Off Book with Dr. Echols

Off Book with Dr. Echols

By Dr. EcholsEducation
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Off Book with Dr. Echols episodes

  • Three American Poets: Dickinson, Whitman, and Harper
    In this last lecture of our series, I ask "Who is American Literature by, and who is it for?" In reading perhaps the two most famous American poets alongside a poet I believe should be one of the most famous, we are positioned to ask this question, and to interrogate our own understanding of what it means to be American. Is literature all about beauty? Existential questions? Formal experiments and mastery? Politics? Untold stories? Dominant narratives? Marginalized ones? The answer is up to you.
    18 min
  • Life Together: Puritan Values, American Lives
    In this lecture, I'll be exploring the roots of Puritan theology in the Protestant Reformation, and the exciting new possibilities, tensions, and problems that this revolutionary theology created for early English settlers in American in the seventeenth century. I'll focus on the speech of John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to a group of 700 colonists on the importance of modeling Christian charity not only for their own survival, but also to prove the viability of their religious practices before the eyes of the world. This is also known as Winthrop's famous "City Upon a Hill" speech, which later became a byword for the Cold War notion of American Exceptionalism, or the idea that America represents a "chosen people" responsible for modeling virtue to the rest of the world (and thus subject to certain privileges and responsibilities). What connections do you see between Winthrop's speech and our own society? What ideals do you think have survived in American culture from these Puritan beginnings?
    37 min
  • Providence and Prejudice: Phyllis Wheatley's Revolutionary Poetics
    In this short episode, I introduce the work of African-American poet Phyllis Wheatley as no less revolutionary than the writing of Thomases Paine & Jefferson. Enslaved, taken forcefully from her home continent under brutal conditions, named for the ship that carried her and the man who bought her, Wheatley lived and wrote under extreme and traumatic circumstances. Her poetry subtly blends classical allusions and religious principles to assert the moral, intellectual, and literary equality of enslaved Africans to an audience primarily composed of white Europeans, many of whom were implicated and involved in the practice of slavery themselves. If you are interested in learning more about the publication of Wheatley's first book (the first written by an African-American), or about her life, I recommend this blog post from Wake Forest University. There is also a powerful poem written by Eve L. Ewing in response to Wheatley's life and work, written in connection with the 1619 Project.
    37 min
  • "Once More Into The Breach" - Drafting, Reviewing, and Revising

    Now that many of you have finished your Annotated Bibliographies, you will be spending this week drafting your papers. Here are some practical tips for completing your first draft, while making sure you are grounded in the text: 

    1. Figure out your thesis. Remember, it needs to be an interpretive, literary claim. If you're not talking about what a specific text and/or author is doing or showing in your argument, you are off-track. It also needs to make an argument, not just an observation. See the (Hypo)thesis lecture to refresh your memory on what I mean here. 

    2. Assemble your best quotes from the text(s) you're writing about. Think of at least 4 or 5 moments in the text that help demonstrate your thesis.  

    3. Now, assemble your quotes from your secondary sources. These could be claims that support your own; that highlight a concept or example you find important; that demonstrate a connection between your argument and an existing conversation or topic; or they could be pieces of biographical or historical information that help the reader understand something necessary about your text. Paste them separately. 

    4. Now, using your method of choice, create an outline for your argument. You can physically print and cut out both pages and move them around, or you can cut/paste in your word processor. The point is, you want to begin by thinking about how the text itself can help prove your argument, and how you want to present that argument. Then, it's just a matter of filling in the missing pieces: the topic sentences, the transitions connecting your ideas, etc. 

    30 min
  • What is the City but the People?" - Reading Texts in Context

    Last week, we touched on some of the practical uses of reading: building your vocabulary, appreciating beauty, learning to notice things and remark upon them critically. This week, we'll be digging in to some of the things that literature has to teach us: the kinds of social, historical, political, ethical, and personal knowledge it can unlock for us.

    34 min

About Off Book with Dr. Echols

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A series of lectures and conversations on the work of reading, writing, and thinking about literature. Delivered in support of English courses at Temple College.