Blogs

The Dream of Definitions

In a dream world, the definitions of reality seem to be no longer viable. They become twisted and multiplied; each definition can be molded to a new form. The connections between objects and their definitions are liquid, and seemingly inapplicable to the waking reality. And yet, as Lewis Carroll proposes in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, the dream world is not so different from reality –they are both absurd. If this is the case, could not the nature of definitions be fluid in reality as well as in dreams?

To all teachers, teacher assistants and professors: I feel for you.

 Neural and Behavioral Sciences Senior Seminar

Bryn Mawr College, Spring 2010

Aphasia

Call me Isabel (Archer). I’ve been that girl looking on the picnic on a sunny green, the ferocious, “ridiculously overactive imagination”, the woman who mistook a man for who she wanted him to be, the painter of blank canvases, and the hostage of a kiss. Call me Isabel.

Brought to you by The Slippery Brain Sodality

   a novel by Leslie Feinberg  

 Neural and Behavioral Sciences Senior Seminar

Bryn Mawr College, Spring 2010

Astrocytes

Due to an unfortunate mishap with grammar, I felt I could order only a very specific edition of Alice's adventures, but that edition was unfortunately sold out (possibly purchased by all of us?) until yesterday when Amazon finally shipped it.  However, the late shipping meant it would not arrive in time for me to read it for class tomorrow.  Alas, the only copies still available at the library were at Swarthmore, which again would not have arrived on time.  Fortunately, Lewis Carroll wrote his books so long ago that they're all in the public domain and available on Google Books.

3/17 CLASS NOTES, YO

Reading William James chronologically

For Monday- read The Will to Believe

Wai Chee Dimock says she was surprised by how smart her students were, via creeping on their online posts

Discussion of Wai Chee Dimock discussion- how literature can be mode/means for some other end, but doesn’t equal the end

Fabelhaft- interesting how literature is not necessarily at the center, looking at literature sideways

Calamity- issue w/ description of how lit can be read and then tossed away, disposable. If you’ve read it, then there is some impact

Let's start with the good. I really do love this course, and the openness and freedom of the discussions is to be appreciated. We do have a good rapport in this class, despite the fact that there are so very many of us, and I think every single person in the class has valuable, intelligent, well-thought-out things to say.

Mind the Gaps