Presentation of Fox's "Listening to the World"

As promised, here are some notes from class today. I think we had a really great discussion of Fox's book (though there was soooooooo much more we could have talked about), and I want to thank you for being such good sports about the Manchester Essay. I've sent along two handouts to Trixie so that she can post them to angel (the Manchester Essay assignment sheet and a more formal outline of Fox's book), so make sure you keep your eyes open for both of them.

We brought up some interesting ideas during class today that aren't necessarily reflected in the outline that I've created, so I wanted to make sure they got posted here.

• Agression: we discussed aggression in two ways: 1) diction, 2) parody. The assignment sheet seemed to be aggressive not only because of particular uses of diction, but because the parody of writing assignments was so strongly developed. The threat of "expulsion" for not citing sources really seemed to ring true for some of us.
• The term "original": we contemplated the meaning of the word original and talked about how world majority students may understand this word differently than us. The ideology from which world majority students come deeply and profoundly affects their writing, and the same applies to mainstream American students.
• Linear thinking: as a class we mapped out common linear modes of thinking that often get applied to the writing process (brainstorming, drafting, editing) and the structure of an essay (intro, body, conclusion). How else might we say that an American/Western ideaology guides our writing, thinking, and doing in this culture?

I want to thank everyone again for participating in my presentation today. I hope you found our conversation as useful as I did.

Carrie