Audience

The audience for a scholarly article consists of:

(1) Readers academic but not specialized. The graduate student in the field who hasn't yet specialized in any subfield. The interested colleague.

(2) Specialized readers; scholars in this particular subfield.

The article should be understandable for (1) but also tell (2) something new. Of course, there are gradations between (1) and (2). I might be specialized in Spanish poetry but not a specialist on Machado. In that case, I would still want to understand the article and learn something new, so intermediate categories don't really change the situation.

My graduate students should be writing for the rest of the class, but they should also tell me, the specialist reader, something new. An undergraduate paper I graded today told me something new about a novel that I had read a dozen times. Originality is really not that difficult in literary criticism. You just has to look at the text anew, just really look and see what is there.

Imagine if your criterion were only (1): Provide basic information to interested students or non-specialists. The you would no longer be presenting original research.

If your criterion were only to teach a specialist something new, then you wouldn't have to worry about being understandable by a graduate student. Since potential readers occupy various rungs of the ladder, though, it doesn't seem like a good idea to address only those on the top rung. Also, if you aren't communicating your message well to the graduate students, it is very possible that you are failing to communicate even with the specialists, who also vary somewhat in the exact amount of expertise they might have on every point of interest.

Instructions

It is often useful to formulate very simple instructions for something that, in theory, you already know how to do. This technique can help you to clarify what it is that you find difficult in some aspect of scholarship that should be easy but is not.

For example, I have problems keeping everything I need for a particular project in one place so I can find it. If I mastered that technique, then writing the article I'm trying to finish this week would be very easy. I wouldn't have to worry that one book was in my car, others in my apartment, and some others in my office. So I could write instructions on how to finish an article. First, assemble all of the materials in one place. Then, make a list of the parts of the article that need to be completed. Then, complete those parts. Fourth, send the article as an attachment to the guy.

Forbidden Words

I told my undergraduate class not to use the words interesante, diferente, importante, and cosa. Four words that they just had to do without. I wrote this in capital letter in English on the assignment sheet. JUST DO NOT USE ANY OF THESE WORDS. It might seem an arbitrary constraint, but it forces them to look for other, more varied vocabulary items rather than relying on the four favorite words of undergraduate Spanish students. The list is short on purpose: I wanted to concentrate on a few to begin with. I could have prohibited bueno, malo, personas, etc...

Of course, I got papers using these words in abundance. I guess I should have used caps, bold-face, and 16-point type for my warning, with some obscentiies thrown in.

Scholars should have forbidden words too. Problematize is a good one to start with.

How to Grade Papers

You first need to block out some time. Somehow, papers do not grade themselves without some time devoted to them.

Get all the papers or tests you have to grade together, in one place. A folder or envelope helps.

You need a physical space in which to grade. It doesn't matter where, but papers need to graded in some specific place.

Some substances might come in handy. Caffeine or small amounts of alcohol. Some anger managements techniques might also be necessary.

I have bad handwriting and fast typing, so I type out my comments on the computer after correcting some grammar mistakes and putting some ?? and WTF and !! on them. (Usually I don't write WTF.) When I am done, I just insert page breaks between each student's comments and print the whole thing out, stapling or paper-clipping the sheet to the student's paper. That way I also have a computer file with all my comments and grades, so I can see what problems particular students have between one paper and the next.

Estimate how many papers you can do in an hour. For example, I could do one 20-page graduate paper in an hour, or 6 four-page undergraduate papers in the same time. Don't do the good ones first and save the bad for last. Rather, work more or less at random. Use the best ones to set the standard for what an A should be, and put papers in the order their rank, good to bad. Make sure a worse paper does not have a better grade.

I work one hour on, one hour off. So this evening, for example, I graded 6 paper between 7 and 8 p.m., then six more between 9 and 10. That leaves five more for the morning between 8 and 9.

I hate grading, but I also manage to be quick if I want to be.

If a student turns in a paper late, they do not get it back with the rest of the class, even if I have it graded already. I view the grading of a single batch of papers as a single task, and keep all the papers physically in one place until they are graded.

Ineffective (iii)

Some characteristics of a certain type of ineffective prose:

Abstraction. Often we don't know what the writer is talking about. There are abstract concepts, but nothing specific that we can put our finger on.

Self-Absorption. The writer seems more involved with herself than with the task of communicating, proud of her particular positions. A use of a lot of feel-good language masks the absence of justification.

Gratuitous melodrama or didacticism.. There is a sense of urgency or a call to action, but the writer cannot define what it is he really wants us to do.

A Poetry Blurb That Works

If I had to write a blurb for a book of poetry, it might go something like this:

A highschool dropout roams the beaches of Northern California, meeting a series of strangers who propose contests of strength and absurdly specific wagers: what pieces of detritus will the next wave carry away? He is in no position to refuse any suggestion offered to him. He understands the literal meaning of the words spoken to him but he will never understand the rules of the game.

Of course, that blurb will only work for a single book of poetry, one that, in fact, does not yet exist, though I may write it some day. Where you get into trouble is with blurbs that could be about any book of poetry: "The poet gazes at his navel and has some profound but whimsical thoughts, writing them up with flair and panache."

Ineffective (ii)

Here's a press release I got twice yesterday in my email:

A recession has hit America at such an angle that everything has been called into question. The thoughtlessness of fin de siecle America has been replaced by mistrust, envy, and defensiveness. In this atmosphere, new imperatives emerge: to sort out wheat from chaff, gold from dross, truth from fiction. These imperatives are enacted in solitude, as the poet takes a scalpel to the body of his experiences. Blank's Title of Book is a vivid manifestation of a new, scrupulous American consciousness. It is the effort of a poet to elevate the carnal with intellect, and to create a memorable chiasmus between them. The frigidity of post-modern verse is replaced by a new romanticism, that is not romantic. That is the central endeavor here, and it is performed with panache.

I got quite angry about how bad this was. It makes the argument that a particular piece of writing, in the case a book of poetry, is a necessary gesture at the present historical moment, but it makes this argument so incompetently that we aren't convinced it's going to be a very effective book of poetry. I know, I should calm down, but let's look at what this paragraph is trying to say.

The attempt at historical contextualization at the beginning falls flat. Is it really true that thoughtlessness has been replaced with defensiveness? What does this really mean? isn't there pretty much the same amount of envy and mistrust as there always was? So the desperate imperative is to sort the wheat from the chaff. A resonant biblical metaphor, to be sure, but what does it really mean in this context? Here is comes off as a mere cliché, especially alongside of "gold from dross." The poet performs surgery on himself, presumably a metaphor for self-analysis, but how is that different from what any other poet might do? The romantic genius working in solitude is hardly a new conception of poetry. If there is an imperative, it would be nice to know what it actually is so we can do it.

I'm not sure what "elevate the carnal with intellect" and "create a memorable chiasmus between them" mean. I could parse these phrases in several ways, I know what the rhetorical figure of chiasmus is, but how could I be sure if I'm guessing right? The overgeneralization (the frigidity of post-modern verse) is objectionable to me. What poets are meant here? Isn't postmodernism of Ginsberg and O'Hara hyper-romantic? Lest we think that this new romanticism is romantic, the author sets us straight. But then what is it? "... the central endeavor, carried off with panache" is empty verbiage.

I count five passive verbs here in seven sentences: "has been called into question," "has been replaced," "are enacted," "is replaced," "is performed." I've defended the passive voice many times before, but in this case I won't because I don't think it is effective. (Not that the active verbs are any better here.)

The tone of this passage is filled with passionate intensity, as Yeats would say, but it is lacking in any concrete detail. What are this guy's poems even about? What kind of language do they use? Are they funny? Melodramatic? Self-deprecating? We don't actually know anything about them after reading this summary of their "central endeavor."