Welcome

Welcome to AmLitNewpaltz, the blog for my American literature classes. What I’m hoping the blog will do is serve several purposes. First, I’m hoping it will become a place where people can continue conversations from class or start new ones. It should be a place where people can post their own reactions to the works we’re reading and the issues we’re discussing. It should also be a place where people can communicate with each other—set up meetings or study sections.

I’m also hoping to use the blog as a place to work through my own critical obsessions. One thing I’m particularly interested in is the question of aesthetics—what is beauty and literary quality? What makes a work of art great or beautiful? How do we compare the aesthetic qualities of different works? How do we decide which is better? These are questions that used to be at the heart of literary analysis, but have been neglected for a long time. I’m hoping that the blog will help me articulate some of my thinking on these questions, and at the same time garner some responses from you all.

Please note, all three of my courses will be participating in the blog. I’m setting it up this way to generate more mass in the discussion. (And because I’d go nuts keeping track of three different blogs.)

So…this is your space as much as mine. I’m not going to grade this, though it is a form of participation.

Now, this is an experiment, so if you've got suggestions, please send them along.