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Facebook and The Liberal Arts We have talked in class about the important role that the audience plays in oversharing. We have discussed that an overshare becomes so based on the particular audience the information is shared with. For example, sharing detailed information about a health issue with a doctor may not be considered oversharing, […]

I found PostSecret to be a fascinating picture blog.  Perusing the site generated three questions as I was scrolling down the posts. 1.  Why do people feel the need to anonymously post things that don’t seem to be controversial or embarrassing?  I did not consider any of the posts to be oversharing. 2.  Do the […]

Hi.  In light of the readings concerning Facebook and the split between offline and online selves, I think that it would be a good idea to suggest a book that may help us ‘theorize’ our understanding of how social networks work.  I included this book because it concerns itself more with theory than ‘application’ or other […]

Hi all. I’m playing with three paper topics. The first I mentioned in class: A consideration of the choices that feminist writers make between intimate storytelling and preservation of their loved ones’ privacy. Like we saw with Woolf, there are good reasons for feminist writers to tell intimate stories, particularly intimate stories about their lives with […]

I am interested in exploring the posthumous reputations of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Robinson. Robinson was a contemporary of Wollstonecraft, and was an “actress, poet, dramatist, novelist, and celebrity figure” (Wikipedia). She wrote a candid memoir that was unfinished at the time of her death but published posthumously by her daughter. Some specific things I’m […]

(by Kathy Cacace) While it was only a tangent during last night’s class discussion on Virginia Woolf and the memoir club’s straddling of the public and private spheres, on the way home I really got to thinking about this idea of the performative intimacy on Facebook. Somebody (Sarah, I think? Sorry! Bad with names but […]

For those who didn’t take notes, here are photos of the chalkboard. -Sarah  

I think the fashion world can be a great example of what “oversharing” is. Especially in today’s world where the accessibility to certain types of realities just for the elite, is made possible only through social media. Though designer collections may vary in style, one thing is common to all runways; the inescapable presence of […]

During our last class discussion on Godwin’s “Memoirs” I presented the idea that there were similarities in his frank discussions of Mary’s affairs to modern writings by those practicing polyamory. Continuing to think on this topic has led to two possible paper ideas, though both are still very early stage ideas. The first would be […]

1. The Editor’s Note of my edition (2nd by Harvest/HBJ) explains that most of the essays here were not intended for publication. Should we adapt our reaction to the text knowing that these were her private works? If so, how? Is the posthumous publication of this private text an act of oversharing her work and life […]

Virginia Woolf’s Idea of Privacy by Joshua Rothman, particularly this: “To me, though, Woolf’s sense of privacy still feels relevant; when I keep it in mind, I see it everywhere… On Tumblr and Facebook, we seek out the same private sociality that Woolf described. Usually, we think of social media as a forum for exhibitionism. But, inevitably, the […]

I am interested in exploring how Sex and the City altered the way female relationships are portrayed on television and how this lead to an expanded market for televised storytelling from the female perspective. In order to focus my work, I want to compare Sex and the City to Orange is the New Black looking […]

Hello.  A paper topic I am interested in pertains to the deficit ancien regime France incurred before the French Revolution.  For instance, I know that the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) between France and Great Britain is ultimately what caused the deficits.  After the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), Great Britain, for whatever reason, was able to pay back […]

(post by Kathy Cacace) It’s true that I work in medical publishing, but in the Venn diagram of my personal interests and my professional life, there is only one small overlap: how we talk about our bodies, particularly women’s bodies.  As I thought about this in relation to our class discussions and the theme of […]

“Thus to be a friend is to stand to another in a relationship of trust, for the sake of one’s friend; to be a writer is to stand ready to violate that trust for the sake of one’s story” (108). Do you agree with this statement? Is there a difference between writing one’s story and […]

  I would like to add a visual to the William Godwin reading. Mary Godwin was very unlucky in love. Her first “unrealized” love affair was with Henry Fuseli , whose paintings like “The Nightmare” were extremely gothic horror depictions. Was that what drew Mary to Fuseli?

My suggestion for a complementary reading to Godwin’s Memoirs is Godwin & Mary: Letters of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Reading their letters to each other provides a nuanced view of their relationship. There are only 160 letters–most of them very short–that trace the trajectory of their relationship from courtship through pregnancy, marriage and up to […]

Having read Memoirs by William Godwin, the following questions resonated: 1. Described as a unique, strong willed and urgent person with many traits of genius, is Godwin’s writing about Mary Wollstonecraft not only the story of genius but how genius relates to non-conformity? 2. More in tune with the topic of the class, is Memoirs […]

Hello.  I just read William Godwin’s 1798 ‘Memoirs of the Author…’ piece.  I printed a copy of it off of the Project Gutenberg website; hopefully, there will be a match between all the different translations/editions of this work.  I just finished reading it and have generated 3 questions I had about the work.  They are: 1) […]

(The Butcher’s Shop by Annibale Carraci, via Wikimedia Commons) 1. Did any part of Cleaving make you cringe?  And in what way, if any, do you think cringe-iness relates to oversharing?  For example, I found myself cringing at Powell’s repeated Buffy the Vampire Slayer references.  On the one hand, I could easily blame this on my dislike […]

1. Much of our discussion in class touched on oversharing as it relates to the audience. Critics of Cleaving have suggested Powell has no audience in mind, and that the book is less a memoir and more one big overshare. Do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not? 2. Cleaving was published in 2009, […]