Dear Reader,
For today’s blog post I will address another area of our ASTU course that rests outside of the previously discussed subjects based on the content of literary texts. Indeed, another essential component of the Global Citizens CAP stream, which is also covered by my Art Studies course is the skill of scholarly writing with the purpose of educating and develop us as university scholars.
The fashion in which our class has addressed scholarly writing is mainly through analyzing and studying the material presented in “Academic Writing” written by Janet Giltrow followed up by our class discussions. When I first began reading Giltrow’s guide to academic writing I was slightly confused as I found Giltrow’s rather colloquial language and casual tone to be missing the focus for academic literature. I had expected a rigid “black and white” description of what I, as a student, is required to do in order to improve and develop my academic writing. Instead, I was met with vivid descriptions and rather intangible guidelines for how to understand and gain a perspective on what scholarly writing. Following Giltrow diving into scholarly writing, as a reader, you are given a sensation of engaging in a conversation and thought process rather than complete ideas. As we have discussed in class, when looking at Giltrow’s reasoning behind her choice of language, you as a reader can perceive a more holistic and accurate representation of what academic writing often entitles. Just as Giltrow indirectly displays through her writing style, it is the act and ability to engage in a written conversation together with other scholars.
Since I began to comprehend Giltrow’s idea, I have come to gain a new understanding of both how to read scholarly texts and how to enable my own scholarly voice to interplay with them. Interestingly, I found that painting up a more abstract and metaphorical understanding of scholarly writing such as Giltrow does, and citation in particular, enables me to feel more comfortable with my own impression of scholarly writing. For instance, Giltrow compares the skill of effective citation to the director of an orchestra. My Professor Luger later developed this idea further during our class discussion. Doing so, my perception of “citation” changed and underwent a rather drastic paradigm shift. Previously, I had a tendency to refer to “citation”- as the act of borrowing external players from another team (scholar), for the purpose of continuing with the metaphorical comparisons, helping me win a “game” of argument rather than citations fully being under my control. After our discussion, however, I began to see my role shifting from being one of the players to being the coach of the team made of my own ideas and the ideas from other scholars. Thus, the concept that citation, when done properly, instead is a process of your own academic creation was ground-breaking to me.
Furthermore, to enhance this discussion we also went back to many of our articles written by experienced scholarly writers field, such as Matthew Bolton whom I have mentioned in previous blog posts. Analysing Bolton’s essay regarding Ondaatje’s Running in the Family from the perspective of scholarly writing techniques rather than the literary content Bolton presents, it is clear to what extent Bolton is in control of his essay. That is to say that Bolton uses the voices of other scholars in order to amplify his own argument. An example of this can be noticed in the paragraph Accusations and a posteriori ethics, where Bolton brings in contrasting opinions of several other scholars such as Mukherjee and Mundwiler with the purpose of “creating a spot on the map” as Professor Luger would put it, for his own opinion being heard (Bolton, 222). Doing so, we were able to link this technique back to Giltrow’s idea of the different functions of citations; such in this case identify oneself as a member of a group collectively and to take a new turn in the scholarly conversation (Giltrow, 41). I found the ability to apply Giltrow ideas to actual scholarly writing to be fascinating and utterly important. It pinpoints authenticity of the theoretical understanding of literary scholars writing process and is as I regard it, a major catalyst for me to implement this in my own writing.
To conclude, these past classes have brought new perspectives and knowledge that I will do my best to incorporate into my own academic carrier in order to sharpen my scholarly voice.
Have a good weekend!