Last week with Written on Their Hearts: Writing, Worship, and Spiritual Formation in the Life of the Mind, Dr. Royce Francis began a new series on writing with a new format for the ESN blog, i.e., Masterclass. Like a Masterclass in music or performance, it provides the opportunity to learn skills from an expert, as well as exercises designed by that expert to help you deepen those skills in your own academic life. In this series, which will run for the length of the spring semester, he will weave together theological reflection and practical suggestions on becoming a skilled writer in general and within your field. He will also provide exercises each week to give readers a way to put the ideas in the series into practice. Join ESN for a Masterclass in writing. Questions and conversation are welcome—feel free to use the Comments section to express them, or email them to http://www.intervarsity.org/contact/emerging-scholars-network. [Read more…] about Writing Starts With Reading (Masterclass in Writing, Part 2)
reading
Book Review: Reading for the Common Good, by C. Christopher Smith
Reading for the Common Good: How Books Help Our Churches and Neighborhoods Flourish, C. Christopher Smith. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016.
Summary: Explores how the communal practice of reading in congregations fosters a learning community and shared social imagination the results in clearer congregational identity, sense of mission in one’s setting, and wider engagement with the environment, economics, and political order.
[Read more…] about Book Review: Reading for the Common Good, by C. Christopher Smith
Journalism Notes: Spiritual Growth Through Reading and Writing News
One of the biggest challenges I face as a journalism professor is just getting students to read the news. Even those majoring in journalism often spend little time staying abreast of current events. [Read more…] about Journalism Notes: Spiritual Growth Through Reading and Writing News
Book Review: The Edge of the Precipice
The Edge of the Precipice: Why Read Literature in the Digital Age?
By Paul Socken
My rating:Â 4 of 5 stars
What will become of reading? In particular, what will become of reading and engaging what have been considered the great works of literature from various cultures (no canon arguments here!)? With the advent of digital media with writing that comes to us in blog posts, tweets, and laced with visual content, what will happen to sitting down to read a long work like Don Quixote or War and Peace? With the growing emphasis on STEM education in our highly technological economy, will reading that seems to yield no immediate job skill or tangible benefit still have a place? These are among the questions explored in this collection of essays.
One of the things I realized immediately in reading this collection was that I was among my people! These people love reading and books and consider this love to have had a profound shaping influence in their lives. I suspect that people like that will love this book, particularly if they have been engaged in literary studies in the last several decades. [Read more…] about Book Review: The Edge of the Precipice
Book Review: Why Read?
Why Read? by Mark Edmundson
Bloomsbury USA, originally published in 2004
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
English departments are under attack in higher education. To be precise, courses that involve reading literature are under attack. Some people still prize being able to express oneself well in writing – maybe what we’ll have down the road is simply “Writing Departments.â€
Not if Mark Edmundson has his way. Why Read? is an extended essay on the value of reading, an expansion of a widely circulated Harpers Magazine article [On the Uses of the Liberal Arts]. His answer might be quite surprising to those who have been around English Departments of late. He argues that reading is important for great writers’ exploration of the big questions of life:
- Why are we here?
- What is a life well lived?
- Why should character matter?
He believes books can change us and the test of a good book is that we can live its truth.