Due Tuesday Sept. 9 by 5 PM by e-mail to Dr. K; they will be posted by 6 PM

In The Atlantic of July 2008, Nicholas Carr wrote a provocative article called “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” In it, he says

I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle…. 

A recently published study of online research habits, conducted by scholars from University College London, suggests that we may well be in the midst of a sea change in the way we read and think. As part of the five-year research program, the scholars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium, that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. They found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another site. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it. The authors of the study report:

It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.   

Since most of you are at the beginnings of your scholarly careers, I’m interested in seeing if you are part of this “sea change.” So here’s what I want you to do for your first short take.

Assume I assign you to write a research paper on William Blake’s poem “The GARDEN of LOVE.” How would you go about writing this paper? In a 3-5 page minimum paper (4-6 pp min. for grad students), describe to me the specific steps you would take in researching this paper. Include all the actions you would perform, how you would find and gather materials, what mediums you would use (paper & pencil, keyboard, visiting the library, etc.), the time you would spend, and how you would proceed with the paper. If you do research online, identify the databases you would use and the search terms you would use as well. (You do not have to write the actual paper—just go through the process of researching it.)

As a conclusion to this paper, compare your research process to the process Carr describes in his article. Are you the kind of researcher he describes? And what implications does your research process have for the kinds of literary study (and/or writing and/or teaching) you intend to do?

At the end of the course, once you have studied the composing process more deeply, you will be required to revise this short take and present it orally to the class. You will have a conference with me to discuss the plans for this revision.

When you are done, go to the Projects page and read at least four of your classmates' short takes.

Link 1             Link 2