1. C122 Day 7

2. Today Communication in Practice quiz
Examples and discussion of “uncanny”
Deep reading of an excerpt from The License
Discussion of power and representation in The License
Summary and preview of Monday’s reading

3. Communication in Practice Quiz
What does “uncanny” mean?
Give one example of an encounter you’ve had with something uncanny (or paranormal)
What does a driver’s license symbolize in The License?
What’s one thing from the reading that you found interesting or confusing? Why?

4. UNCANNY What does “uncanny” mean?
What experiences have you had with the uncanny?
“A structure is felt to lurk below the surface…and, just barely visible, its glimmer becomes uncanny” (123).

5. The Uncanny Valley

12.
Start at 0:42

18. Not just people – “Unheimlich”

19. https://www.youtube.c om/watch?v=hpb2- ZOzc_o

20. Reading a Complex Text
Through the uncanny, perhaps, the naturalized may grow contingent with the latent critique in its stories of alternate possibilities. Things as they are, things that appear to be as they must be, threaten to fall apart. In the light of an uncanny space, these naturalized rules almost appear to be what they are, constructions. As Turner (1981) wrote of the liminal, this space breaks down code into its parts, which loom grotesquely out of order. They acquire the horror of taboo in Mary Douglas’s (1996) classic sense of the term, of things out of place that threaten a naturalized order. Douglas recognizes that such ambiguity has its seductions as well as dread; “the richness of poetry depends on [it]…aesthetic pleasure arises from the perceiving of inarticulate forms.” (130)
Key words?
Topic?
Argument?
Structure
Topic sentence
Supporting sentences
Connectors?

21. Resistance
“The uncanny story denaturalizes dominant histories, imagining ghostly pasts and potential futures.” (131)
What does a driver’s license symbolize in this essay?
What does the UFO genre tell us about ourselves/the United States?

22. More on the uncanny
What do other uncanny stories tell us about human nature?
genres of uncanny things - vampires, zombies for desire. Frankenstein & Godzilla for science/medicine
Start to make the connection to poetics in general
Creativity, like the uncanny, expresses uncomfortable things in glimmers and can expose underlying structures
That’s why, a la Bauman, it’s useful to study art

23. Poetic/Uncanny
What is the “poetic function of language”? (128)

24. Writing and Representation
What do we think of the people who believe in UFOs? How does Lepselter represent them?
Why does Lepselter structure her essay in such different halves?
We’ll talk more about strategies for representation next week

25. Summary
The uncanny is a poetic alteration of the familiar, making it strange or “off”
The uncanny shows us something about our own nature by hinting at aspects of ourselves and our society that we normally conceal
The uncanny produces uncertainty, and thus has the power to disturb social norms
Poetic language does essentially the same things

26. Greetings Assignment due Monday Articles:
Ottenheimer, “Writing Cousin Joe”
When does Cousin Joe use “standard” grammar and when does he use dialect? Why?
What are our responsibilities when transcribing?
Key words: orthography, transcription, dialect
Note: the n word appears in the article, and we’ll discuss it in class
Leila Monaghan, “Conversations: The Link Between Words and the World”
LEARN THE TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS. You will be graded on their use in Fieldnotes 1 and 2
This is a good example of a thick description of a short interaction; can help with Greetings