Discourse is the best part of what we do in literature classes, in my opinion, and yet it’s usually limited to inside the classroom. The blog breaks the walls, and I like it for that reason—one. It also feels a lot less formal, like a message board that I might join for fun, and I like it for that reason, too. I like that it makes our discourse public, as well—because why should we horde these ideas?—three.
I wish I could say that it actually invites the public into our discourse, though. Comments from people who are not in our class should be enabled. Personally, I’m studying to be a creative writer, most of my story ideas are sci-fi, and some include apocalyptic scenarios; there is some overlap in readership between my kind of niche and cli-fi fans; and the time to start establishing an audience is now, but I currently have no internet presence and not enough finished material to start a blog of my own that could really compete for the spotlight. Meanwhile, this cli-fi course blog is an opportunity. More comments on the blog will lead to more page views, certainly, especially if we’re talking about comments from the likes of Dan Bloom and maybe even Barbara Kingsolver. The University should be very open to this kind of publicity.
Anyway, I still only have seven posts, when I should have at least eight by this point according to the syllabus. Maybe this feels too informal for absent-minded me. But that’s my fault.
Our in-class discussions keep raising points in my mind that are somehow tangential to the actual focus of the course. This course gets me thinking, in other words, which is what I like. A course blog is the perfect forum for the sidebar discussions that I’m sometimes inspired to have. Course blogs should be commonplace. So far this semester, I’ve posted two links to related outside media, in addition to my reviews.
What I haven’t done, though, is comment on posts made by my classmates, you all. I’m sorry about that. I will make a point to do so, going forward.
I did comment on a post of yours, Ted, but it was in response to an article whose author, I sensed, was anti-science. The article made me madder than I realized and my comment was more caustic than I’d intended. (My aunt had just died at the time, and I was feeling negative through and through, I guess.) When I revisited the blog a couple days later to delete it before anyone could witness me raving so undignified-like, I found that you’d already deleted it. Good moderating!
