Willard McCarty <MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca> (02/21/90)
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 1080. Tuesday, 20 Feb 1990. (1) Date: 19 Feb 90 21:07 EST (28 lines) From: Malcolm Hayward <MHAYWARD@IUPCP6.BITNET> Subject: Reading Aloud (2) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 12:01 EST (10 lines) From: JackFruchtman_8302850 <E7U4FRU@TOWSONVX.BITNET> Subject: Reply to Mark Riley and Reading Aloud (3) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 90 16:19 PST (22 lines) From: KESSLER <IME9JFK> Subject: Re: 3.1059 queries (108) (4) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 08:12 EDT (19 lines) From: "Leslie Z. Morgan" <MORGAN@LOYVAX> Subject: citing PhD theses (5) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 90 22:47:32 CST (12 lines) From: ENCOPE@LSUVM Subject: Organism Cope Reinforced for Citing Dissertations (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 19 Feb 90 21:07 EST From: Malcolm Hayward <MHAYWARD@IUPCP6.BITNET> Subject: Reading Aloud I missed how we ever got onto this topic, but let me plunk for my favorite: Booth Tarkington's Penrod books (Penrod, Penrod Jashber, and Penrod and Sam). The syntax is convoluted, the vocabulary seems far above what a 10 or 12 year old should be able to read--but two out of three of my kids really enjoyed them. In fact, for both I read through all three twice. Why did they enjoy them? Sometimes I think it is in spite of the old fashioned prose; sometimes I think it is because of it. Certainly Tarkington has clear insights into the way kids think. Maybe with the prose the way it is the child realizes, Hey, he is not talking down to me but rather expressing the way that I think in words that I would use were I able to use words that way. Of course the kids do not use such words for their realizations. Anyway, I guarantee at least a 66% chance that the children will respond to Penrod in ways you would not be able to predict--at least if you expect that the best books are ones that, as Donald Webb says, reproduce the rhythms of the spoken language. The experience of the Penrod books suggests exactly the opposite. Malcolm Hayward MHayward@IUP Department of English Phone: 412-357-2322 or IUP 412-357-2261 Indiana, PA 15705 (2) --------------------------------------------------------------16---- Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 12:01 EST From: JackFruchtman_8302850 <E7U4FRU@TOWSONVX.BITNET> Subject: Reply to Mark Riley and Reading Aloud There is plenty of fine children's literature that may be appropriately read aloud to children, even older children. Examples: Jean George's _My Side of the Mountain_, Lynn Reid Bank, _The Indian in the Cupboard_, Katherine Paterson's _Bridge to Terabithia_, Zilpha Snyder's _Egypt Game_. And then, of course, there is everything by Lloyd Alexander. Good reading! (3) --------------------------------------------------------------25---- Date: Sat, 17 Feb 90 16:19 PST From: KESSLER <IME9JFK> Subject: Re: 3.1059 queries (108) Dear Willard, I have argued with colleagues for years that the Diss should be written as a book, at least in the Humanities. They turn a deaf ear, since most have them dont know how to write a book, and are not serious in any case. We waste umpteen dollars and strength and youth of our grad students in making them write Dissertations that we then say will be their ticket to a job, and then they must take 3-5 years making the stuff into a book in hopes of getting it published, while teaching heavy loads and starting families and all that. Criminal proceedings, and when compared to scientists' approach, worse than criminal. People used to get their (Germ+French) Diss published in Europe, perhaps, which had a Kultur for the Diss. We have copied that literally, but left the meaning out of it. It is a set of hurdles to be surmounted, purposelessness incarnate. I find it loathesome, but, the whole thing is surely silly by now. I was skeptical as a lad of Pound's strictures against the profession, since I was entering it, but of course looking back, he was correct in scorning the American+Germanic Diss, which produced almost nothing. Now of course lok at the Univ Press lists and see whatis being produced! That needs an essay of its own, but first I want to win a lottery, and then try cutting at their Achilles/Artemisial tendons. Kessler here. (4) --------------------------------------------------------------23---- Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 08:12 EDT From: "Leslie Z. Morgan" <MORGAN@LOYVAX> Subject: citing PhD theses For the language/literature field, in the question of to cite or not re PhD theses, there is another underlying issue: how the thesis was originally conceived. There is a difference in institutions. Certain large state universities do not grant the PhD if a publishable dissertation is not produced. In that case, the dissertation IS a book, and becomes cited as such. (This policy has side effects, of course, which I will not go on about here, but which merit discussion.) At other institutions, the dissertation is an apprenticeship, from which articles and/or a heavily revised book may be produced later. In that case, citing the dissertation is necessary. (5) --------------------------------------------------------------17---- Date: Mon, 19 Feb 90 22:47:32 CST From: ENCOPE@LSUVM Subject: Organism Cope Reinforced for Citing Dissertations In my first published article (the beginning of a long series of happy errors!), I cited several dissertations from _DAI_ and its predecessor, _DA_. The reader for the journal, a well-known editor of Rochester, congratulated me (anonymously) for having been _so_ thorough as to go looking through dissertalia. This should be empirical proof that dissertations are worth something. Indeed, citing them initiated my career (and without that odd event, their would be no "veteran e-mailer" on these lists). -- KLC