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My Professional Writing Papers

Technical Writing ·  Exposition & Argumentation ·  Non-fiction Creative Essays ·  Grammar and Usage of Standard English ·  The Structure of English ·  Analysis of Shakespeare

Analysis of Literary Language ·  Advanced Professional Papers ·  The History of the English Language ·  First Internship: Tutoring in a Writing Workshop ·  Second Internship: Advanced Instruction: Tutoring Writing

Visual Literacy Seminar (A First Course in Methodology) ·  Language in Society (A Third Course in Methodology) ·  The Writer's Guild

Journalism

UMBC'S Conservative Newspaper: "The Retriever's Right Eye" ·  UMBC'S University Newspaper: "The Retriever Weekly" ·  Introduction to Journalism ·  Feature Writing ·  Science Writing Papers

The Shipka Spaces: Theories of Communication and Technology

Communicative Objective #1 (CO1): The Re-patent ·  Presentation/Gaming Activity: "Shopping Happens" ·  The History of "this" Space: UMBC Food

Blackboard Weekly Posts (A Bulletin Board Community)

Communicative Objective #2 (CO2): Recontextualization of Authorless Text

Explanation of How to Read "This" Objective ·  Parameters for Recontextualizing Authorless Text ·  Photos of the Authorless Text Artifacts

The Authorless Text Narrative ·  The Authorless Text Goals, Choices, and Process Narrative-Sketch ·  The Authorless Text Rolling Credits

The Authorless Text Workshops One and Two: Brainstorming Ideas Within a Social Context ·  The Authorless Text that was Researched, Tested, and Abandoned

Authorless Text Blackboard Community Post

Click here if you feel lost.

Click here if you feel found.

"Altered States, Analog to Digital:
A brief synopsis of my life told through business cards."

Click here if you feel dizzy.

The Official Lost and Found of Authorless Text

Using "this" space, I will discuss my collection of found texts. In "this" space, I will talk about what what I am finding and how these texts might (or might not) be read and/or work together.

"You're hungry again? You ate yesterday..." by P.C. Paul

I have four possible design paths or ideas.

Topic One
This will probably be the first of the ideas to get dumped. Something to the effect of "Footnotes and Notes for the Foot." This came about from the card in my wallet for foot massage. In the UMBC Writing Center there are two handouts for MLA and APA style guides. We all know there are many various style guides out there:

1. MLA
2. APA
3. Chicago
4. MLA
5. APA
6. Chicago
7. AP (Associated Press)
8. IEEE
9. Turabian (History)
10. AIP (American Institute of Physics)
11. CBE (Council of Biology Editors)
12. AAA (American Anthropological Association)
13. ASA (American Sociology Association
14. NLM (National Library Medicine)
15. CSE (Council of Science Editors)
16. Harvard
17. APSA (American Political Science Association)
18. Mathematics/Statistics also has one but I didn’t find it yet in my research
19. I don’t know if the SAE has one (Society of Automotive Engineers) they may use the one from the mechanical engineers.

These I found with little digging on the web, the above cited works are all authorless text.

         As far as Notes for the Foot a brief look showed me I could find all kinds of authorless text about feet, foot health, foot problems, and other useful knowledge. I am really not clear as how these types of text weave and categorize together other than by a play on words and that the bottom of the page in publishing is a footer.

Topic Two
The next thought is no less bizarre than the first. I wrote a narrative last summer about myself and the twists and turns I went though in my education from one field to the next but all had some kind of connection to each other. I thought I was writing something interesting. Maggie in ENGL 407, Communications in Society, heard me talk about this in Shipka’s office and thought the topic would have been an interesting tale for a history, obviously a small glimpse of my own personal history and that this tale had something to offer to more youthful peers. I wasn’t thrilled with this because I am not really comfortable with talking about myself as a topic or a focus of analysis. I prefer artifacts or things versus people especially personal stuff. I was trying to get published and many of the journals are calling for this memoir stuff which was why I wrote the essay. Shipka in 407 Tuesday informed us that when students were asked to write abut their college experience, out of hundreds read, only three types actually existed. Shipka called them the "Rocky" essay (against all odds), "Before Eve" (I can’t think of what this is now, so I have to ask Shipka to clarify), and "Amazing Grace (Shipka didn’t clarify this one either but I am thinking "Lost" but "Found"). When I think of the essay I now think my essay that I thought said something falls into the category of "Amazing Grace" though it could be "Rocky." I thought of it more as the ending music of the Jetsons where he gets trapped on the conveyor belt. "Jane! Stop this crazy thing!"

        I travel by bus everywhere because I can’t afford a car and pay tuition I would collect bus schedules so I was thinking of recontextualizing mass transit schedules. Then it occurred to me Monty Python did a skit spoofing Masterpiece Theater and it was something like Murder on the 5:38 to Brighton, known as the Agatha Christie (Railway Timetables) Sketch. Everything the actors said in the skit revolved around departure and arrival times to various places. I then decided why limit myself to say the UMBC bus line and the MTA after all, all of this information is on the web. I could dig into Howard County, my old home town of Westbury N.Y. and the Nassau County bus line, Philadelphia, and Lancaster PA. Why stop there? Bring in train schedules like the commuter lines from Baltimore to DC, the Amtrak, and LIRR (Long Island Railroad). I could also bring in trolleys from Baltimore and Philadelphia. Then expand to airports and airplanes because having also used those. I was thinking of weaving my twisted educational tale with the twisted scheduling of trying to get from one place to the next: basically what my life has felt like and calling it "You Can’t Get There From Here." When it comes to mass transit the saying really is true. You end up traveling from taxi, to bus, to subway, to train, to ferry, to ocean liner, to airplane and back again and don’t forget that most of the journey is on foot.

Topic Three

The front of "Wo Hop" in N.Y.C. Chinatown

Okay, time to put on your tin foil hat again. When I was a reporter for the Retriever, somehow all the articles on food that semester were being fielded to me. I became the "Food Man" on campus. If it dealt with food it seemed to have my name on the article. The Authorless text seems to be heading in that direction once again. Being the "Food Man" or writing about food was NEVER something I EVER considered. I consider myself a picky eater but maybe I’m not as picky as I think. At some point in time when I lived in New York, my group of eccentric friends developed this oddity of running to a restaurant at the drop of a hat. But not just any restaurant, it all depended upon what someone said they were hungry for. If someone said they wanted a cheeseburger we would run down to Virginia to a special place. If someone said Chinese in an hour we were crossing the Manhattan Bridge to enter Chinatown and would eat only at Wo Hops, 17 Mott Ave., and specifically in the basement. If one dumps the search term “Wo Hop” into the search engine one receives dozens of hits all saying the same thing. Click here to see some reviews posted at http://www.menupages.com/

         If someone said, "souvlaki," back in the cars off to Bayville on the North Shore of Long Island. If someone said Mexican food we were on a plane to Bloomington, Ill. Chicken in a Black Bean sauce we’d scurry over to Hicksville, NY. We starting mapping out the entire Continental US with our stomachs. Then we did it because we could. Now the fascination may exist because I don’t have enough money to buy food and I’m hungry all the time. I started to think of all the take-out restaurants around me here in my travels in Arbutus and Catonsville and there are a lot. I went out and collected take-out menus. I have no idea why but again Monty Python came into my head and it was the skit of the three Australian Bruce’s. At the same time I thought of the image of Kilroy who was from the WWII era and painted everywhere. He always looks like he is peering over the edge of a fence. I did a search on him and found variations of his image. I thought maybe I could use him to hold the menus. Why not weave a text of the Three Kilroy’s who attended UMBC and became the experts in Catonsville/Arbutus Take-out. I might be able to weave scenes of them in one restaurant bugging the restaurant owner for extra cat or dog in their Chinese take-out or how two of the Kilroy’s admonish the third and banish him form the dining table because what he chose looks awful and stinks literally but he loves to eat it there because he says that it’s the best made.

Topic Four
This topic in my mind is the most boring but maybe does the most work as far as categorization. The authorless text would be business cards. First, this text is probably one of the most overdone types of text in this class. If I consider the work business cards do in goals and choices I am a little nervous because this authorless text may not provide a great deal to write about. I have a small binder I have maintained over the years not for collecting purposes as one of my brother-in-law’s has done over the years but this was a "working portfolio" with several categories within the collection. Some categories might fall short of six so those may have to be negated but this would also end up in goals and choices as what was trimmed out and why. Various categories would be Automotive Suppliers, Dealers, Software Sales, Computer Sales, Doctors, Dentists, Chiropractors, Therapists, Record Stores, Antique Glass Dealers, Universities, Veterinarians, Pet Stores, and there are probably still more all of which are from different states. I think some of the cards would have their own stories and some would mark out phases of interest of things also.

Delivery
As far as how to display the project this project regardless of which I choose I believe will work nicely for a web site within my own web site or several pages broken up into various categories. I think this one may lend itself to scanning and digitizing.

Note: To see what my colleagues were coming up with in the forms of authorless text and recontextualization designs refer to this link: Shipka's Blackboard Prompt #7