Women's Reading and Writing Practices: Chick-Lit as A Site of Struggle in Popular Culture and Literature

This paper explores the polyvalent and gendered nature of the relationship between the practices of reading and charming and the Mother of God in the dream narratives of Gagauz women in the Republic of Moldova. The most widespread healing text used by this Orthodox Christian minority, The Dream of the Mother of God, is paradigmatic of this relationship being the principle ‘site’ where images of and beliefs about healing and dreaming meet with women’s reading and writing practices. Women’s knowledge of reading and charming constitutes dangerous knowledge and their dream narratives of literacy and healing represent an important way in which gender and identity are performed by this group of women. I argue here that although dreams with the Mother of God and her text represent transgressions of patriarchal religious boundaries, their ability to contribute to the reimagining or renegotiation of gendered social roles for these women is limited.

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Pre-modern Scriptures in Postmodern Times

Postscripts The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds ◽

10.1558/post.v2i2.293 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 2 (2-3) ◽

pp. 293-315

Author(s):

Diana Walsh Pasulka

Keyword(s):

Martin Heidegger ◽

Religious Thought ◽

Reading And Writing ◽

Writing Practices ◽

Localized Analysis ◽

Crisis Of Modernity ◽

Paul Griffiths

A contemporary movement in Christian religious thought advocates for the recovery of pre-modern exegetical practices. Wesley Kort, Paul Griffiths, and Catherine Pickstock are among several theorists who support a return to pre-modern reading and writing practices as an answer to the crisis of modernity. In the context of scripture studies, the works of Kort, Griffiths, and Pickstock can be understood as examples of analyses that focus on the performative elements of scripture. Their stress on memorization, recitation, and reading reflect the influence of studies of the performative function of scriptures by Wilfred Cantwell Smith and William Graham. Kort, Griffiths, and Pickstock take this line of argument even further, by arguing that is it the very loss of scripture as performance that has inaugurated a loss of the sacred in modernity. This development thus tackles the philosophical issues at stake between secularism and theology and moves beyond the localized analysis of the meaning of specific scriptures. The following analysis places this development in an historical and philosophical context by revealing the theoretical precedents that each scholar draws upon, specifically the later writings of Martin Heidegger.

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Inscriptions and Literacy

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195336467.013.034 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

John Bodel

Keyword(s):

Archaic Period ◽

Reading And Writing ◽

Roman World ◽

Difficult Question ◽

Writing Practices ◽

Methodological Problems

The study of ancient reading and writing practices must begin with inscriptions. This chapter charts the recent debates about the concept of literacy in the Roman world. Setting out from the archaic period, it shows how inscriptions have a key role to play in any assessment of the difficult question of levels of literacy, while at the same time highlighting some of the methodological problems involved in such enquiries. The chapter concludes with a brief exploration of topics ripe for further study .

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The Business of Rhyming: Burma-Shave Poetry and Popular Culture

PMLA ◽

10.1632/pmla.2010.125.1.29 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 125 (1) ◽

pp. 29-47

Author(s):

Mike Chasar

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Popular Culture ◽

The United States ◽

Reception History ◽

Reading Practices ◽

Advertising Campaign ◽

Reading And Writing ◽

The Core ◽

Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽

Creative Forces

This essay uses the example of the long‐lived and popular Burma‐Shave advertising campaign to argue that literary critics should extend their attention to the vast amounts of poetry written for advertising purposes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Burma‐Shave campaign—which featured sequences of rhyming billboards erected along highways in the United States from 1926 to 1963—not only cultivated characteristics of literary and even avantgarde writing but effectively pressured that literariness into serving the commercial marketplace. At the same time, as the campaign's reception history shows, the spirit of linguistic play and innovation at the core of Burma‐Shave's poetry unintentionally distracted consumers' attention away from the commercial message and toward the creative forces of reading and writing poetry. A striking example of popular reading practices at work, this history shows how poetry created even in the most commercial contexts might resist the commodification that many twentieth‐century poets and critics feared. (MC)

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Appropriation: Towards a Sociotechnical History of Authorship

Authorship ◽

10.21825/aj.v4i2.1438 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Adriaan Van der Weel

Keyword(s):

Western World ◽

History Of Reading ◽

Reading And Writing ◽

Writing Technologies ◽

Writing Practices ◽

Concept Definition ◽

Public Consumption ◽

History Of ◽

Literate Culture ◽

Radical Revision

The evolution of our literate culture across the millennia has been marked by clearly identified and well-documented milestones in the history of reading and writing technologies. Changes in literacy, understood as the sum of reading and writing practices, have always followed such milestones at some remove. Not only are they much more diffuse in character and much harder to identify and describe, but they stand in a tenuous cause-and-effect relationship to the technologies in question. This article makes a plea for a stronger awareness of the effects of technology on our literate culture. Reading has always received a fair amount of attention (with the history of reading being a prominent subdiscipline of the field of book studies), but it should be recognized that its corollary, authorship, is a central, and, as digital technology is becoming ubiquitous—at least in the Western world—, increasingly important part of our literate culture, too. With Web 2.0 technology enabling more people than ever in history to write for public or at least semi-public consumption, the concept, definition and status of authorship is in need of radical revision.

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Growing Up Burney

Journal of Juvenilia Studies ◽

10.29173/jjs46 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Lorna Clark

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Family Members ◽

Original Compositions ◽

Literary Form ◽

Growing Up ◽

Frances Burney ◽

Family Identity ◽

Reading And Writing ◽

Writing Practices ◽

The Family

The pressure of family identity and politics affected more than one generation of Burneys. Beyond Frances Burney, and her intense relationship with her father Charles Burney, were other family members who also felt the pressure to “write & read & be literary.” These tendencies can be seen most clearly in the works of juvenilia preserved in the family archive. A commonplace book bound in vellum has been discovered that preserves more than one hundred poems, mostly original compositions written by family and friends. The activity of commonplacing reflects a community in which reading and writing are valued. Collected by the youngest sister of Frances Burney, they seem to have been copied after she married. The juvenile writings of her nieces and nephews preponderate, whose talents were encouraged, as they give versified expression to their deepest feelings and fears. Literary influences of the Romantic poets can be traced, as the young authors define themselves in relation to these materials. Reflecting a kind of self-fashioning, the commonplace book helps these young writers explore their sense of family identity through literary form. This compilation represents a collective expression of authorship which can inform us about reading and writing practices of women and their families in the eighteenth century.

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The Correlation between Students’ Performance in Integrated Exercises and Their Academic Achievements in English Course for Non-English Department

E-Structural ◽

10.33633/es.v3i02.4171 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 3 (02) ◽

pp. 82-96

Author(s):

Qorinta Shinta

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Test Scores ◽

Text Comprehension ◽

Reading And Writing ◽

First Semester ◽

Academic Achievements ◽

Writing Practices ◽

Reading Text ◽

Writing Scores ◽

Writing Exercises

Abstract. The English Course in Public Health Faculty of Diponegoro University is expected to develop the reading skills of the students through various exercises. However, its main goal is to help students identify simple, complex and compound sentences and how to organize them into good paragraphs. As in the Faculty of Public Health, the English Course is only given once in the first Semester, the exercises in each of the lesson is very compact which consists of Reading Text, Comprehension Questions, Word Study, Grammar and Usage, and Writing, in short these are called integrated exercised. Some students did very well on the exercises while others did not. The purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between the students’ performance in integrated exercises and their academic achievements of Diponegoro University Students majoring in Public Health who took English Course. The academic achievements in this study refer to their Mid-Term test Scores. Method of the Study: in the study of Diponegoro University Freshmen majoring in Public Health, a descriptive qualitative method was used to determine whether or not there is a correlation between reading and writing exercises and their academic achievements. The instruments used are the scores of 3 taken from exercises in unit 1, 2 and 3 and 1 Mid-Term test. The population of this research is 73 Public Health students of Diponegoro University taking English 1 Course. The data analysis result shows that Sig score is 0,000 < 0,05 therefore Ho is declined and Ha is accepted, which means there is a correlation between reading and writing practices scores and mid test scores 0.403 which is positive. Therefore, it can be concluded that the higher their writing scores are, the higher mid test scores will be.Key words: correlation, English course, integrated exercises, mid-term testAbstrak. Mata kuliah Bahasa Inggris di Fakultas Kesehatan Masyarakat diharapkan mampu mengembangkan ketrampilan membaca mahasiswa memalui berbagai Latihan soal-soal. Namun, tujuan utama dari mata kuliah ini adalah membantu para mahasiswa menindentifikasi kalimat – kalimat sederhana, kompleks dan majemuk serta bagaimana membentuk kalimat – kalimat tersebut dalam bentuk paragraph. Karena mata kuliah Bahasa Inggris hanya disajikan satu kali, maka latihan-latihan soal pada setiap unit dibuat sangat padat yang terdiri dari Teks Bacaan, Pertanyaan tentang bacaan, Kosakata, Grammar dan fungsinya, serta Latihan writing. Ada mahasiswa yang bisa mengerjakan Latihan soal dengan sangat baik tetapi ada juga yang kesulitan. Tujuan dari peneltian ini adalah untuk melihat korelasi antara Nilai dari Latihan soal reading dan writing serta prestasi akademik dari Mahasiwa baru Universitas Diponegoro jurusan Kesehatan Masyarakat. Prestasi akademik dalam hal ini adalah nilai Mid-term test mereka. Dalam penelitian pada mahasiswa baru Universitas Diponegoro jurusan Kesehatan Masyarakat, digunakan metode deskriptif kualitatif untuk menetukan apakah ada atau tidak ada korelasi antara Latihan soal reading dan writing dengan prestasi akademik mereka. Instrumen yang digunakan pada penelitian ini adalah 3 nilai yang diambil dari 3 latihan soal Unit 1, 2 dan 3. Jumlah populasi adalah 73 Mahasiswa Kesehatan Masyarakat Universitas Diponegoro yang mengambil mata kuliah Bahasa Inggris 1. Hasil dari data analisis menunjukkan bahwa nilai Sig 0,000 < 0,05 sehingga Ho ditolak dan Ha diterima, yang berarti ada korelasi antara nilai Latihan writing dengan nilai ujian tengah semester 0.403 positif. Sehingga bisa disimpulkan bahwa semakin tinggi nilai mereka pada Latihan writing akan semakin tinggi juga nilai mereka dalam Ujian Tengah Semester.Kata kunci: korelasi, mata kuliah bahasa Inggris, nilai latihan soal terpadu, nilai Ujian Tengah Semester

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The implications of reading en writing language preference with regard to internet access for users in South Africa

Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Natuurwetenskap en Tegnologie ◽

10.4102/satnt.v25i3.156 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 25 (3) ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Pieter Blignaut ◽

Theo Mcdonald

Keyword(s):

Internet Access ◽

Home Language ◽

The Internet ◽

Language Preference ◽

Reading And Writing ◽

African Languages ◽

Website Development ◽

The World ◽

The Many ◽

A Site

For historical reasons, English is the language of the internet. Currently, e-commerce attracts customers from all over the world. In order to do good business, websites must be accessible to clients from a variety of cultures and languages. To achieve usability for a global audience, websites must be internationalized as well as localized. Given the many cultures and idiosyncrasies of those cultures, both of these tasks are extremely complex and it is virtually impossible to do both at the same time. It could be helpful if some cultures do not object to the fact that the language of the internet is not the same as their home language. In this study the preferred language of reading and writing of various groupings of African users was determined. It was found that, whereas the Afrikaans-speaking subjects preferred to have written material in their home language, speakers of other African languages preferred English. This has enormous implications for website development as developers can focus on the usability and functionality of a site without having to spend time translating the content into a variety of languages.

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