{"id":19,"date":"2016-08-02T23:33:16","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T06:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl470teamblue\/?page_id=19"},"modified":"2016-08-17T23:17:27","modified_gmt":"2016-08-18T06:17:27","slug":"annotated-bibliography","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl470teamblue\/annotated-bibliography\/","title":{"rendered":"Annotated Bibliography"},"content":{"rendered":"

Utopian Longing and Literary Futures – Roxanne Rimstead<\/strong><\/p>\n

Roxanne Rimstead is a professor at the University of Sherbrooke, best known for her book on poverty narratives<\/a>, arguing that the economic class we are born in will influence our style of writing and experiences. She primarily teaches courses in cultural studies and how subsets of different cultures (such as prisons) will enable a certain type of discourse to be shared in a literary format. <\/span><\/p>\n

In this short article, titled <\/span>Utopian Longing and Literary Futures<\/span><\/i>, Rimstead emphasizes the need to build an understanding of the writing that is produced from oppressed populations. She claims that through understanding the populations that are silenced through our present economic system, it is then that we can become properly critical of the existing system and then move towards a brighter, more inclusive and communicative future for the whole of the population. Three main tenets are suggested in order to achieve this. Firstly, creating a community that translates work from across the diverse cultures and languages in Canada, French and English, Aboriginal languages, and then progressing forward into other languages as well – not merely bilingual, but what the Canadian population truly represents. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rimstead also suggests that academia be changed to create a \u2018youth literary journal\u2019 that is not based solely on grades, and that offers bursaries to diverse voices within the Canadian population. Extending on this point, it would also mean including academes of all levels on projects together, encouraging and creating funds for young scholars to go to conferences and work on extensive projects with more established professionals. <\/span><\/p>\n

Lastly, Rimstead emphasizes the need to focus on public forms of art and narrative, ones that extend beyond the academic world. This point is paralleled in York\u2019s article, that it is important to pay attention to the art of the every day, whether it is for capitalist production, or from a more grassroots initiative, where subcultures use various platforms to create a voice for their group. Looking at alternative means of storytelling, the Storycorps<\/a> project, funded by NPR, could be an example of a media outlet that allows individuals of all backgrounds to share their stories, by interviewing someone they know and adding this person’s wisdom to the Storycorps database for all to see.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading Under Neoliberalism – Lee Konstantinou \u00a0(Laura Savoie)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lee Konstantinou\u00a0<\/span>is an associate professor of English as the University of Maryland. He contributes frequently to the online journal, Arcade. This particular post was in response to Joshua Landy’s work on the importance of challenging readers<\/a><\/span>.\u00a0In this blog post, Konstantinou debates the validity of literary works in a Neoliberal\u00a0market.<\/p>\n

Konstantinou argues that the decline of poetry, and similarly challenging literary texts in the public market is due to changes in publishing and reading priorities. He also posits that the public’s perception of and appreciation for the literary arts has eroded. Konstantinou acknowledges the proliferation of successful creative writing programs, but wonders at the demand for all of this excellent writing.<\/p>\n

This blog post acknowledges that conglomerate-owned publishers place profits above all else. As a result, midlist authors are not published, and editors no longer take chances on new authors for fear of losing money. The result is a public market flooded with literary look a likes and easily consumed work. (Some believe that writing a good novel means following ten easy steps)<\/span>\u00a0Konstantinou fears that the reading public is losing it’s connections to literary writers.<\/p>\n

This idea of a split between literature for the public market and those for academics, relates strongly to\u00a0Roland Barthes theory<\/a><\/span>\u00a0of the oppositional nature of ‘readerly’ or ‘writerly’ texts. Readerly texts are easy to understand, and do not challenge the readers perceptions of the world or the linear progressions of storytelling. Writerly texts, however, challenge the reader’s perceptions with a multitude of meanings and narrative structures. Writerly texts force the reader to make meaning for themselves (“Roland Barthes”)<\/p>\n

Konstantinou wonders is literature has a public mission<\/a><\/span>.<\/span> It is either that it benefits<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>the lives of the readers through enrichment and pleasure, or that literature affords nothing that an engaging television show does. The author believes personally that every person would benefit from being able to, and wanting to, read a long, difficult, and rewarding novel.<\/p>\n

Bye-bye Borders: Neoliberalism in Publishing III – Jeffrey R. Di Leo (Laura Savoie)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this article, Jeffrey Di Leo images the future of publishing and book-selling as a result of neoliberalism. He argues that one of the most visible signs of neoliberalism in publishing has been the decline of independent booksellers<\/a>\u00a0and the rise of book superstores (think Bares and Noble or Chapters). Mass market<\/span> <\/a>bookstores like these have a small team of buyers who make vital purchasing decisions for the entire chain of stores. This homogenizes the literature offered here because the buyers are reluctant to take chances on backlist\u00a0titles or new authors.<\/p>\n

However, book superstores are slowly declining<\/span><\/a>\u00a0as well , as a result of the popularity of eBooks and online shopping. Amazon alone will soon be responsible for over half of all book sales in the United States. This may actually benefit smaller publishing houses and developing authors as the digital marketplace is less competitive and their work can be searched or sourced by tags that connect narratives to the kind of people who will appreciate them<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Globalizations, academic capitalism and the uneven geographies of international journal publishing spaces – Anssi Paasi (Dilinie Perera)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this article, Paasi draws attention to difficulties and issues with unbiased knowledge production of the social sciences on a global scale, in the space of academic journal publishing. Within the space of the Anglo-American academic journals, there is a residual idea that in order to protect and preserve traditions of different geographies, barriers that insolate that knowledge should be broken through the learning of English globally. Through this language then, the flow of knowledge would not be stilted and the global community could work to preserve those traditions.<\/p>\n

Passi draws issue to this as not only does this translation lose bits and pieces of the original knowledge, but the\u00a0Anglo-American publishing community has its own system in determining what genres are worth publishing, which operates in a very market-like manner. As such, what is actually allowed within the public sphere of knowledge is only a small portion of what is being produced. What this is leading to, according to Passi, is a homogenization of the social science. While Passi is talking about a genre on a global scale, I feel that the same ideas could be to describe publishing and knowledge production in the Anglo-American space of Canada.<\/p>\n

Be Suspicious of Stories – Tyler Cowen (Dilinie Perera)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this short video, Cowen cautions his audience to the dangers of simple stories. He explains that with everything that is presented in a nice, clean, tied up fashion, there is something that is being left out. As our lives are always in a state of messiness, there is no feasible way that the stories about us are, or should be, extremely tidy. Cowen goes on to say that when a speaker or author chooses to simplify a story there are several outcomes that develop from that. The general ones he mentions, which he points out is also a reduction, are:\u00a0stories end\u00a0up too simplified,\u00a0they present only absolutes – like good and evil – with no gray,\u00a0and the publishers of stories – i.e. the market and the politicians – dictate what stories we have and do not have. With each expansion of these three ideas, Cowen explains why reducing a narrative into a more easily consumable package is dangerous and why all human beings need to wary of the stories they take in and the ones they produce themselves.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

Cowen, Tyler. “Be Suspicious of Stories.” TedTALKS<\/em>. 8 November 2009, https:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/tyler_cowen_be_suspicious_of_stories.<\/p>\n

Di Leo, Jeffrey R. “Bye-bye Borders: Neoliberalism in Publishing III”.\u00a0American Book Review\u00a0<\/em>32.2 (2011):\u00a0Project Muse.\u00a0<\/em>Web. 15 Aug 2016.<\/p>\n

Fee, Margery ed. \u201c50th<\/sup> Anniversary Interventions.\u201d Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 204 (2010) Print.<\/p>\n

Konstantinou, Lee. “Reading Under Neoliberalism”\u00a0Arcade.\u00a0<\/em>23 Feb 2010. Web. 10 Aug 2016.<\/p>\n

Paasi, Anssi. “Globalisation, academic capitalism, and the uneven geographies of international journal publishing spaces.” Environment and Planning A<\/i>, vol. 37, no. 5, 2005., pp. 769-789<\/p>\n

“Roland Barthes: Understanding Text”.\u00a0University of Waterloo, Arts,\u00a0<\/em>n.d,\u00a0http:\/\/www.arts.uwaterloo.ca\/~raha\/700_701_web\/BarthesLO\/readerly.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Utopian Longing and Literary Futures – Roxanne Rimstead Roxanne Rimstead is a professor at the University of Sherbrooke, best known for her book on poverty narratives, arguing that the economic class we are born in will influence our style of writing and experiences. She primarily teaches courses in cultural studies and how subsets of different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40963,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-19","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl470teamblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl470teamblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl470teamblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl470teamblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40963"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl470teamblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl470teamblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl470teamblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions\/95"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl470teamblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}