I’m writing this journal because there wasn’t one assigned for this day so I can’t comment on other people’s, and I have to miss class.
First, I’d like to discuss my meeting with Dr. Tuttle. I met with Dr. Tuttle to discuss my ADE project as the subject for my capstone. We both remarked that this was a good idea, because my ADE project was done under unique circumstances: I was concussed after being assaulted by a patient I worked with. Overall, my project didn’t really reach my standards of completion, so I am excited to return to it with a new and better lens. Specifically, we discussed that I would use a similar format to approach the same topic but from a different perspective. I’ll still be writing about the Bell Jar, but this time I’ll be focusing on the providers and their characterization in reference to Esther’s well-being. I’ll be making 7, instead of 6, journal entries, changing my reflection to focus on my experience of working in a psychiatric healthcare facility, and repurposing my art.
Secondly (and finally) I’d like to discuss Clune. I think that Clune had some brilliant points about refuting egalitarianism in literary education. Specifically, I like this quote:
The point of literary education isn’t to venerate William Shakespeare or George Eliot or Biggie Smalls or Henry Thoreau. It’s to enable you to see things that were invisible, to hear new sounds, to understand what didn’t make sense.
Michael Clune,”The Humanities Fear of Judgement”
I think that this is an important thought. In fact, I feel as though the entirety of my literary education has been centered around this task: reading the invisible ink of literature; each author has left behind cultural, emotional, and social artifacts in the midst of their poetry and prose and it is my job to find it, to understand it, and to venerate it. I understand where Clune is coming from— it seems that without prioritizing certain texts, this becomes an irrelevant task— who cares about Milton if you can watch the bachelor? But the fact is, literary students might watch the bachelor for reasons beyond escapism— in fact they might be able to find a deeper sociological understanding from watching the bachelor. However, it is vital to understand Wordsworth, Butler, Chopin, and Hurston in order to reach the point where all media can be subject to criticism because they contain valuable literary artifacts and cultural criticism that the English student needs in their toolkit in order to perform analysis in any meaningful way.
