Three for Thursday

[lunabee34]

1. I only have one outstanding task to complete as Senate Chair, and it will take me less than an hour to complete (just compiling a list of things). Then I will be well and truly done with the position, and I am so relieved.

My transition document for the next chair was 9 pages single-spaced (divided into bullets and with white space between categories for readability). It broke everything down step-by-step, including time frames and boilerplate for emails he'll need to send. We were supposed to meet to discuss the handover, and it lasted less than five minutes because the document was so thorough. LOL

2. Approaches to Teaching Harriet Jacobs (MLA) is finally in fucking print after only 5 years since the submission process. Really looking forward to seeing my chapter in print.

3. A Carolina wren is nesting in the mailbox, and the babies are cheeping! I also saw a raccoon in the side yard nosing around all the trees, standing up on its hind legs and then digging through the straw. So, so cute.

Comments

[author_by_night]

This is off topic, but your MLA mention made me think of a question I'd had for a while. Ever since college, actually, but I couldn't ask then because it sounded snarky. So I'm genuinely curious: Why is there a strict adherence to MLA format (and specialized formats in general)? Is it for authenticity purposes in a given field?

Congratulations on getting published!

[lunabee34]

Thank you! <3

MLA is the most prestigious professional organization for academics who teach and research languages and literature. They host an annual conference and regional branches host additional annual conferences; they publish a journal, and they publish scholarly books. They also provide forums for discussion of issues relevant to our profession and other stuff.

All style guides exist for a couple reasons: uniformity in publications so that each chapter in a collection of articles or each article in a journal is formatted and cited in the same way; so that readers can find what is being cited. MLA consists of parenthetical citations (generally the page number being quoted or paraphrased from that goes in parentheses along with author's last name right after the quote or paraphrase) and a Works Cited page that lists more information about each source used. So the WC page allows a reader to find all the sources, and the parenthetical citation allows the reader to find the exact quote or part of the text being referred to.

I find APA maddening because it doesn't use parenthetical citations with page numbers, and I don't understand how anyone is supposed to find the parts of a source text being referred to.

[author_by_night]

Okay, citation is actually a very good point. Now that I'm thinking about it, that probably made my own research (way back when) a lot easier, versus doing non-MLA research where it was a little harder to find exactly what I needed. Huh. I never put that together before. Maybe google needs to adopt MLA. ;)

[lunabee34]

:)

I think that a lot of instructors don't do a good job of explaining to students why we require them to do, well, anything LOL, so the foundation of my pedagogy is something called Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TiLT) where I explain the purpose of all assignments and readings, including their real world and career purposes.