3.1080 N&Q: reading aloud; PhD dissertations (124)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Tue, 20 Feb 90 22:54:43 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 1080. Tuesday, 20 Feb 1990.


(1) Date: 19 Feb 90 21:07 EST (28 lines)
From: Malcolm Hayward <MHAYWARD@IUPCP6.BITNET>
Subject: Reading Aloud

(2) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 12:01 EST (10 lines)
From: JackFruchtman_8302850 <E7U4FRU@TOWSONVX.BITNET>
Subject: Reply to Mark Riley and Reading Aloud

(3) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 90 16:19 PST (22 lines)
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK>
Subject: Re: 3.1059 queries (108)

(4) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 08:12 EDT (19 lines)
From: "Leslie Z. Morgan" <MORGAN@LOYVAX>
Subject: citing PhD theses

(5) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 90 22:47:32 CST (12 lines)
From: ENCOPE@LSUVM
Subject: Organism Cope Reinforced for Citing Dissertations

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 19 Feb 90 21:07 EST
From: Malcolm Hayward <MHAYWARD@IUPCP6.BITNET>
Subject: Reading Aloud

I missed how we ever got onto this topic, but let me plunk for
my favorite: Booth Tarkington's Penrod books (Penrod, Penrod
Jashber, and Penrod and Sam). The syntax is convoluted, the
vocabulary seems far above what a 10 or 12 year old should
be able to read--but two out of three of my kids really
enjoyed them. In fact, for both I read through all three
twice. Why did they enjoy them? Sometimes I think it is
in spite of the old fashioned prose; sometimes I think it is
because of it. Certainly Tarkington has clear insights into
the way kids think. Maybe with the prose the way it is the
child realizes, Hey, he is not talking down to me but rather
expressing the way that I think in words that I would use
were I able to use words that way. Of course the kids do not
use such words for their realizations. Anyway, I guarantee
at least a 66% chance that the children will respond to Penrod
in ways you would not be able to predict--at least if you
expect that the best books are ones that, as Donald Webb says,
reproduce the rhythms of the spoken language. The experience
of the Penrod books suggests exactly the opposite.

Malcolm Hayward MHayward@IUP
Department of English Phone: 412-357-2322 or
IUP 412-357-2261
Indiana, PA 15705
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------16----
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 12:01 EST
From: JackFruchtman_8302850 <E7U4FRU@TOWSONVX.BITNET>
Subject: Reply to Mark Riley and Reading Aloud

There is plenty of fine children's literature that may be appropriately
read aloud to children, even older children. Examples: Jean George's
_My Side of the Mountain_, Lynn Reid Bank, _The Indian in the Cupboard_,
Katherine Paterson's _Bridge to Terabithia_, Zilpha Snyder's _Egypt
Game_. And then, of course, there is everything by Lloyd Alexander. Good
reading!
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------25----
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 90 16:19 PST
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK>
Subject: Re: 3.1059 queries (108)

Dear Willard, I have argued with colleagues for years that the Diss
should be written as a book, at least in the Humanities. They turn a
deaf ear, since most have them dont know how to write a book, and are
not serious in any case. We waste umpteen dollars and strength and
youth of our grad students in making them write Dissertations that we
then say will be their ticket to a job, and then they must take 3-5
years making the stuff into a book in hopes of getting it published,
while teaching heavy loads and starting families and all that. Criminal
proceedings, and when compared to scientists' approach, worse than
criminal. People used to get their (Germ+French) Diss published in
Europe, perhaps, which had a Kultur for the Diss. We have copied that
literally, but left the meaning out of it. It is a set of hurdles to
be surmounted, purposelessness incarnate. I find it loathesome, but,
the whole thing is surely silly by now. I was skeptical as a lad of
Pound's strictures against the profession, since I was entering it, but
of course looking back, he was correct in scorning the American+Germanic
Diss, which produced almost nothing. Now of course lok at the Univ
Press lists and see whatis being produced! That needs an essay of its
own, but first I want to win a lottery, and then try cutting at their
Achilles/Artemisial tendons. Kessler here.
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------23----
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 08:12 EDT
From: "Leslie Z. Morgan" <MORGAN@LOYVAX>
Subject: citing PhD theses


For the language/literature field, in the question of to cite or not re
PhD theses, there is another underlying issue: how the thesis was
originally conceived. There is a difference in institutions. Certain
large state universities do not grant the PhD if a publishable
dissertation is not produced. In that case, the dissertation IS a book,
and becomes cited as such. (This policy has side effects, of course,
which I will not go on about here, but which merit discussion.) At
other institutions, the dissertation is an apprenticeship, from which
articles and/or a heavily revised book may be produced later. In that
case, citing the dissertation is necessary.
(5) --------------------------------------------------------------17----
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 90 22:47:32 CST
From: ENCOPE@LSUVM
Subject: Organism Cope Reinforced for Citing Dissertations

In my first published article (the beginning of a long series of happy
errors!), I cited several dissertations from _DAI_ and its predecessor,
_DA_. The reader for the journal, a well-known editor of Rochester,
congratulated me (anonymously) for having been _so_ thorough as to
go looking through dissertalia. This should be empirical proof that
dissertations are worth something. Indeed, citing them initiated my
career (and without that odd event, their would be no "veteran e-mailer"
on these lists). -- KLC