Metawritings

Metawriting—the writing about writing or writing that calls attention to itself as writing—has been around since Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy, but Jill Talbot makes that case that now more than ever the act of metawriting is performed on a daily basis by anyone with a Facebook profile, a Twitter account, or a webpage. Metawritings: Toward a Theory of Nonfiction is the first collection to combine metawriting in both fiction and nonfiction. In this daring volume, metawriting refers to writing about writing, veracity in writing, the I of writing and, ultimately, the construction of writing. With a prologue by Pam Houston, the anthology of personal essays, short stories, and one film script excerpt also includes illuminating and engaging interviews with each contributor. Showcasing how writers perform a meta-awareness of self via the art of the story, the craft of the essay, the writings and interviews in this collection serve to create an engaging, provocative discussion of the fiction-versus-nonfiction debate, truth in writing, and how metawriting works (and when it doesn’t). Metawritings provides a context for the presence of metawriting in contemporary literature within the framework of the digital age’s obsessively self-conscious modes of communication: status updates, Tweets, YouTube clips, and blogs (whose anonymity creates opportunities for outright deception) capture our meta-lives in 140 characters and video uploads, while we watch self-referential, self-conscious television (The Simpsons, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Office). Speaking to the moment and to the writing that is capturing it, Talbot addresses a significant and current conversation in contemporary writing and literature, the teaching of writing, and the craft of writing. It is a sharp, entertaining collection of two genres, enhanced by a conversation about how we write and how we live in and through our writing. Contributors Sarah Blackman Bernard Cooper Cathy Day Lena Dunham Robin Hemley Pam Houston Kristen Iversen David Lazar E. J. Levy Brenda Miller Ander Monson Brian Oliu Jill Talbot Ryan Van Meter

Essays inspiring readers to take an innovative approach to writing

Addresses how digital forms of personal writing can be most effectively used by teachers, students, and other community members. At a time when Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Instagram, and other social media dominate our interactions with one another and with our world, the teaching of writing also necessarily involves the employment of multimodal approaches, visual literacies, and online learning. Given this new digital landscape, how do we most effectively teach and create various forms of “personal writing” within our rhetoric and composition classes, our creative writing classes, and our community groups? Contributors to Getting Personal offer their thoughts about some of the positives and negatives of teaching and using personal writing within digital contexts. They also reveal intriguing teaching activities that they have designed to engage their students and other writers. In addition, they share some of the innovative responses they have received to these assignments. Getting Personal is about finding ways to teach and use personal writing in the digital age that can truly empower writing teachers, writing students, as well as other community members. “Getting Personal offers an engaging, comprehensive view of how and why instructors, in both creative and academic writing, can integrate contemporary writing and communication practices into their classrooms, assignments, and curricula.” — Jill Talbot, editor of Metawritings: Toward a Theory of Nonfiction “I am right now rethinking some of my assumptions about what it means to do and to teach personal writing—especially in digital environments. I’m also taken with the fact that while the chapters are clearly academic, they are also personal, and while several of them explicitly call the ‘false binary between the personal and the academic’ into question, my sense is that they themselves do so implicitly as well.” — Barry M. Maid, coauthor of The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life, Fourth Edition

In The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic, Mario Perniola puts forth the radical argument that we are shifting away from organic sexuality, based on desire and pleasure, and moving towards a more neutral inorganic and artificial sexuality, a sexuality always available but indifferent to beauty, age or form. Perniola takes the reader on a tour of Western philosophy, from Descartes, Kant and Hegel to Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Sartre, to reframe our understanding of personal experience and the aesthetic world around us. In order to realize the sex appeal of the inorganic Perniola argues that we must become 'things that feel', we must think ourselves closer to the inorganic, creating an alliance between senses and things. Examples from contemporary culture that, for Perniola, are emblems of the sex appeal of the inorganic, include progressive rock music, fashion, deconstructive architecture and the novels of Georges Perec.

Writing for Visual Media looks at the fundamental problems a writer faces in learning to create content for media that is to be seen rather than read. It takes you from basic concepts to practice through a seven-step method that helps you identify a communications problem, think it through, and find a resolution before beginning to write. Through successive exercises, Writing for Visual Media helps you acquire the basic skills and confidence you need to write effective films, corporate and training videos, documentaries, web sites, PSAs, TV shows, nonlinear media, and other types of visual narratives. You'll explore your visual imagination and try out your powers of invention. The companion web site enriches the content of the printed book with video, audio, and sample scripts. It includes scripts and the video produced from them; visual demonstrations of concepts; and an interactive, illustrated glossary of terms and concepts. Please visit www.focalpress.com/cw/friedmann-9780240812359 click on the Interactive Content tab, and follow the registration instructions.

In this collection of essays, thirty scholars from diverse disciplines offer their unique perspectives on the genius of the King James Version, a translation whose 400th anniversary was recently celebrated throughout the English-speaking world. While avoiding nostalgia and hagiography, each author clearly appreciates the monumental, formative role the KJV has had on religious and civil life on both sides of the Atlantic (and beyond) as well as on the English language itself. In part 1 the essayists look at the KJV in its historical contexts—the politics and rapid language growth of the era, the emerging printing and travel industries, and the way women are depicted in the text (and later feminist responses to such depictions). Part 2 takes a closer look at the KJV as a translation and the powerful precedents it set for all translations to follow, with the essayists exploring the translators’ principles and processes (with close examinations of “Bancroft’s Rules” and the Prefaces), assessing later revisions of the text, and reviewing the translation’s influence on the English language, textual criticism, and the practice of translation in Jewish and Chinese contexts. Part 3 looks at the various ways the KJV has impacted the English language and literature, the practice of religion (including within the African American and Eastern Orthodox churches), and the broader culture. The contributors are Robert Alter, C. Clifton Black, David G. Burke, Richard A. Burridge, David J. A. Clines, Simon Crisp, David J. Davis, James D. G. Dunn, Lori Anne Ferrell, Leonard J. Greenspoon, Robin Griffith-Jones, Malcolm Guite, Andrew E. Hill, John F. Kutsko, Seth Lerer, Barbara K. Lewalski, Jacobus A. Naudé, David Norton, Jon Pahl, Kuo-Wei Peng, Deborah W. Rooke, Rodney Sadler Jr., Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Harold Scanlin, Naomi Seidman, Christopher Southgate, R. S. Sugirtharajah, Joan Taylor, Graham Tomlin, Philip H. Towner, David Trobisch, and N. T. Wright.

A new association for the study of the Septuagint was formed in South Africa recently. The present collection is a compilation of papers delivered at the first conference of this association, as well as other contributions. The volume addresses issues touching on the Septuagint in the broad sense of the word. This includes the Old Greek text (Daniel, Proverbs, Psalms and Lamentations) as well as the reception of the LXX (NT, Augustine and Jerome, etc.). A few contributions that may be regarded as miscellanea are nevertheless related to matters Septuagintal (Aristeas, Peshitta, Eunochos).

These fourteen selected essays were originally read at the LXXSA international conference: Construction, Coherence and Connotation in Septuagint, Apocryphal and Cognate Literature (28-30 August 2015), hosted by the North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. Here, the intention was to apply new critical theory and approaches to the fields of Old Testament Scripture as well as associated Apocryphal and Cognate literature, with a specific focus on the interrelated recurring theme of the Wisdom of the deity and its decryption and reception at various times in history. In this regard, it was felt that this theme and associated source texts had been largely overlooked in recent scholarship. Here the aim was to attract recent research by both leading national as well as international scholars which not only shed new light on Old Testament Apocrypha and so-called Pseudepigraphical literature but which also critically reviewed certain biblical wisdom texts which are foundational for both the Christian as well as Jewish communities. As a consequence, many of the essays deal with the apocryphal Wisdom of Sirach. However, important contributions may also be found apropos Micah, Daniel, Baruch, 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Susanna, Judith, and the works of Josephus Flavius.