Response papers are a'comin!

I love my classes this fall. Two of them are what we used to call "readings courses" at the University of Tennessee. In other words, they're meant to be foundation courses, not seminars, which translates to lots of short papers and no long seminar paper! The other is Carol Berkenkotter's Genre Theory course, which will be great too. The first class of my week is Feminist Theories and Methods with Jacquelyn Zita, in which we have a 2-3 page response paper due every week. Then there's Lillian Bridwell-Bowles's Gender, Rhetoric, and Literacy: Historical Bedfellows class, in which we have a one-page response due every week. I thought, why not post those responses here? You can read along with me if you like. Next week's responses will be on the following readings...

For the Feminist Theories and Methods class, which has specified themes for the response papers:

• Beverly Guy-Sheftall, interview with Evelynn M. Hammonds, "Whither Black Women's Studies"
• Robyn Wiegman, "The Progress of Gender: Whither 'Women'?"
• Leora Auslander, "Do Women's + Feminist + Lesbian and Gay + Queer Studies = Gender Studies?"
• Shirley Yee, "The 'Women' in Women's Studies"

and the theme is "Women's Studies: What's in a name?"

For the Gender, Rhetoric, and Literacy class, the readings are:

• the first two chapters of Rhetoric Retold by Cheryl Glenn (which is awesome so far!)
• the first three articles in Reclaiming Rhetorica edited by Andrea Lunsford: "On Reclaiming Rhetorica" by Lunsford, "Aspasia: Rhetoric, Gender, and Colonial Ideology" by Susan Jarratt and Rory Ong, and "A Lover's Discourse: Diotima, Logos, and Desire"
• and the sections on Aspasia and Diotima from Available Means: An Anthology of Women's Rhetoric(s) edited by Joy Ritchie and Kate Ronald

I figure posting my responses will both beef up the scholarly content of my blog and force me to make the responses better than they'd ordinarily be, as more people will be reading them. Funny what motivates me.