Honors English 101
By taking Honors English 101, I had the great pleasure of having professor Dr. John Maddux. Being a first year at UC, he made the transition of an entirely new lifestyle an easier one. He was hilarious and so light hearted. His class was undoubtedly an interesting one and he made a slower read seem rich and lively with interesting material.
In this class we would read chapters of a novel called Notes from No Man's Land and would later discuss them in class. Dr. Maddux would always interpret the reading in ways that were hard to see originally. We wrote papers concerning these passages and would try to decipher alternate ways that the author, Eula Biss, may have interpreted her own writing. At first glance, this book seems to have a lot to do with racism, but has many underlying meanings.
The papers written about this book included a personal reflection, comparing two passages, and an overall response to the book. This class and Dr. Maddux helped me to improve my writing skills and made my writing more interesting.
Below is a summary of the novel:
When you begin reading the essay collection Notes From No Man’s Land by Eula Biss, you are lulled into what appears to be a history of the telephone and telephone poles in America. Biss discusses a so-called war on the poles fueled by private property rights, and allegations they appeared as urban blight. This is a comfortable, intriguing review of cultural history, and readers will find the initial pages diverting if not deeply interesting. And then, on the seventh page, Biss kicks you in the gut and unleashes the real point of her observations. She writes:
"In 1898, in Lake Cormorant, Mississippi, a black man was hanged from a telephone pole. And in Weir City, Kansas. And in Brookhaven, Mississippi. And in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the hanged man was riddled with bullets."
The lists continue, the events are recounted, the dark and dangerous alternate history of telephone poles is revealed. And the reader realizes that Biss has an ulterior motive with her very innocuous-appearing collection. She has written a book about race -- only it is written in a wholly unexpected way, and thus packs a wholly unexpected punch.
If Biss were only a careful observer, then her historical references and careful musings about the poles; the town of Buxton, Iowa; Hurricane Katrina; or reparations would be interesting unto themselves, another American’s perspective on an always problematic aspect of our collective memory. But Biss inserts herself, and her own history, directly into these essays. She writes about jobs she has held, places she has lived, family members, living and dead. Her grandfather was a lineman who “broke his back when a telephone pole fell”; a cousin is biracial; her Caucasian mother had more than one long term relationship with an African-American. Biss is white, but her personal history and interests find her laying claim to more than one racial line. So even when she writes about a cultural or news event, such as the infamous 1999 case of a white woman who gave birth to twins via in vitro fertilization only to discover one was white and one was black, the author still spirals it around to a personal connection. She still finds a way to make the story connect to her, and through that effort, she brings it home to the reader as well.
From New York to Mexico, from the Midwest to California, Biss ticks off geographical destinations that serve as guideposts for a journey into individual and collective understanding. She writes about her teaching jobs in the Bronx and Harlem, and the issue of education for freed slaves during Reconstruction. At a job writing for an African-American community newspaper in San Diego, the dark specter of former government programs on eugenics and race-based sterilization rears its ugly head. She writes of the gardens of Babylon and nonnative plants in California, and immigration from Mexico and urban gardens in New York City. Biss twists us around from what we think we see and know, and demands we reconsider, reconstruct, redirect. “Graffiti is one way to claim a place you do not own,” she writes. “And so is planting a garden. Because we are all forever in exile, or so the story goes, from the original garden.”
A writer will reel at the elegance of Biss’s seemingly effortless connections; a historian will be spellbound by the constant collision of past and present -- which is a historian’s dream, after all. But all readers will be impressed by the ease with which we are escorted along this new trip across America, with how we see ourselves and our country with fresh eyes again. We see so many telephone poles everyday, and yet, have we ever seen them for what they once were, for how they were so casually used?
When I was young, I believed that the arc and swoop of telephone wires along the roadway was beautiful. I believed that the telephone poles, with their transformers catching the evening sun, were glorious. I believed my father when he said, "My dad could raise a pole by himself." And I believed that the telephone itself was a miracle.
Why would any of us think differently, seeing them there, so ubiquitous, so ordinary, so deeply ingrained in our lives? How would we ever be expected to connect all of these dots, across so many miles and so many years? Why would we expect horrors of the past to bring us crashing back to the present? And yet, that is exactly what happens in No Man’s Land.
Biss has a clarity about the American experience -- it is the most stunning aspect of her collection. She sees things that the rest of miss, or worse, ignore. While occasionally the essays seem forced, or personal experience exaggerated, Biss rights herself quickly and regains the understated tone that is so effective. On the whole, she has put together something both relevant and visceral -- a collection that is more than the sum of its parts, and stirring on all counts.
Summary Author: Colleen Mondor
In this class we would read chapters of a novel called Notes from No Man's Land and would later discuss them in class. Dr. Maddux would always interpret the reading in ways that were hard to see originally. We wrote papers concerning these passages and would try to decipher alternate ways that the author, Eula Biss, may have interpreted her own writing. At first glance, this book seems to have a lot to do with racism, but has many underlying meanings.
The papers written about this book included a personal reflection, comparing two passages, and an overall response to the book. This class and Dr. Maddux helped me to improve my writing skills and made my writing more interesting.
Below is a summary of the novel:
When you begin reading the essay collection Notes From No Man’s Land by Eula Biss, you are lulled into what appears to be a history of the telephone and telephone poles in America. Biss discusses a so-called war on the poles fueled by private property rights, and allegations they appeared as urban blight. This is a comfortable, intriguing review of cultural history, and readers will find the initial pages diverting if not deeply interesting. And then, on the seventh page, Biss kicks you in the gut and unleashes the real point of her observations. She writes:
"In 1898, in Lake Cormorant, Mississippi, a black man was hanged from a telephone pole. And in Weir City, Kansas. And in Brookhaven, Mississippi. And in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the hanged man was riddled with bullets."
The lists continue, the events are recounted, the dark and dangerous alternate history of telephone poles is revealed. And the reader realizes that Biss has an ulterior motive with her very innocuous-appearing collection. She has written a book about race -- only it is written in a wholly unexpected way, and thus packs a wholly unexpected punch.
If Biss were only a careful observer, then her historical references and careful musings about the poles; the town of Buxton, Iowa; Hurricane Katrina; or reparations would be interesting unto themselves, another American’s perspective on an always problematic aspect of our collective memory. But Biss inserts herself, and her own history, directly into these essays. She writes about jobs she has held, places she has lived, family members, living and dead. Her grandfather was a lineman who “broke his back when a telephone pole fell”; a cousin is biracial; her Caucasian mother had more than one long term relationship with an African-American. Biss is white, but her personal history and interests find her laying claim to more than one racial line. So even when she writes about a cultural or news event, such as the infamous 1999 case of a white woman who gave birth to twins via in vitro fertilization only to discover one was white and one was black, the author still spirals it around to a personal connection. She still finds a way to make the story connect to her, and through that effort, she brings it home to the reader as well.
From New York to Mexico, from the Midwest to California, Biss ticks off geographical destinations that serve as guideposts for a journey into individual and collective understanding. She writes about her teaching jobs in the Bronx and Harlem, and the issue of education for freed slaves during Reconstruction. At a job writing for an African-American community newspaper in San Diego, the dark specter of former government programs on eugenics and race-based sterilization rears its ugly head. She writes of the gardens of Babylon and nonnative plants in California, and immigration from Mexico and urban gardens in New York City. Biss twists us around from what we think we see and know, and demands we reconsider, reconstruct, redirect. “Graffiti is one way to claim a place you do not own,” she writes. “And so is planting a garden. Because we are all forever in exile, or so the story goes, from the original garden.”
A writer will reel at the elegance of Biss’s seemingly effortless connections; a historian will be spellbound by the constant collision of past and present -- which is a historian’s dream, after all. But all readers will be impressed by the ease with which we are escorted along this new trip across America, with how we see ourselves and our country with fresh eyes again. We see so many telephone poles everyday, and yet, have we ever seen them for what they once were, for how they were so casually used?
When I was young, I believed that the arc and swoop of telephone wires along the roadway was beautiful. I believed that the telephone poles, with their transformers catching the evening sun, were glorious. I believed my father when he said, "My dad could raise a pole by himself." And I believed that the telephone itself was a miracle.
Why would any of us think differently, seeing them there, so ubiquitous, so ordinary, so deeply ingrained in our lives? How would we ever be expected to connect all of these dots, across so many miles and so many years? Why would we expect horrors of the past to bring us crashing back to the present? And yet, that is exactly what happens in No Man’s Land.
Biss has a clarity about the American experience -- it is the most stunning aspect of her collection. She sees things that the rest of miss, or worse, ignore. While occasionally the essays seem forced, or personal experience exaggerated, Biss rights herself quickly and regains the understated tone that is so effective. On the whole, she has put together something both relevant and visceral -- a collection that is more than the sum of its parts, and stirring on all counts.
Summary Author: Colleen Mondor
Honors English 102
I found that Honors English 102 took me for a few loops that Honors English 101 previously hadn't. I had expected the curriculum to be a more difficult and demanding one, but this was by far the hardest and most stressful A I have ever earned.
This class had only one assignment for the entire grade. What was that assignment? A ten page paper. At first, that doesn't sound like THAT hard of a task to accomplish, but it's harder than you think to string together ten pieces of paper by using only words. Dr. Michelle Holley definitely challenges her students by every aspect of the word. She expects even more out of her Honors students, as she should.
The first task of the class was to find a good topic for this monster of a paper. We needed to find a suitable subject that we could find a opposing team to fight with our words, as well as have a strong ethos (emotional connection) with. I don't find myself to be a person who loves debate, so at first, this task presented a few problems for me. I tried to think of different disputable topics that I actually genuinely cared about and could prove my point easily. I didn't want to choose a topic that seems to be overdone, so my brainstorming took me awhile to find the perfect topic for me and my life.
Last March, (2011) my family and I encountered life-shattering news concerning my dad, Rod, and his health. Most likely caused by second-hand smoke, he now has a disease called Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, which, unfortunately for us, has no known cure. Because no medicines or remedies are available for his condition, he had two options: 1. Wait to die and hope for the best. or 2. Go through a series of general tests to get on the list for a double lung transplant. Knowing that a double lung transplant is not only a strenuous but very expensive procedure, we still chose the second option.
A very few percentage of people in the world are actually organ donors, and I decided to make my ten page paper a persuasive one to argue against those who either oppose or are simply not organ donors. My ethos concerning the paper was a strong one and I felt passionate about my every word. I put a lot of work into my final project and my paper reflected that. The countless hours spent writing and editing those ten pages were stressful ones, but they created one of the most inspiring and best works of writing I have ever put on paper.
This class had only one assignment for the entire grade. What was that assignment? A ten page paper. At first, that doesn't sound like THAT hard of a task to accomplish, but it's harder than you think to string together ten pieces of paper by using only words. Dr. Michelle Holley definitely challenges her students by every aspect of the word. She expects even more out of her Honors students, as she should.
The first task of the class was to find a good topic for this monster of a paper. We needed to find a suitable subject that we could find a opposing team to fight with our words, as well as have a strong ethos (emotional connection) with. I don't find myself to be a person who loves debate, so at first, this task presented a few problems for me. I tried to think of different disputable topics that I actually genuinely cared about and could prove my point easily. I didn't want to choose a topic that seems to be overdone, so my brainstorming took me awhile to find the perfect topic for me and my life.
Last March, (2011) my family and I encountered life-shattering news concerning my dad, Rod, and his health. Most likely caused by second-hand smoke, he now has a disease called Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, which, unfortunately for us, has no known cure. Because no medicines or remedies are available for his condition, he had two options: 1. Wait to die and hope for the best. or 2. Go through a series of general tests to get on the list for a double lung transplant. Knowing that a double lung transplant is not only a strenuous but very expensive procedure, we still chose the second option.
A very few percentage of people in the world are actually organ donors, and I decided to make my ten page paper a persuasive one to argue against those who either oppose or are simply not organ donors. My ethos concerning the paper was a strong one and I felt passionate about my every word. I put a lot of work into my final project and my paper reflected that. The countless hours spent writing and editing those ten pages were stressful ones, but they created one of the most inspiring and best works of writing I have ever put on paper.