First Blog Post For ENGL 372
Hello! My
name is Alexandra Rowe. I’m an English major and an art minor. I’m a junior
here at Shepherd University. Some of the subjects that I’m interested in are literature,
art, design, movies, and music. I work on campus as an attached tutor and as a
gallery assistant. Since I’m taking two other classes this semester, I’m going
to be quite busy this summer. Fortunately, all my classes seem really engaging,
so I’m looking forward to this semester.
I’m
taking this ENGL 372 class because I saw a poster promoting it on the Knutti
Hall bulletin board. The subject of this class, “Funny Girls: Writing about
Women and Humor” looked like it would be a lot fun, particularly during the warm
summer months. Aside from the interesting and fabulous topic of this class, I
really hope to improve my writing precision, skills and style. A professional
aspiration of mine is to have a critical essay or article of mine to be
published in a peer reviewed journal. I enjoy reading critical essays in
journals and I want to be able to write at that level of quality and style. I
think that since this class is focused on the techniques and structures of advanced
composition, it would really help me to obtain the necessary tools to help me
to reach my goal. Even though this class has just begun, the required readings
seem rather helpful to me. I have started to read the textbook for this class,
Joseph Harris’s Rewriting: How to Do with
Texts. I think this textbook should come in handy. Another reason that I’m
taking this class is that it is online. I like online classes because there is
more flexibility regarding balancing my personal time management.
What makes
me laugh? I laugh at a lot of things, but I tend to laugh at things that are
really ridiculous, surreal or absurdist. I have laughed at many funny women
that are my favorites, but for the sake of space on this blog, I’m going
discuss a television show with a funny woman as the main protagonist. As a
child, the reruns of the series Murphy
Brown left a positive impression on me because the eponymous protagonist of
the show was a smart, successful and bluntly honest woman who was also really
funny. She was nobody’s fool and she didn’t suffer them either. For instance, one
hilarious running gag on the show was that Murphy had the worst luck in finding
and maintaining a secretary. Fortunately, someone on YouTube has made a Herculean compilation of all the secretaries that Murphy had to deal with. Although there are seven videos, I decided to pick two videos for this blog post. The links are
below and I think the video clips are worth your time.
I consider Murphy Brown to be part of the television
triptych of the “intelligent and funny woman surrounded and forced to deal with
an ensemble of neurotics, eccentrics, and idiots in her job” narrative along
with Leslie Knope in Parks and Recreation
and Liz Lemon in 30 Rock.
In
closing, happy blogging! We certainly will have some great texts and topics to
discuss for this class.
Great first post, Alexandra. Love the Murphy Brown connection and those clips are hilarious. And your idea about "the television triptych of the 'intelligent and funny woman surrounded and forced to deal with an ensemble of neurotics, eccentrics, and idiots in her job'" sounds like a GREAT potential paper topic.
ReplyDelete