especially when they begin to use critical theories to help them develop their interpretations. So lets take a brief look at those questions now.

My interpretation is my opinion, so how can it be wrong?

Yes, your interpretation is your opinion. Thats what its supposed to be. In fact, the definition of the word thesis is debatable opinion, and your thesis is the

Critical theory and you 9

main point of your argument when you write a paper that offers an inter- pretation of a literary work. But notice the word debatable in the definition of the word thesis. When youre giving your interpretation of a literary work, youre not saying I like this work or I dont like this work. True, I like this work and I dont like this work are opinions that cant be wrong. (Your instructor cant tell you that youre wrong unless your instructor wants to suggest that youre lying about your opinion!) But that kind of opinion is not an interpretation. Its not a thesis because its not debatable. A readers interpretation doesnt tell us whether or not he or she likes a

given literary work. An interpretation tells us what the reader thinks the literary work means. An interpretation is thus an opinion that is debatable. Your interpretation, therefore, can be judged right or wrong by other readers, just as you can judge their interpretations right or wrong. So the point in offering an interpretation is not just to state what you think the literary work meansnot just to give your opinionbut to use evidence from the literary work to explain why you think your interpretation is valid. Interpreting a literary work, then, is like being both a detective and a lawyer: first you have to figure out what you think the work means; then you have to make a case for your opinion that will be as convincing to others as you can make it.

Do authors deliberately use concepts from critical theories when they write literary works?

Once students begin to use critical theories to interpret literature, they often see so many theoretical concepts in literary works that they think the authors must have put those concepts there on purpose. How else, many students wonder, could these critical theories show us so much about literature? The truth is, how- ever, that authors may or may not deliberately use concepts from critical theories when they write literary works. Lets use psychoanalytic theory as an example. We are told that D.H. Lawrence knew some of Freuds theories and

deliberately used psychoanalytic concepts when he wrote Sons and Lovers, a novel that focuses on a young mans rather consuming and self-destructive oedipal attachment to his mother. But many authors were unfamiliar with psychoanalysisor with any of the critical theories we use todaywhen they wrote literary works. Shakespeare, for example, lived and died long before Sigmund Freud developed his psychoanalytic approach to understanding human behavior. Yet we can use psychoanalytic concepts to interpret Shakespeares plays and sonnets, for instance, to understand his characters motivations or to gain insight into some of the psychological forces operating in the society represented in his work. For Freud didnt invent the psychological forces that motivate human beings. As he himself stated, Freud simply observed those psychological forces and gave them names. That is, Freud discovered some- thing that had always existed and that would continue to exist whether or not anyone ever discovered it: the human psyche.

10 Using critical theory

Shakespeare, therefore, didnt need psychoanalytic theory to create his emotionally complex and psychologically conflicted characters. All he had to do was represent human behavior accurately: his characterizations automatically included the operations of the human psyche. However, while Shakespeare didnt need psychoanalytic theory to create his masterpieces, psychoanalytic theorists believe that psychoanalytic concepts can help us understand the work of Shakespeare and other writers more profoundly than we might be able to do without those concepts. And indeed, all schools of critical theory, including those upon which we draw in this book, make the same kinds of arguments for the usefulness of their approaches to literary interpretation.

How can we interpret a literary work without knowing what the author intended the work to mean?

When we interpret a literary work we assume that it may contain more meanings or fewer meanings or different meanings from those the author intended it to have. After all, writers are human beings. Sometimes what they produce goes beyond their expectations, beyond what is called authorial intention. On the other hand, sometimes a literary work doesnt live up to what its author intended it to mean: sometimes authors fail to achieve their intentions. And even if literature were nothing more than the embodiment of authors intended meanings, we usually dont know, or cant be certain, what an author intended a particular work to mean. Many authors whose works we read are long dead, and there is no record of their intended meaning. Some authors, however, wrote essays in which they explained what they

wanted their work to mean, and, of course, many authors are alive and can tell us what they intended their work to mean. Yet even then, we still have to face the problem of whether a given literary work achieves the authors intention, fails to achieve the authors intention, or is even richer and more complex than the author expected it to be. All we really have to go on is the literary work itself, even when we know the authors intention. So thats what we go on: the literary work itself. Our interpretation can draw on historical elements relevant to the authors life and times, but our interpretation must be supported by adequate evidenceelements of plot, characterization, dialogue, setting, imagery, and so forthfrom the literary text. Therefore, even when we feel that our interpretation must be what the author intended the work to mean, we generally say the text seems to intend or the text implies rather than the author seems to intend or the author implies.

Why feeling confused can be a good sign

Perhaps one of the most unfortunate things about formal education is that it trains us to fear failure to such a degree that we become afraid to take risks. At the first feeling of confusion we often become terrified. When confronted

Critical theory and you 11

with a new subject or even a new idea, the first time we silently say the words I dont get itthe first time we feel confusedwe usually experience any number of negative reactions that generally involve giving up without a fight: Why should I waste my time when Im not going to understand this anyway? That is, we assume that our confusion is a sign of probable, if not inevitable, failure. Confusion, however, can mean just the opposite when were learning

something new. It can mean that weve let go of an old, comfortable way of seeing things in order to see something new. Because were trying to see something new, however, we cant quite get a firm grasp of it immediately. Its like crossing a river: were temporarily stuck in the middle. Weve let go of the riverbank on which we were comfortably seated, but weve not yet reached the bank on the other side. This experience is especially common when were learning critical theory because critical theory requires that we temporarily let go of old ways of seeing thingsold ways of seeing literature, society, ourselvesin order to see them in new ways. So whatever your experience as you work your way through this textbook,

remember that its natural to feel confused at times. In fact, I think you should honor your confusion because it means that youve been courageous enough to let go of your usual way of understanding things in order to try a new way that you havent quite grasped yet. Youve let go of the riverbank in order to cross to the other side of the river. Although it may take a little while to get to that other side, you cant even begin the journey if you dont let go of solid ground. And no matter how you look at it, thats a brave and a very worthwhile act.

12 Using critical theory

Chapter 2

Using concepts from reader-response theory to understand our own literary interpretations

Why should we learn about reader-response theory?

Most of us are intrigued, I think, by the prospect of learning something interesting or useful about ourselves. Thats precisely what reader-response theory offers us, and perhaps thats why it has become a popular framework for the study of literature. There are, however, several different kinds of reader-response theory, and

they arent all interested in the same kinds of self-knowledge. Some reader- response approaches examine the ways in which our literary interpretations are influenced by social factors: for example, by the social or cultural group with which we identify, by the system of education that tells us what literary works are important and how they should be interpreted, or even by the classmates whose opinions influence our responses as we read literary works together. Other reader-response approaches analyze literary works themselves in order to determine how our responses are guided by the way a work is written: for instance, the amount of information provided about characters and plot, the order in which that information is provided, and the attitude of the narrator that provides it. Finally, some reader-response approaches try to determine how our responses to literary works are influenced by our personal experiences, by the emotional or psychological dimension of our daily lives: for example, our likes and dislikes, our loves, our fears, our desires, and our memories. It is this last kind of reader-response theory that we are interested in here.

For despite their differences, all reader-response theories have one important thing in common. They all believe that readers play an active role in making meaning when they read. So lets begin at this common point by focusing, in this chapter, on the following question: how does each of us make meaning when we read a literary work? And to find answers to this question, lets use a reader-response approach that helps us examine the emotional events that occur within us as we read. For although we might believe that our literary interpretations are completely objective and based solely upon what happens in a story, poem, or play, in fact a good deal of what we think happens in a literary text, and what we think the text means, comes from the history of our

personal experiences, which acts as a kind of emotional filter through which we perceive the literary work. It seems reasonable, then, to see if we can improve our ability to understand and enjoy literature by improving our ability to understand the role that our personal responses play in our literary interpretations. One well-known framework for exploring the personal dimension of our

individual reading processes is offered by Norman Holland,1 who suggests that we respond to literary texts in much the same way that we respond to experiences in our daily lives. Holland believes that each of us has what he calls an identity theme, which is the pattern of our emotional challenges and coping strategies by which we respond to people and events on an everyday basis. To offer a simple example, if I dont trust people who remind me of my emotionally manipulative Aunt Betty, then I wont trust literary characters who remind me of her. And if I deal with my negative feelings about my Aunt Betty by refusing to see anything good in her at allby reducing her to her character flaw so that I dont have to deal with her emotionallythen I will deal in the same way with literary characters that remind me of her: by refusing to see anything good in them at all. In short, the same kinds of people, places, and events that create anxiety and

activate my defenses in my everyday life will create anxiety and activate my defenses when I see representations of those kinds of people, places, and events inor project them ontoa literary work. For obvious reasons, Holland calls this reading experience, which can occur for different reasons at multiple points throughout our reading of a literary work, the defense mode. To go back to the example of Aunt Betty, I will go into defense mode as soon as I spot a literary character that reminds me of her because, although Im probably not aware of it, this reminder makes me anxious. My defenses are activated because I feel in need of some emotional protection. When we are in defense mode, we will interpret what we are reading, not

in a manner that reflects the actual words on the page, but in a manner that reduces our anxiety. In other words, we will imagine that the troubling passage means whatever our defenses require it to mean at that point in time. Holland calls this part of the reading process the fantasy mode. For example, my defenses having been raised by encountering a literary character that reminds me of my Aunt Betty, I will see only the negative side of the portrayal even if the character is portrayed positively in some respects. Most probably without rea- lizing it, I will view this character in a very limited way so thatjust as I do in my relationship with my Aunt BettyI can avoid dealing with the emotions it will otherwise create in me. For many of us, however, it is rather difficult to know when we are in

defense mode or fantasy mode. For these two modes occur in order to keep us from knowing something we dont want to know about ourselves and, therefore, about the literary work we are reading. How, then, can we use Hollands ideas to help us discover how our personal reading responses operate to influence our interpretation of literature?

14 Using critical theory

Perhaps the following common reading experiences can serve as vehicles for the kinds of responses described by Holland. That is, they can provide us with a hands-on, up-close-and-personal method to get in touch with and put into words the specific ways in which we are responding to a given literary work. In order to do so, these response vehicles focus on some of the very specific kinds of relationships that can occur between ourselves and various elements of a literary work.

Response vehicles

Personal identification

Personal identification is the experience of seeing ourselves in a literary character, often without knowing that we are doing so. We feel that we understand how this character feels and what motivates his or her behavior because we believe that the character feels as we would feel in his or her circumstances and is influenced by the same motivations that would influence us in a similar situation.

The familiar character

Sometimes a literary character seems familiar to us because that character reminds us of someone we know, often someone important in our lives in the past or in the present, although we may not realize that this recognition is taking place. A character may remind us of a friend, family member, spouse, former sweetheart, teacher, roommate, classmate, or anyone else weve known at any point in our lives. Perhaps a character physically resembles, shares some personality traits with, or behaves like someone we know or used to know.

The familiar plot event

A plot event can be as brief and/or simple as a characters picking up a pen or as long and/or complex as a son discovering his father in a hotel room with a strange woman. Sometimes a plot event seems familiar to us because, whether we realize it or not, the event reminds us of something weve seen or experi- enced ourselves. Unless asked to do so, we may not notice that we are relating personally to a particular plot event because plot events are generally numerous, and our attention is often focused on the plot events that are, according to our teacher or textbook, central to the meaning of the literary work.

The familiar setting

Sometimes a literary setting seems familiar to us because its geographic location or physical appearance evokes memories of a place with which we associate important experiences that occurred there or with which we associate an

Using concepts from reader-response theory 15

important time in our life, although we may not realize that we are making this kind of connection. Personal responses to a literary setting are often more subtle than other kinds of personal responses to literature because many readers regard setting as a backdrop that doesnt require attention in its own right.

Response exercises

Given our focus, in this chapter, on learning to understand the personal sources of our own literary interpretations rather than to analyze literary works, we wont do the kinds of interpretation exercises you will find in subsequent chapters, chapters that focus on different ways to understand literature. Instead of exercises that analyze each of the five sample literary works included at the end of this book, well use our response vehicles and one of our sample literary worksAlice Walkers Everyday Use (1973; see Appendix D)to generate response exercises you can use whenever you want to explore the role played by your personal responses in your interpretation of a literary work. The sample responses that follow each exercise are intended to illustrate the wide variety of responses that can be elicited by these exercises as well as the fact that different exercises can elicit similar responses. Later in the chapter, well examine the ways in which your personal responses can either help or hinder your ability to interpret literature. Finally, well explore the ways in which your personal responses can be used to help you generate topics for interpreting literature that are meaningful to others as well as to yourself. In order to perform the exercises below, you first need to read Alice Walkers

story Everyday Use, which appears at the end of this book. If youve not already read this story, please do so now. Then take a sheet of paper and try the following exercises. For each exercise, give whatever answers accurately reflect your feelings, even if you sometimes give the same answer to more than one question.

Personal-identification exercise

1 Which character do you like most? 2 Which character do you dislike most? 3 For which character do you feel most sorry? 4 Which character do you admire most? 5 To which of the above four questions did you have the strongest emotional

response? (It doesnt matter what kind of emotion you experienced. Just pick the question that caused the strongest feeling in you.) Write down again here the character you named in answering that question.

6 How do you see yourself in the character you named in question 5? List all the things you have in common with this character. (You may have things in common with this character that dont come immediately to mind. Think about it.) Your job in question 6 is to describe as

16 Using critical theory

completely as possible all the ways in which you personally identify with this character.

7 This is the crucial, final step. Now that you know some of the ways in which you personally identify with this character, how might that iden- tification have influenced your interpretation of the story? For example, might your personal bond with this character have influenced your inter- pretation of this character, of another character, or of a particular event in the story? Write down your answer in as much detail as possible. (Try your best to answer this question thoroughly, but dont worry if, at this point in time, youre unable to do so as fully as youd like.)

Our answer to question 7 is the key to understanding an important aspect of our emotional relationship to the story and, therefore, an important source of our interpretation of it. Lets see how my interpretation of Everyday Use might change according to which character I identify with most strongly. Suppose, for instance, I identify most strongly with Maggie because, like her,

Im a quiet, shy person or had a sibling whom I felt was given more advantages or attention than I was. In that case, I might interpret Dee (Wangero) because of her insensitivity to Maggiein a wholly negative manner as a shallow, selfish, insensitive person, and Id probably make light of the few positive qualities the text clearly gives her. I might even suspect that Dee started the fire that burned down the familys former home, although the story provides no clear evidence to support such a suspicion. In addition, I might argue that Mrs. Johnson (Mama) has been a less-than-perfect mother in favoring Dee over Maggie or in underestimating Maggies talents. And I might dislike Hakim because of his apparent insensitivity to, and even dismissal of, Maggie. In contrast, what if, instead, I identify with Dee? For example, suppose that,

like Dee, I chose a path different from that of my family or have felt mis- understood by my family. In that case, I would probably interpret Dee more positively, as a character with understandably conflicted feelings toward her mother and sister and an understandable desire to live her own life. Although I would have to admit that Dee has some unfortunate traits, I would probably be more aware of her good pointsincluding her less obvious good pointsthan would other readers. I might focus, for instance, on her remarkable achievements despite the biases of race, class, and gender that have stood in her way. And I might notice the textual evidence that suggests her desire to be appreciated by her mother and sister rather than treated as an outsider. In addition, I might argue that Mrs. Johnson has been a less-than-perfect mother in favoring Maggie over Dee or in failing to bridge the emotional distance between herself and Dee that has existed since Dees childhood. Indeed, even my interpretation of Hakims behavior toward Mrs. Johnson and Maggie will be influenced by whether or not I think him good enough for Dee. Now what if, instead of identifying with either sister, I identify with

Mrs. Johnson? Suppose, for example, I have children of my own and can

Using concepts from reader-response theory 17

understand what a difficult job it must have been for Mrs. Johnson to raise two daughters by herself on a low income. In that case, I might interpret Dee nega- tively based largely on her failure to appreciate all her mother has done for her. And I might argue further that it would be unfair of readers to blame Mrs. Johnson in any way for Dees problems because I would be aware of all the ways in which Mrs. Johnson is a hardworking, devoted mother who loves Dee and who wishes she could please her successful daughter (just look at Mrs. Johnsons dream about appearing on television) despite Dees insensitive air of superiority. In addition, I might find Maggie sympathetic, not just because she is shy and has suffered many serious hardships, but because Maggie clearly love

CH.22 major methods of managing waste grad school essay help

DQ 5

CH20

1. How much of our global energy supply do nuclear power, bioenergy, and hydroelectric power contribute? How much of our global electricity do these three conventional energy alternatives generate?

2. Describe how nuclear fission works. How do nuclear plant engineers control fission and prevent a runaway chain reaction?

3. List several concerns about the disposal of radioactive waste. What has been done so far about its disposal?

4. Describe two biofuels, where each comes from, and how each is used.

CH 21.

5. What factors and concerns are causing renewable energy use to expand? Which two renewable sources are experiencing the most rapid growth?

6. Describe several environmental and economic advantages of solar power. What are some disadvantages?

7. How do modern wind turbines generate electricity? How does wind speed affect the process? What factors affect where we place wind turbines?

8. Definegeothermal energy, and explain three main ways in which it is obtained and used. Describe one sense in which it is renewable and one sense in which it is not

CH.22

9. Describe five major methods of managing waste. Why do we practice waste management?

Article-teaching contemporary literary theory.pdf argumentative essay help: argumentative essay help

Christianity and Literature Vol. 48, No. 1 (Autumn 1998)

DIALOGUE

Teaching Contemporary Literary Theory at a Church-Sponsored University

Daniel K. Muhlestein

Criticism ought to promote the critique of religion . . . through di- verse challenges, including satire and mockery, in its dealings with literature and with cultural issues.

Jonathan Culler, Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions

To what extent should potentially controversial approaches to lit- erature be pursued here?

Brigham Young University, Graduate Council Report

It is important to talk about pedagogical strategy. beU hooks,

“Toward a Revolutionary Eeminist Pedagogy”

Contemporary literary theory is the study of the assumptions upon which literary criticism is based and the analysis of the linguis- tic, cultural, political, and economic contexts within which litera- ture and criticism are produced and consumed. From one perspec- tive such theoryMarxism, feminism. New Historicism, post- colonialism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, and so forthis an “attempt to govern interpretations of particular texts by appealing to an account of interpretation in general” (Knapp and Michaels 723). From another perspective it is a “low-visibility, high-intensity war” of cultural politics (Will 288). And from either perspective it is controversial. As Paul de Man observes.

The quarrelsome tone that hangs over the debates on the teach- ing of literature can often be traced to tbe advent of contemporary literary theory. This is certainly not surprising. Whenever new

79

80 DANIEL K. MUHLESTEIN

approaches or techniques are being advocated, a very understand- able ill-humor overcomes those who feel they may have to modify or to reconsider well-established pedagogical habits that served them well until the most recent troublemakers came along. But the polemical response in thecaseof contemporary literary theory, and especially of some of its aspects, runs deeper.

It feeds not only on civilized conservatism but on moral indig- nation. It speaks with an anxiety that is not only that of a disturbed tranquility but of a disturbed moral conscience. (21)

This anxiety, this disturbed moral conscience, has been expressed by writers ranging from George Will to W. Jackson Bate to Edward W. Said to Frank Lentricchia. It has produced a vigorous debate among Christian literary critics, many of whom view theory as a threat not only to cultural values but also to religious faith.^ And it is felt with particular intensity at educational institutions sponsored by religious organizations. As a result, teaching contemporary lit- erary theory at a church-sponsored university can be something of a challenge. That challenge can be met, however, through the appli- cation of three related principles. In the following pages I describe those principles and give examples of how they can be applied. My examples are necessarily based upon my own experience, but the principles they illustrate can be put to use in a variety of settings.

I

The first principle is almost self-evident: if you teach a contro- versial subject such as contemporary literary theory, then teach it in enough depth and complexity to give the students a real under- standing of the material. One obvious way to do this is through fo- cus. No student, however brilliant, can learn Jacques Lacan or de- cipher Jacques Derrida in a week or two. Consequently, in my un- dergraduate courses we study only two or three critical approaches a semester. And in my graduate seminar we do a semester-long case study in critical methodology: we study a single approachand study our study of that materialin such a way as to learn to iden- tify and critique the master assumptions that underlie any given critical method.

A second way to facilitate real understanding is context. Theo- ries neither develop nor are embraced in a vacuum: they are the products of cultural, political, and economic pressures; and they bear the marks of that determination both in what they say and how they are received. Jean-Paul Sartre’s assertion that scarcity trans- forms revolutionary fervor into state oppression, for example, is best understood as his attempt to come to grips with Soviet aggression (for an overview of Sartre’s position, see Anderson, Considerations

TEACHING CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY 81

85-87). And the popularity of Derrida in American literary circles probably has less to do with the “truth value” of bis views than with how well deconstruction fits what Michele Lamont calls tbe cultural and institutional requirements of current academic life (586). Con- sequently, in my courses on theory we study context as well as con- tent: we review the political events that engendered Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony (for a discussion of the circumstances under which Gramsci developed bis theory, see Anderson, “Antimo- nies”); we identify the link between the formalist emphasis on text- ual autonomy and Pierre Macherey’s definition of ideology as an absent, wifer/iaZZy excluded determination existing at the very mar- gins of the text (for a review of Macherey’s evolving theory, see Kavanagh 34-37); we discuss the relationship between Anglo-Ameri- can new pragmatists and French writing-the-body theorists and ask what impact tbat has on Elaine Showalter’s critique of biocriticism (for an example of her critique, see 250-52); and so forth. And in doing so, we use context to illuminate content.

A third way to help students come to grips with the material is to require them to read primary texts. No summary can take the place of reading Louis Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Appa- ratuses,” Fredric Jameson’s The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, or Stephen Greenblatt’s “Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and Its Subversion.” No overview can do jus- tice to Judith Fetterly’s The Resisting Reader, Helene Cixous’ “The Laugh of the Medusa,” or Adrienne Rich’s essays on the link between sexuality and textuality. And no gloss can replace Julia Kristeva’s “Women’s Time,” Lacan’s “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter,’” or that amazing collaborative effort titled Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Psychoanalysis. There simply comes a point at which the stu- dents must read and reread the primary texts themselves.

A fourth way to nail down knowledge is through application. Summary is easy; application is hard; and critique is mandatory. Hence the culmination of a class on literary theory should be an extended essay in which students describe an approach, apply it, and critique approach and application alike. In doing so, they both synthesize the theory and test its mettle by translating the general into the specific, the abstract into the concrete.

II

Of course, this first principle, the notion that if you are going to teach something you should teach it in depth, is hardly new. Neither is there much new in the second principle: if you teach a controver- sial subject such as theory, then critique what you teach. Indeed, in an obvious sense tbe second principle is little more than a logical

82 DANIEL K. MUHLESTEIN

extension of the first. A professor, that is to say, has a professional obligation to present both sides of an issue, to identify the weak- nesses in a given position as well as its strengths. The question, then, is not whether but how to critique theory. A number of things help, some of which are a simple function of the initial attempt to under- stand the material.

For example, studying the context out of which a theory develops or within which it is popularized demystifies that theory by reveal- ing the iron necessity behind the apparent freedom with which the theory unfolds. When Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory: An Intro- duction is placed within the context of what Perry Anderson calls the “crisis” of Western Marxism, for instance, the necessity behind Eagleton’s switch from an approach based upon the work of Althusser to one grounded in the texts of Walter Benjamin becomes clear (for an account of the crisis, see Anderson, In the Tracks 68- 80). And Eagleton’s sudden enthusiasm for pluralism”Any method or theory which will contribute to the strategic goal of human eman- cipation . . . is acceptable,” he writes (210)is revealed as a symp- tom of an underlying problem: Western Marxism’s determinate in- ability to prove that its master narrative of history and the methods of literary analysis based upon it are objectively superior to other such narratives and methods.

Context, then, can help us see how and why a theorist like Eagleton switches from a type of criticism that identifies and de- fends the Marxist master narrative upon which it is based to an apparent pluralism that is in fact simply Marxism under cover. The example of Eagleton is also helpful in that it points to a second, and closely related, way in which the quest for detailed understanding can lead to substantive critique. And that w ay is sequence. Inmost cases those who are best qualified to critique the theorists of one generation are the next generation of theorists within that same tradition. An obvious example can be found in Anglo-American feminism. Many early feminists in America focused on the ways in w hich male authors stereotype female characters. This kind of analysis is called “feminist critique,” and it was pioneered by Kate Millett, who in Sexual Politics proved that in Henry Miller’s narra- tives women are defined as sexual objects in order to ensure the su- periority of the male hero. One of the best critics of feminist critique is Showalter, a second-generation feminist who argues that feminist critique is too male-oriented and that “if we [only] study [men’s] stereotypes of women,… we are not learning what women have felt and experienced, but only what men have thought women should be” (130). And one of the best critics of Showalter’s alternative to feminist critique (“gynocriticism”) is contemporary feminist Lillian S. Robinson, who notes that too often “conclusions about ‘women’s

TEACHING CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY 83

fiction’ or ‘female consciousness’ have been drawn or jumped to from considering a body of work whose authors are all white and comparatively privileged” (114).

My point, of course, is that, when the theorists within a given tra- dition critique one another in this way, studying them in sequence does triple duty: it helps us understand the theories themselves (who can better explicate feminist critique than Showalter?); it gives us a vigorous, detailed, and evolving critique of those same theories; and it teaches us to look at recent theories, those hot commodities that have yet to be demystified by future generations, with less awe and more skepticism.

A third way to separate the wheat from the chaff is to listen very closely to the dialogue between competing approaches. Such dia- logue can range all the way from personal attacks (Eagleton’s essay on formalism in Literary Theory is an obvious example) to attempts to bring together related approaches (the work of the Marxist/femi- nist collective in Paris is a case in point). And while not all such texts repay careful attention, many do, giving us valuable insight into the possible weaknesses in competing theories. Thus, Anderson’s Marx- ist analysis of deconstruction can show us the downside of defining all human activity in terms of language {In the Tracks 43-55). Showalter’s feminist critique of Lacanshe calls him, with no small irony, “the ladies’ man oi Diacritics” (247)can make clear some of the problems produced by his attempt to debiologize Freud. Rich- ard Levin’s humanist critique of feminism can dramatize the way in w^hich some feminist critics project their ow n ideologies onto Shakespeare. And Edward Pechter’s old historicist critique of ap- proaches influenced by the Western Marxist tradition can highlight the gap between New Historicist theory and practice.

A fourth way to critique a contemporary literary theory is to read it symptomatically. As its name implies, a symptomatic reading is a kind of diagnosis: it treats a formal contradiction in the text as a symptom of a subtextual ideological impasse that the author is struggling to resolve or repress. Such symptomatic readings have been employed by critics ranging from Claude Levi-Strauss to Jameson (see Levi-Strauss 206-31; Jameson 74-83). The benefit of interpreting a theory symptomatically is that doing so can reveal what Macherey calls the unconscious of the text, its ideological sub- strata.

For a case in point, consider Carol Gilligan’s influential essay “In a Different Voice: Women’s Conceptions of Self and of Morality,” where Gilligan defines a process of moral development that culmi- nates in the application to both self and other of tivo fundamental imperatives: an “obligation [to care]” (302) and an “injunction against hurting” (302). In the final stage of moral development, the

84 DANIEL K. MUHLESTEIN

mature self recognizes

. . . the psychological and moral necessity for an equation of worth between self and other. Responsibility for care then includes both self and other, and the obligation not to hurt… is reconstructed as a universal guide of moral choice. [Making a choice thus in- volves] seeking that solution which would best protect both… self and others. (306)

This is a persuasive conclusion, one reminiscent of Christ’s admo- nition to love thy neighbor as thyself. Unfortunately, it is contra- dicted by Gilligan’s methodology and use of examples. In the essay all of her examples of moral choices involve abortion. And she de- fends each decision to abort the fetus not (as her theory directs) by applying to moral equals an “obligation to care” and an “injunction against hurting” but rather by excluding from the self/other equa- tion the unborn child, who given its stake in the outcome is argu- ably the most significant other.

Consequently, when we read Gilligan’s essay, the contradiction between her theory and her methodology prompts us to read it “against the grain.” In doing so, w e analyze the various covert meth- ods by which she excludes the fetus from the self/other equation. We interpret her use of such methods as a symptom of a latent ideologi- cal imperative, concluding that she wrote the essay less to define moral development/^er se than to redefine abortion as a quint- essentially moral act. We view the necessity behind her use of such methods as evidence of a flaw in the ideology that overdetermined her production of the text. And we highlight that flaw by emphasiz- ing what happens when her model is applied to her examples in a nonexclusionary w ay.

A symptomatic reading, then, can be used to uncover and make available for critique the ideological subtext of an essay like “In a Different Voice.” In doing so, such readings typically work in tan- dem with yet another w ay of critiquing contemporary literary theory. And that way is “grafting”: turning a theory against itself by applying it to itself. In his critique of Beyond the Pleasure Prin- ciple, for example, Derrida turns Sigmund Freud’s text against itself by showing the extent to which the particulars of Freud’s theory are determined in advance by Freud’s own search for pleasure. Jame- son’s theory of metacommentary has been used to show the flaws in metacommentary as theory (Muhlestein, “Rethinking” 40-86). Annette Kolodny’s “three critical propositions” have been used to highlight the political function of the gap between theory and prac- tice in her own analysis of “A Jury of Her Peers” (Muhlestein, “His- tory” 3-17). And most students can find examples of Macherey’s

TEACHING CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY 85

three critical fallaciesthe “empirical,” the “normative,” and tbe “interpretive”in Macherey’s own criticism. The great strength of this kind of criticism is that there is no easy way to appeal the ver- dict since both the basis for the critique and tbe method by which it is carried out have been established in advance by the theory un- der scrutiny. The theory has provided the rope with which it is hanged.

A sixth way to critique a literary theory is simply to apply it to a number of dissimilar texts and see what kind of criticism it pro- duces. One way to do tbis is to take a book like Contexts for Criti- cism, an introduction to literary theory that discusses a different approach per chapter and that divides each chapter into one section on theory and one on application, and apply the theory described in one chapter to the literary texts referenced in the application section of another. What happens, you ask, when the Oedipal Com- plex is applied not to Hamlet or Sons and Lovers but to “The Red Wheelbarrow,” “There is no frigate like a book,” or “The Eagle”? In fact, two things happen. First, tbe students see that some theories are more portable than others and begin to view lack of portability as a red flag, as evidence that tbe theory is not as universal as it claims to be. Second, the students begin to rethink tbe relationship between theory and text and see that the process by wbicb meaning is produced can become a dialectical engagement in which the text is used to critique the theory as much as the theory is used to illu- minate the text.

Context, sequence, discourse, symptomatic readings, grafting, and application, then, are six ways to critique contemporary liter- ary theory in the process of teaching it well. Some aspects of theory, however, are made of sterner stuff and simply shrug off standard methods of analysis. Tbey look like Truth. And that is a wonderful thing. Our goal, after all, is to discover and proclaim that which is true. Except that in some cases something which from a profes- sional perspective looks like a Truth that is impervious to critique also conflicts with Christian doctrine or practice. What then?

There are at least two options. Tbe first and easiest one is sim- ply not to assign those kinds of texts. To leave them out, however, is surely to shirk the principal obligation of a professor, which is to teach the material in the field. Further, to abandon the texts is also effectually to abandon tbe students. After all, many of them will go on to do graduate work at other universities. And when they do, they will have to face the same texts in a neutral or even, as is sometimes the case, covertly hostile environment (for examples of such hostil- ity, see Culler). What about them?

A second option is to approach such texts from within a perspec- tive in which faith is given full value as a method of critique as well

86 DANIEL K. MUHLESTEIN

as a way of life. This is the better option, obviously. But how? That depends. In some cases the best move may be to stress the moral implications of embracing a given position or of employing a par- ticular technique. For example, when we study Althusser’s discus- sion of the significance of the naming process and read his assertion that families are Ideological State Apparatuses which use “hailing” to turn their children into servants of capitalism (162-65), I point out that, while adopting Althusser’s method of analysis is an effec- tive way to discuss literature, when we use his technique we also necessarily signal our acceptance of the assumptions in his theory by which that technique is authorized. And if we are not comfort- able with those assumptions, we should not employ the technique.

In other cases it may be necessary to concede part of the theory, identify the point at which we say “This far, no further,” and ac- knowledge the problems inherent in our position while at the same time inviting our students to adopt it with us. When we read “Com- pulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” for example, I con- cede Rich’s assertion that throughout history men have used every- thing from literature to laws to rape to murder to enforce hetero- sexual relationships and repress lesbian relations. I then identify the part of her essay that I reject: her advocacy of a lesbian continuum. And I acknowledge that my rejection of her advocacy is based upon two fairly simple reasons, neither of which has much to do with lit- erary theory. The first reason is my sense that the fact that some- thing has been repressed tells us very little about the nature of the thing/7er se. Something is not good simply because it has been re- pressed any more than it is bad simply because it has been repressed. And this is so even if the repression itself turns out to be badeven, that is to say, if the repression is achieved through the casual denial of free agency or the ready use of violence. The second reason that I reject Rich’s advocacy of a lesbian continuum is my own prior ac- ceptance of my church’s teachings on the proper expression of hu- man sexuality. As I review these reasons with my students, I both acknowledge the problems inherent in my position and invite my students to occupy it with me. If they cannot do that, 1 invite them to suspend judgment until they can.

Seldom if ever do I use church doctrine or authority as a lever in a classroom debate about theory. There are two reasons for my re- luctance to do so. The first is that in an academic environment gen- erally dedicated to the ideals of free inquiry, vigorous critique, and demonstrable evidence, the switch from dialogue to authority tends to jar some students and alienate others. This is especially true in a class that is learning to analyze binary structures and critique appeals to authority and that is therefore understandably eager to apply its new skills to (among other things) the professor’s pedagogy.

TEACHING CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY 87

Consequently, although framing the issue that way certainly stops the discussion, it does so without really solving the problem: it per- suades those who are already, in effect, persuaded, but it dissuades those who are not. The second and more important reason is that such an approach gives the students only part of what they need. It gives them the correct answer but leaves them without a way to de- fend that answer in a rigorous academic setting. And, in doing so, it calls into question the veracity of the answer itself.

I remember vividly my own experiences as a student in this re- gard. In a course on the New Humanists, for example, we read H. L. Mencken’s essay “Memorial Service” in which he asks, “Where is the grave-yard of dead gods?” (143), and catalogues the hundreds of deities who were once “gods of the highest eminence. . . . They ranked . . . with Jehovah himself; the worst of them stood far higher than Thor. Yet they have all gone down the chute” (145). Mencken concludes his catalogue with this observation:

You may think I spoof. That I invent the names. I do not. Ask the rector to lend you any good treatise on comparative religion: you will find them all listed. They were gods of the highest standing and dignitygods of civilized peoplesworshiped and believed in by millions. All were theoretically omnipotent, omniscient, and im- mortal. And all are dead. (147)

In class that day, after reviewing the implications of Mencken’s es- say, the professor provided an informal scriptural alternative to those implications. And I sat there shaken, knowing that I needed more than that. I knew what the Scriptures said. What I did not know was how to defend them in a way that did not feel like a retreat into denial. What I did not have, and what I very much needed, was a way to defend my faith that did not force me to model the precise behavior that Mencken had so persuasively defined as evidence of gullibility. What I needed was a way to respond to Mencken that did not substantiate through its method his position and undermine my own, I needed the w^herewithal to say what I then felt but could nei- ther articulate nor justifynamely, that it is as logical to read Mencken’s catalogue as evidence of a heaven-sent impulse to grope toward salvation as it is to interpret the graveyard of the gods as proof that God is man’s creation. What I learned the hard way that day, and what my students’ reactions have since conflrmed, is that, as odd and unsettling as it may seem, using, say, the letters of the apostle Paul to confront the research of Nancy Chodorow without giving the students a substantive way to bridge the gap between faith and intellect can be a surprisingly high-risk approach. We really do have to yoke faith to studyauthentic, serious, rigorous study. And when we do not, our faith, as well as our learning, suffers.

88 DANIEL K. MUHLESTEIN

III

Of course the success ofthe endeavor depends upon more than just what is taught: how it is taught, the framework within which it is taught, makes a great deal of difference as well. And that brings us to the third and final principle: if you teach a controversial sub- ject such as theory, create a set of policies and a classroom environ- ment that are conducive to learning and faith alike. Although no professor ever has complete control over the complex give-and-take of classroom dynamics, there are a number of ways to fine-tune the context within which theory is studied.

Tw o obvious ways have to do with the mundane but critical issues of testing and evaluation. In order to push the students to learn the material, a class’s examinations must be as rigorous as its syllabus. They must require specificity, synthesis, and a sense of history. Multiple-choice and fiU-in-the-blank will not do. Indeed, the best exams, by which I mean the ones most likely to help the students master the material, are made up of essay questions that require substantive preparation, independent thinking, and a near eternity to grade.

Tough tests alone, however, are not sufficient to guarantee either understanding or critique. This is especially true when the subject matter is in controversy. Why? Because in the short run grades matter. Sometimes they matter a lot. And unless the students are sureand I mean really surethat the professor will not punish them for advocating alternative views, they will feel a surprising amount of pressure simply to repeat the professor’s position rather than doing the hard work of discovering and defending w hat they themselves actually believe, which work is an absolute prerequisite to both true understanding and authentic critique. Of course, some professors, especially those w hose main goal is to advance a particu- lar position, intentionally maximize that pressure in order to intimi- date their students into agreement or silence. But even in the ab- sence of bad intent, some degree of pressure is almost always present in an academic setting: it is a function ofthe hierarchical relation- ship between the grader and one being graded. And when it is felt too keenly, it produces the antithesis of education: agreement with- out debate, compliance without understanding, and silence without critique. Consequently, any professor who teaches issues in contro- versy has a fundamental obligation to counteract such pressure by creating a classroom environment in which fairness and generosity are as abundantand as obviousas rigor and the demand for evi- dence. Before they can learn theory well, students really do have to know that their grades will be based on their knowledge, not their politics. They have to know that they will be treated kindly regard-

TEACHING CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY 89

less of what stance they may take on a given issue. And they have to know that the necessary critique of positions and theories will never degenerate into a personal attack on either students within the class or professors without. Until students learn that, even the most rig- orous exams will extract from them only nervous calculation and a too ready reflection of the professor’s own position.

Rigor and fairness, then, must be woven together in order to cre- ate a classroom environment in which learning can flourish. But what of faith? What fosters that? Testimony does. And testimony is thus the third thread that a professor at a church-sponsored uni- versity must weave into the fabric of a class in contemporary liter- ary theory. Personal testimony, that is to say, must become as much a part of the classroom environment as scholarly rigor and unflinch- ing fairness. In that way, if students begin to struggle with the chal- lenges to faith posed by literary theory, they have before themselves the example of others who have faced the same challenges, worked through the same issues, and remained true to their religious con- victions. The question, then, is how testimony can best be integrated into a class on contemporary literary theory. As can be seen, the bulk of this essay has been devoted to answering precisely that ques- tion in terms of course design and classroom pedagogy. Indeed, perhaps all that remains to be discussed is what might be called the Catch-22 of bearing testimony at a church-sponsored university.

Unlike the case at most other institutions of higher education, professors at church-sponsored universities have the opportunity to bear testimony to their students. Indeed, they typically have a well defined professional obligation to do so. For example, the document detailing the policy on faculty rank and status at the school where I teach, Brigham Young University, declares: “Members of the faculty . . . must live lives of loyalty to the . . . gospel; their students must know where they stand on the most important issues of life, and their colleagues must feel their love and support for the church…. Students should see by their teachers’ lives and scholarship that they are committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ” (4). Further, this call to witness through word and deed is so central to BYU’s mission that it is measured semiannually, with failure to meet University expec- tations constituting possible grounds for dismissal (Teacher Evalu- ations 2). This is not an unexpected requirement; neither is it un- reasonable. BYU is, after all, funded by the tithes of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And most students attend BYU precisely in order to receive an education in which the sacred and the secular are fused. Sometimes, however, the law of unintended consequences kicks in. For on occasion the fact that declarations of faith are both encouraged and subject to review is sufficient of itself to undermine the very witness it seeks to promote.

90 DANIEL K. MUHLESTEIN

Mencken once observed, when speaking of the need for academic freedom:

No man’s opinion is worth a hoot, however well supported and maintained, as long as he is not absolutely free, if the spirit moves him, to support and maintain the exactly contrary opinion…. He may seek the truth and the truth only, and bring up his highest tal- ents and diligence to the business, but always there is a specter be- hind his chair, a warning in his ear. Always it is safer . . . for him to think one way than to think another way, and in that bald fact there is excuse enough to hold his whole chain of syllogisms in suspicion. He may be earnest, he may be honest, but he is not free, and if he is not free, he is not anything, (150-51)

And what is true of an intellectual position is equally true of a spiri- tual declaration. To be effective, a professor’s testimony not only must be freely given, but it also must be seen to be offered up with- out compulsion or restraint, without “a specter behind his chair” or “a w^arning in his ear.” It is not that the spirit cannot function when testimony is encouraged: it can and does. It is, rather, that some students, especially those who are studying the ways in which orga- nizations maintain ideological coherence, are less likely to search for that spirit when they know that the testimony being borne exists within the necessary framework of an institutional imperative. What this means is that, paradoxically, the same policies that en- courage a professor to bear testimony also make that testimony less likely to touch those who most need to feel it.

This is a perplexing problem, and one not easily solved. In the end the solution to what might be called the specter of necessity must come, if it is to come at all, through the nature of the testimony be- ing borne: if the testimony itself is pure, then the spirit in which it is offered will usually, although not always, come through. By “pure” I mean three things: first, that the testimony is an honest one, nei- ther claiming faith as knowledge nor reducing knowledge to hope; second, that the testimony is used as a tool to increase faith, not as a way to score cheap points when an issue is in doubt or as a weapon to silence an opponent; and, third, that word is matched by deed. For if ve preach like Christians but teach like agnostics, if the way in w hich we approach our subject matter is not shaped by the truths to w hich we testify, then, as Derrida would say, we are supplement- ing that which is peripheral for that which is central, replacing deed with word and hailing the latter as the former. If, on the other hand, both our course design and our classroom pedagogy are themselves a testament to our faith, formal testimony then becomes a capstone rather than a supplement, a culmination rather than a gesture. Ac- tions speak in unison with words. And that harmony of word and

T E A C H I N G C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A R Y T H E O R Y 91

deed carries us beyond the Catch-22 of bearing testimony at a church- sponsored university.

Brigham Young University

NOTES

‘In Religion and Literature see the special 1990 issue titled Religious Thought and Contemporary Literary Theory. In Literature and Relief see Bruce L. Edwards, Jr., Tanner, Young, and the special 1989 issue titled Can There Re a Christian Theory of Literature? In Christianity and Literature see Battenhouse, Davies, Detweiler, Bruce L. Edwards and Branson L. Woodard, Jr., Michael Edwards, Finley, Knedlik, Low, McManmon, Ritchie, Ryken, Walhout, Wright, and Zornado.

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Literary theory the basics by hans bertens 2014. buy argumentative essay help

LITERARY THEORY

THE BASICS

Now in its third edition, Literary Theory: The Basics is a clear and engaging introduction to this core area of study. Exploring a broad range of topics, from the New Criticism of the 1930s to the Ecocriticism and Posthumanism of the twenty-first century, it guides the reader through the sometimes confusing world of literary theory to answer such questions as:

Why is theory so important? Can I use modern theories to analyse texts from other periods? What are issues like gender or race doing in literary theory? How do I decide which theory to use and must I pick just one? What comes after theory?

Now with updated case studies and suggestions for further reading, Literary Theory: The Basics is a must read for anyone wishing to approach the many debates and theories in this field with confidence.

Hans Bertens is Professor of Comparative Literature at Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

The Basics

ACTING Bella Merlin

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY Nancy Stanlick

ANTHROPOLOGY Peter Metcalf

ARCHAEOLOGY (SECOND EDITION) Clive Gamble

ART HISTORY Grant Pooke and Diana Newall

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Kevin Warwick

THE BIBLE John Barton

BUDDHISM Cathy Cantwell

THE CITY Kevin Archer

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE Suman Gupta

CRIMINAL LAW Jonathan Herring

CRIMINOLOGY (SECOND EDITION) Sandra Walklate

DANCE STUDIES Jo Butterworth

EASTERN PHILOSOPHY Victoria S. Harrison

ECONOMICS (SECOND EDITION) Tony Cleaver

EDUCATION Kay Wood

EUROPEAN UNION (SECOND EDITION) Alex Warleigh-Lack

EVOLUTION Sherrie Lyons

FILM STUDIES (SECOND EDITION) Amy Villarejo

FINANCE (SECOND EDITION) Erik Banks

FREE WILL Meghan Griffith

HUMAN GENETICS Ricki Lewis

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY Andrew Jones

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Peter Sutch and Juanita Elias

ISLAM (SECOND EDITION) Colin Turner

JOURNALISM STUDIES Martin Conboy

JUDAISM Jacob Neusner

LANGUAGE (SECOND EDITION) R.L. Trask

LAW Gary Slapper and David Kelly

LITERARY THEORY (THIRD EDITION) Hans Bertens

LOGIC J.C. Beall

MANAGEMENT Morgen Witzel

MARKETING (SECOND EDITION) Karl Moore and Niketh Pareek

MEDIA STUDIES Julian McDougall

THE OLYMPICS Andy Miah and Beatriz Garcia

PHILOSOPHY (FIFTH EDITION) Nigel Warburton

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY Joseph Holden

POETRY (SECOND EDITION) Jeffrey Wainwright

POLITICS (FOURTH EDITION) Stephen Tansey and Nigel Jackson

THE QURAN Massimo Campanini

RACE AND ETHNICITY Peter Kivisto and Paul R. Croll

RELIGION (SECOND EDITION) Malory Nye

RELIGION AND SCIENCE Philip Clayton

RESEARCH METHODS Nicholas Walliman

ROMAN CATHOLICISM Michael Walsh

SEMIOTICS (SECOND EDITION) Daniel Chandler

SHAKESPEARE (THIRD EDITION) Sean McEvoy

SOCIAL WORK Mark Doel

SOCIOLOGY Ken Plummer

SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS Janice Wearmouth

TELEVISION STUDIES Toby Miller

TERRORISM James Lutz and Brenda Lutz

THEATRE STUDIES (SECOND EDITION) Robert Leach

WOMENS STUDIES Bonnie Smith

WORLD HISTORY Peter N. Stearns

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LITERARY THEORY

THE BASICS Third edition

Hans Bertens

Third edition published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2014 Hans Bertens

The right of Hans Bertens to be identified as author has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Whilst every effort has been made to trace copyright holders, this has not been possible in all cases. Any omissions brought to our attention will be remedied in future editions.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

First published 2001 by Routledge Second edition published 2008 by Routledge

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bertens, Johannes Willem. Literary theory : the basics / Hans Bertens. Third edition. pages cm. (The Basics; 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. CriticismHistory20th century. 2. LiteratureHistory and criticismTheory, etc. I. Title. Pn94.B47 2013 801.950904dc23 2013010557

ISBN: 978-0-415-53806-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-53807-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-48883-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence (1922, Penguin) reproduced by permission of Pollinger Limited and The Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli.

The work of Louise Bennett Coverley is copyrighted, and permission to use said material has been obtained from the Executors of the Louise Bennett Coverley (LBC) Estate, messrs: Judge Pamela Appelt ([email protected]) and Fabian Coverley B.Th ([email protected]).

CONTENTS

Introduction 1

1 Reading for meaning: practical criticism and New Criticism 4

2 Reading for form I: formalism and early structuralism, 191460 28

3 Reading for form II: French structuralism, 195075 46 4 Political reading: class, gender, and race in the 1970s

and 1980s 67 5 The poststructuralist revolution: Derrida and

deconstruction 102 6 Poststructuralism continued: Foucault, Lacan, French

feminism, and postmodernism 123 7 Literature and culture: cultural studies, the new

historicism, and cultural materialism 150 8 Postcolonial criticism and theory 168 9 Sexuality, literature, and culture 195 10 Posthumanism, ecocriticism, and animal studies 213 11 Conclusion 233

Bibliography 240 Index 259

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INTRODUCTION

There was a time when the interpretation of literary texts and lit- erary theory seemed two different and almost unrelated things. Interpretation was about the actual meaning of a poem, a novel, or a play, while theory seemed alien to what the study of literature was really about and even presented a threat to the reading of individual poems, novels, and other literary texts because of its reductive generalizations. In the last thirty years, however, inter- pretation and theory have moved closer and closer to each other. In fact, for many people involved in literary studies, interpretation and theory cannot be separated at all. They would argue that when we interpret a text we always do so from a theoretical perspective, whether we are aware of it or not, and they would also argue that theory cannot do without interpretation. The premise of Literary Theory: The Basics is that literary theory and

literary practice the practice of interpretation can indeed not be separated very well and certainly not at the more advanced level of academic literary studies. One of its aims, then, is to show how theory and practice are inevitably connected and have always been connected. Although the emphasis is on the 1970s and after, the first three chapters focus on the most important views of literature and of the individual literary work of the earlier part of the twentieth century. This is not a merely historical exercise. A good

understanding of, for instance, the New Criticism that dominated literary criticism in the United States from the mid-1930s until 1970 is indispensable for students of literature. Knowing about the New Criticism will make it a lot easier to understand other, later, modes of reading. More importantly, the New Criticism has by no means disappeared. In many places, and especially in secondary education, it is still very much alive. Likewise, an understanding of what is called structuralism makes the complexities of so-called poststructuralist theory a good deal less daunting and has the added value of offering an instrument that is helpful in thinking about culture in general. This book, then, is both an introduction to literary theory and an

admittedly somewhat sketchy history of theory. But it is a history in which what has become historical is simultaneously still actual: in the field of literary studies a whole range of approaches and theo- retical perspectives, those focused on meaning and those focused on form, those that are political and those that are (seemingly) apoli- tical, the old and the new, operate next to each other in relatively peaceful coexistence. In its survey of that range of positions Literary Theory: The Basics will try to do equal justice to a still actual tradi- tion and to the radical character of the new departures of the last four decades. We still ask, What does it mean? when we read a poem or novel or see a play. But we have additional questions. We ask, Has it always had this meaning? or, What does it mean and to whom? and, Why does it mean what it means? Or, perhaps surprisingly, Who wants it to have this meaning and for what reasons? As we will see, such questions do not diminish literature. On the contrary, they make it even more relevant. In recent years, a number of critics have expressed a certain

impatience with what is now simply called theory and which has, as we will see, ventured far beyond strictly literary territory. There is no denying that theory, in its eagerness to uncover hidden patterns and bring to light hidden assumptions, has sometimes pushed things to rather implausible extremes or that theorys desire to be radical has occasionally seemed a goal in itself. Especially after 9/11 and subsequent events theorys more extravagant claims seemed to some commentators armchair exercises that had little or no relation to what happened in the real world. But a return to modes of critical interpretation that are not, in

one way or another, informed by some form of theory is

INTRODUCTION2

impossible. As I have already noted, most literary critics would claim that all interpretation is governed by certain assumptions and that interpretation can seem theory-free only if we are unaware of those assumptions if we are, in effect, blind to what we are doing. If we prefer awareness, our interpretational practice will inevitably be marked by the theoretical interventions of the last forty years. We could, of course, choose to work with the assumptions of tra- ditional interpretation, but we would (ideally) have thought long and hard about them and have realized that these assumptions, taken together, in themselves constitute theories with regard to reading and literary value. We cant go home again. Or, to be more precise, perhaps we can go home again, but not with the illusion that our home is theory-free. Theory, then, is here to stay and the great majority of literary

academics would not want it otherwise. They believe that theory has dramatically sharpened and widened our understanding of a great many fundamental issues and expect that theory, in its restless grappling with ever new issues, will continue to enhance our understanding (even if it may in the process also come up with things that severely test our intellectual patience). A case in point is the relatively new field of ecocriticism, which also illustrates theorys flexibility. More than earlier theoretical ventures, it recog- nizes the importance of empirical, even scientific, evidence for its political project, in this case that of raising our ecological con- sciousness. This new edition of Literary Theory: The Basics has been revised,

brought up to date, and expanded with discussions of posthuman- ism, animal studies, and very recent developments such as world literature. And, like the earlier editions, it casts its net rather wide. Since the theories that have emerged within literary studies have been so thoroughly assimilated by various other disciplines, a book on literary theory has much to say about the wider world of the humanities and beyond.

INTRODUCTION 3

1 READING FOR MEANING PRACTICAL CRITICISM AND NEW CRITICISM

ENGLISH MEANING

If we want to understand English and American thinking about literature in the twentieth century a good starting-point is the nineteenth-century figure of Matthew Arnold (182288), English educator, poet (once famous for his rather depressing but much anthologized Dover Beach), and professor of poetry at Oxford University. Arnolds views, which assigned a very special role to literature, and further enhanced its prestige, were not wholly new. In fact, his central idea that, apart from its aesthetic and pleasing qualities, literature also had important things to teach us was already familiar in antiquity and we see it repeated time and again over the ages. So we find Thomas Jefferson, future president of the future United States of America, observing in a 1771 letter that a lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear than by all the dry volumes of ethics and divinity that were ever written. However, Arnold is not interested in the more practical aspects of the idea that literature is a source of instruction moral or other- wise but places it in a spiritual context. Writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, Arnold saw

English culture as seriously threatened by a process of secularization

that had its origins in the growing persuasiveness of scientific thinking and by a Philistinism that was loosened upon the world by the social rise of a self-important, money-oriented, and utterly conventional middle class, which is characterized by vulgarity, coarseness, and unintelligence. With the spiritual comforts of religion increasingly questionable now that the sciences in parti- cular Darwins theory of evolution seemed set on undermining the authority of Bible and Church, Arnold foresaw a crucial, semi- religious role for poetry especially:

More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.

(Arnold [1880] 1970: 340)

The future of poetry, Arnold tells his readers, is immense, because in poetry our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. This radical claim for poetry made in an 1880 essay called The Study of Poetry is in fact the culmination of claims that Arnold had for decades been making on behalf of what he called culture and which in a book called Culture and Anarchy (1869) he had defined as the best that has been thought and said in the world (Arnold [1869] 1971: 6). As this makes clear, that best is not necessarily confined to poems, but there is no doubt that he saw poetry as its major repository. The special importance that he accords to poetry is not as surprising as it may now seem. It accurately reflects the status of pre-eminent literary genre that poetry, especially in its lyrical form, enjoyed in Arnolds time. Moreover, in giving poetry this illustrious, almost sacred, function, Arnold builds on ideas that earlier in the nineteenth century had been formulated by Romantic poets like Percy Bysshe Shelley (17921822), who had attributed a special, visionary status to poetry, and on a long tradition, going back to the classics, that likewise gives literature, and especially poetry, special powers. It was only natural, then, for Arnold to put forward poetry as the major embodiment of culture. What does Arnold have in mind with the best that has been

thought and said in the world? Strangely enough, Culture and Anarchy is very outspoken, but not very clear on this point. Arnold

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has no trouble making clear by what forces and in which ways that best is threatened: the evil is summarized by the anarchy of his title, which includes the self-centred unruliness of the working class and the hideous and grotesque illusions of middle-class Protestantism (63). He is, however, not very precise in his defini- tions of the best. This is partly because he assumes that his readers already know: he does not have to tell them because they share his educational background and his beliefs. But it is also due to its elusiveness. Arnold can tell us where to find it, for instance in Hellenism the Greek culture of antiquity, with its aerial ease, clearness, and radiancy (134) but can only describe what it expresses: an attitude towards life, a way of being in the world. Included in this attitude we find freedom from fanaticism, deli- cacy of perception, the disinterested play of consciousness, and an inward spiritual activity that has for its characters increased sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased sympathy (6064). What culture would seem to amount to is a deeply sympathetic and self-effacing interest in, and contemplation of, the endless variety that the world presents. For Arnold, poetry probes life more deeply, is more sympathetic towards its immensely various manifestations, and is less self-serving than anything else, and so we must turn to poetry to interpret life for us. Because poetry has the power to interpret life, we can also turn to it if we want to be consoled or to seek sustenance. With the persuasiveness of religious explanations seriously damaged, poetry has the now unique power of making sense of life, a sense from which we can draw comfort and strength. Moreover and here we see the idea of instruction culture allows us to grow, to become more complete and better human beings. As Arnold puts it in Culture and Anarchy: Religion says, The kingdom of God is within you; and culture, in like manner, places human perfection in an internal condition, in the growth and predominance of our humanity proper, as distinguished from our animality (47).

CONTINUITY OR CHANGE?

Let me for a moment turn to one of Arnolds major examples of the culture he extols: Hellenism, the complex of intellectual and emotional attitudes expressed in the civilization of ancient Greece.

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Like all university-educated people of his time, Arnold was thor- oughly familiar with classical history and literature. So familiar, in fact, that in some ways he sees Greek epics and plays that are more than 2,000 years old as contemporary texts. The classics and the ideal of culture that they embody are timeless for Arnold. This is a vitally important point: the best that has been thought and said in the world, whether to be found in the classics or in later writers, is the best for every age and every place. From Arnolds perspective, this makes perfect sense. After all,

culture and its major means of expression poetry must take the place of a religion that equally was for every age and every place. But this introduces what many literary academics now see as a ser- ious problem. Arnold does not consider the possibility that what is the best for one age may not be the best for another, when cir- cumstances have completely changed, or that what within a given period is the best for one party (say, the aristocracy) is not neces- sarily the best for another (poverty-stricken peasants, for instance). Arnolds culture and the poetry that embodies it demand an intel- lectual refinement and sensitivity, and a disinterested otherworldli- ness that under a good many historical circumstances must have been a positive handicap. Arnold would probably not deny this but he would argue that, all things being equal, there is only one cul- tural ideal embodied in the best for which we should all strive. The way I am presenting this with peasants pitted against the

aristocracy could easily create the impression that Arnold is an elitist snob. But that is not necessarily the case. Arnolds ideal of culture is certainly exclusive, in the sense that it defines itself against money-grubbing vulgarity, narrow-minded fundamentalism, upper- class arrogance, and so on; but it does not seek to exclude anyone on principle. If we allow ourselves to come under the influence of culture, we can all transcend the limitations imposed on us by class, place, and character, and acquire the cultured sensitivity and respectful, even reverent, attitude towards the world that culture holds up for us. In fact, this is what Arnold would like all of us to do: to escape from the place and the time we live in and transform ourselves into citizens of an ideal world in which time does, in a sense, not pass and in which we are in some ways the ways that count all the same. After all, in Arnolds view culture is of all time: it exists in an autonomous sphere where time- and place-bound

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personal, political, or economic considerations have been left behind. We can fully enter the realm of culture only if we choose, at least temporarily, to disregard the here and now of personal ambition, political manoeuvring, and economic gain.

LIBERAL HUMANISM

Although that may not be immediately clear, this view of culture has important implications. Arnold is of course aware that culture will always reflect (to some extent) its time and place of origin in the sense that, for instance, medieval and early modern literature will assume that the Sun revolves around a static Planet Earth but with regard to what it really has to tell us it stands apart from time and place; that is, from history. With regard to its essence, culture transcends history. We must assume, then, that its creators the poet supreme among them also transcend time and place, at least as long as the act of creation lasts. A timeless culture must be the creation of timeless minds; that is, of minds that can at least tem- porarily disregard the world around them. This brings us to an important question: where does a creative mind that has tempora- rily soared free of its mundane environment find the insights that will allow it to contribute to the best that has been thought and said? The answer must be that the source of that wisdom can only be the individual creator. Poets find what is valuable and has real meaning in themselves; they just know. Arnold was by no means unique in his view of the creative

individual. It was shared by the large majority of his contemporaries and by the countless writers and critics who in the course of the twentieth century would more or less consciously follow his lead. More importantly, it is still the prevailing view of the individual not just the creative ones in the Western world. This view of the individual or subject, to use a term derived from philosophy is central to what is called liberalism or liberal humanism, a philosophical/ political cluster of ideas in which the ultimate autonomy and self- sufficiency of the subject are taken for granted. Liberal humanism assumes that all of us are essentially free and that we have at least to some extent created ourselves on the basis of our individual experiences. It is easy to see that this view of the subject is perva- sively present in our culture and in our social institutions. The legal

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system, for instance, starts from the assumption that we have a certain autonomy. If your lawyer succeeds in convincing the court that the murder you thought you could get away with was not a conscious act that you could have decided against, but was ordered by those voices in your head, you will be declared insane. Likewise, democ- racies do not set up elections with the expectation that people will wander mindlessly into a voting booth and make a completely arbi- trary choice between the candidates. Our social institutions expect us to be reasonable and to be reasonably free. Because of that freedom, we ourselves are supposedly the source of the value and the meaning we attach to things. As liberal subjects we are not the sum of our experiences but can somehow stand outside experience: we are not defined by our circumstances but are what we are because our self has been there all along and has, moreover, remained remarkably inviolate and stable. Not surprisingly, in much of Western literature, and especially in

lyric poetry and realistic fiction, individuals present themselves, or are portrayed, along these lines. In the realistic novels of the mid- nineteenth century, characters again and again escape being defined by their social and economic situation because they are essentially free. Since what they are their self is largely independent from their situation, the circumstances in which they find themselves can be transcended. Realism suggests that the characters that it presents find the reasons for their actions and decisions inside themselves. Because this liberal humanist view of the individual is as pervasively present in our world as it was in the nineteenth century, it also characterizes much of our contemporary literature. For many present-day critics and theorists this is a deeply pro-

blematic view. In the later chapters of this book we will encounter various objections to this liberal humanist perspective. Let me here just point at one possible problem. What if access to Arnolds the best depends, for instance, on education? If that is the case, Arnolds campaign for a culture that supposedly has universal validity begins to look like arrogance: we would have the educated telling the uneducated that they are barbarians. Arnold might object that ideally all of us should get the same extended education. And he might also point out that education does not benefit those who refuse to be educated after all, Culture and Anarchy does not hesitate to group the English aristocracy and the Anglican

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establishment with the Barbarians. But he would have to admit that educational opportunities are not evenly distributed over this world; there are, even within every nation, sharply different levels in education. A sceptic might easily see Arnolds campaign for his idea of culture as a move in a struggle for power and status: for the power to define culture, to decide what the best is, and for membership of the cultural elite. In fact, even if we grant Arnolds claim and accept that his idea of culture does indeed represent the most humane, most tolerant, most morally sensitive perspectives that human civilization has come up with, we would still have a problem. Would we have the right to impose that culture on people who couldnt care less? In short, there are serious problems with Arnolds humanist con-

ception of culture and poetry. I should, in all fairness to Arnold, say that it has taken almost a hundred years for these problems really to register and that even now his views are still seductive. Isnt it true that many of us, at least at some point in our lives, want to see lit- erature as a high-minded enterprise by and for sensitive and fine- tuned intellectuals that is somehow several steps removed from the trivial push-and-pull of ordinary life? It is an alluring prospect: to have a place to go where in a hushed silence, the sort of silence that we very appropriately find in a library, we meet with the kindred, equally sensitive people who have written the works we read. It is a place where time does not pass and where in some ways the ways that count we are all the same. The best books, the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (180382) tells us in his famous essay The American Scholar (1837), impress us ever with the con- viction that one nature wrote and the same reads (Emerson [1837] 2007: 1142). We, the readers, are of course only the passive con- sumers of what they, the writers, have actively produced, but doesnt that difference tend to fall away? Especially so since the texts we read are, in the act of reading, lifted out of their historical context and so to a certain extent cut loose from their creators? It is too good to be completely true, even if it is not necessarily

wholly untrue. How can we, apart from everything else, possibly know whether the seemingly kindred spirits that we meet in that timeless place do indeed share our perspectives and concerns? What guarantee is there that we do not see our concerns in such sharp relief only because we ignore what we do not want to see? Perhaps

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Arnold is right about Hellenisms aerial ease, clearness, and radiancy, but where in that phrase are the murder and mayhem of so many of the Greek classics? Can the Greeks, or can Chaucer, or Dante, or even Shakespeare, who all lived in worlds dramatically different from our own, really have been in some important way similar to ourselves? Perhaps delicacy of perception, the disin- terested play of consciousness, and the other qualities that Arnold attributes to his ideal culture are indeed of all times, even if in dif- ferent periods and places they will have been framed by different historical circumstances. But since we cannot travel back in time we will never know. The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there, the narrator of L.P. Hartleys novel The Go- Between (1953: 9) tells us, and he may well be right. In the final analysis, Arnolds historical continuum between Hellenism and the high culture of his own time the poetry that must interpret life for us is an act of faith.

LITERATURE AS CIVILIZATIONS LAST STANCE

When Matthew Arnold died, in 1888, English literature was fairly well established as an academic subject in both England and America. Interestingly, in British India English had already, since the 1830s, served to familiarize the native elite with Englishness and to anglicize them to the extent that they were prepared to have them- selves anglicized. However, English literature as it was studied in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could not very well be regarded as a serious intellectual discipline. Academic English was largely devoted to the history of the English language and to its older forms, such as Middle and Old English (the absolutely unintelligible language of Beowulf ). The study of literature was largely the province of well-educated men of letters who preferred high-minded evalua- tions and discussions of an authors sensibility to critical analysis and attention to the structure the actual workings of literary texts. What really changed things and moved them in a direction we can

more readily recognize is the intervention of a young American poet, T.S. Eliot (18881965), who had moved to England before the outbreak of the First World War, and the British governments desire to find a place for the study of English literature somewhere in its educational schemes. While Eliot, with whose views I will deal in a

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moment, was primarily influential in the universities, the govern- ment-controlled Board of Education gave English literature a solid place in secondary education. It is worth noting how closely the so- called Newbolt Report of 1921 that the Board had commissioned follows in Arnolds footsteps: Great literature, it tells us, is a timeless thing. It is an embodiment of the best thoughts of the best minds, the most direct and lasting communication of experience by man to man (Newbolt Report 1921: 15), and it may form a new element of national unity, overcoming class differences. As the Report tells us, An education fundamentally English would, we believe, at any rate bridge, if not close, this chasm of separation (22). Great literature, with its focus on a spiritual realm of unselfish harmony where all petty quarrels are forgotten or have become irrelevant, could over- come social conflict and anti-patriotic sentiment. What the Report in fact suggests, although it never says so in so many words, is that social and economic inequality pales next to the equality we can find in the study or perhaps the mere reading of great texts. It is always easy to criticize the ideals of the past and we should

perhaps not come down too hard on these English educators or on their American counterparts, who somewhat earlier had put for- ward the study of English and in particular American literature as an important binding principle in a nation trying to assimilate large numbers of immigrants. Apart from everything else, they may also have had the spiritual well-being of British and American students at heart. Still, the idea that literature might be instrumental in for- ging national unity has some consequences we must look at because it introduces a criterion that is absent from Arnolds view of poetry as the interpreter of life. If literature is supposed to promote national unity, it makes good sense to throw out those texts that emphasize disunity tension between social classes, between reli- gious denominations, between regions or that are openly unpa- triotic. For Arnold such texts, if they were sensitive and intelligent enough, were perfectly admissible. In fact, Arnolds disinterested play of consciousness will inevitably although of course not exclusively lead to critical assessments of the outside world. But if literature is used to foster national unity in other words, if it is used to create or keep alive a national identity critical assessments of the nations mercenary politics or its cultural vulgarity will no longer be very welcome.

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ARNOLDS ACADEMIC HERITAGE: THE ENGLISH SCENE

As I have just noted, in the more academic sphere the most influ- ential spokesman for Arnolds vision was the young expatriate American poet T.S. Eliot, who had settled in London before the First World War. In the early 1920s Eliot did what Arnold had largely avoided: he set out to define the criteria that the best that had been thought and said in the world would have to meet and he undertook the mission actually to identify that best in so far as it had been expressed in literary form. In other words, after drawing up the admission requirements he used them to establish which texts met those criteria and which failed to do so. The canon the list of good and even great literary works that he set out to con- strue in the 1920s would dominate virtually all English and American discussions of literature until the 1970s, and it is still a powerful influence today. For Eliot, poetry the genre in which he was most interested

was profoundly impersonal. This is not to say that he denied poets the right to express themselves in their poetry, although it would not be too difficult to extract that position from his writings. In Tradition and the Individual Talent, for instance, we find him claiming that the poet has not a personality to express, but a particular medium (Eliot [1919] 1972: 75). Eliots main aim, however, is to deflect his readers attention from everything he considers of at best secondary importance the poets personal or social circumstances and so on and to get poetry itself on centre stage. Eliot, then, objects to highly emotional outpourings and personal confidences because they tend to focus our attention on the poet rather than the poetry. What is more, from Eliots perspective, they also make for bad and superficial poems. This does not mean that he is against the expression of deep feelings in poetry. However, expressions of profound emotion should not have an autobiographical dimension. Even if the emotion is unquestionably the poets, it should be conveyed in such a way that the poets private life plays no role in its presentation. What the poet needs to look for, Eliot tells us in Hamlet, another essay from 1919, is an objective correlative: a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular

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emotion (Eliot [1919] 1969: 145). Emotion must be conveyed indirectly. The poets emotion should be invested in a carefully selected and appropriate objective correlative, which will then evoke the proper response in the reader. Moreover, emotion must always be kept in check by what Eliot called wit, a quality that he required of all poetry and by which he means an ironic perception of things, a sometimes playful awareness of paradoxes and incongruities that poses an intellectual challenge to the reader. It follows from this that Eliot had little use for, for instance, the low- key, soft-focus emotionality of Alfred Tennyson (180992):

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.

(Tears, Idle Tears, 1847)

In contrast with this sort of poetry, Eliots own poetry presents what might somewhat unkindly be described as a terse, tight-lipped, ironic melancholy that signals in its striking use of images, juxtaposi- tions, inversions, and other poetic strategies just how intellectually agile and alert it is. It is a poetry that fully demands the readers close attention. [P]oets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult, as Eliot told his readers in The Metaphysical Poets (Eliot [1921] 1969: 289). The corresponding complexity of its language and form forces us to take it seriously in its own right and makes it dif- ficult to see it in, for instance, autobiographical terms. The integration of intellect and emotion, and, less insistently, of

profundity and playfulness, that Eliot sees as an absolute condition for good poetry drastically limits his list of worthwhile poets. In fact, for Eliot, writing in the 1920s, literature had taken a wrong turn more than two centuries before. In The Metaphysical Poets he argues that the so-called Metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century still knew how to fuse thought and feeling, and seriousness and lightness, in their poetry. After their heyday, however, a dis- sociation of sensibility had set in in which intellect, emotion, and other formerly integrated qualities had gone their separate ways (288). For Eliot this had led to poetry that errs either on the one

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side sterile rationality, for instance or on the other excessive emotion or a levity that turns into irresponsibility and that is always condemned to superficiality because of such failures. With hindsight, we can see that Eliot proclaims his own poetic

practice and that of his fellow modernist poets of the early twen- tieth century as the general norm. With hindsight, we can also see that Eliots nostalgia for a past when people were supposedly still whole in the sense that they knew how to combine thought and feeling reason and emotion harmoniously was fed by a deep dissatisfaction with the contemporary world in which harmony seemed sadly lacking. It may at first sight not be clear what this has to do with Eliots views

of literature. However, Eliot, following Arnold, consciously places poetry and by implication all literature that meets his criteria in opposition to the modern world. He seeks in poetry the sort of profound experience that the modern world, in which materialistic values and a cheap moralism have come to dominate, cannot offer. For Eliot, the natural, organic unity that is missing from the world and that we ourselves have also lost with the advent of scientific rationalism and the utilitarian thinking of industrialization the dissociation of sensibility is embodied in aesthetic form in poetry. So even if poetry has no answers to any questions we might ask, it is still of vital impor- tance and it allows us to recapture temporarily a lost ideal of wholeness in the experience of reading. As Eliots fellow American Robert Frost (18741963) phrased it from a slightly different perspective, poetry provides a momentary stay against confusion. Because of its integra- tion of thought and feeling and of opposing attitudes in a coherent aesthetic form, poetry, rather paradoxically, could even serve that function if the confusion itself was its major theme (as, for instance, in Eliots The WasteLand of 1922). Simultaneously, poetry deepensour awareness of the important things in life. Although Eliot is obviously very much interested in poetic tech-

nique and in the form of specific poems an interest that would be worked out by a group of American poets and critics, the so-called New Critics he is ultimately even more interested in a poems meaning. Poetry should convey complex meanings in which attitudes that might easily be seen as contradictory are fused and which allow us to see things that we otherwise would not see. Our job, then, is to interpret poems, after which we can pass judgement on them; that is,

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establish how well they succeed in creating and conveying the complexity of meaning that we expect from them. Here lies Fred, / He is dead does not pass muster. The idea that we read poems, and literature in general, because they contain deep meanings is now a commonplace. However, as will become clear in the course of this book, the meaning of a specific literary work cannot have a mono- poly on our interest. An interest in the form of the poem, novel, or play in question and, by extension, in the form of literature as a whole is equally legitimate, as is an interest in a literary works politics. But those complications will have to wait.

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND

Eliot, although trained as a philosopher, was not affiliated with a university. But he was one of the most exciting poets of his genera- tion and also one whose philosophical interests made him think long and hard about the nature and function of literature. Inevitably, his views of literature were immediately picked up by young university teachers. Eliots most influential following emerged at Cambridge University with the literary academic I.A. Richards (18931979) and the group that would somewhat later be led by the critic F.R. Leavis (18951979). Although each of them in his own way disagreed with some of Eliots claims, Richards and Leavis initiated two intimately related schools that would give shape to English and American thinking about literature for almost fifty years. In Richardss hands Eliots emphasis on the poem itself became

what we call practical criticism. In a still fascinating experiment Richards withheld all extra-textual information authors name, period, explanatory commentary and asked undergraduate stu- dents (and tutors) to interpret poems that were thus completely stripped of context. It would be difficult to think up a more text-oriented approach. We are now so familiar with this that it is difficult to imagine how revolutionary Richardss experiment once was. This should not obscure the fact that Richards stands firmly in the

line of Matthew Arnold and T.S. Eliot regarding the importance of literature and, more particularly, poetry. Like so many young intel- lectuals of the period, Richards had deep misgivings about a con- temporary world that seemed to have lost its bearings. He, too, saw

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in poetry an antidote to a spiritual malaise that seemed to pave the way for chaos. If the moral order would indeed fall apart because of the loss of traditional values that he saw around him, we would, Richards suggested, be thrown back, as Matthew Arnold foresaw, upon poetry. It is capable of saving us; it is a perfectly possible means of overcoming chaos (Richards 1926: 83). Poetry, and the arts in general, could save us because it is there that we find what is truly, and lastingly, valuable what gives meaning to our lives:

The arts are our storehouse of recorded values. They spring from and perpetuate hours in the lives of exceptional people, when their control and command of experience is at its highest, hours when the varying possibilities of existence are most clearly seen and the different activities which may arise are most exquisitely reconciled, hours when habitual narrowness of interests or confused bewilderment are replaced by an intricately wrought composure.

(Richards [1924] 1972a: 110)

This statement is not in the last place interesting because it so clearly illustrates Richardss view of the creative subject. The key- words are control, command, reconciled, and composure. For Richards, the minds of artists are in control of whatever may have befallen them, they reconcile contradictions, and transcend our usual self-centredness. This command and transcendence originates within the artists themselves: we are offered a perfect picture of the liberal humanist individual or subject. Because the arts are our storehouse of recorded values, they

supply the best data for deciding what experiences are more valu- able than others (111). Literary art, then, helps us to evaluate our own experience, to assess our personal life. It is all the better equipped for this because its language is not scientific but emotive. Scientific language is, for Richards, language that refers to the real world and makes statements that are either true or false. The emo- tive language of literature, however, conveys a certain type of knowledge which is not scientific and factual but allows us to connect with superior feelings and attitudes. As I have just noted, practical criticism focuses upon the text and

the text alone. Because of this exclusively textual orientation, it was an ideal programme for teasing out all the opposites that for Richards

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(following Eliot) were reconciled and transcended in poetry, often through the use of irony. Practical criticism named after the book Practical Criticism (1929) in which Richards reported his Cambridge experiments became a major instrument in spreading the idea that the best poems created a vulnerable harmony a precarious coherence out of conflicting perspectives and emotions. As we will see, in the United States this view would develop into the New Criticism that in the 1930s and 1940s became the major mode of criticism there.

THE NOVEL AS GREAT ART

So far, we have been almost exclusively concerned with poetry. F.R. Leavis, the other Cambridge academic who would put a highly personal stamp on (especially English) literary studies, was, at least initially, no exception. Leavis, too, started out with poetry and also took Eliots views as his guiding light. In the course of the 1930s he accordingly subjected the history of English poetry to an icy scrutiny in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, in the process relegating a good many English poets of up till then fine repute (including John Milton) to minor status. In particular Victorian poets, standing collectively accused of a divorce between thought and feeling, intelligence and sensibility a condemnation in which we clearly hear Eliots dissociation of sensibility did not fare well (see, for instance, Thought and Emotional Quality, in Leavis 1975: 7193). However, his work of the later 1940s, in which he sets out to

revalue the English novel, is more pertinent here. Until Leavis changed the picture, fiction had gone largely unnoticed. Novels cannot very well be subjected to the same sort of analysis that we use with poems, especially not the substantial, if not actually sprawling, novels that until the end of the nineteenth century were more or less the rule. But Leaviss discussions of fiction would in any case have departed from the course set out by Eliot and Richards. By the 1940s Leavis had already in his discussions of poetry begun to include a moralistic dimension that is almost completely absent from the work of his American contemporaries, the New Critics. Leavis increasingly comes to judge poems in terms of the life and the concreteness they succeed in conveying. In other words, he begins to discuss content as relatively independent

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of form while for the New Critics, as we will see below, form and content were inextricably interwoven. While for the New Critics and an ever greater number of affiliated academics a texts form created the ironic maturity of its content, for Leavis form became increasingly of secondary importance. What the literary work should provide was a mature apprehension of authentic life, and certainly not one that was too ironic and therefore emotionally sterile (he was not charmed by the ironies of James Joyces Ulysses (1922), which Eliot had thought a great work of art). Like so many others, Leavis was dismayed by what he saw as the superficiality and commodification of the contemporary world; and, much like Eliot, he looked back to Elizabethan England, when people had led authentic lives as members of an organic community. For Leavis, authentic representations of life depended on a wri-

ters personal authenticity and moral integrity. As he said in The Great Tradition (1948) of the novelists he considered great: they are all distinguished by a vital capacity for experience, a kind of rever- ent openness before life, and a marked moral intensity (Leavis [1948] 1962: 17). One of Leaviss great novelists, the English writer D.H. Lawrence (18851930), had already offered a char- acteristically provoking illustration of such openness:

If the bank clerk feels really piquant about his hat, if he establishes a lively relation with it, and goes out of the shop with the new straw hat on his head, a changed man, be-aureoled, then that is life. The same with the prostitute. If a man establishes a living relation to

her, if only for a moment, then that is life. But if it doesnt: if it is just for the money and function, then it is not life, but sordidness, and a betrayal of living. If a novel reveals true and vivid relationships, it is a moral work, no

matter what the relationships may consist in. (Lawrence [1925] 1972a: 129)

Because they believe that because of its scope and its attention to authentic detail the novel can represent life in all its fullness, it is for Leavis and Lawrence superior to whatever the other arts or the human sciences (such as psychology or sociology) may have to offer. It can, moreover, make us participate in that fullness. As Lawrence said: To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man

READING FOR MEANING 19

alive: that is the point. And at its best, the novel, and the novel supremely, can help you (Lawrence [1936] 1972c: 135). This is an attractive programme for the novel and for us. Who

would not want to live authentically and to defend the forces of life against whatever may happen to threaten it? However, like so many attractive programmes, it falls apart upon closer scrutiny. Who is to define a mature apprehension of life, a vital capacity for experience, or a reverent openness before life? And what about the morals that are felt so intensely? Do we know what exactly constitutes the right set of morals? In any case, given his interest in full representations of life in its totality, Leavis almost inevitably came to focus on the novel. If you want scope, the novel has more to offer than lyrical poetry. So, somewhat belatedly, Leavis brought the novel into the amazing professionalization of the study of English as it had started in the 1920s. (Drama, and in particular Shakespeare, many of whose plays lent themselves to an approach in poetic terms, had already been embraced in the 1930s.) This is not to say that novels had been completely ignored. But Leavis elevated this interest into a pro- gramme. Moreover, he significantly expanded its scope, arguing that literary criticism, and in particular criticism of the novel, provided the best imaginable basis for criticizing contemporary culture, anticipating the critique of ideology that much later would come to characterize literary studies. As we will see in the later chapters of this book, lit- erary studies although broader defined than Leavis ever imagined is still very strongly engaged in social and cultural critique, albeit in ways of which Leavis would not necessarily approve.

MEANING IN THE UNITED STATES

In the 1930s, the work of Eliot, Richards, and Leavis found a warm welcome on the other side of the Atlantic among a group of poets, including John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and Cleanth Brooks, who in the middle of that decade initiated a professionalization of American literary studies comparable to the developments in England. These New Critics, as they came to be called (the label derives

from the title of Ransoms 1941 book The New Criticism), shared the misgivings of their English colleagues about the contemporary world. They, too, saw around them a world driven by a desire for

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profit in which the so-called triumphs of modern science, in com- bination with capitalistic greed, threatened to destroy tradition and everything that was not immediately useful including poetry. Like their English mentors, they turned to an idealized past in which organic unity and social harmony had not yet been destroyed by the industrialization and commercialization of the contemporary world. The New Critics, then, saw poetry as a means of resisting com-

modification and superficiality. Because of its internal organization its formal structure a poem created harmony out of opposites and tension and thereby presented a vital alternative. In creating coherent wholes out of the full variety and contradictory complexity of life, poetry halted and transcended the chaotic flux of actual experience. As John Crowe Ransom (18881974) put it in a 1937 essay titled Criticism, Inc.: The poet perpetuates in his poem an order of existence which in actual life is constantly crumbling beneath his touch (Ransom [1937] 1972: 238). In perpetuating such fleeting orders, one of the poets main strategies was the use of paradox with, as Cleanth Brooks (190694) said, its twin concomitants of irony and wonder. By means of paradoxes, the creative imagi- nation achieves union. That fusion is not logical, Brooks continues, it apparently violates science and common sense; it welds together the discordant and the contradictory (Brooks [1942] 1972: 30001). In this emphasis on paradox a statement containing contra-

dictory aspects and irony the New Critics clearly follow Eliot and Richards. They, too, see poems as storehouses of authentic values and as expressing important truths about the complexities of life that no other medium can convey nearly as effectively. This is so, Brooks suggests, because apparently the truth which the poet utters can be approached only in terms of paradox (292), while for Ransom the imagination is an organ of knowledge [that] presents to the reflective mind the particularity of nature; whereas there is quite another organ, working by a technique of universals, which gives us science (Ransom 1938: 156). In some ways, however, they follow their own course. Richards had been seriously interested in the effects of poetry upon its readers. The New Critics exclude both the poet as Richards had done in Practical Criticism and the reader from their approach to poetry. As a result, they focus

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more on the actual form of literary works than their English coun- terparts. In fact, within the context of English and American criti- cism, their approach to literature might well be considered formalist and it does indeed often go by that label. However, compared to the European formalists whom I will discuss in the next chapters, their interest in form is relatively limited. They are not interested in form for its own sake, but in form as contributing to a texts meaning. Indeed, as the prominent New Critic W.K. Wimsatt put it, the aim of literary criticism is to give a valid account of the relation between poetic form and poetic meaning (Wimsatt 1965: 244). The New Critics lack of interest in how the poem affects its

readers does not mean that they denied the special character of poetic language. As Brooks tells us, the poets language is a language in which the connotations play as great a part as the denotations (Brooks [1942] 1972: 295). Moreover, for the New Critics, too, a poem had to be fully experienced in order to be effective. A poem should not mean, but be, as they said, echoing Richardss It is never what a poem says which matters, but what it is (Richards 1926: 3). Reading a poem should be a complete experience that engages all our faculties and that far exceeds merely extracting its message. Anything but the entirety of its paradoxes, opposites, and reconciling ironies is reductive and damaging. Close reading that is, the focus on the text that Richards and

Leavis had promoted so vigorously in England became closer than ever in the hands of the New Critics. With the authors intentions and the readers response removed from the scene, the study of literature restricted itself to analysing the techniques and strategies that poems used to deliver their paradoxical effects: the system of checks and balances that creates the diversity in unity that we experience. Although it probably seems counter-intuitive, from this perspective it is not the poet about whose intentions we usually know next to nothing but the poem itself that does the deliver- ing. What organizes the poem brings its diverse elements together is not so much authorial intention as an abstract princi- ple, the principle of coherence, which the New Critics assumed present and active in any good poem. In good poetry and, by extension, all good literature the principle of coherence keeps the texts paradoxes and possible contradictions in check. Some may object that this does not make much sense because literary texts do

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not spring up overnight and all by themselves in remote and mysterious areas, so it might seem rather perverse to exclude the author from the discussion of a text. But it makes a good deal of practical sense. In some cases we do not even know who the author is, and in many cases we can only guess at their intentions because we have no information. Moreover, when we have that informa- tion it does not necessarily illuminate the poem, at least not from the perspective that I am discussing here. As we have seen, these critics assume that good literature is not bound by time and place. It transcends the limitations of its place of origin (including the author) and addresses the complexities of an essentially unchanging human condition. The concrete intentions of the author, or the circumstances that triggered the poem, are therefore mostly or even wholly irrelevant. What does it matter if we know that Poet X wrote this particular poem because he was hopelessly in love with the undeserving Lady Y? The poem in question will be worthwhile only if it does not give us all the details but focuses on scorned love in general. In this sense, information about authorial intention or the direct occasion for a work of literature may be damaging rather than helpful. For humanist critics such as Eliot, Richards, Leavis, and the New

Critics, human nature and the human condition have not changed over time and are essentially the same the world all over. Human nature is not black, or white, or brown; it does not speak English or Tagalog; it is not prehistoric, medieval, or postmodern; it does not lean towards deep-sea fishing, pig farming, or business administra- tion. Such details will inevitably feature in a literary work, but they are secondary to what a good poem, novel, or play has to offer.

THE REIGN OF THE CRITICS AND ITS LIMITATIONS

In his 1937 essay Criticism, Inc. the New Critic John Crowe Ransom tells us that criticism might be seriously taken in hand by professionals (Ransom [1937] 1972: 229). Aware that he is perhaps using a distasteful figure, he nonetheless has the idea that what we need is Criticism, Inc., or Criticism, Ltd. The essay catches the new professionalism that literary academics on both sides of the Atlantic were not unreasonably proud of and invites us to look at the role that Ransom had in mind for himself and his fellow professionals.

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One part of their self-appointed task stands out. As we have seen, for the New Critics and their English colleagues, literature, and in particular poetry, constituted a defensive line against the world of vulgar commerce and amoral capitalist entrepreneurialism that they held responsible for the moral decline of the Western world. But who was to decide which works of literature among the plenitude that the past has left us (and to which the present keeps on adding) actually contain the best that has been thought and said in the world, to use Arnolds words again? Who was to expose the at first sight attractive poems that because of their limited view and superficial emotions ultimately, even if unintentionally, undermined Arnolds culture? If literature takes the place of religion, as Arnold had prophesied,

then critics are the defenders of the faith. For a period of fifty years the large majority of literary academics on both sides of the Atlantic saw themselves as the elect, as an intellectual and moral elite that had as its central task to safeguard life, the fullness of human experience. In the minds of the Leavisites especially, but also those who partly or wholly shared their views, criticism and social cri- tique were so intimately interwoven that they could not be sepa- rated from each other. As I have already suggested, the interrelatedness of criticism even if it now usually goes under other names and social critique is still a hallmark of English and American literary studies. But let me return to the specific view of literature that we find

among the first generations of literary academics. With hindsight, we can easily see the intimate relationship between their discussions of structure, irony, and so on and a good many indisputably important literary works of the period: Eliots The Waste Land (1922), Ezra Pounds Cantos (192560), Virginia Woolfs To the Lighthouse (1927), James Joyces Ulysses (1922), William Faulkners The Sound and the Fury (1929), and countless other poems, novels, and plays. What was essentially an early twentieth-century view of literature, formed under the influence of specific historical circum- stances, became a prescription for all ages. Predictably, the large numbers of writers who for one reason or another had operated in a different mode (Walt Whitman, for instance, with his long descriptive passages) fell from grace. Literary history was reshaped in the image of the early twentieth century. Whereas we can see the

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irony that the writers and the critics of the period valued so highly as a defensive strategy in a confusing world of rapid social and technological change, they themselves genuinely believed it to be an infallible sign of maturity and proceeded to demote all texts (and writers) that did not meet the required standard. We can also see now that the required standard is heavily gen-

dered. (This anticipates a much fuller discussion of gender in a later chapter, but it must be mentioned here.) Eliots wit, the irony of Richards and the New Critics, and the maturity of Leavis all serve to underline a shared masculinist perspective. This is not to say that they have no place for female writers in its first instalment Leaviss great tradition of English novelists includes two male and two female writers. But in a period in which self-discipline (the self- discipline of the poet who refuses to personalize the poem), wit, a controlling irony, and related qualities are all seen as typically male, whereas overt emotions and a refusal to intellectualize experience are seen as typically female, the female writers elected for inclusion in the literary pantheon were admitted because they met a male standard. Practical criticism and New Criticism have had a lasting influ-

ence. Their preoccupation with the text and nothing but the text would live on after their demise, which is perhaps less surprising if we realize that their view of the text falls well within the range of the enormously influential theorization of the work of art the aesthetic object proposed by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (17241802), who argued that the true work of art is char- acterized by a disinterested autonomy, that it is not instrumental and has no purpose except being itself. Even now the textual orientation of the New Criticism in particular is still a force to be reckoned with, although always tempered by other considerations and mostly but not necessarily stripped of its largely con- servative prejudices. It is, of course, only natural that texts, and not, for instance, landscaping, should play a central role in literary stu- dies. It is less obvious, however counter-intuitive as it may seem that meaning should be so prominent. In the next two chapters we will look at approaches to literature in which the meaning of individual texts, which in England and America pro- vided the major drive for literary studies, is of at best secondary importance.

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SUMMARY

English and American literary studies traditionally focus on the meaning of literary texts. Practical criticism (the United Kingdom) and New Criticism (the United States) first of all provide interpreta- tions, with the New Critics paying particular attention to the formal aspects of literature, which for them also contribute directly to a texts meaning. Within this Anglo-American tradition, literature is thought to be of great importance because in poems, novels, and plays we find the best that has been thought and said. Literature offers the most profound insights into human nature and the human condition that are available to us. Because of its profundity and its authenticity, it offers a vantage point from which to criticize the superficial, rationalized, and commercialized world in which we live. Literary criticism, which seeks out and preserves the very best of what millennia of writing have to offer, thus functions simulta- neously as social critique. Finally, in this traditional form literary studies takes liberal humanism and its assumptions for granted. It sees the individual the subject, in technical terms as not deter- mined and defined by social and economic circumstances, but as fundamentally free. We create ourselves, and our destiny, through the choices we make.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

There is no shortage of books on the English and American literary-critical heritage. Two very accessible and even-handed stu- dies are Chris Baldicks The Social Mission of English Criticism, 1848 1932 (1983), which has chapters on Arnold, Eliot, Richards, and Leavis, and his more recent Criticism and Literary Theory 1890 to the Present (1996), which covers some of the same ground, but also discusses the New Criticism and later developments. Mark Jancovichs The Cultural Politics of the New Criticism (1993) is espe- cially interested in what the New Critics saw as their social mission. Garrick Daviss Praising It New: The Best of the New Criticism (2008) offers an excellent collection of seminal New Critical essays. Gerald Graffs Professing Literature: An Institutional History (1987)

maps the institutionalization of literary studies in the United States

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while Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (1989) by Gauri Viswanathan offers a fascinating account of English in colonial India. Eliots early essays Tradition and the Individual Talent,

Hamlet, and The Metaphysical Poets are still worth reading. Those who would like to see the New Criticism in action can also still go directly to the source. Cleanth Brookss The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry ([1947] 1968) contains a number of now classic essays while his collaboration with Robert Penn Warren in Understanding Poetry ([1939] 1976) led to an enor- mously influential textbook on New Critical interpretation. Leaviss approach to poetry and the poetic tradition comes through vividly in his New Bearings in English Poetry (1932) and Revaluation (1936); The Great Tradition ([1948] 1962) is a good example of his equally uncompromising criticism of the novel. Finally, English studies features fairly regularly in English and

American fiction. For those who want to have a look behind the scenes, I can recommend David Lodges three novels dealing with English in both England and the United States Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984), and Nice Work (1988) and A.S. Byatts Possession: A Romance (1990). And for those who want to have an overview, Elaine Showalters rather caustically titled Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents (2005) looks unsparingly at the absurdities of academic life.

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2 READING FOR FORM I FORMALISM AND EARLY STRUCTURALISM, 191460

In spite of the enormous influence of Eliot, Leavis, and the New Critics, our current perspectives on the study of literature owe perhaps more to continental Europe than to England and America. The continental European tradition of literary studies that is responsible for this begins in Russia in the second decade of the twentieth century, specifically in Moscow and St Petersburg. It finds a new home in Prague in the late 1920s, when the political climate in Russia has become too repressive, and travels to France (by way of New York City) after the Second World War, where it comes to full bloom in the 1960s and begins to draw widespread international attention. It is in France, too, that it provokes a counter-movement that achieves its full force in the 1970s and 1980s and that is still the dominant presence in literary and cultural studies. Like its Anglo-American counterpart, this originally Russian

approach to literature initially concentrated on poetry. But that is about all the two had in common. The English, later Anglo- American, line of development and the Russian one had nothing whatsoever to do with each other. The Russians who developed the so-called formal method which gave them the name formalists were totally unaware of what happened in England, while the English and Americans were completely ignorant of the debates

that took place in Russia (and later in Prague). It was only when a prominent formalist, the Russian linguist Roman Jakobson (1896 1982), and his fellow formalists began to be translated into English in the late 1950s and 1960s that the English-speaking world began to take notice of their wholly different approach to literary art. But even then the response was slow, no doubt because the formalist approach was so foreign to what Eliot, Leavis, the New Critics, and their ubiquitous heirs saw as the mission of literature and of writing about literature. Significantly, the formalist perspective had to be picked up, assimilated, and further developed by the French before it really made an impact on English and American literary thought. In what follows I will concentrate on the work of the Russians

and look only briefly at some later developments. Relevant here is not historical comprehensiveness but a certain way of looking at literature that much later would have a great impact in the English- speaking world.

EARLY FORMALISM

As the phrase formal method will have suggested, the formalists were primarily oriented towards the form of literature. That focus on formal aspects does not mean that they could not imagine a possible moral or social mission for literature. As one of them, Viktor Shklovsky (18931984), put it in 1917 in an essay titled Art as Technique, literature has the ability to make us see the world anew to make that which has become familiar, because we have been overexposed to it, strange again. Instead of merely registering things in an almost subconscious process of recognition because we think we know them, we look at them once again: art exists that one may recover the sensation of life The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known (Shklovsky [1917] 1998: 18). The result of this process of defamiliarization is that it enables us once again to see the world in its full splendour or, as the case may be, its true awfulness. I should say that this was not a radically new insight. More than a hundred years earlier the English poet Shelley had already claimed that poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world Shelley had not much eye for awfulness and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar (quoted in Scholes 1974: 174). But although the

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formalists were prepared to recognize this as a not unimportant effect of literature, they initially relegated it to the far background. The social function of literature, either as the repository of the best that had been thought and said, or as one of the great revitalizers (with the other arts) of our perception of the world around us, lar- gely left them cold in the first phase of their explorations. What they wanted to know was how literature works, how it achieves its defa- miliarizing effects. For the New Critics the formal aspects of literary works were not unimportant. However, they were first of all inter- ested in the form in which a poem presented itself because a close scrutiny of its formal aspects would reveal the complex of oppositions and tensions that constituted the poems real meaning. But the formalists were after what they considered bigger game and in order to do so they ignored literatures referential function, the way it directs us to the world we live in, and gave it, even more than the New Criticism had done, an autonomous status or at least gave the aesthetic dimension of literature an autonomous status, as Jakobson qualified their position in 1933. From their earliest meetings, around 1914, the formalists focused

on what Jakobson in 1921 started to call literariness that which makes a literary text different from, say, a piece in The Economist or Time. In other words, although they always worked with individual texts, what they were interested in was what all literary texts have in common a literary common denominator. Seeing the study of literature as a science, they concentrated, like true scientists, on general rules. Whereas practical criticism and the New Criticism focused on the individual meaning of individual texts, formalism sought to discover general laws the more general, the better. The secret of literariness, the formalists decided, was that in

poetry the initial focus of their interest ordinary language becomes defamiliarized. While an article in Time aims for clarity and will therefore use plain language, poetry subjects language to a process of defamiliarization. It is this linguistic defamiliarization that then leads to a perceptual defamiliarization on the part of the reader, to a renewed and fresh way of looking at the world. How does poetry defamiliarize what I have just called plain language? It employs an impressive range of so-called devices. It uses, for instance, forms of repetition that one does not find in ordinary language, such as rhyme, a regular meter, or the subdivision in

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stanzas that we find in many poems. But poetry also uses devices that one may come across in non-poetic language (although not with the same frequency) like metaphors and symbols. In so doing, it often also exploits the potential for ambiguity that language always has. Whereas a Time article tries to avoid ambiguities because it wants to be as transparent as possible, poetry makes use of all the second (and third) meanings that words and phrases tend to have, plus all the associations they evoke. What all these devices have in common is that they always draw attention to themselves: they constantly remind us that we are dealing with language and not with the real world because they signal their own difference from the non-literary language that we ordinarily use (and which we take to represent the world). Advertising agencies are well aware of this. At one time the Heinz company tried to boost its baked beans sales with the brilliant slogan Beans Means Heinz, a phrase that inevitably draws our attention to its own language. Because its ingenious play with language catches the eye and makes it stand out among other ads, it probably also effectively served its purpose: to sell more beans. For the formalists, then, poetry is not poetry because it employs time-honoured and profound themes to explore the human condition but rather because in the process of defamiliarizing the language it draws attention to its own artificiality, to the way it says what it has to say. As Roman Jakobson said in 1921, poetry is a mode of language characterized by an orientation towards its own form. Or, as he put it in What Is Poetry? (1934):

Poeticity is present when the word is felt as a word and not a mere representation of the object being named or an outburst of emotion, when words and their compositions, their meaning, their external and inner form acquire a weight and value of their own instead of referring indifferently to reality.

(Jakobson [1934] 1987: 378)

What poetrys orientation upon its own form first allows us to see in a fresh manner is language itself. What that language refers to what it communicates is of secondary importance. In fact, if a work of art draws attention to its own form, then that form becomes part of its content: its form is part of what it

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communicates. (This is obvious in paintings that are completely abstract: since such paintings do not refer us to the outside world, they can only be about themselves. They force us to pay attention to their form, because that is all they have to offer.) Now the idea of defamiliarization works well enough in the case

of poetry and the difficult, wilfully innovative and defamiliarizing Modernist poetry of the formalists own period perfectly confirmed the validity of defamiliarization as the ultimate criterion in estab- lishing literariness. But unsurprisingly they ran into trouble in their attempts to make the defamiliarizing devices of poetry work for fiction: the most obvious ones rhyme, for instance simply do not occur in fiction and the less obvious ones such as imagery can also be found, even if not to the same degree, in ordinary usage. It is true that there are novels that in spite of this achieve an impressive degree of defamiliarization. This, for instance, is how Russell Hobans Riddley Walker takes off: On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs (Hoban [1980] 1982: 1). But such novels are rare. Usually we have to look pretty closely to find real deviations from ordinary language.

FABULA AND SYUZHET

In 1925 Boris Tomashevski (18901957), building upon earlier efforts of his colleagues, formulated the fullest formalist answer to the question of how to distinguish the language of fiction from ordinary language. The difference, he argued, is not so much a difference in language but a difference in presentation. In order to clarify this he juxtaposed two concepts: fabula (introduced by Shklovsky in 1921) and syuzhet (or suzhet, depending on how one transcribes the Russian alphabet). The fabula is a straightforward account of something: it tells us what actually happened. For instance, John Doe kills his cousin Jack to become the sole heir of a fortune and sits back to wait for the demise of his aged and infirm uncle old J.J. Doe, his cousins father and only remaining kin who controls the money. The police work hard at solving the case but fail to do so. J.J. Doe hires a private eye who naturally succeeds where the police have failed. John Doe is arrested and duly sentenced.

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These are the bare bones of the sort of story that one finds in countless private eye novels. But this is not how the standard pri- vate eye novel, which is usually narrated by the private eye himself (or herself ), would tell it. The novel would begin with the private eye being invited by J.J. Doe to come to his mansion to talk about the case. The fact that the murder has been committed by John will not become clear until we have almost reached the end. As in all detective novels, the author manipulates the fabula to create max- imum suspense. Such a manipulation of the fabula creates the syuz- het (the story as it is actually told) and it is the syuzhet that has the defamiliarizing effect that devices have in poetry: like, for instance, rhyme, the syuzhet calls attention to itself. Moreover, it defami- liarizes the events of the story because it actively interferes with the storys chronology. (I will discuss in a moment why we usually do not experience that attention-calling effect when we read, say, a detective novel.) It will immediately be obvious that one and the same fabula can give rise to a good many syuzhets. That insight became the basis for a book that much later would enjoy wide- spread influence, Vladimir Propps The Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928), which I will look a

DQ4 CH 6 The study of ethics encompass write essay help: write essay help

DQ4

CH 6

1. What does the study of ethics encompass? Describe and differentiate instrumental value and intrinsic value. What is environmental ethics?

2. How can sustainable development be defined? What is meant by the triple bottom line? Why is it important to pursue sustainable development?

3. Compare and contrast anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism. Explain how individuals with each perspective might evaluate the development of a shopping mall atop a wetland in your town or city.

4. Describe Aldo Leopolds land ethic. How did Leopold define the community to which ethical standards should be applied?

CH7

5. What isthe tragedy of the commons? Explain how the concept might apply to an unregulated industry that is a source of water pollution.

6. What is the difference between customary law and conventional law? What challenges do transboundary environmental problems present?

7. Compare and contrast the three major approaches to environmental policy: tort law, command-and-control, and economic policy tools.

CH18

8. What happens to solar radiation after it reaches Earth? How do greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere?

9.Why is carbon dioxide considered the main greenhouse gas? Why are carbon dioxide concentrations increasing in the atmosphere?

10. How might a warmer climate affect agriculture? How is it affecting distributions of plants and animals? How might it affect human health?

DQ4 CH 6 What does the study of ethics encompass? essay help: essay help

DQ4

CH 6

1. What does the study of ethics encompass? Describe and differentiate instrumental value and intrinsic value. What is environmental ethics?

2. How can sustainable development be defined? What is meant by the triple bottom line? Why is it important to pursue sustainable development?

3. Compare and contrast anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism. Explain how individuals with each perspective might evaluate the development of a shopping mall atop a wetland in your town or city.

4. Describe Aldo Leopolds land ethic. How did Leopold define the community to which ethical standards should be applied?

CH7

5. What isthe tragedy of the commons? Explain how the concept might apply to an unregulated industry that is a source of water pollution.

6. What is the difference between customary law and conventional law? What challenges do transboundary environmental problems present?

7. Compare and contrast the three major approaches to environmental policy: tort law, command-and-control, and economic policy tools.

CH18

8. What happens to solar radiation after it reaches Earth? How do greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere?

9.Why is carbon dioxide considered the main greenhouse gas? Why are carbon dioxide concentrations increasing in the atmosphere?

10. How might a warmer climate affect agriculture? How is it affecting distributions of plants and animals? How might it affect human health?

Discusses alternative designs for development college essay help nyc

DQ3

CH13

1. Chapter 13 discusses alternative designs for development that take into account protection of environmentally sensitive areas, public transportation, walkable, mixed use neighborhoods, etc. The term “smart growth” is often used to describe this method of planning. Do you have examples of green communities in Los Angeles? What do you think are the biggest health benefits from these compared to traditional development?

2.What factors lie behind the shift of population from rural areas to urban areas? What types of cities and countries are experiencing the fastest urban growth today, and why?

3.Why have so many city dwellers in the United States, Canada, and other nations moved into suburbs?

4.How are some people trying to prevent or slow sprawl? Describe some key elements of smart growth. What effects, positive and negative, do urban growth boundaries tend to have?

CH15

5.What is one way natural ecosystems can perform wastewater treatment? Explain the process and your thoughts on using such natural or created systems in wastewater treatment.

6.Compare and contrast the main types of freshwater ecosystems. Name and describe the major zones of a typical pond or lake.

7.Name three major types of water pollutants, and provide an example of each. Explain which classes of water pollutants you think are most important in your local area.

8.Definegroundwater. Why do many scientists consider groundwater pollution a greater problem than surface water pollution?

Age Of Oil Assignment college essay help los angeles: college essay help los angeles

As you know, our world is heavily dependent on oil. In Chapter 6 of Contemporary Environmental Issues, you have read that there is concern about the possibility of reaching a peak in oil production, while Chapter 8 ofContemporary Environmental Issuesintroduces a variety of possible alternative energy sources. Based on the concern that we may be running out of oil, describe at least tworenewablealternatives to oil that are currently available and discuss the barriers that keep these alternatives from replacing oil as our primary means of energy. Do not discuss other fossil fuels or nuclear energy, which are all nonrenewable sources. Additionally, discuss the role that government plays in ensuring a transition to these renewable alternatives in a post peak-oil world.

Your initial post should be at least 250 words in length. Utilize at least two scholarly or reputable resources and your textbook to support your claims. Cite your sources in APA format.Quoted text should constitute no more than ten percent of your post. Respond to at least two of your classmates posts by Day 7.

Please only original work!

Contemporary Environmental Issues Discussion grad school essay help

As you know, our world is heavily dependent on oil. In Chapter 6 of Contemporary Environmental Issues, you have read that there is concern about the possibility of reaching a peak in oil production, while Chapter 8 ofContemporary Environmental Issuesintroduces a variety of possible alternative energy sources. Based on the concern that we may be running out of oil, describe at least tworenewablealternatives to oil that are currently available and discuss the barriers that keep these alternatives from replacing oil as our primary means of energy. Do not discuss other fossil fuels or nuclear energy, which are all nonrenewable sources. Additionally, discuss the role that government plays in ensuring a transition to these renewable alternatives in a post peak-oil world.

Your initial post should be at least 250 words in length. Utilize at least two scholarly or reputable resources and your textbook to support your claims. Cite your sources in APA format.Quoted text should constitute no more than ten percent of your post. Respond to at least two of your classmates posts by Day 7.

Please only original work!

ENGR 202 Evaluation and Presentation of Experimental Data high school essay help

ENGR 202 Evaluation and Presentation of Experimental Data II – Summer 2016 Lab 4: Capturing Temperature Measurements with a

Thermocouple Original: Dr. Scoles, Dr Miller, Dr Chmielewski Rev: Dr. Marino

8/17/16 page 1 of 7

Goals

Measure, plot, and record temperature measurements from a Type K thermocouple (TC)

Correct the measured voltages with a calibration curve

Find the time constants of the TC cooling curves Equipment/Software

NI USB TC-01 Thermocouple Measurement Device

Type K thermocouple, Omega KTSS-HH o Nickel-10% chromium (+) vs. Nickel-5% aluminum and silicon (-)

Power resistor, 100 , 25 Watt

Hewlett Packard E3631A DC power supply

Excel Reading or Viewing

Review – Week 8 lecture notes Introduction

A thermocouple (TC) can be used to measure temperature over wide ranges in a variety of measurement environments and with fine spatial resolution. The sensing operation of the TC is based on the Seebeck effect: when two dissimilar metals are joined at both ends to form an open loop, an open circuit voltage is developed (Figure 1). The voltage is proportional to the difference in temperature at the two junctions. The measured voltage is on the order of tens of millivolts. To extract the temperature at the measuring junction (T1) from the measured voltage, we will want to keep the reference junction (T2) at a fixed, known temperature.

Figure 1. Two junctions, T1 and T2, formed by joining wire types A and B.1

The ice/water bath at 0C (Figure 2) has become the standard for the reference

temperature, and published thermocouple voltage vs temperature tables are based on

1 Figures are from Analog Devices Application Note AN-369, Thermocouple Signal Conditioning Using the AD594/595, J. Marcin, 1998.

8/17/16 page 2 of 7

this value. This method of providing the reference junction temperature is impractical in field- and lab-measurement situations, so alternatives have been developed.

Figure 2. Thermocouple loop with the reference junction at 0 C.

Rather than using ice, two methods can be used to do cold-junction compensation

software and hardware. The temperature of the reference junction can be measured directly using a semiconductor sensor or thermistor. The T2 sensor can be chosen to provide a very accurate measurement in a narrow temperature span centered on the expected junction temperature. The measured T2 and the measured sensing junction voltage can be used in a calculation to remove the effect of the reference junction voltage and extract the temperature of T1.

The alternative to the software approach is to have the T2 sensing junction within

your measurement hardware, and have it used by a circuit that will generate a voltage equal and opposite to that of the reference junction (Figure 3). Once the effect of the T2 junction is removed, the circuit amplifies and scales the output voltage to represent the T1 junction temperature as 1 mV/C or 10 mV/C (the 10 mV/C value is more common).

Figure 3. Electronic cold junction compensation

ENGR 202 Evaluation and Presentation of Experimental Data II – Summer 2016 Lab 4: Capturing Temperature Measurements with a

Thermocouple Original: Dr. Scoles, Dr Miller, Dr Chmielewski Rev: Dr. Marino

8/17/16 page 3 of 7

Procedure

1. With the Hewlett Packard E3631A DC power supply off connect two alligator leads from the power resistor terminals to the + and COM terminals (under 25V label) as shown in Figure 5).

Figure 4. TC inserted into the core of the bower resistor (not to scale)

1. Start your temperature measurement VI. Within the NI software, set the thermocouple type to, K and set the units to C. Enable data logging in the NI software, collecting 1 sample/second.

2. Record the starting temperature as the ambient temperature, T, in the analysis discussion that follows.

3. Insert the Omega thermocouple into the center of the power resistor. The thermocouple should not touch the sides of the resistor, it must float at the center of the radius.

4. Set the power supply voltage to 16 V.

a. Turn on power supply by pressing the Power button. Press the Output On/Off button. Voltages are shown on the left half of the supply display, and currents on the right half. If a digit on the voltage side is not flashing, press the Voltage/Current button. Use the Adjust knob to set the voltage.

5. Observe the TC temperature as the resistor warms up to its maximum temperature, typically between 50 and 70C (122 and 158F). Collect data until dT/dt=0.0167, or one degree/minute, we will treat that as steady-state.

6. Remove the TC from the power resistor, hold it vertically without waiving it around and continue to measure the temperature until it returns to a value close

8/17/16 page 4 of 7

to the ambient level. This is measuring the free convective cooling response of the thermocouple.

7. Stop your VI and save the data to a file.

8. Repeat this heating and cooling cycle two more times, saving the data into a new file each time.

9. Make sure you have three good cooling curves saved before you leave the lab. These curves should generally look alike.

10. Turn off the power supply.

a. Press Output On/Off on the supply, and turn off Power.

Data Analysis this portion can be done outside of lab Part 1.

The shape of the curve you saw for the thermocouple cooling is characteristic of many physical phenomena, including capacitor discharging, radioactive decay, and others. A straight forward energy analysis of the thermocouple system identifies that the rate of change in energy stored in the thermocouple is equal to the energy lost to the room by way of convection.

The energy of the system is calculated with respect to the heat capacity of the thermocouple and is represented by the expression

E = m x cp x T (1)

Where E = energy content of the thermocouple, kJ m = mass of thermocouple system, kg (assumed constant) cp = the specific heat of the material from which it is constructed, kJ/(kg-K)

(assumed constant) T = temperature of the thermocouple, K, which varies.

Therefore the rate of energy change with respect to time is evaluated by taking the time derivative of this equation

dE/dt = m x cp x dT/dt (2)

Where t is time in seconds. The energy leaving the thermocouple is picked up by the air in the room. This

energy flow, driven by the temperature difference between the thermocouple and the air in the room is called heat transfer and in this case is primarily convective heat transfer (we will ignore conduction and radiation). As mentioned in lecture, this mode of heat

ENGR 202 Evaluation and Presentation of Experimental Data II – Summer 2016 Lab 4: Capturing Temperature Measurements with a

Thermocouple Original: Dr. Scoles, Dr Miller, Dr Chmielewski Rev: Dr. Marino

8/17/16 page 5 of 7

transfer is modeled based on the Newton Law of Cooling for a surface and is calculated with the expression

dE/dT = h x As x (T-T) (3)

Where h = Newton Coefficient for rate of convective heat transfer, kJ/(m2-K-s)

depends on the conditions As = surface area of the thermocouple, m2 T = temperature of the room, K (this is the ambient temperature of the room) T = temperature of the hot surface, K, in this case the thermocouple

temperature

Equating the two expressions for rate of energy change produces a simple, first order ordinary differential equation between temperature and time

dE / dT = – m x cp x dT/dt = h x As x (T-T) (4) Note: the negative sign results from the fact that energy gain by the air is energy lost from the TC Take a look at the simple solution for this equation of temperature as a function of time, T(t). Determine the time constant, , for a first-order thermodynamic system:

Where T0 = temperature of thermocouple before cooling starts, K

= m cp / (h As), s, represents the time constant for the first order system

T= ambient temperature

The next formal step is usually to collect terms in T and t, which yields

With the data acquired in this laboratory, T, T0, and T(t) the time constant for your TC can be evaluated. There are several ways to find these time constants.

(5) /t0 e TTTtT

T t T T0 T

et / (6)

8/17/16 page 6 of 7

The simplest technique is to take the natural logarithm of both sides of equation 1, which yields

This equation has the familiar form of y = mx + b, where the slope m equals -1/ and the intercept b is 0. The slope of the straight line you get when you plot the natural log of the fraction in parenthesis vs. time will be the time constant. The Excel LINEST function can extract the slope from straight-line data.

Computer tools such as MATLAB and LabVIEW have built-in capabilities to fit an exponential curve to a set of data. See the Exponential Fit VI in LabVIEWs Mathematics: Fitting menu on the Functions Palette. Tab-delimited data can be read into LabVIEW with the Read From Measurement File Express VI.

Once you find your time constant, plot an exponential through your measured data. Describe in your report how well an exponential model fits the cooling data.

For each run, calculate:

o Rise time to steady state and dT/dt at mid-rise

o Time at steady state and dT/dt

o Fall time from steady state and dT/dt at mid-fall

Your Report

Prepare a written report following the guidelines in our grading rubric. This report is due one week after your lab. Required Graphical Results

Each of the three cooling curves should be included in the report Some Discussion Points That Must Be Covered

From your readings and lecture, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of using the Cold Junction Compensation circuit for temperature measurement?

Why would you choose a differential input channel thermocouple for this application rather than a single-ended channel?

Explain your reasoning behind the setup of your voltage measurement task.

What are some of the sources of measurement error in this experiment? What is the Omega Type K thermocouple temperature accuracy? Can you use propagation of error to estimate the error in the temperature readings?

How well did the exponential cooling model fit the temperature data?

ln T t T T0 T

– t/ (7)

ENGR 202 Evaluation and Presentation of Experimental Data II – Summer 2016 Lab 4: Capturing Temperature Measurements with a

Thermocouple Original: Dr. Scoles, Dr Miller, Dr Chmielewski Rev: Dr. Marino

8/17/16 page 7 of 7

Required Printouts

One page hardcopy of final temperature measurement front panel showing measured data for the three trials

Excel, Labview, or Matlab analysis of your temperature measurements. Make sure all tables and figures are properly labeled in the body of your lab report or the appendix section.

If you use Labview: one page hardcopy of final temperature measurement block diagram including the subVI. The diagram should have text documentation explaining the VIs function and the team member names.

Bibliography

American Society for Testing and Materials (ATSM), Manual on the Use of Thermocouples in Temperature Measurement, ASTM PCN 04-470020-40.

Analog Devices AD594/595 Datasheet, http://www.analog.com/UploadedFiles/Data_Sheets/AD594_595.pdf, Rev. C, 1999. Viewed on November 3, 2007.

Omega TC wire spec sheet page

Analog Devices Application Note AN-369, Thermocouple Signal Conditioning Using the AD594/595, J. Marcin, 1998.

Doering, Ed. Create a SubVI in LabVIEW, http://cnx.org/content/m14767/latest/ Connexions. 17 Mar. 2008. Viewed on May 10, 2010.

II – Summer 2016 Lab 4: Capturing Temperature Measurements with a

Thermocouple Original: Dr. Scoles, Dr Miller, Dr Chmielewski Rev: Dr. Marino

8/17/16 page 1 of 7

Goals

Measure, plot, and record temperature measurements from a Type K thermocouple (TC)

Correct the measured voltages with a calibration curve

Find the time constants of the TC cooling curves Equipment/Software

NI USB TC-01 Thermocouple Measurement Device

Type K thermocouple, Omega KTSS-HH o Nickel-10% chromium (+) vs. Nickel-5% aluminum and silicon (-)

Power resistor, 100 , 25 Watt

Hewlett Packard E3631A DC power supply

Excel Reading or Viewing

Review – Week 8 lecture notes Introduction

A thermocouple (TC) can be used to measure temperature over wide ranges in a variety of measurement environments and with fine spatial resolution. The sensing operation of the TC is based on the Seebeck effect: when two dissimilar metals are joined at both ends to form an open loop, an open circuit voltage is developed (Figure 1). The voltage is proportional to the difference in temperature at the two junctions. The measured voltage is on the order of tens of millivolts. To extract the temperature at the measuring junction (T1) from the measured voltage, we will want to keep the reference junction (T2) at a fixed, known temperature.

Figure 1. Two junctions, T1 and T2, formed by joining wire types A and B.1

The ice/water bath at 0C (Figure 2) has become the standard for the reference

temperature, and published thermocouple voltage vs temperature tables are based on

1 Figures are from Analog Devices Application Note AN-369, Thermocouple Signal Conditioning Using the AD594/595, J. Marcin, 1998.

8/17/16 page 2 of 7

this value. This method of providing the reference junction temperature is impractical in field- and lab-measurement situations, so alternatives have been developed.

Figure 2. Thermocouple loop with the reference junction at 0 C.

Rather than using ice, two methods can be used to do cold-junction compensation

software and hardware. The temperature of the reference junction can be measured directly using a semiconductor sensor or thermistor. The T2 sensor can be chosen to provide a very accurate measurement in a narrow temperature span centered on the expected junction temperature. The measured T2 and the measured sensing junction voltage can be used in a calculation to remove the effect of the reference junction voltage and extract the temperature of T1.

The alternative to the software approach is to have the T2 sensing junction within

your measurement hardware, and have it used by a circuit that will generate a voltage equal and opposite to that of the reference junction (Figure 3). Once the effect of the T2 junction is removed, the circuit amplifies and scales the output voltage to represent the T1 junction temperature as 1 mV/C or 10 mV/C (the 10 mV/C value is more common).

Figure 3. Electronic cold junction compensation

ENGR 202 Evaluation and Presentation of Experimental Data II – Summer 2016 Lab 4: Capturing Temperature Measurements with a

Thermocouple Original: Dr. Scoles, Dr Miller, Dr Chmielewski Rev: Dr. Marino

8/17/16 page 3 of 7

Procedure

1. With the Hewlett Packard E3631A DC power supply off connect two alligator leads from the power resistor terminals to the + and COM terminals (under 25V label) as shown in Figure 5).

Figure 4. TC inserted into the core of the bower resistor (not to scale)

1. Start your temperature measurement VI. Within the NI software, set the thermocouple type to, K and set the units to C. Enable data logging in the NI software, collecting 1 sample/second.

2. Record the starting temperature as the ambient temperature, T, in the analysis discussion that follows.

3. Insert the Omega thermocouple into the center of the power resistor. The thermocouple should not touch the sides of the resistor, it must float at the center of the radius.

4. Set the power supply voltage to 16 V.

a. Turn on power supply by pressing the Power button. Press the Output On/Off button. Voltages are shown on the left half of the supply display, and currents on the right half. If a digit on the voltage side is not flashing, press the Voltage/Current button. Use the Adjust knob to set the voltage.

5. Observe the TC temperature as the resistor warms up to its maximum temperature, typically between 50 and 70C (122 and 158F). Collect data until dT/dt=0.0167, or one degree/minute, we will treat that as steady-state.

6. Remove the TC from the power resistor, hold it vertically without waiving it around and continue to measure the temperature until it returns to a value close

8/17/16 page 4 of 7

to the ambient level. This is measuring the free convective cooling response of the thermocouple.

7. Stop your VI and save the data to a file.

8. Repeat this heating and cooling cycle two more times, saving the data into a new file each time.

9. Make sure you have three good cooling curves saved before you leave the lab. These curves should generally look alike.

10. Turn off the power supply.

a. Press Output On/Off on the supply, and turn off Power.

Data Analysis this portion can be done outside of lab Part 1.

The shape of the curve you saw for the thermocouple cooling is characteristic of many physical phenomena, including capacitor discharging, radioactive decay, and others. A straight forward energy analysis of the thermocouple system identifies that the rate of change in energy stored in the thermocouple is equal to the energy lost to the room by way of convection.

The energy of the system is calculated with respect to the heat capacity of the thermocouple and is represented by the expression

E = m x cp x T (1)

Where E = energy content of the thermocouple, kJ m = mass of thermocouple system, kg (assumed constant) cp = the specific heat of the material from which it is constructed, kJ/(kg-K)

(assumed constant) T = temperature of the thermocouple, K, which varies.

Therefore the rate of energy change with respect to time is evaluated by taking the time derivative of this equation

dE/dt = m x cp x dT/dt (2)

Where t is time in seconds. The energy leaving the thermocouple is picked up by the air in the room. This

energy flow, driven by the temperature difference between the thermocouple and the air in the room is called heat transfer and in this case is primarily convective heat transfer (we will ignore conduction and radiation). As mentioned in lecture, this mode of heat

ENGR 202 Evaluation and Presentation of Experimental Data II – Summer 2016 Lab 4: Capturing Temperature Measurements with a

Thermocouple Original: Dr. Scoles, Dr Miller, Dr Chmielewski Rev: Dr. Marino

8/17/16 page 5 of 7

transfer is modeled based on the Newton Law of Cooling for a surface and is calculated with the expression

dE/dT = h x As x (T-T) (3)

Where h = Newton Coefficient for rate of convective heat transfer, kJ/(m2-K-s)

depends on the conditions As = surface area of the thermocouple, m2 T = temperature of the room, K (this is the ambient temperature of the room) T = temperature of the hot surface, K, in this case the thermocouple

temperature

Equating the two expressions for rate of energy change produces a simple, first order ordinary differential equation between temperature and time

dE / dT = – m x cp x dT/dt = h x As x (T-T) (4) Note: the negative sign results from the fact that energy gain by the air is energy lost from the TC Take a look at the simple solution for this equation of temperature as a function of time, T(t). Determine the time constant, , for a first-order thermodynamic system:

Where T0 = temperature of thermocouple before cooling starts, K

= m cp / (h As), s, represents the time constant for the first order system

T= ambient temperature

The next formal step is usually to collect terms in T and t, which yields

With the data acquired in this laboratory, T, T0, and T(t) the time constant for your TC can be evaluated. There are several ways to find these time constants.

(5) /t0 e TTTtT

T t T T0 T

et / (6)

8/17/16 page 6 of 7

The simplest technique is to take the natural logarithm of both sides of equation 1, which yields

This equation has the familiar form of y = mx + b, where the slope m equals -1/ and the intercept b is 0. The slope of the straight line you get when you plot the natural log of the fraction in parenthesis vs. time will be the time constant. The Excel LINEST function can extract the slope from straight-line data.

Computer tools such as MATLAB and LabVIEW have built-in capabilities to fit an exponential curve to a set of data. See the Exponential Fit VI in LabVIEWs Mathematics: Fitting menu on the Functions Palette. Tab-delimited data can be read into LabVIEW with the Read From Measurement File Express VI.

Once you find your time constant, plot an exponential through your measured data. Describe in your report how well an exponential model fits the cooling data.

For each run, calculate:

o Rise time to steady state and dT/dt at mid-rise

o Time at steady state and dT/dt

o Fall time from steady state and dT/dt at mid-fall

Your Report

Prepare a written report following the guidelines in our grading rubric. This report is due one week after your lab. Required Graphical Results

Each of the three cooling curves should be included in the report Some Discussion Points That Must Be Covered

From your readings and lecture, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of using the Cold Junction Compensation circuit for temperature measurement?

Why would you choose a differential input channel thermocouple for this application rather than a single-ended channel?

Explain your reasoning behind the setup of your voltage measurement task.

What are some of the sources of measurement error in this experiment? What is the Omega Type K thermocouple temperature accuracy? Can you use propagation of error to estimate the error in the temperature readings?

How well did the exponential cooling model fit the temperature data?

ln T t T T0 T

– t/ (7)

ENGR 202 Evaluation and Presentation of Experimental Data II – Summer 2016 Lab 4: Capturing Temperature Measurements with a

Thermocouple Original: Dr. Scoles, Dr Miller, Dr Chmielewski Rev: Dr. Marino

8/17/16 page 7 of 7

Required Printouts

One page hardcopy of final temperature measurement front panel showing measured data for the three trials

Excel, Labview, or Matlab analysis of your temperature measurements. Make sure all tables and figures are properly labeled in the body of your lab report or the appendix section.

If you use Labview: one page hardcopy of final temperature measurement block diagram including the subVI. The diagram should have text documentation explaining the VIs function and the team member names.

Bibliography

American Society for Testing and Materials (ATSM), Manual on the Use of Thermocouples in Temperature Measurement, ASTM PCN 04-470020-40.

Analog Devices AD594/595 Datasheet, http://www.analog.com/UploadedFiles/Data_Sheets/AD594_595.pdf, Rev. C, 1999. Viewed on November 3, 2007.

Omega TC wire spec sheet page

Analog Devices Application Note AN-369, Thermocouple Signal Conditioning Using the AD594/595, J. Marcin, 1998.

Doering, Ed. Create a SubVI in LabVIEW, http://cnx.org/content/m14767/latest/ Connexions. 17 Mar. 2008. Viewed on May 10, 2010.

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Question 1

Compose a safety policy statement for your current organization (or an organization for which you previously worked), following the guidelines in the course textbook. Be certain it is specific to the organization and not just a series of generic statements.

Your response must be at least 75 words in length.
Path: pWords:0
10 points

Question 2

What types of management system issues are targeted in the planning process of Z10 section 4.0? Provide an example of each issue.

Your response must be at least 75 words in length.
Path: pWords:0
10 points

Question 3

Most organizations hire contractors in some capacity, either to aid in production work or to provide ancillary services, such as cleaning, maintenance, remodeling, and food service. Discuss how a contractors operations could adversely affect the health and safety of an organizations employees. What procedures should be in place to prevent any adverse effects?

Your response must be at least 75 words in length.
Path: pWords:0
10 points

Question 4

What are some actions that should be taken by a safety practitioner when an organization’s safety culture starts to drift into a negative state? Provide examples that illustrate your point.

Your response must be at least 75 words in length.
Path: pWords:0
10 points

Question 5

Explain the differences between authority, responsibility, and accountability as they apply to OSH program management. In your discussion, provide examples of how your current organization (or a past one) implements these concepts. Is it effective? How can you tell? What recommendations do you have for improvement?

Your response must be at least 200 words in length.
Path: pWords:0
30 points

Question 6

A recent OSHA inspection in your machine shop identified several serious deficiencies in occupational noise control. Serious violations were issued citing 29 CFR 1910.95(i)(2) and 29 CFR 1910.95(k). Using the PDCA framework, develop a plan that will correct the deficiencies and ensure that the violations do not recur.

Your response must be at least 200 words in length.

The goals of environmental health best essay help

Hello,

I need at least 150 words per question with correct APA references.

Thank you!

CH.14

Explain the goals of environmental health and identify major environmental health hazards.

Explain the movements of toxic substances and how they affect organisms and ecosystems.

Evaluate risk assessment and risk management.

What are epidemiological studies, and how are they most often conducted?

How do scientists identify and assess risks from substances or activities that may pose health threats?

CH.17

Can technology provide evidence for the need for or for the results of sustainable change? Provide examples.

Describe the composition, structure, and function of Earths atmosphere

Explain stratospheric ozone depletion and identify steps taken to address it

Name three common sources of indoor pollution and their associated health risks. For each pollution source, describe one way to reduce exposure to the source.

Legal, ethical, financial implications nursing essay help: nursing essay help

For the last component of the project please prepare a PowerPointpresentation describing the healthcare management problem you worked on in this capstone course.

SLP Assignment Expectations

The slides of the presentation must specifically contain the following:

Title
Introduction: (background and context of the problem)
Importance/relevance and extent of the problem
Causes
Stakeholder issues
Legal, ethical, financial implications.
Possible solutions and current attempts
Specific plan and its likelihood of success
Conclusions
References

Length: This assignment should be at least 10 slides in length.

References: At least 15 references should be included from academic sources (e.g. peer-reviewed journal articles).

Clarity: (e.g. points are concise and understandable)

Spelling: While no points are deducted, assignments are expected to adhere to standards guidelines of spelling.

Your PowerPoint presentation must include an oral narrative.Review the instructions. It provides guidance so you are sure that the audio file is linked to your slides when you submit your work.

At the bottom of this page, there is a link to an oral communication rubric. This rubricWILL BE USED to assess the quality of your presentation and assign a grade for this assignment.Please review it carefully before you begin this assignment.Your presentation will be graded on the following attributes: organization, content, adaptation to audience, and delivery. The point value for each attribute and what specifically you’ll need to do in order to earn the maximum possible points on this assignment can be found in the oral communication rubric.

The purpose of using this rubric is to assist you in strengthening your presentation/oral communication skills. As you know, this is a skill set that’s essential for establishing a successful career. If you have any questions regarding the expectations as outlined in the rubric, please don’t hesitate to bring them to my attention.”

Oakman, T., Blendon, R., Campbell, A., Zaslavsky, A., & Benson, J.. (2010). A Partisan Divide On The Uninsured. Health Affairs, 29(4), 706-711.

Rapp, C., Etzelwise, D., Marty, D., Coffman, M., Carlson, L., Asher, D., Callaghan, J., & Holter, M.. (2010). Barriers to Evidence-Based Practice Implementation: Results of a Qualitative Study. Community Mental Health Journal, 46(2), 112-118.

Shortell, Stephen M, Gillies, Robin R, Anderson, David A, Mitchell, John B, & Morgan, Karen L. (1993). Creating organized delivery systems: The barriers and facilitators. Hospital & Health Services Administration, 38(4), 447.

Charles Zabada, Patrick Asubonteng Rivers, & George Munchus. (1998). Obstacles to the application of total quality management in health-care organizations. Total Quality Management, 9(1), 57-66.

Kathleen L McFadden, Gregory N Stock, Charles R Gowen III, Patricia Cook. (2006). Exploring Strategies for Reducing Hospital Errors. Journal of Healthcare Management,51(2), 123-35, discussion 136.

Tips for Effective Powerpoint Presentations. Retrieved 3/2/2013 from

The purpose of using rubric to enhance critical thinking assignment help sydney: assignment help sydney

Your task for this module’s SLP is tofurther discuss the planidentified in the case assignment. Please include the following: (Critical Thinking Skills Assignment)

Identify and clarify an ethical dilemma associated with the chosen topic of your course project.
Identify and discuss several alternatives and select one to address in your plan.
Explain the components in your hypothetical plan for resolving the problem by implementing the solution.
Present the plan in an outline and identify the roles of various participants in addressing the problem.

SLP Assignment Expectations

Length: This assignment should be between 2-3 pages (500-750 words) in length, excluding references.

References: At least two references should be included from academic sources (e.g. peer-reviewed journal articles).

Organization: Subheadings should be used to organize your paper

Format: APA format is recommended. While APA formatting of references is not a requirement, the references need to be presented in order using a standard citation style (APA, AMA, MLA etc). When material is copied verbatim from external sources, it MUST be enclosed in quotes. The references should be cited within the text and also listed at the end of the assignment in the References section. See Syllabus page for more information on APA format.

Grammar and Spelling: While no points are deducted, assignments are expected to adhere to standards guidelines of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and sentence syntax. Points may be deducted if grammar and spelling impact clarity.

Your paper will be evaluated based on the rubric criteria.

At the bottom of this page, there is a link to a critical thinking rubric. The rubricWILL BE USED to assess the quality of your paper and assign a grade for this assignment. Please review it carefully before you begin this assignment.Your paper will be graded on the following attributes: organization, contextual awareness, knowledge of conventions, and appropriate use of sources and evidence. The point value for each attribute and what you’ll need to do in order to earn the maximum possible points on this assignment can be found in the writing rubric.

The purpose of using this rubric is to assist you in strengthening your critical thinking skills. As you know, this is a skill set that’s essential for establishing a successful career. If you have any questions regarding the expectations as outlined in the rubric, please don’t hesitate to bring them to my attention.

Joseph F. Coates. (2004). The radical solution to rising health-care costs. Employment Relations Today, 31(2), 1-11.

Experts Suggest Solutions to the Healthcare Crisis. (1992). Management Review, 81(7), 20.

Robinson, F.. (2010). Tackling health inequalities. Practice Nurse, 39(5), 9-10

HealthReform.Gov. Retrieved 3/2/2013 from

Kristen Starnes-Ott, Michael J Kremer. (2007). Recruitment and retention of nurse anesthesia faculty: Issues and strategies. AANA Journal,75(1), 13-6.

Critical Thinking Definition

Critical thinking is a habit of mind characterized by the comprehensive exploration of issues, ideas, artifacts, and events before accepting or formulating an opinion or conclusion. At TUI students demonstrate and exercise critical thinking skills in written papers presented in response to Case and Session Long Project assignments. Signature assignments are best characterized by those that require an argumentative essay approach to include problem identification, establishing a position on one or more issue surrounding the problem, and utilizing background readings and other information sources to develop a well-reasoned argument to support their position on the issue.

Critical Thinking Rubric

 
Objective
Student Performance Criteria

 
Weak
Marginal
Adequate
Strong

Coverage of issues
Demonstrate the ability to clearly and comprehensively describe the problem and issues addressed in the assignment.
Issue/problem to be considered critically is stated without clarification or description.1
Issue/problem to be considered critically is stated but description leaves some terms undefined, ambiguities unexplored, boundaries undetermined, and/or backgrounds unknown.
Issue/problem to be considered critically is stated, described, and clarified so that understanding is not seriously impeded by omissions.
Issue/problem to be considered critically is stated clearly and described comprehensively, delivering all relevant information necessary for full understanding.

Demonstrate the ability to discern between relevant and non-relevant information in concisely presenting information for full understanding of the issue or problem.
Information presented as relevant to the problem is not adequate. Some critical relevant information is omitted. Some irrelevant information is presented as relevant.
The information presented is relevant, and marginally adequate to support the argument. Some relevant information is omitted. No irrelevant information is presented as relevant.
The information presented is relevant, and fully adequate to support the argument. No irrelevant information is presented.
All relevant items of information are presented, and both the nature and degree of their relevance are clearly explained. If some information available to the reader is superficially relevant, but actually irrelevant, then the nature of its irrelevance is explained.

Selection & use of evidence
Demonstrate the ability to identify, select, analyze, evaluate and apply relevant background materials, to include expert opinion, in formulating and supporting well-reasoned arguments.
Information search is inadequate. Information is taken from background materials without any interpretation or evaluation. The viewpoints of experts are taken as fact, and not questioned.
An attempt is made to identify and evaluate relevant background materials. The information extracted from the background materials is discussed, but the discussion is not adequate to support a coherent analysis. The viewpoints of experts are mostly taken as fact, with little questioning.
All relevant background materials are identified. The information extracted from the materials is subjected to enough interpretation and evaluation to develop a coherent analysis or synthesis.

Viewpoints of experts are subject to questioning.
All relevant background materials are identified. The information is extracted from the materials is subjected to thorough interpretation and evaluation, supporting a coherent, convincing analysis or synthesis. Viewpoints of experts are thoroughly critiqued.

Analysis of Assumptions & Context
When presenting a position, demonstrate the ability to thoroughly analyze ones own and others assumptions, and the contexts within which those assumptions arise.
When presenting a position, the student is aware of the importance of assumptions, but sometimes confuses assumptions with mere assertions. The student can identify some contextual elements which give rise to assumptions, such as environmental, social and temporal factors.
When presenting a position, the student questions some assumptions, and identifies several contextual elements relating to those assumptions. May be more aware of others’ assumptions than one’s own (or vice versa).
When presenting a position, Identifies and interrogates one’s own assumptions, as well as those of others. Discusses relevant contextual elements relating to those assumptions.
Thoroughly (systematically and methodically) analyzes own and others’ assumptions when presenting a position. Presents and prioritizes all the relevant contextual elements relevant to those assumptions.

Students Position
Demonstrates imagination in developing a position (perspective, thesis/hypothesis), taking into account the complexities of an issue.
Specific position (perspective, thesis/hypothesis) is stated, but is simplistic and obvious. The complexities of the issue are mostly ignored.
Specific position (perspective, thesis/hypothesis) is indicative of some careful thought, and acknowledges some of the complexities of the issue.
Specific position (perspective, thesis/hypothesis demonstrates creativity. The complexities of the issue are fully elucidated.
The specific position (perspective, thesis/hypothesis) offered is imaginative, taking into account all the complexities of the issue. The position is novel and counter-intuitive.

Demonstrates the ability to synthesize others points of view within position (perspective, thesis/hypothesis) and to consider the limits of the position (perspective, thesis/hypothesis).
Others’ points of view are ignored in formulating the position. The limits of the position, to include its domain of applicability, are ignored.
Others’ points of view are acknowledged, but not analyzed with respect to the issue. The position’s domain of applicability is recognized as having limits, but those limits are not explored.
Others’ points of view that support the position are incorporated into the argument. Opposing points of view are either ignored or minimized. Some attempt is made to delimit the domain of the position.
Others’ points of view with respect to the position are acknowledged, and the extent to which they support or fail to support the position are clearly explained. If others’ points of view fail to support the position, those points of view are presented, analyzed and refuted. The domain of applicability is clearly delineated.

Conclusions
Demonstrates ability to logically formulate and present conclusions from that reflect students informed evaluation.
Conclusion is inconsistently tied to some of the information discussed; related outcomes (consequences and implications) are oversimplified.
Conclusion is logically tied to information, because information is chosen to fit the desired conclusion; some related outcomes (consequences and implications) are identified clearly.
Conclusion is logically tied to a range of information, including opposing viewpoints; related outcomes (consequences and implications) are identified clearly.
Conclusions and related outcomes (consequences and implications) are logical and reflect students informed evaluation and ability to place evidence and perspectives discussed in priority order.

Notes:

(1) Text in red: Measures taken directly, or with slight modification, from the AACU critical thinking value rubric (). Draft objectives were based on these measures

Suggested Solutions to the Healthcare Crisis essay help from professional writers

For this assignment please answer the following questions for the problem you previously identified:

Are there any solutions to the problem? Please explain.
Are some of the solutions already implemented in healthcare organizations? Please describe such existing attempts, programs, or interventions. Do they seem to be working, please compare and contrast the programs?
Do you think a good plan could be devised to address the problem? (you will further develop this plan in the SLP component)

Assignment Expectations

Length: This assignment should be between 2-3 pages (500-750 words) in length, excluding references.

References: At least two references should be included from academic sources (e.g. peer-reviewed journal articles).

Organization: Subheadings should be used to organize your paper

Format: APA format is recommended. While APA formatting of references is not a requirement, the references need to be presented in order using a standard citation style (APA, AMA, MLA etc). When material is copied verbatim from external sources, it MUST be enclosed in quotes. The references should be cited within the text and also listed at the end of the assignment in the References section. See Syllabus page for more information on APA format.

Grammar and Spelling: While no points are deducted, assignments are expected to adhere to standards guidelines of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and sentence syntax. Points may be deducted if grammar and spelling impact clarity.

Joseph F. Coates. (2004). The radical solution to rising health-care costs. Employment Relations Today, 31(2), 1-11.

Experts Suggest Solutions to the Healthcare Crisis. (1992). Management Review, 81(7), 20.

Robinson, F.. (2010). Tackling health inequalities. Practice Nurse, 39(5), 9-10.

HealthReform.Gov. Retrieved 3/2/2013 from

Kristen Starnes-Ott, Michael J Kremer. (2007). Recruitment and retention of nurse anesthesia faculty: Issues and strategies. AANA Journal,75(1), 13-6.

BHS365 SLP Assignment Expectations cheap mba definition essay help: cheap mba definition essay help

In BHS365, you were introduced to the concept of critical thinking, and were tasked with applying the first two steps in the process. In BHS414, you reinforced the concepts and steps applied in BHS365, by having you again apply those early steps, but then take the process one step further.

Identify and clarify an ethical dilemma associated with the chosen topic of your course project. To achieve this, the students will be expected to gather and evaluate relevant information (e.g., peer review and credible sources). Furthermore, the students will be asked to consider alternatives for addressing the dilemma and the implications of each. Finally, the students will be expected to choose and most appropriate alternative and describe its proposed implementation.

SLP Assignment Expectations

Length: This assignment should be between 2-3 pages (500-750 words) in length, excluding references.

References: At least two references should be included from academic sources (e.g. peer-reviewed journal articles).

Organization: Subheadings should be used to organize your paper

Format: APA format is recommended. While APA formatting of references is not a requirement, the references need to be presented in order using a standard citation style (APA, AMA, MLA etc). When material is copied verbatim from external sources, it MUST be enclosed in quotes. The references should be cited within the text and also listed at the end of the assignment in the References section. See Syllabus page for more information on APA format.

Grammar and Spelling: While no points are deducted, assignments are expected to adhere to standards guidelines of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and sentence syntax. Points may be deducted if grammar and spelling impact clarity.

Your paper will be evaluated based on the rubric criteria.

At the bottom of this page, there is a link to a writing rubric. The rubricWILL BE USED to assess the quality of your paper and assign a grade for this assignment. Please review it carefully before you begin this assignment.Your paper will be graded on the following attributes: organization, contextual awareness, knowledge of conventions, and appropriate use of sources and evidence. The point value for each attribute and what you’ll need to do in order to earn the maximum possible points on this assignment can be found in the writing rubric.

The purpose of using this rubric is to assist you in strengthening your written communication skills. As you know, this is a skill set that’s essential for establishing a successful career. If you have any questions regarding the expectations as outlined in the rubric, please don’t hesitate to bring them to my attention.

BHSH Writing Rubric

Objective
Weak
Marginal
Adequate
Strong

Organization
Demonstrate the ability to organize content logically, concisely, and in a manner appropriate to the assignment.
Little organizational control is apparent in the document.
Significant organizational flaws are apparent in the document.
Minor organizational flaws are apparent in the document.
Clear organizational strategy is apparent in the document.

Demonstrates the ability to support a central point or viewpoint throughout the document.
Insufficient elaboration and/or support (e.g., summaries, listings) in the document.
Limited elaboration and/or support in the document.
Support with some specific details and elaboration in the document.
Support through both specific details and elaboration apparent in the document.

Demonstrates the ability to effectively use transitions to aid the readers comprehension.
Ineffective attempt to provide transitions in the document.
Transitions provide some guidance to the reader of the document.
Transitions guide the reader through the text of the document.
Transitions actively contribute to the readers understanding of the text within the document.

Contextual Awareness
Demonstrate the ability to express ones intended purpose clearly and consistently in writing.
The purpose is not identified, is unclear, or inappropriate in the document.
Purpose is occasionally unclear in the document.
Clear purpose, but not consistently sustained throughout the document.
Clear purpose sustained throughout the document.

Demonstrate the ability to present information to varying audiences in such a way that the information is meaningful to that group.
Doesnt respond to the needs of the audience.
Limited sense of the needs of the audience.
Addresses the needs of the audience.
Effectively addresses the needs of the audience.

Demonstrate the ability to discover, assemble, evaluate, and explain competing ideas or explanations.
Competing ideas or explanations arent present in the document.
Limited inclusion and analysis of competing ideas or explanations, and no linkage back to the central theme or viewpoint in the document.
Effectively presents, explains, and analyzes competing ideas or explanations, but doesnt clearly relate back to the central theme or viewpoint in the document.
Effectively presents, explains, and analyzes competing ideas or explanations, and then relates them to the central theme or viewpoint in the document.

Demonstrate breadth and depth of understanding of the assigned topic in writing.
There is no clear focus on the central theme or viewpoint presented in the document. It isnt apparent that the author knows the topic of the document.
There is evidence of a broad based understanding of the central theme or viewpoint, but no evidence of an in-depth understanding in the document.
Provides a broad based understanding of the central theme or viewpoint, but few details or specificity is furnished in the document.
Clear evidence that the document contains a general and detailed understanding of the central theme or viewpoint with ample examples and appropriate evidentiary support.

Knowledge of Conventions
Demonstrate the use of standard written English.
Errors interfere with comprehension of the text within the document.
Numerous distracting errors within the document.
Few errors and no interference with the comprehension of content within the document.
Successful use of sophisticated grammar and mechanics within the document.

Demonstrate the ability to use appropriate sentence structure within the document.
Poor or repetitious sentence structure throughout the document.
Some use of appropriate sentence structure, not adequate to the purpose or audience.
Sentence structure is appropriate to purpose and audience.
Sentence structure effectively matches the purpose and audience.

Sources and Evidence
Demonstrate the ability to appropriately incorporate quality, relevant sources in support of ideas within the document.
Attempt to use sources which support ideas within the document.
Attempt to use credible and/or relevant sources to support ideas that are appropriate for the discipline and genre of the writing.
Consistent use of credible, relevant sources to support ideas that are situated within the discipline and genre of the writing.
Skillful use of high-quality, credible, relevant sources to develop ideas that are appropriate for the discipline and genre of the writing

Demonstrate the ability to properly cite in-text citations and record them on the list of references.
Failure to cite in-text citations in the document; references page not present.
Inconsistently cites in-text citations; fails to consistently list sources on the reference page.
Cites all in-text citations, but fails to use a consistent format; does list sources on reference page, but is inconsistent in format.
Accurately cites all in-text citations and consistently lists them on the reference page.

Demonstrate the ability to use ones own words in support of the text and not be overly dependent on outside sources.
Less than 70% of the text is in the authors own words.
70% to 79% of the text is in the authors own words.
80% to 89% of the text is in the authors own words.
90% or more of the text is in the authors own words.

Harold G. Koenig. (2000). Editorial: Exploring Psychobiological, Psychosocial, and Cultural Aspects of Patient Care: The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine in the 21st Century. International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 30(3), 195-202.

MOONEY, G.. (2009). Is it not time for health economists to rethink equity and access? Health Economics, Policy and Law, 4(2), 209-221.

Katharine V Smith. (2005). Ethical Issues RELATED TO HEALTH CARE: The Older Adult’s Perspective. Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 31(2), 32-9.

Norma Stephens Hannigan (2006). Blowing the whistle on healthcare fraud: Should I? Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners,18(11), 512-7.

Brad Beauvais, Rebecca Wells, Joseph Vasey, Jami L Dellifraine. (2007). Does Money Really Matter? The Effects of Fiscal Margin on Quality of Care in Military Treatment Facilities. Hospital Topics,85(3), 2-15.

Eco-Env- Paper -02 mba essay help

New Short paper-02 below topics four pages, no responses

Note: Guidelines for Submission: Module Five Short Paper must be three to four pages in length with double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, one-inch margins, use of three sources, and citations in APA format.

Read the Should the United States Stop All New Offshore Drilling for Oil? chapter fromTaking Sides: Clashing Views on Economic Issues.Highlight the analytical points and inferences within the article. Submit a report on how the analysis of policy has been done. Include what the focus is, what outcome is expected, and how this analysis is used in advocating for a certain policy among stakeholders. Classify your point of view and illustrate how one can arrive at the same conclusion using the same data, but under a different assumption.For additional details, please refer to the Module Five Short Paper Rubric document in the Assignment Guidelines and Rubrics section of the course.

400 words paper on problems associated with Material Safety Data Sheets argumentative essay help

1) With the adoption of GHS by OSHA, the problems associated with Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) in many different formats will be solved. What other problems with MSDSs are likely to remain despite the standardized formatting?

Your response must be at least 400 words in length.

2)Discuss how cultural and literacy issues can impact the effectiveness of a HazCom training program. Suggest ways that these issues can be addressed.

Your response must be at least 400 words in length.

Publications by safety professionals and organizations nursing essay help: nursing essay help

OSHA has identified falls as (36.5%) of hazards in construction.

Falls(36.5%)

********(I have attached 3 articles required from the online library)*********

The assignment is to write a research paper involving FALLS as a construction hazard. You may narrow your topic down to a more specific type of accident within the major category. For example, under falls, you could focus your research on falls from ladders. When writing the paper, consider the following questions:

1. What are the common causative factors?

2. What does data indicate?

3. What are the effective proven corrective measures?

Remember that a significant aspect of any research paper is the summary analysis by the writer of that research (in this case, you).

The submission must be aminimum of three pages in length, not including the title page or reference page.A minimum of three scholarly reference sources must be used from the Online Library.

Scholarly sources include:

peer-reviewed journal articles (Click here to access a webinar outlining peer-reviewed articles.)

safety reference books and textbooks, and

other publications by safety professionals and organizations (print or online).

Note that wikipedia.com, answers.com, ask.com, about.com, and similar broad-based Internet sites are not considered scholarly sources. Use government and professional safety-related sources, such as osha.gov., niosh.gov, asse.org, nsc.org, and nfpa.org. Contact your professor if you have any questions about the validity of a reference source. APA format is required. Be sure to use in text citations for direct quotes and paraphrased information.

Hazard Control Peer-Reviewed Assignment writing essay help

28 ProfessionalSafety AUGUST 2016 www.asse.org

Hazard Control Peer-Reviewed

Keeping Workers on the Ground By Albert Weaver III and Cynthia H. Sink

Fall injuries, both on the same level and to a lower level, remain among the most dis-abling injuries in the U.S. Researchers at Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety (2014) examined Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) injury data of all workplace injuries to determine which events caused an employee to miss 6 or more days of work, then ranked those events by total workers compensation costs. The results of their examina-

tion showed that the leading causes and direct costs of the most disabling work- place injuries in 2012 were:

1) overexertion involving an outside source;

2) falls on the same level; 3) struck by an object or equipment; 4) falls to a lower level. Falls to a lower level accounted for $5.12

billion in costs in 2012. According to Feder- al Highway Administration (FHWA, 2014) 2,643,567 million ton-miles of freight were transported in the U.S. during 2011 (a ton- mile is a single ton of goods that is trans- ported for 1 mile). Collecting the following data involving semis, tractor-trailers and tanker trucks due to falls to a lower level, BLS (2016) reports that between 2011 and 2013, 7,450 nonfatal occupational inju- ries and illnesses occurred involving days away from work and 44 fatalities. This is BLS category code 8421 including tanker trucks and flatbed trucks except straight trucks, logging trucks and car haulers.

It also excludes fire trucks, which are category 8425. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration defines semitrailer as any motor vehicle, other than a pole trailer, which is designed to be drawn by another mo- tor vehicle and is constructed so that some part of its weight rests upon the self-propelled towing motor ve- hicle (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations).

Cargo Tank Truck Falling Hazards When loading a cargo tanker, climbing on top to

observe the fill level creates a fall hazard. Adding to the possibility of having a fall, certain cargo can create hazardous gases or slick surfaces. According to Cargo Tank Risk Management Committee (CTRMC, 2014), the top 10 reasons (not ranked) that workers climb atop transportation tanks are to:

1) ensure security; 2) check equipment; 3) extract samples; 4) load/unload product; 5) assess liquid content levels; 6) initiate air unloading or vapor recovery; 7) perform maintenance and inspections; 8) wash tanks; 9) remove snow; 10) discharge heel (any material remaining in a

tank following unloading, delivery or discharge of the transported cargo).

Case Studies The following case studies exemplify falls from

tanker trucks where the cargo transported fell out- side DOT regulations for gauges on tankers.

Albert Weaver III, CSP, is president of L.A. Weaver Co. Inc., an occupational and environmental consultancy. He holds an under- graduate degree from Western Carolina University and an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University, where he was a NIOSH fellowship recipient. Weaver was an adjunct faculty member for 2 years and a lecturer for the engineering extension for 20 years. He is a 40-year professional member of ASSEs North Caro- lina Chapter, which he has served twice as president. In addition, he is member of the Societys Environmental Practice Specialty, for

which he was a founding member and past administrator, and a past administrator of the Consultants Practice Specialty.

Cynthia H. Sink is an engineering intern at L.A. Weaver Co. Inc. She is a senior in the Industrial and Systems Engineering program at North Carolina State University with an anticipated graduation date of 2016. Prior to this, she worked for several large manufacturing and service firms in North Carolina and Virginia.

In BrIef Working on top of cargo tankers presents risks such as falling and exposure to hazardous materials. Using a fill-level gauge to determine the fill level can eliminate the need for personnel to be on top of a cargo tanker. Considerations for in- stalling a fill-level gauge include pricing, safety and applicability to the material being transported. With the cost of fill-level gauges starting at $40, their addition to cargo tankers increases worker safety with- out placing an undue cost burden on the transporter.

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Falls From Cargo Tankers

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www.asse.org AUGUST 2016 ProfessionalSafety 29

The addition of a fill-level gauge to a cargo tanker

increases the safety of the

workers filling the tank without placing an undue cost burden on the transporter.

028_035_F1Wea_0816.indd 29 7/21/16 4:24 PM

30 ProfessionalSafety AUGUST 2016 www.asse.org

Case Study #1 During the process of loading blood and discarded

turkey parts at a turkey processing plant, the driver climbed the truck-mounted ladder on the side of the truck to check the fill level of the blood tank as it was being loaded. The driver needed to stand on top of the truck to hold onto the blood pipe while looking down into the tank to determine when it was full or if the weight limit had been reached. The truck was not equipped with a fill gauge.

When the tank was full, he instructed a processing plant employee to cut off the blood flow into the tank. After bending over the tank as if he were sick, he fell approximately 10 ft onto a concrete floor, striking his head. He died 2 days later. The autopsy report noted that the cause of death was aspiration pneumonia with contributing causes of blunt force trauma to the head.

The decedent was working in an environment with the potential of producing hydrogen sulfide. Although it is a recognized hazard in the meat processing in- dustry, it is unknown whether the processing plant personnel involved in the loading process or the driv- er who was fatally injured knew of the hazard.

Case Study #2 A wastewater management employee at a hog

processing plant was transferring hog waste sludge containing decayed and fermented pig parts, urine, feces, fat, grease and hair from an overhead stor- age tank to a tanker truck for shipment off-site. After starting the gravity flow of the waste into the tanker, the employee remained on top of the tanker truck. In accordance with company policy, he was wear-

ing a personal fall arrest system (PFAS) anchored overhead. The transport company was aware of the possible production of hydrogen sulfide gas by the anaerobic breakdown of waste.

Due to the cool outside temperature and the warmth of the sludge being loaded, a thick fog was generated, hindering visibility. Within minutes of start- ing the loading process, the truck driver noticed a lack of motion by the employee on top of the tank- er. The driver found the employee motionless and slumped over, his head in the tankers hatch open- ing and the sludge still running. Another worker noted that employees were unhooking the harness so that they could bend over the hatch opening to check the tank fill level. The wastewater employee suffered a fa- tal injury from inhalation of hydrogen sulfide gas. The truck was not equipped with a fill gauge.

Case Study #3 A fuel oil tank truck delivery employee was loading

fuel at a transfer station. The truck held approximately 3,200 gallons, the typical size for home delivery vehi- cles. The employee had parked his tank truck beside the fuel loading rack at the oil company and climbed the steps of a 48-in.-high platform. After removing the tank hatch and setting the downspout into the tank to load fuel oil, the driver climbed to the top of the fuel truck and onto the fuel spill reservoir/platform to observe the filling process.

After an unusually long period, plant workers no- ticed the truck still at the platform. After searching the truck, workers found the delivery employee in the drivers side cab of his truck, leaning against the

Gauge Types Quick Reference

Type Physical basis/principle Advantages Constraints/limitations Cost range Sight eye (type of sight glass)

Visual indication Simplicity; can retrofit Volume known only to level visible; may need cleaning after each use; subject to breakage; should carry a spare glass.

$40 for 5-in. diameter part plus cost to install

Threaded rod gauge

Visual indication Simplicity; can retrofit Worker must be at cargo tanker opening to see the fill level.

$30 for nuts, fender washer, and threaded rod plus cost to install

Sight tube Hydrostatic head Simplicity; can retrofit; can manufacture with parts from plumbing supply store

Subject to breakage, should install with a cut-off valve; viscosity is an issue, may clog with thicker substances; may freeze with certain substances in cold weather.

$170 for materials plus labor to assemble and install

Float gauge Visual indication Simplicity; can retrofit Certain product characteristics, such as a sticky coating forming on the float, can make this gauge inaccurate.

$230 for part plus cost to install

Load cell (a.k.a. strain gauge device)

Essentially a mechanical support member or bracket equipped with one or more sensors that detect small distortions in the support member

Weighing system requirements must be a paramount consideration throughout initial vessel support and piping design, or performance is quickly degraded (Hambrice & Hopper, 2004).

Cost; not conducive to retrofitting; vessel support structure and connecting piping must be designed around requirements of floating substructure; need to know specific gravity of liquid hauling.

$10,000

Ultrasonic level sensor

Measure the time required for a sound wave to travel from the emitter to the objects surface and return to the detector

Not subject to deterioration due to corrosive, viscous, coating and scaling liquids; accuracy.

Do not work well with liquids with foam, heavy vapor, turbulence.

$760 plus cost to install

Radar Uses guided wave radar to measure the liquid level or volume in mobile tanks

Precise; for bulk solids, slurries, and opaque liquids such as dirty sumps, milk and liquid styrene, even in vapor and foam; can retrofit; ideal for vessels with numerous obstructions.

Cost $1,393

Table 1

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www.asse.org AUGUST 2016 ProfessionalSafety 31

glass, bleeding and incoherent. Hair and blood on the ground on the passenger side of the truck indicated the site of the employees landing after falling from the top of the truck. The employee suffered a broken left shoulder, broken ribs, broken back and head injuries.

A threaded rod with brass washers acting as a fill gauge (Figure 1 shows an exemplar) mounted to the inside of the hatch allowed the employee to view the fill level while standing on the loading platform (load- ing rack). The side of the truck, pulled alongside the loading platform, acted as a barrier, which would have protected him from falling from the platform. However, the employee claimed he was too short to see the gauge while standing on the platform, so he climbed on top of the truck for a better view.

In these case studies, the injuries occurred after the employee climbed onto the cargo tanker to de- termine the fill level. Knowing the fill level of the tank is important for safety. Although this article discusses the types of gauges that could be used to avoid the aboveground exposure, other usual and customary injury prevention controls could be employed, such as pretask assessments for evalua- tion of confined space hazards, respiratory hazard assessments, use of personal and area hydrogen sulfide monitoring, personal worker-down alarm systems, automatic fill line shut-off technologies and hermetical seals at the junction of the waste discharge and tank hatch openings.

Although not applicable to the type of tank trucks and loading racks in these three cases, other loss prevention technologies are employed at some tank loading facilities. Railings can be constructed that surround the work area on the top of the tank. Gantry systems, designed for the type of cargo tankers used, can be moveable or permanently in- stalled to prevent falls. Cargo tankers can have cat- walks or tank top walkways with railings installed to prevent falls, and overhead anchored fall arrest systems can be used to reduce the severity of falls.

Determining Fill Levels in Tank Trucks Various types of systems are used to determine

the fill level of tankers of which the gauges cov- ered here are only part. More complex methods in- clude metering skids, weight systems and bottom

loading. Composed of one or more flowmeters, a metering skid is a framed device on which various assemblies are installed to aid in custody transfer, that is gallons of product (Petropedia, 2016).

Top loading and bottom loading involve tank- ers being filled at loading gantries either by loading from the top or from the bottom, with or without vapor recovery systems. Top loading uses an ar- ticulating arm inserted into the tank compartment through a hatch on top of the truck. A long fill pipe extends to the bottom of the compartment. Liquid level rapidly covers the bottom opening of the fill pipe resulting in low vapor generation. Bot- tom loading uses a hose or flexible arm attached to the bottom of the tanker. Vapor generation is minimized by the introduction of liquid through the bottom of the tanker compartment (BP Safety Group, 2008).

Equipping tankers or the source of the cargo with an automatic shut-off valve allows the opera- tor to monitor the fill level from the ground. Auto- matic shut-off technology has been in use since the early 1940s (U.S. Patent No. US2316934 A, 1943) and has been used in many different industries. By using an automatic shut-off system, the worker no longer needs to stand on top of the tanker while the tank is filling.

Automatic shut-off valves work with an electronic gauging system. The gauge measures the fill level and when the tank is filled to a predetermined level, the filling system automatically shuts off (W. Graham, personal communication, July 7, 2014). The system requires companies to alter the filling process by us- ing a power take off (PTO) pump to fill the tankers rather than gravity. The PTO pump is powered from the running engine of the tanker truck. Another type of system is an overflow prevention system that uses a gauging system to control the automatic shut off. Once the liquid level reaches the desired shut off point, the engine will automatically turn off, thus re- moving the power to the pump. This eliminates the need for workers to be on top of the tanker to manu- ally shut off a filling mechanism.

Gauges Reviewed Keeping personnel on the ground while load-

ing can be facilitated by the use of fill-level gauges. Many types of gauges ranging in price and com- plexity are available. Cargo tankers can be retro- fitted with low-tech and less expensive gauges, or high-tech gauges that provide greater accuracy

Figure 2

Sight Eye Sight eyes

Figure 1

Threaded Rod Threaded rod gauge

Brass fill-level indicators

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32 ProfessionalSafety AUGUST 2016 www.asse.org

and convenience. Following are several examples of these gauges. Table 1 (p. 30) lists common types of gauges and their characteristics.

Sight Eye One of the simplest and lowest cost gauges is

a sight eye gauge. This is a glass or plastic bowl design with an aluminum or metal framework to support the bowl that can be retrofitted to a cargo tanker (Figure 2, p. 31). The bowl of the sight eye provides a visual indication of the fluid level in the tank. Sight eyes are usually attached to the cargo tank at the rear of the tank where the surface of the tank is less curved. A hole is cut into the cargo tank the size of the circumference of the sight eye base, then the sight eye is welded to the cargo tank.

Typically three sight eyes are used to indicate a low, medium and maximum level in the cargo tank by installing them at the different corresponding heights. Once installed, the sight eyes can be used to view the fluid level in a tanker without having to access the top of the tanker.

The cost of a 5-in. sight eye is approximately $40 plus the cost of installation. Fill-level informa- tion received from the sight eyes is limited since the volume is known only to the extent of the level of the sight eye. The bowl can break or become dirty making the fill level no longer visible. Also, the consistency of the liquid must be such that the bowl can fill. A semiliquid substance such as a sludge with large semisolids may block the 5-in. bowl and the bowl may not fill correctly.

A sight eye should not be confused with a sight glass. A sight glass is a glass tube, or a glass-faced section of a process line, used for sighting liquid levels or taking manometer readings.

Sight Tube Another inexpensive liquid fill-level gauge for

cargo tankers is a sight tube. A sight tube, like the one shown in Figure 3, is a glass tube used for sight- ing liquid levels or taking manometer readings. As the liquid level in a vessel rises or falls the liquid in the glass tube will also rise or fall. The gauges are made of glass, plastic or combination of the two materials (Tomsic & Hodder, 2000).

Sight tubes are simple and can be retrofitted to

cargo tankers. As the liquid fills the tanker, the sight tube will maintain the same level of fluid, thus giv- ing a visual indicator of the tankers fill level (Figure 4). Parts to assemble a sight tube cost approximately $170; installation, cutting holes into the cargo tank, welding the pipe-fittings and assembling the parts are additional costs. Use of a sight tube is ham- pered by severe cold weather, which may cause the contents of the tube to freeze. Also viscosity of the liquid may be an issue. If the liquid is too thick or contains semisolids, it may not fill the tube. Another concern is the gauges ability to withstand impact; since the tube stands out or away from the tank, the tube is subject to breaking.

Threaded Rod A threaded rod gauge is also used in some cargo

tank trucks. The gauge is a threaded rod welded to the top lip of the tank hatch with brass or other nonspark- ing, nonferrous metal washers threaded onto the rod at the height(s) the cargo is to be loaded (Figure 1, p. 31).

Float Gauge Similarly low tech, a float gauge can be retrofitted to

a cargo tank. Floats are buoyed on the liquids surface; therefore, the density of the float must be less than the density of the liquid. The position of the float is ob- served visually by an indicator arm, which is external to the tank. A float gauge consists of a ball float at the end of a rod (Figure 5). The rod is placed through the side of a cargo tank and an arrow is attached to the rods exterior end. As the liquid level rises, so does the float and the arrow attached to the exterior end of the float, indicating the tankers fill level. Float gauges cost approximately $230 plus installation. Liquids that may form a sticky coating on the float, such as a resin, could interfere with the accuracy of the gauge (Emerson Pro- cess Management, 2006).

Load Cells Alternatively, load cells are complex and ex-

pensive, but provide greater accuracy when deter- mining the fill volume (Figure 6). As explained by Webster and Eren (2014), The strain-gauge load cell consists of a structure that elastically deforms when subjected to a force and a strain-gauge net- work that produces an electric signal proportional to this deformation (pp. 41-44). Load cells, also known as strain gauges, are essentially sensors that

Figure 3

Sight Tube Tube clamped with radiator clamps to front of trailer

Clear tubing

Figure 4

Sight Tube Clear sight tube

DANGER Relieve all tank pressure before opening cover

DANGER Confined Space

www.asse.org AUGUST 2016 ProfessionalSafety 33

measure the strain or distortions of the framework supporting the tank (Hambrice & Hopper, 2004). Not conducive to retrofitting, load cell systems must be part of the vessel support and piping de- sign. Also, the specific gravity of the liquid cargo must be known to calibrate the system. Load cells cost approximately $10,000.

Similar to using a load cell, the amount of fill can be determined by weight. Tanker trucks can be weighed empty and then weighed full. A gallon es- timate can be made by subtracting the before weight from the after weight and using a one-pound-per- gallon conversion. This can be done with traditional truck scales or portable truck scales.

Ultrasonic Level Transmitters Ultrasonic level sensors measure the time re-

quired for a sound wave to travel from the emitter to the objects surface and return to the detector (Figure 7). Then the information is sent to a receiv- er located in the cab of the truck. By using sound waves, the ultrasonic level sensors are not subject to deterioration due to corrosivity, viscosity, or being coated or scaled by liquids as would a float gauge or sight tube. Liquids with foam, heavy va- por or turbulence do not work well with ultrasonic level sensors since those characteristics can absorb and/or deflect away a substantial portion of the re- turn signal (Flowline, 2016).

Guided Wave Radar First used in the early 1990s for measuring the

level of liquids, guided wave radar level sensors uti- lize a continuously suspended cable or rod (wave guide) inside the cargo tank. Guided wave radar may also be known as micro-impulse radar.

Guided wave radar level sensors operate by gen- erating electromagnetic energy of approximately 1 GHz, which is at the low end of what is consid- ered by RF engineering to be microwaves. The radar energy pulses are guided toward the surface of the liquid through a suspended cable or rod that runs the length of the desired measuring range. Using the re- flected radar pulses and time-of-flight, guided wave radar units measure the empty space (Lewis, 2012).

Costs & Benefits The expenditure to fit a cargo tanker with a fill-

level gauge is offset by the safety of keeping per- sonnel on the ground, away from noxious and toxic contaminants, and possible injury. Fluids need not be toxic to create a hazard. Overfilling can create slippery surfaces and cause exposure to contami- nants, while spills that feed insects and vermin can spread disease at food plants.

OSHA (2016) states that by implementing an ef- fective safety and health management system, em- ployers may expect to significantly reduce injuries and illnesses and thus reduce the associated costs. ASSE (2002) states, There is a direct positive cor- relation between investment in safety, health and environmental performance and its subsequent re- turn on investment. Employers can also benefit in avoiding costly litigation. Between 2013 and 2015, of the nine work injury lawsuits reported by North Carolina Lawyers Weekly (2016), the average set- tlement reached was $1.6 million.

Another incentive to protect workers is the mem- orandum of understanding (MOU) between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and OSHA. The MOU moves the OSH Act into DOJs Environment and Natural Resource Division and that divisions Envi- ronmental Crimes Section. The U.S. Attorneys of- fices works with OSHA to investigate and prosecute worker endangerment violations (Smith, 2015). Not only could an incident be a financial cost to a com-

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Float Gauge Float gauge

Fill-level indicators

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Ultrasonic level transmitter

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34 ProfessionalSafety AUGUST 2016 www.asse.org

pany, it could also mean criminal charges for an owner. OSHA Administrator David Michaels notes that employers now face prison terms of 25 years instead of 6 months if convicted of crimes that con- tribute to employee fatalities.

Smith (2015) notes that one firms owner was charged in June 2015 with four counts of making false statements, one count of obstruction of justice and one count of willfully violating an OSHA regu- lation causing death to an employee. He pleaded guilty to all charges and faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison, 3 years of supervised release, $1.5 million in fines and a $510 special assessment for the criminal conviction.

The cost for installing gauges on tank trucks range from approximately $40 for sight eyes and sight tubes to about $10,000 for load level gauges (Table 1). Even the $10,000 more sophisticated gauges are substan- tially less than the cost for litigated incidents.

DOT Guidance Following are details of the requirements under

DOT for which gauges are required. Using cargo tankers for bulk transport presents hazards to per- sonnel while loading and unloading, including ex- posure to confined spaces and falling, among other risks. Bulk packaging is defined by DOT in 49 CFR 171.8 (transportation regulations) as a packaging, other than a vessel or a barge, including a transport vehicle or freight container, in which hazardous materials are loaded with no intermediate form of containment. Defined by volume, it has:

1) maximum capacity greater than 450 L (119 gallons) as a receptacle for a liquid;

2) maximum net mass greater than 400 kg (882 lb) and a maximum capacity greater than 450 L (119 gallons) as a receptacle for a solid; or

3) water capacity greater than 454 kg (1,000 lb) as a receptacle for a gas.

Cargo tankers have manufacturing designs, gauges and loading procedures specified by DOT regulations in 49 CFR as well as American Society of Mechanical Engineers technical documents and other consensus standards. Tank specifications are given based on the material being transported. Some cargo tank trucks are not required by DOT to have fill-level gauges. Typi- cally, these vehicles haul nonhazardous materials and even though the cargo may be considered nonhazard- ous, the process of loading, unloading and hauling with a cargo tanker presents hazards. As noted in the case studies, one hazard is falling from the top of the cargo tanker. Eliminating the need to be on top of the cargo tanker reduces this risk and improves worker safety. For the type of tanker that DOT specifies for a specific material, fill-level gauge specifications for the different

type of cargo tanks also depend on the type of mate- rial transported. Fill-level gauges offer the opportunity to keep workers on the ground and should be used re- gardless of regulatory mandates to employ them.

The following discussion and example explain the sequential steps needed to determine the type of tanker and fill gauge necessary for DOT-defined haz- ardous materials. The type of tanker and gauge that can be used is listed in the hazardous materials table in 49 CFR 172.101. The bulk transport column (8C) of that table lists the type of cargo tanker that can be used for transport, with the three digits listed desig- nating the appropriate section of part 173 (Figure 8).

Once the type of cargo tanker that can be used is de- termined, then the specifications of the gauge needed can be found under the standards for that type of tank- er. As an example, hexafluoropropylene compressed orrefrigerant gas R 1216, the standards listed for bulk transport are 49 CFR 173.314 and 173.315. The latter lists an MC-331-type cargo tanker, which is primarily for transportation of compressed gases.

Next, the type of gauge must be determined for that type of cargo tanker. A search of the trans- portation code gives 49 CFR 178.337-14, Gaug- ing Devices, and addresses the requirements. That subchapter references 49 CFR 173.315(h), which is a listing for the different compressed gases and the gauging device permitted for filling purposes.

For an MC 338, which is an insulated cargo tank motor vehicle, the DOT specification in 49 CFR 178.338-14 for gauging devices requires that the tanker have an accurate fixed-length dip tube, fixed trycock line or differential pressure liquid level gauge that indicates the maximum permitted level, which is 2% outage below the inlet of the pressure control valve or pressure relief valve and with a de- sign pressure at least that of the tank for the prima- ry control for filling. The standard requires that the gauge be designed and installed to accurately indi- cate the maximum filling level at the point midway of the tank both longitudinally and laterally.

Section 178.345 includes the general design and construction requirements applicable to specifica- tion DOT 406, DOT 407 and DOT 412 cargo tank motor vehicles. Section 178.345-12 specifies for gauging devices that:

Each cargo tank, except a cargo tank intended to be filled by weight, must be equipped with a gauging device that indicates the maximum per- mitted liquid level to within 0.5% of the nominal capacity as measured by volume or liquid level. Gauge glasses are not permitted.

A gauge glass is a glass or plastic tube for mea- suring liquid level in a tank or pressure vessel, usu- ally by direct sight (Tomsic & Hodder, 2000).

Figure 8: Example using DOT hazard-

ous materials table (excerpt). For hexafluoropropyl- ene compressed or refrigerant gas

R 1216, 49 CFR 173.314 or 49 CFR 173.315 bulk cargo

tanker standards would apply.

Figure 8

Example Using DOT Hazardous Materials Table

Symbols

Hazardous materials descriptions and proper shipping names

Hazard class or Division

Identification Numbers PG

Label Codes

Special provisions (172.102)

(8) (9) (10) Vessel stowage

Packaging (173.***)

Quantity limitations (see 173.27 and 175.75)

Location Other Exceptions Non- bulk Bulk

Passenger aircraft/rail

Cargo aircraft only

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8A) (8B) (8C) (9A) (9B) (10A) (10B) Hexafluoropropylene

compressed or Refrigerant gas R 1216

2.2 UN1858 2.2 T50 306 304 314, 315

75 kg 150 kg A

www.asse.org AUGUST 2016 ProfessionalSafety 35

Conclusion Cargo tank owners/operators should install

gauges to keep workers grounded, whether or not doing so is mandated by DOT or other regulations. Not only do gauges and other fill-level devices keep workers safe, but they also decrease the cost associ- ated with injuries while delivering a positive return on investment. The type of gauge to use may be in part a financial decision but it should also be based on the type of load to be transported. Gauge suppli- ers can provide selection guidance as well as advice on the efficacy of the fit between the cargo and the gauge or sensor. Another source of feedback is firms that use the gauge with a similar cargo. PS

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Fill-level gauges offer the opportu- nity to keep workers on the ground and should be used regardless of regulatory mandates to employ them.

Copyright of Professional Safety is the property of American Society of Safety Engineers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Evaluating Credible And Scholarly Scientific Sources summary and response essay help: summary and response essay help

The purpose of this assignment is to help you distinguish between different types of information sources and evaluate sources of information for credibility. Scientists and scholars use information from a variety of sources, some of them scholarly journal articles that have been, and others credible websites, magazines, and news sources. While all scholarly sources are considered credible, most credible sources you will encounter in your daily life are not actually scholarly. It is important to view information with a critical eye, as there is a lot of misinformation from bunk sources out there. If you do not believe this, just navigate to Google in your Internet browser, type in the words, We never went to the Moon, and see what you find. Did you know that the Moon may be made of cheese? Exactly what kind, however, remains a mystery (Uncyclopedia.wikia.com, 2016).

In order to complete this assignment, you will need to follow the links provided on theto view three numbered sources. For each source, complete a two-page questionnaire. When you have finished, you will have identified which of three sources is not credible, which sources are credible, and which source is also scholarly.

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Uncyclopedia.wikia.com (2016). Is the Moon made of cheese? Retrieved from

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Green Energy in Canada Discussion cheap essay help: cheap essay help

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discussing the relationship between costs and pricing of green energy and its effect on

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pricing of green energy and its effect on stakeholders through the use of similar media

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Note: Guidelines for Submission: four pages Paper in length with double spacing, 12-point Times New

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Note: Green Energy in Canada: Nice Try, Shame About the Price (read below web. Site.

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Reading and Resources

Article: Green Energy in Canada: Nice Try, Shame About the Price

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Journals: The following is a collection of journals that can be used for research purposes on environmental economic

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Wall Street Journal

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Businessweek

Harvard Business Review

Library Article: Regulatory Enforcement and Compliance: Examining Danish Agro-environmental

Policy (Optional)

This case is about offshore drilling. The article also reviews liability laws, property rights, voluntary action, and

emissions. It shows an interpretation of models and appraises the connection between analysis and policy.

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NEW; Eco-env-03 two pages discussions and followed by two responses choose state Maryland my state. Thanks

Pick a nationwide story and a statewide story (not necessarily from the state where you live) from The Economist, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Businessweek, or Harvard Business Review. Analyze the differences between federal and state governments in dealing with environmental issues.

NEW; Eco

–

env

–

03 two pages discussions and followed by two responses choose state

Maryland my

state. Thanks

Pick a nationwide story and a statewide story (not necessarily from the state where you

live) from The Economist, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Bu

sinessweek, or Harvard

Business Review. Analyze the differences between federal and state governments in

dealing with environmental

issues

.

NEW; Eco-env-03 two pages discussions and followed by two responses choose state

Maryland my state. Thanks

Pick a nationwide story and a statewide story (not necessarily from the state where you

live) from The Economist, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Businessweek, or Harvard

Business Review. Analyze the differences between federal and state governments in

dealing with environmental issues.

SLP Assignment Expectations Overview essay help service: essay help service

For this component of the SLP please explain theimplications of this problem for the stakeholdersof the organization (be sure to compare and contrast the implications for the different stakeholders). Among these, you are asked to give special attention to patients.

SLP Assignment Expectations

Length: This assignment should be between 2-3 pages (500-750 words) in length, excluding references.

References: At least two references should be included from academic sources (e.g. peer-reviewed journal articles).

Organization: Subheadings should be used to organize your paper

Format: APA format is recommended. While APA formatting of references is not a requirement, the references need to be presented in order using a standard citation style (APA, AMA, MLA etc). When material is copied verbatim from external sources, it MUST be enclosed in quotes. The references should be cited within the text and also listed at the end of the assignment in the References section. See Syllabus page for more information on APA format.

Grammar and Spelling: While no points are deducted, assignments are expected to adhere to standards guidelines of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and sentence syntax. Points may be deducted if grammar and spelling impact clarity.

EVOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM

Gillian Fairfield, David J Hunter, David Mechanic, & Flemming Rosleff. (1997). Managed care: Implications of managed care for health systems, clinicians, and patients. British Medical Journal, 314(7098), 1895-8.

Maciosek, Michael V. (1994). Causes of rising health care costs and the implications of r. Illinois Business Review, 51(3), 6.

Foy A, Stransky B (2009). Understanding the Cause of Health Care Inflation. American Thinker. Retrieved 3/2/2013 fromunderstanding_the_cause_of_hea.html

Understanding the Cause of Health Care Inflation my assignment essay help

For this case your are asked to identifypotential causes for the problem you began addressing in module 1, critically analyze the causes and explain how you would go about assessing these causes in the context of a specific organization. Again, you are asked to refer to practice but also integrate literature that deals with this issue and the knowledge you acquired in the previous courses in the BSHS program.

Assignment Expectations

Length: This assignment should be between 2-3 pages (500-750 words) in length, excluding references.

References: At least two references should be included from academic sources (e.g. peer-reviewed journal articles).

Organization: Subheadings should be used to organize your paper

Format: APA format is recommended. While APA formatting of references is not a requirement, the references need to be presented in order using a standard citation style (APA, AMA, MLA etc). When material is copied verbatim from external sources, it MUST be enclosed in quotes. The references should be cited within the text and also listed at the end of the assignment in the References section. See Syllabus page for more information on APA format.

You will be expected to provide a scholarly basis for your response. Your opinions should be justified with evidence from the literature. References should be cited properly in the text of your essay, as well as at the end. Several scholarly references should be cited for this assignment. Please limit your response to 3 pages maximum

EVOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM

Gillian Fairfield, David J Hunter, David Mechanic, & Flemming Rosleff. (1997). Managed care: Implications of managed care for health systems, clinicians, and patients. British Medical Journal, 314(7098), 1895-8.

Maciosek, Michael V. (1994). Causes of rising health care costs and the implications of r. Illinois Business Review, 51(3), 6.

Foy A, Stransky B (2009). Understanding the Cause of Health Care Inflation. American Thinker. Retrieved 3/2/2013 from

Events and Causal Factors Chart Project english essay help

Unit IV Assignment

Events and Causal Factors Chart Project

Read the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) investigation report of the 2007 propane explosion at the Little General Store

in Ghent, WV. The final report can be read/downloaded at the following link:

http://www.csb.gov/assets/1/19/CSBFinalReportLittleGeneral.pdf

Additional information on the incident, including a video summary, can be found at the following link:

http://www.csb.gov/little-general-store-propane-explosion/

Complete the assignment as detailed below.

Part I: From the information in the report, create a chart listing events and causal factors for the incident in Microsoft

Word, Open Office, or a similar word processing software. If you choose to use a program other than Microsoft Word, be

sure to save and submit the document as a Microsoft Word document (i.e., .doc, .docx). The objective of this project is to

provide you with an opportunity to use this important and very practical analytical tool. The chart does not have to be

infinitely detailed, but the key sequence of events should be charted as should the key conditions surrounding the events.

Keep in mind that the purpose of an events and causal factors chart is to aid in identifying which conditions could be

causal factors.

Use the charting procedures on pages 7276 of your textbook to help you with this assignment. In addition, refer to the

example events and causal factors (ECF) chart in the Unit IV Lesson for an example of this type of chart.

Part II: On a separate page, discuss the potential causal factors that are revealed in the analysis. How do these causal

factors compare to the causal factors found in the CSBs investigation report? Do you think more analysis is needed? This

part of the assignment should be a minimum of one page in length.

Upload Parts I and II as a single document. For Part II of the assignment, you should use academic sources to support

your thoughts. Any outside sources used, including the sources mentioned in the assignment, must be cited using APA

format and must be included on a references page.

Useful hints: In Microsoft Word, you can use parentheses for events (events), square brackets for conditions [conditions],

and brackets for the accident {accident}; you may also use a similar convention, such as color-coded text or the shapes

that are available within Microsoft Word. Whatever convention you use, be sure you provide some kind of key.

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BOS 4601 Application of accident investigation techniques college essay help online

BOS 4601, Accident Investigation 1

Course Learning Outcomes for Unit IV Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

3. Apply accident investigation techniques to realistic case study scenarios. 3.1 Develop an events and causal factors analysis chart.

4. Evaluate analytical processes commonly used in accident investigations.

Reading Assignment Chapter 6: The Analytical Process Chapter 7: Events and Causal Factors Analysis Buys, J. R., & Clark, J. L. (1995). Events and causal factors analysis. Retrieved from

https://www.wecc.biz/Administrative/2014HPWGWorkshop2EventsandCa usalFactorsCharting.pdf

In order to access the resource below, you must first log into the myCSU Student Portal and access the Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Reference Center database within the CSU Online Library. Kletz, T. (2012). Missed opportunities in accident investigation. Loss Prevention Bulletin, 2012(227), 6-9.

Unit Lesson Imagine that you are a part of an investigation team that has completed the gathering of evidence related to an accident. You have witness interviews; photographs and diagrams of the scene; and mountains of paper that represent policies, procedures, and training. How do you make sense of all of this information? In the previous unit, we said that accident investigation is a three step processgain knowledge, analyze the knowledge, and develop corrective actions. Gathering evidence is a part of the gaining knowledge step, helping us understand what happened. However, the evidence by itself does not get us very far. We need to organize it in some fashion so that we can move from what happened to why it happened. An events and causal factors (ECF) chart is a good first step in making the transition to analysis. Much like accident investigation itself, creating the ECF chart is a sequential process. The first step is to define the accident sequence. Once the sequence of events is known, we look for conditions that are related to each event. At this point, we are not identifying causal factors but, rather, are simply relating conditions to events. Once all events and conditions are charted, we can use any additional evidence to validate all of the facts. The sequence can be changed, and conditions can be added or deleted as the evidence is further examined. Only when the chart is completed and verified can we begin to analyze conditions to determine causal factors. Now, it may be helpful to look at an example of an accident sequence. Here is what we know: On January 2, 2016, at 5:34 a.m., Sam, the night maintenance technician, noticed a leak in the water pipe in the valve department. The valve had been leaking for four months, but because a maintenance request had not been submitted, the problem was not fixed. Sam was about to clock out at 5:40 a.m. and decided to leave a note for Mary, the first shift technician, to mop up the area. At 5:53 a.m., an air horn was sounded for everyone to respond to an area. As workers arrived, they noted that Bob (another employee) was lying in a

UNIT IV STUDY GUIDE

Events and Causal

Factors Charting

BOS 4601, Accident Investigation 2

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE

Title

pool of water. It was very obvious to everyone that Bobs leg was broken. An ambulance was called, and, at 6:00 a.m., Bob was transported to the hospital. During the investigation, it was learned that Sam had noted the water but decided not to clean the area immediately. Sam left a note at the desk at 5:41 a.m. and departed the area. Mary was supposed to clock in at 5:40 a.m., but she called her supervisor, Tom, at 5:33 a.m.; she was unable to talk to him, so she left a message that she would be arriving at 6:00 a.m. since she was running late. Tom, the supervisor, also called at 5:33 a.m., and he left a message for Mary, saying that he was running 15 minutes late. Mary, who arrived at 5:53 a.m., heard the alert horns and responded to the accident. First, we chart the known events. Note that the two phone calls are charted as events occurring simultaneously. We could also chart some events that did not occur, such as Sam not cleaning up the spill (Oakley, 2012). There could also be assumed events, such as Bob slipping in the water and falling. The level of detail is up to the investigator, but you may find that more detail results in fewer missed causes. To see an example of an ECF timeline of events chart for this incident, click here. The next step is to add conditions that are applicable to the events. Once these are charted, causal factors begin to emerge. At first glance, we can see that the failure of the night maintenance technician to clean up the spill was a likely causal factor. It certainly was a factor, and without the chart, we might be tempted identify it as the sole cause. To see an example of an ECF events and conditions chart for this incident, click here. Within a safety program, authority implies control and would reflect the ability to provide direction, apply discipline, and allocate resources. Responsibility implies that something has been assigned or tasked, and the expectation is that you will complete it. Accountability is the application of consequences (good or bad) for actions taken or not taken under the assigned responsibility (Manuele, 2014). It is helpful to think of causal factors in terms of accountability. According to Oakley (2012), the four levels of accountability are as follows:

Worker or equipment level: The failure to clean up the spill and not posting a wet floor sign certainly fall within the responsibility of the night maintenance worker.

Supervisor level: The communication failures between the supervisor and the other employees involved deserve more investigation, as do the supervisors policies on turnovers from one shift to the next.

Management level: Upper management should be held accountable for allowing the leak to remain uncorrected for four months. Some of this responsibility may be shared with the supervisor.

Corporate level: The safety culture of an organization that allows leaks to go unrepaired and has not established clear policies for safety management needs further investigation.

The chart can also reveal good things. The time between the response team being called and the transportation to the medical facility was only seven minutes. Effective emergency response can be a significant contributor in reducing the overall severity of an accident (Oakley, 2012). You can see that our investigation does not end with the completion of the chart since additional avenues to explore have been identified. Still, we did finally turn the corner from the what to the why. In our example, we developed the chart after the evidence was gathered, but in a real world investigation, the chart can, and should, be started as soon as any facts are known about the accident. Expect the ECF chart to change as new facts and information are uncovered. The order of events may change, as well as the significance of the conditions. Do not spend all of your time making the chart pretty until the investigation is complete and you are ready to include it in a final report. Choose substance over style. An events and causal factors chart is a basic building block of accident analysis. We cannot determine why something happened until we are certain we know what happened and the sequence in which it happened. In the next two units, we will examine additional techniques that can be used to identify more of those elusive why factors.

BOS 4601, Accident Investigation 3

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE

Title

References Manuele, F. A. (2014). Advanced safety management: Focusing on Z10 and serious injury prevention

(2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Oakley, J. S. (2012). Accident investigation techniques: Basic theories, analytical methods, and applications

(2nd ed.). Des Plaines, IL: American Society of Safety Engineers.

Suggested Reading If you are interested in learning more about the events and causal factors analysis, review the PowerPoint at the link below. It is an in-depth presentation with great information about this subject. Coffey, M. (n.d.). Events and causal (conditional+) factors analysis [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from

http://indico.ictp.it/event/a13209/session/2/contribution/16/material/slides/0.pdf This website discusses events and causal factors charting. This is a skill that we will be using in several unit assignments, and this may be a helpful resource for more information on the topic. Occupational Safety & Health Training. (n.d.). Events and causal factor charting. Retrieved from

http://www.oshatrain.org/notes/2hnotes12.html

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Increasing Parking at WSU

By Kaitlin ODonnell, Paul Tamasan, Malik Aldarmarki, Amjad Alenzi

z

Introduction

Washington State University is an extremely popular Pac-12 college

With recent increase in enrollment, there has become an issue with the amount of parking on site for students.

With the current parking, the rates are also extremely high for students to afford.

. Since 2015 the parking trend has kept growing at more than 7% per year (news.wsu) and it is supposed to increase again within the 2020-2021 school year.

Transportation services in the institution depend on funds generated from parking permit fees and fines to conduct maintenance and expansion since no vote head is allocated to such expenditure under tuition (Chan, Chau, & Chan, 2012). Markedly, an increase in the parking permit rates in the institution would strain the finances of students .

The parking crisis would be resolved through the development of practical recommendations from the task forces and by securing the full backing of the institutions administration.

z

Methods

WSU Parking and Transportation Taskforce would develop practical recommendations that would solve the parking problem and enhance the satisfaction of students. The task force engaged willing students to provide their views on the parking problems in the institution and ways through which the setbacks could be handled.

To perform this task effectively we would perform 5 different tasks

1. Establish our target audience and approach

This would include students and teachers using WSU parking

2. Create an infographic ideas

3. Look at financially reasonable and physically reasonable areas to create new parking at WSU

4. Interview students to research their opiniions

z

Results

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Task 1

According to the Daily Evergreen, a proposed parking rate increase for the Washington State Universitys Transportation Service will take effect on July 1 of 2020. This will result in fees ranging between 20 cents to $2.49 more for the annual passes and between 4 and 32 cents more for daily passes. This doesnt seem much at first but over the long run, the daily passes will add up and produce a tremendous price. The proposed change came from the transportation task force that considered the price increases can help repair and maintain the 4 parking garages on the campus. The WSU budget plans suggests that there will be a total of $2.6 million in expenses such as maintenance, repairs, and replacements of parking facilities and improved garage parking lots. Since the Transportation Service at WSU doesnt receive federal or state aid, it is understandable they would increase the rates to keep up with the maintenance. The daily parking permit has a price anywhere between $2.05 to $14.31 depending on the zones. For the annual parking permits. The annual parking permits range anywhere from $125 to $900.

z

Task 2

Creating infographic fliers and visuals can help in a number of ways, for this part of our project we used our designated audience and approach to come up with different ideas for infographics. We can use things such as poles, surveys, and so on to see what kind of infographics would draw students and teachers to give their opinion virtually on this topic. Using a virtual stance would help us broaden our demographic with students who gave their opinion.

z

Task 3

Our next task after we looked at the financial decisions that WSU Transportation Services have made and the reasons behind them, we decided to assess the Pullman campus for unused/underused areas of land. The first set of land that is being underused is the Rogers-Orton soccer fields. That field is designed for recreational use but not a lot of events are taken place on the field according to an intramural soccer referee Ryan Haisch. He said that the field is never used because the field has poor quality grass and the field lines arent maintained properly. Since WSU has high quality soccer fields across the street, that is where the intramural games take place. Another area of land that is unused is the area around the baseball field. Referencing to the map, the blue areas are where the parking is. Around the Bailey-Brayton Field, there is a lot of space that can be used for parking. These two massive areas of land could host 500+ parking spots which can benefit the student body and the university as well. The parking rates would decline and more students would be more inclined to purchase a parking

z

Task 4

For this task we asked 3 different students 5 different questions. Question 1: How do you feel about driving to class everyday and parking on campus?

Question 2: What are your thoughts on the parking permit rates?

Question 3: Do the parking permit rates offered by the university affect your financials?

Question 4: What do you think the university can do to improve your parking experience?

Question 5: Do you believe they should increase more parking spaces for their students?

After we asked the questions for each individual, they all gave similar responses. For the first question they all felt like driving to class everyday was a hassle at times. They would arrive late because the spots fill up and its difficult to find a spot right before class starts. For the second question, they all had negative thoughts on the parking rates because they believe the permits should be free because tuition is already expensive. For the third question, they all mentioned how the permit rates are negatively affecting their financials because they would have to sacrifice a little bit of money for food and personal expenditures to put into the cost of the parking permit. The fourth question, they all answered that they should lower the price of the permits or make it free. For the fifth question, they all like the idea of the university creating more parking spaces because it would be easier to find a spot and not be as stressed.

z

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Introduction

In recent times, there has been a steady rise in the number of students who enroll at Washington State University (WSU). The growing population of the university, together with outstanding teaching services, has cemented its stature in the region. Because of this, the rising student population needs adequate parking for students who live off campus and do not always have access to bus routes. The problem regarding the increasing population has been witnessed in the parking section of the WSU Pullman campus. Notably, students and staff who own vehicles find it difficult to access the universitys parking lots due to overcrowding and parking rates. In essence, this has inconvenienced students who access the institution, and it has crippled the efficiency of parking services and revenue collection in the university. Since 2015 the parking trend has kept growing at more than 7% per year (news.wsu) and it is supposed to increase again within the 2020-2021 school year.

The parking problem has led to the increase of parking fees for vehicles that access the institution. Ideally, transportation services in the institution depend on funds generated from parking permit fees and fines to conduct maintenance and expansion since no vote head is allocated to such expenditure under tuition (Chan, Chau, & Chan, 2012). Markedly, an increase in the parking permit rates in the institution would strain the finances of students, which would affect the reputation of the university. In response, the institution has appointed the WSU Parking and Transportations Taskforce to investigate the issue and proffer solutions to the problem. Therefore, the parking crisis would be resolved through the development of practical recommendations from the task forces and by securing the full backing of the institutions administration.

Methods

The main aim of the WSU Parking and Transportation Taskforce is to develop practical recommendations that would solve the parking problem and enhance the satisfaction of students. Therefore, the task force engaged willing students to provide their views on the parking problems in the institution and ways through which the setbacks could be handled. Besides, they asked a majority of students to submit emails of their views for further comparison to draw practical recommendations that would satisfy all the parties in the institution. Furthermore, the task force sought expert opinion from renowned structural engineers and planners on efficient ways of expanding the parking space in the institution to address the parking crisis. In essence, the meeting was essential as it helped provide the taskforce with viable information that would improve the chances of resolving the problem successfully.

The task force analyzed recommendations of the students while emphasizing those that were possible to implement. Moreover, they evaluated the proposals using views from members of the taskforce and professionals to ensure that they did not diverge from the advice of professionals. Inherently, the members of the task force visited the parking lots and surveyed the spaces adjacent to the institution. Additionally, they retrieved data on parking permits and fees levied from the Transportation Services building and analyzed the parking charges that have been imposed from the year 2016 up to date. Markedly, understanding of the parking fees levied to students was essential in noting the existent disparities to promote the financial wellbeing of students.

Results

The WSU Parking and Transportations taskforce engaged the students successfully in seeking their views regarding the parking crisis. A large percentage of the students who were consulted expressed their disappointment with the parking officials for their inefficiency and slow response to addressing the parking crisis. Inherently, they believed that the parking fees that were levied were sufficient to fund the program meant to expand the parking space to accommodate the rising number of students in the institution. Besides, the high parking fees levied strained the students financial resources, which adversely affected their welfare while on campus (Chan et al. (2012). Additionally, professional planners acknowledged the need to expand the parking space. Sargisson (2018) expresses that the expansion of parking spaces would enhance access to the public institution. Furthermore, a lack of adequate parking spaces would result in inconveniences and wastage of time as students and instructors attempted to access the institution (Michael et al., 2015). Members of the taskforce were displeased with the universitys organizational planning and highlighted the need to revise the design of the parking space to ensure it could accommodate additional vehicles. Markedly, results of the consultations augmented the effectiveness of the recommendations of the task force to handle the parking crisis.

Task 1: According to the Daily Evergreen, a proposed parking rate increase for the Washington State Universitys Transportation Service will take effect on July 1 of 2020. This will result in fees ranging between 20 cents to $2.49 more for the annual passes and between 4 and 32 cents more for daily passes. This doesnt seem much at first but over the long run, the daily passes will add up and produce a tremendous price. The proposed change came from the transportation task force that considered the price increases can help repair and maintain the 4 parking garages on the campus. The WSU budget plans suggests that there will be a total of $2.6 million in expenses such as maintenance, repairs, and replacements of parking facilities and improved garage parking lots. Since the Transportation Service at WSU doesnt receive federal or state aid, it is understandable they would increase the rates to keep up with the maintenance. The daily parking permit has a price anywhere between $2.05 to $14.31 depending on the zones. For the annual parking permits. The annual parking permits range anywhere from $125 to $900.

Task 2: Our next task after we looked at the financial decisions that WSU Transportation Services have made and the reasons behind them, we decided to assess the Pullman campus for unused/underused areas of land. The first set of land that is being underused is the Rogers-Orton soccer fields. That field is designed for recreational use but not a lot of events are taken place on the field according to an intramural soccer referee Ryan Haisch. He said that the field is never used because the field has poor quality grass and the field lines arent maintained properly. Since WSU has high quality soccer fields across the street, that is where the intramural games take place. Another area of land that is unused is the area around the baseball field. Referencing to the map, the blue areas are where the parking is. Around the Bailey-Brayton Field, there is a lot of space that can be used for parking. These two massive areas of land could host 500+ parking spots which can benefit the student body and the university as well. The parking rates would decline and more students would be more inclined to purchase a parking permit.

Task 3: We were lucky to interview three students who rely on their vehicle to get to class everyday. They go by the name of Aleks, Tyler, and Wyatt. All three of them live in different apartments and they dont rely on the bus system because it doesnt fit with their schedule, instead they drive themselves to school. We asked each individual similar questions.

Question 1: How do you feel about driving to class everyday and parking on campus?

Question 2: What are your thoughts on the parking permit rates?

Question 3: Do the parking permit rates offered by the university affect your financials?

Question 4: What do you think the university can do to improve your parking experience?

Question 5: Do you believe they should increase more parking spaces for their students?

After we asked the questions for each individual, they all gave similar responses. For the first question they all felt like driving to class everyday was a hassle at times. They would arrive late because the spots fill up and its difficult to find a spot right before class starts. For the second question, they all had negative thoughts on the parking rates because they believe the permits should be free because tuition is already expensive. For the third question, they all mentioned how the permit rates are negatively affecting their financials because they would have to sacrifice a little bit of money for food and personal expenditures to put into the cost of the parking permit. The fourth question, they all answered that they should lower the price of the permits or make it free. For the fifth question, they all like the idea of the university creating more parking spaces because it would be easier to find a spot and not be as stressed.

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In preparation for this weeks discussion, students should read pages335341, chapter 12, in the course textbook. They should also study a number of the academic articles relating to market efficiency that are identified in footnotes to this reading.

Question:How efficient are capital markets? Explain.

Writing about 250 words with APA style if have references.