Class Blogs

A significant portion of the writing, thinking, and collaboration of this semester will take place in the blogosphere! All students will have their own blog at Blogger.com and these blogs will be connected via the course blog Food / Literature.

In this way we can share thinking, publish our work and ideas to a broader community than just our class members, and connect our work to the enormous literary and cultural resources of the web.

A blog is a "web log" -- in its most essential form, a commentary on other sites on the web. Since our class will draw on on-line research and includes extended investigation of current and historical themes and issues, our class work is, most appropriately, web commentary. Our blogs are "academic blogs" focused on the work in this class, rather than "personal blogs." (Create a second blog that you can use for this purpose!)

Writing on the blog should be thoughtful and careful, appropriate not only the the academic project of the class, but mindful of the possibility that your writing is published to a world-wide audience. 300 words per blog post is about right for a typical post. Blogs should be both personal and visually attractive. Each post should include at least one image and several links to other sites on the web.

I suggest first writing blog entries in your own word processing program before cutting and pasting into the blog. The blog is an easy to use space that allows revision and commentary by your classmates and other readers.

You will make many links in your blog to sites related to the literature and themes of the course. You are expected to write thoughtful and insightful blog entries two times per week, and to write content-meaningful commentaries on your classmates entries -- eight to ten times per week. After specific blog assignments, I will visit your blog to record your work and your commentaries in the grade book.

The intergration of blogging into literature study will be intellectually enriching and develop your skills as a publishing writer!