Welcome to English Studies

ND Governor’s School, Summer 2015

First Day

again!

again!

Our Public Schedule in Brief:www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/GovSchool2015/Homepage.htm

This is also our public homepage, where photos etc. will be displayed.

Our primary room is SOUTH ENGINEERING 314.

We MIGHT move to other spaces—the English dept., a coffee shop, the library—on some days and weeks.

This may include the West Dining Center computer cluster.

Room assignments, unfortunately, are a bit improvisational for us. Space on campus is highly in demand for both summer classes and other special programs, and so we will be shifting around to different rooms throughout the 5 weeks.

Stay alert, and try not to go bonkers!

At the end of each session and each day, always ask your instructor where the next class will meet.

what is

English Studies?

Free-write for about 5 minutes.

Your Instructors

Cindy Nichols

Vicki Fossum

Phillip Bode

Megan Even

Davin Wait

Will each talk a little bit about...

•Personal and academic background•Discipline•Current work•Definition of “English Studies”•Positioning of discipline within English Studies•What you’ll do within this discipline here in Gov School

React and free-write again.

What is

English Studies?

Ok. So.

What is “English”???

Or what is “English Studies”?

?

???

What holds everything together in English Studies? What makes it a unified

field?

Why is one class studying the

development of Ophelia’s

character in Hamlet, another

class is watching old Daffy

Duck cartoons, another is

writing original slam poetry,

and still another class is

examining literacy statistics for

Lithuania?

• RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION: study of language which informs, persuades, and motivates.

o SOCIAL MEDIA or NEW MEDIA WRITING: whole new ways of writing when one is texting , facebooking, twittering or otherwise facing a screen, & whole new kinds of human communities.

• LITERATURE STUDIES: study of language art.

• CREATIVE WRITING: the writing of language art.

• LINGUISTICS: scientific study of language.

Social linguistics: study of speech communities. Why do North Dakotans say “awnt” instead of “ant”? What new “languages” are developing in a digital and globalized world?

Psycholinguistics: the study of how our brains learn, understand, and use language.

Historical linguistics: study of language change—helps us understand why English spelling is bonkers & nonphonetic!

Take the word COUGHWhat’s with the goofy “ou”?

Why doesn’t one letter—“a”—represent the “aw” sound in English? Where did this “ou” come from?

Or why don’t we use “au,” “aw,” “ah,” or “o” instead—all of which are used in the spelling of other English words? (cop, caw, caught)

And then there’s the weirdness of the “gh”: why not just use an “f”? And why is it sometimes “ph”?

Not to mention the “c”: why not a “k” and why is it sometimes “ch” or “ck” or “qu”?

Historical linguistics helps us understand language irregularities.

Also helps you feel less dumb if you’re a poor speller!

And then we’ve still got:CRITICAL THEORY

ENGLISH EDUCATION

COMPOSITION STUDIES

LITERACY STUDIES

GENDER STUDIES

PUBLICATIONS/MASS COMMUNICATIONS: writing for newspapers and magazines—often housed in English.

TECHNICAL & PROFESSIONAL WRITING: study of how to write for different professions (doctor, lawyers, chemists, farmers, engineers, artists). Also how to write instructions, memos, pamphlets.

Word Press

It’s where you’ll find your assignments and post your work for each discipline.

It’s where you’ll converse electronically with your classmates.

It’s where you’ll freewrite, muse, sulk, sing, scratch your head and mess around with language.

the place where we

Davin will be telling

you lots more.

This isn’t actually Davin. It’s a generic clip art image of some poor boring guy whom none of us will ever meet. Or want to.

For Creative Writing this afternoon, we will visit the site below and browse through the

quotations:

www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/CreativeWriting/323/Litquotes.htm