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Kind of relating to some of the other posts people made this week, here are some pictures from when I was in NYC for my externship. I was staying with a relative and when we were walking around the city, we stopped in a store to get out of the cold while we double-checked which direction we were walking in. The pictures are blurry, but of course you can tell what they're saying because they're "color-coded."

As an English major, the college essays that I have thus-far written for my field have all been based on other people's work.  The topic may be as specific as a single poem, or cover several different works of literature, but the point is to make an argument about a specific idea or theme found in the work(s) being written about.  The style is very detached; while I am putting forth my own opinion, I still need to write in an unemotional way, basing my statements on quotations and facts.  The paper is my own interpretation of the work(s) involved, and it is written to be -- if not outright persuasive -- at least a sound argument.  Still, everything is far more clinical than, for example, the Jonathan Lethem essay that we read in class, "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism."  Like an academic essay on English literature, Lethem made an argument and supported it with literary examples, but his tone was far warmer and more informal that both anything I have found myself called upon to write and the vast majority of academic essays that I have read -- though it was similar to non-fiction books, which generally have more of their authors' personalities than do essays.

While reading The Goblin Market, I had trouble deciding whether the poem was about the events surrounding a girl's first sexual experience or an encounter with addictive substances. I felt it easily went both ways.

But sat down listless in the chimney-nook
And would not eat.

Laura's whole personality has changed at this point in the poem either from sex or drug withdrawal. 

Then sat up in a passionate yearning,
And gnashed her teeth for baulked desire, and wept
As if her heart would break.

Again, this line is ambiguous and, I felt, could be interpreted both ways.  Laura could be experiencing a serious desire to have sex again or she could be desperatly wanting to fulfill her next drug fix. 

Either way, I saw The Goblin Market as a cautionary tale for all types of addictions.  Whether it be a sexual addiction or substance abuse, the general plot of The Goblin Market could be applied to all sorts of addictions. 

Perhaps sexual and drug addiction were a focus because they were prominent during the time the poem was written?

Below is my response to a twitter convo that began with "What is a school?" and evolved into "How does a school bridge the gap between the classroom and external experiences?"

Last semester I finished a course on the culture of poverty. It blew my mind when I realized that every race had a group of people that shared a culture that stemmed from poverty---one of survival, hopelessness, resourcefulness, the value of hardwork,and sufferings from marginalization.
Excited to read about poverty and the people who lived it, I dived right into readings from Oscar Lewis, who was an "expert" on the cultural traits of poverty, and Judith Goode, who defended and understood poor communities in contrast to Lewis. And so, through class discussions and readings, I was under the impression that I was "learning" because I was reading from scholars who dedicated their careers to observing and analyzing poverty.
     It wasn't until I was well into writing papers for the course using these sources did I finally stop and say to myself, "I know firsthand what poverty and its culture is like, why must I have old, white-privilaged scholars who never lived it validate my experiences in my paper?" To my frustration, I was learning things I had known all along. If anything, I was the expert.
    Which brings me to an answer of the question: How can schools bridge the gap between the classroom and external experiences? Well, we must change the structure of our schools by making the external experiences of the students the focus of the classroom.

When I read Goblin Market before the class discussion, I thought Laura and Lizzie were just normal sisters who look out for each other. I was actually set on the thought that they were sisters the whole time I was reading the poem. Things that Laura and Lizzie do, such as sleeping together and walking together, are activities that any sisters would do. As a younger sister, I have walked with my sister. Also, my sister and I have shared a room and slept in the same room when we were younger. As Laura looked out for Lizzie, I would looke out for my sister and protect my sister from "globins" as well.

After the class discussion, my thoughts about the relationship changed a bit. I think it is possible that Christina Rossetti was trying to portray a lesbian relationship between Lizzie and Laura. As mentioned during the discussion, the way Laura talked to Lizzie after the "Laura and Goblin incident" was pretty sensual.

In order to understand the poem better, it would be nice to discuss and estimate Laura and Lizzie's age. I also wonder why they don't have parents living in their house.

As mentioed below, I think it would be good to talk about Jeanie. I didn't completely understand the purpose that Jeanie served in this poem.

I was thinking about our readings and discussion this week and was reminded of the laws of thermodynamics (i.e. the energy of the universe is constant and the entropy of the universe is increasing).  It seems like these principles also apply to the creation of new genres and academic writing too. 

In terms of the infinite regress of source materials, perhaps they are the conserved “energy” and all of our different interpretations and changes that we apply to these conserved sources serve to combine but, in doing so, spread out the sources into something “new”… a unique combination.   I think the idea of wanting to produce something that’s different, in any form that it may take  (write, draw, describe) are all ways of taking a finite source and expanding out to something infinite. 

With the ability to reference so many sources on the internet, our ability to combine, but expand, has increased profoundly.  The internet opens our window to new languages, stories, tones of voice, categories of knowledge, graphic representations, interactions, as well as things we’re not even seeking to find (i.e. the surprises that may come up when you Google).  Since you can make many more variants from 100 sources than 5, for example, all of these aspects can make for even greater diversity and boundless creativity.  As the universe is increasing, so are our literary kinds. 

Throughout "Goblin Market" one of the aspects I found the most striking is the playful air of the format and its similarity to the structure of a nursery rhyme or a fairy tale. The fact that it has this shared format makes the poem exceptionally striking, as one can undoubtedly say it is a poem that is not meant for children, as it reflects upon topics that would be incomprehendible to them. Rossetti might have used this format to speak lengths about conflicts such as sexuality, inequality and sexual violence and how these are often a part of a woman's struggle, though as children you are shielded from hearing about the realities of such horrible truths.

At the end of the poem, we learn that both women have been married but their husbands do not have a role in the text. They are not described in any way. We learn that Laura and Lizzie's relationship is the most important one in each of their lives along with each of their children -- and their feelings of obligation to worn them about the dangers of the goblins. While the relationship is ultimately erotic, as are the calls of the goblins, Laura and Lizzie's eroticism stretches far beyond purely sexual connotation. They seem emotionally close and devoted to one another and seem to miss the past during which they were able to enjoy their time together.

"Laura would call the little ones
And tell them of her early prime,
Those pleasant days long gone
Of not-returning time"

Since our discussion of Goblin Market this week, and the related question of whether each of us is a feminist, I have been stuck on my answer to that question.  My intial response was that I am, of course, but then I began to wonder if that definition is too narrow.  In fact, I'm kind of stuck wondering if feminism is too narrow in general.  Until recently, I accepted the dictionary definition of feminism as being about equally for both genders, but it is that binarism that has me stuck right now. 

It seems to me that, historically, feminism has relied on the notion that there are two distinct genders, and that those genders are at odds with one another.  While there's definitely a tradition, especially within 3rd wave feminism, of making room for women who don't strictly adhere to gender norms, there is still the problem of erasure of women who were assigned male at birth, and the errasure of men who were assigned female at birth, inherent in much of the rhetoric surroundng feminism.  From the second wave movement of loving one's vulva, to recent events, including the "Womyn born Womyn" event, feminism still seems stuck on the idea that having a vagina = being a woman.  To me, this is too narrow a definition.

This is my second time using Serendip for one of my classes.  Before I took interdisciplinary perspectives on gender and sexuality last year I was really not looking forward to having to blog each week.  I did not think anyone else would ever read the things that I posted.  I was surprised to find myself in a conversation with my entire class that existed outside the walls of our classroom.  Every week we had to do a blog post and our posts often created topics that would fuel discussions inside and outside of class.   One week, one of my classmates wrote in her blog post about how much she disliked one of the books we read.  A few days later, the author of that book responded to her post stating the reasons she wrote the things my classmate disliked in her book.  I am excited to see where the online Literacies and Education class discussion will take us.

I am also looking forward to really understanding what this class is about.   I want to truly break down what literacies actually mean.  Could you consider socially illiterate when they can read and write but they have no comprehensions of meaning and symbolism through body language?    What does multi-literacy mean and how is it achieved within an academic setting such as Bryn Mawr?  What are the implications of not having computer literacies in the growing technological era?  These questions are just starting points for me with this course and they will be some of the points I plan on addressing throughout the semester.

To me, the most striking thing about Rosetti's "Goblin Market" was the relationship between the women.

The relationship between Laura and Lizzie is complicated and intriguing; they are described as sisters but there is innuendo of sexual relationship. "Golden head by golden head" they sleep beside one another. Lizzie risks everything to help Laura, and succeeds in saving her. Maybe lovers, maybe sisters, one is undoubtedly the savior of the other. And the concluding lines of the poem do not chastise Laura for her indiscretion, but rather dispense the wisdom that "there is no friend like a sister." Regardless of its ambiguous nature, the poem centers on the fact of their relationship.

One of the things we didn't really talk about in class was Jeanie, the woman who fell prey to the goblins in the way that Laura did. Only, presumably, Jeanie did not have a Lizzie. Laura reflects on Jeanie when she realizes she can no longer hear the goblins, and the poem reads,

"She thought of Jeanie in her grave,

 Who should have been a bride;

But who for joys brides hope to have

Fell sick and died"