tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60006522011-08-25T16:27:20.584-05:00A commonplace book for my work on the Walter J. Ong Collection, held by the Pius XII Memorial Library, Saint Louis University.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.comBlogger2111100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-65602562143434708232011-08-25T16:24:00.001-05:002011-08-25T16:26:25.374-05:00

While this site remains for linking purposes, the complete Notes from the Walter J. Ong Collection blog is located at http://www.jpwalter.com/ong/.

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-25711876051840206792007-01-04T17:57:00.000-06:002007-01-04T18:01:07.477-06:00

The technical issues seem to have been solved and Notes from the Walter Ong Collection seems to be working fine now, including publishing a RSS feed. All new posts should be there. And don't forget to check out the two-week old Walter J. Ong Collection website.

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-7006125553570569742006-12-22T16:49:00.000-06:002006-12-22T16:53:02.420-06:00

The move to a Saint Louis University server seems to have caused some problems that need to be worked out. Unfortunately, I do not have complete access to the server, and the library will be closed until after the New Year. Until that time, I’ll keep posting here, which may be easier to use.

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-29316291719063112006-12-22T16:48:00.000-06:002006-12-22T16:49:13.542-06:00

I'm pleased to announce, on behalf of the Pius XII Memorial Library at Saint Louis University, that the Walter J. Ong Collection Web site is now live. The Walter J. Ong Collection website seeks to provide scholars, students, and researchers with information about the Walter J. Ong Manuscript Collection, to host a digital repository for collection materials, and to serve as a comprehensive

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-40020308730752284672006-12-13T14:17:00.000-06:002006-12-13T14:30:10.567-06:00

Notes from the Walter J. Ong Archive is being reborn as Notes from the Walter J. Ong Collection, and will now be hosted on a Saint Louis University server at http://ongnotes.slu.edu. The move is intended to give this blog official status and to join it with the soon-to-come Walter J. Ong Collection web site.

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-59861580589178380792006-12-12T19:57:00.000-06:002006-12-13T14:15:26.854-06:00

A number of people have asked me about an Ong quote I included in a CFP in which Ong suggests that we are in an ecological age:The age in which humans existence is now framed, the age in which human life and technology so massively and intimately interact, can well be styled not only the information age and the age of interpretation, but, perhaps, even more inclusively, the ecological age, in

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1162586356762245142006-11-03T14:38:00.000-06:002006-11-03T14:39:35.536-06:00

Abstracts for MLA 2006 session "Walter J. Ong’s Orality and Literacy at Twenty-Five" (Session 108; Thursday, 28 December; 8:30–9:45 a.m., Congress C, Loews) are now available.Cross-posted to Machina Memorialis.

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1162047031339887082006-10-28T09:49:00.000-05:002006-10-28T09:50:31.360-05:00

The more I read in cognitive studies, the more I find that Ong was already there, working with ideas and theories that cognitive studies is now exploring or finding to be true. Let me juxtapose two snippets I've come across in the past few days, one from Ong's "Comment: Voice, Print, and Culture" (The Journal of Typographic Research 4.1 (1970): 77-83), which expresses a common Ongian theme, and

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1162047219358890172006-10-14T09:52:00.000-05:002006-10-28T09:53:39.360-05:00

Mixing Memory has a repost on cognitive science's return to linguistic relativity.Over the last decade or so, however, cognitive scientists have been revisiting linguistic relativity (linguistic determinism is probably gone for good). They've discovered that language does in fact constrain the way we perceive and conceptualize a wide variety of things, including time, space, number, events, and

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1160081612473514772006-10-05T15:53:00.000-05:002006-10-05T15:53:32.490-05:00

And, finally, the 25th anniversary of Orality and Literacy CFP for the Computers and Writing 2007.CFP: Orality and Literacy 2.0: Orality-Literacy Contrasts and the Next 25 YearsAs you may know, I've organizing conference sessions for both the upcoming MLA and CCCC to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the publication of Walter J. Ong's Orality and Literacy (1982-2007). I'd like to finish this

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1158360093561461792006-09-15T17:40:00.000-05:002006-09-15T17:41:33.583-05:00

With the CCCC acceptance letter earlier this week, I can now say that my plans for a series of confernece sessions celebrating the 25th anniversary of the publication of Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word is really going to be a series. I'll get a web page up with abstracts at some point, but here's the info for both the MLA 2006 and CCCC 2007 sessions:MLA 2006108. Walter J.

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1153070826153713492006-07-16T11:35:00.000-05:002006-07-16T12:44:36.096-05:00

While Ong's use of secondary orality is well known and widely used in relation to digital contexts, his use of secondary literacy is largely unknown. The term's obscurity comes as no surprise as it's buried in a 1996 interview in Composition FORUM (Kleine, Michael, and Fredric G. Gale. “The Elusive Presence of the Word: An Interview with Walter Ong.” Composition FORUM 7.2 (1996): 65-86):“When I

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1152974738672326992006-07-15T09:15:00.000-05:002006-07-16T12:52:47.363-05:00

Critiques of Ong's and others' account of orality and literacy contrasts, especially those leveled by Beth Daniell, sometimes cite Denise Schmandt-Besserat's monumental Before Writing and other works as evidence their theory. This argument is, of course, based on a misreading of Ong, Schmandt-Besserat, or both, and, in fact, as I'm sure I've mentioned here before, Ong himself thoroughly

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1149975434838016242006-06-10T16:34:00.000-05:002006-07-13T12:03:05.396-05:00

As I mentioned a few days ago, I've compiled both a long and short bibliography of Ong's publications on oral-written-print-electronic contrasts. In addition to the two versions, there's an introduction which offers some important qualifications. As the introduction explains, while extensive, the long bibliography is not comprehensive, and while highly selective, the short bibliography is not

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1148334121287029432006-05-22T16:41:00.000-05:002006-05-22T16:56:42.623-05:00

I thought I'd post my bibliography handout, which goes with my Computers and Writing 2006 presentation "Ong’s Digital Turn: Published and Unpublished Writings after Orality and Literacy." There should be streaming video archives of a number of the presentations at http://richrice.com/cw/website. On it are a number of unpublished material found in the archives.Select Bibliography for "Ong’s

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1148135600915191362006-05-20T09:30:00.000-05:002006-05-20T09:33:20.943-05:00

MLA has accepted my panel "Walter J. Ong's Orality and Literacy at 25," which I hope will be the first of a series of 25th anniversary celebrations for the book. MLA's on board, Computers & Writing 2007 will likely be a go, so now it's up to CCCC. Steve may be right: 2007 just might be the year of Ong.The MLA panel's three papers and presenters are:"Orality, Literacy, and Ong's Asymmetrical

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1164225498637494022006-03-29T17:38:00.000-06:002006-11-22T14:01:32.386-06:00

From "Renaissance Ideas and the American Catholic Mind" (Thought 29.4 (1954): 327-356):In the ancient world, language had been bound less to writing and thus less to space, but rather to time, for language had there been felt primarily as something uttered, not as something recorded. Verba volant, scripta manent. Spoken words, like time itself, fly. Only when speech is no longer an utterance but

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1164224074468008142006-03-29T17:29:00.000-06:002006-11-22T13:34:34.470-06:00

In a letter to William F. Lynch, S.J., editor of Thought, dated June 21, 1954 (found in the "Renaissance Ideas and the American Catholic Mind" files), Ong writes:Related to this theme is that you deal with on p. 20--which reminds me somewhat of Piere Teilhard--namely the necessity for a deeper penetration of the mysteries and realities of man in order to make possible the greater penetration of

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1164223584052593012006-03-29T16:03:00.000-06:002006-11-22T13:26:24.053-06:00

Since I've had difficulty in getting offprints of my own work, I'm often struck by the number of offprints, even full issues, Fr. Ong had sent to people. Requests weren't always filled or filled in full, but they often were. For instance, Ong had offprints of "Renaissance Ideas and the American Catholic Mind" sent to 86 people and he had full issues sent to another 51 people without charge!

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1164224758111383922006-03-29T13:36:00.000-06:002006-11-22T13:45:58.113-06:00

Ong has been, from time to time, accused of wanting to return to an oral past, a notion which he vehemently dismissed as a misreading of his exploration of the past. The passage below is far too early to be one of his refutations, but it does express his belief on the role of the past. From "Renaissance Ideas and the American Catholic Mind" (Thought 29.4 (1954): 327-356):In treating of humanism

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1142876842405144712006-03-20T11:44:00.000-06:002006-03-20T11:47:22.420-06:00

2007 CCCC Convention: Call for Proposals25 Years of Reading and Misreading Orality and LiteracyThis session is intended to mark the 25th anniversary of the publication of Ong's Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word by exploring the ways the text has been read and misread by those working in the fields of composition studies, rhetoric, literacy studies, orality-literacy studies, and

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1142573597996309712006-03-16T23:30:00.000-06:002006-03-17T09:03:24.110-06:00

I got 11 proposals for my planned session for MLA 2006. I'm pleased with all of them, and deciding which three to accept is proving quite a task. This is the sixth or seventh conference panel I've put together using an open call for papers, and while I've had more papers to choose from once or twice, I've never had so many papers I want to accept. We still have to see if MLA will accept the panel

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1164223513807340792006-03-06T10:22:00.000-06:002006-11-22T13:25:13.823-06:00

There might be enough material in the collection for someone (not me) to write an article on Ong and the American Comic. Source material would likely include material from the following publication files: "Mickey Mouse and Americanism." America 65.26 (4 Oct. 1941): 719-20. "The Comics and the Super State: Glimpses Down the Back Alley's of the Mind." Arizona Quarterly 1.3 (1945): 34-48. (See also

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1164223458793231292006-03-02T12:41:00.000-06:002006-11-22T13:24:18.796-06:00

Just about six months ago, I came across a letter from Ong to his parents discussing DeMille's Samson and Delilah. Today I found another one, this time in the corresponsence files for the article "Kafka's Castle in the West." In this new letter, Ong writes:Next month DeMille's Samson and Delilah is being released. I had the opportunity to see the scripts of this production all through the various

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1164223376787810842006-03-01T14:48:00.000-06:002006-11-22T13:22:56.790-06:00

While I've found correspondence between Ong and Eliot's representatives before, today I found a letter directly from Eliot himself, dated 30 Dec. 1947. It's nothing exciting, just Eliot thanking Ong for an earlier letter and the comment that he's looking forward to receiving an offprint of Ong's article "Wit and Myster: A Revolution in Medieval Latin Hymnody" (Speculum: A Journal of Medieval

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1164223238753159672006-03-01T12:33:00.000-06:002006-11-22T13:20:38.756-06:00

In one of the folders containing Ong's "Comics and the Super State" (Arizona Quarterly 1.3 (1945): 34-48) is a survey intended to learn what comics people read. Correspondence in the files indicates that the essay, which sees quasi-fascist, Nazi ideologies in superhero comics, grew out of teaching a "practical criticism" course at Regis College. While the title of the course should have tipped

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1164223112038641852006-02-22T12:22:00.000-06:002006-11-22T13:18:32.053-06:00

Found in the publication file for "Contemporary Readings in the Higher Sophistry" (America 70.13 (1944): 343-345). In response to a letter from a reader, Ong wrote:This is the perennial difficulty of Christ's revelation: it is the most satisfactory thing we know, but to have it and keep it I must reform and keep reforming myself.I've discussed Ong's theology and its role in his scholarship before

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1140049128670075212006-02-16T08:06:00.000-06:002006-02-16T08:48:46.860-06:00

Ong reviewed scores of books over the years, often writing insightful review essays rather than simple reviews. A collection of his published reviews would be an education in and of itself. A few of Ong's reviews are reprinted in An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry and are well worth reading. While I'm sure having to choose which to include was difficult, I really wish the review of

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1140047836577903412006-02-15T17:29:00.000-06:002006-02-15T17:57:16.586-06:00

While I've read most of the essays in In the Human Grain, I read them in other collections or as typescripts or in their original publication. In short, while I've read the essays, I've never read "the book" which means I've never read the Introduction until a week or so ago. The intro's one of those short useful pieces that covers a lot of territory that one ought to know before reading Orality

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1139870978652954582006-02-13T16:07:00.000-06:002006-02-13T16:55:39.673-06:00

A recent inquiry to the St. Louis Room asked how detailed the finding guide would be, and if it would be possible to search by key words, people, etc. There was also the assumption in that inquiry, I think, that the work would be done sometime this summer. (A fair assumption as that was the original estimate, an estimate made, I should note, without the ability to really look over the scope of

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1139868297871939072006-02-13T15:56:00.000-06:002006-02-13T16:07:11.026-06:00

For what it's worth, my Computers and Writing 2006 proposal, "Ong's Digital Turn: Published and Unpublished Writings after Orality and Literacy," has been accepted. Among other things, I'll be talking about Ong's unfinished 40,000 word manuscript Language as Hermeneutic: A Primer on the Word and Digitization and the unpublished essay "Time, Digitization, and Dali’s Memory."Archives | computers

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1139866026255674382006-02-13T15:23:00.000-06:002006-02-15T17:53:29.983-06:00

From the Introduction to Ong's In the Human Grain: Further Explorations of Contemporary Culture: "The passage of time affects man's own thinking about God and thus the way he construes his own situation. This is the line of thought running through the third and last section of the present volume. In the past it was easy to identify God with what man did not know the universe. The argument ran:

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1139865256661432112006-02-13T15:16:00.000-06:002006-02-13T15:55:06.336-06:00

On Jan. 31, I finished moving out of the office I'd moved into this past summer. I always knew the office was going to be temporary, but I hoped I'd be there a few more months. The good news is that there's real space for me again in the St. Louis Room, and it's actually better than my old work area. The move itself took place to make room for the newly established Digital Resources Librarian,

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1139772975714534122006-02-12T13:09:00.000-06:002006-02-13T12:28:20.396-06:00

[The above title is, of course, a allusion to Ong's essay "The Talked Book," which is different than a talking book, but there you go. While I'm titling this post "The Talking Book 2.0," that's probably a term better used for books on CD-ROM. And now that I think about it, there's also .mp3, .wav, etc. audio books, and now those self-playing digital audio books from Playaway. But as this is the

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1164047414118562162006-02-12T10:10:00.000-06:002006-11-20T12:30:14.133-06:00

from Rev. of Arguments in Rhetoric Against Quintilian. Translation and Text of Peter Ramus Rhetoricae Distinctiones in Quintilianum. Trans. Carole Newlands. Intro. James J. Murphy. Quarterly Journal of Speech (1987): 242-3:Professor Murphy's Introduction makes many new or otherwise important points, including the following. At the center of Ramus's program was an attack not on Aristotle alone but

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1164046453724011612006-02-11T11:59:00.000-06:002006-11-20T12:14:13.726-06:00

from Rev. of Saving the Text: Literature/Derrida/Philosophy, by Geoffrey H. Hartman. Philosophy and Rhetoric 15.4 (1982): 274-77.Wonderful though they may be, "texts are false bottoms," Hartman states (p. 66). This they certainly are. Despite the potentials of the word which texts alone can release, despite the specific pleasures of the text, there is not text apart from sound. All text is

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1164045836933604032006-02-10T12:48:00.000-06:002006-11-20T12:03:56.936-06:00

from Rev. of Saving the Text: Literature/Derrida/Philosophy, by Geoffrey H. Hartman. Philosophy and Rhetoric 15.4 (1982): 274-77.Despite his explicit attention to writing, however, Derrida in fact concentrates not chiefly on writing but on print, inadvertently it seems. Like other deconstructionists and their predecessors generally, he seldom analyzes preprint texts and most commonly selects

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1164045769319746072006-02-08T16:49:00.000-06:002006-11-20T12:02:49.323-06:00

from Rev. of Eighteenth-Century British Logica and Rhetoric, by Wilbur Samuel Howell. William and Mary Quarterly 29.4 (1972): 637-343:Howell makes clear (pp. 152 ff) that ‘elocution’ (in the sense of the fifth part of Ciceronian rhetoric, previously called pronuntiatio or actio) was stressed largely out of a need to improve reading outloud from texts, especially pulpit reading. But this indicated

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1164045528354703072006-02-04T10:49:00.000-06:002006-11-20T11:59:36.556-06:00

From Ong's review of Classical Rhetoric in English Poetry, by Brian Vickers. College English 33.5 (1972): 612-16.I have recently suggested in Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology that Western culture can be conveniently divided into two periods, the romantic age (in which we still lie and are destined to live for the entire foreseeable future) and the rhetorical age, which reaches back in full view

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1138466900559395312006-01-28T10:46:00.000-06:002006-01-28T10:48:20.576-06:00

I came across an online essay describing the "Toronto School" of Communication, hosted, appropriately enough, by the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology and written by Senior McLuhan Fellow Twyla Gibson. The Toronto School is, essentially, media ecology. Among other things, the piece discusses the importance of such figures as Marshall McLuhan, Walter J. Ong, Eric Havelock, Harold Innis,

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1137102928285436292006-01-12T15:54:00.000-06:002006-01-12T15:55:28.303-06:00

Computers and Writing 2006 (as opposed to Computers and Writing Online 2006) proposals are due Jan. 15. Call for Papers | Submission Form. For what it's worth, here's my proposal:“Ong’s Digital Turn: Published and Unpublished Writings after Orality and Literacy”Although the merits and particulars of Walter Ong’s study of orality-literacy contrasts are the subject of some debate, the influence of

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1136413563310363862006-01-04T16:24:00.000-06:002006-01-05T14:22:33.536-06:00

Ong's Orality and Literacy turns 25 next year (1982-2007), and as many regular readers know, I believe the book is both widely misread and misunderstood. See, for instance "Reading and Misreading Orality and Literacy," notes for my CCCC 2006 RNF presentation, interview response, and this rant. To mark the 25th anniversary of the book's publication, I've decided to organize a series of conference

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1135543503135868792005-12-25T14:42:00.000-06:002005-12-25T14:45:03.136-06:00

Konrad Glogowski, winner of the 2005 Edublog "Best Newcomer" Award, has a post on developing community through blogging: I have spent the last ten days creating a new blogging community for my students. The old one stopped working. I’ve been using Manila for the past two years but there have been too many problems lately. First, the IT team said it was a virus, then the aftermath of the virus,

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1135543250597705102005-12-25T14:39:00.000-06:002005-12-25T14:41:09.993-06:00

Robert K. Logan, author of The Fifth Language: Learning a Living in the Computer Age, The Sixth Language: Learning a Living in the Internet Age, and The Alphabet Effect, is currently working on Understanding New Media: Extensions of Marshall McLuhan:A new study is being made of the social impacts and history of the “new media” is a project called Understanding New Media: Extensions of Marshall

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1133294972399343752005-11-29T14:06:00.000-06:002005-11-29T14:09:32.413-06:00

Rereading Orality & Literacy so as to give my students a theoretical framework for understanding Naomi Mitchinson's Early in Orcadia, I was, once again, struck by the fact that it's much too well known and far too little well read. I've seen far too many discussions of this book by scholars who haven't read it or haven't read it recently (i.e., discussions of it are based not on the text but on

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1132275009749527732005-11-17T18:49:00.000-06:002005-11-17T18:50:09.763-06:00

The University Archivist also passed along to me "The Image Culture" by Christine Rosen, published in The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society. Again, I'm posting this as an article to return to, but from a quick skim of the introduction, I see Rosen ends the intro with this: Two things in particular are at stake in our contemporary confrontation with an image-based culture: First,

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1127760979937033902005-11-04T14:37:00.000-06:002005-11-04T15:21:58.943-06:00

C|Net published a interesting article on "Intelligence in age of Internet" back in mid September and I forgot to mention it here. The article begins with the question: "It's a question older than the Parthenon: Do innovations and new technologies make us more intelligent?" and the piece discusses this issue from a historical and cross-cultural perspective. A few quotes: Intelligence, as it

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1131136061811283702005-11-04T14:26:00.000-06:002005-11-04T14:27:41.823-06:00

Yesterday's New York Times has an article on teenagers and their use of digital technology, essentially a story based on the Pew Internet & American Life Project's report "Teen Content Creators and Consumers."The NYT article begins Melissa Paredes, a 16-year-old in Lompoc, Calif., maintains a Web site where she writes poetry, posts pictures and shares music. So when she was mourning her

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1130171685284890522005-10-24T00:12:00.000-05:002005-10-24T12:22:42.343-05:00

I don't seem to have mentioned it here before, but Fr. Ong was concerned with issues of race from at least the mid-1950s. I've come across a number of both letters and public letters/talks in which he discusses racism, both overt and subtle, though he seems to have focused more on subtle racism, especially racism through language. One example he liked to cite was a priest, while addressing his

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1129993891011105382005-10-22T10:06:00.000-05:002005-10-22T10:14:22.500-05:00

The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin offers the site Teaching Gutenberg. In all, an excellent site which focuses on two themes, "The Invention" and " Books Before and After the Gutenberg Bible."The InventionJust what did Johann Gutenberg invent? What need in society was he addressing with this invention? How did he adapt existing technology for a new

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1129050934540632532005-10-11T12:15:00.000-05:002005-10-11T12:15:34.556-05:00

Via the Digital Medievalist Community mailing list. Please note that I am not affiliated with the conference. Please see their web site for contact information.===========================================================CLiP 2006 FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS AND POSTERSThe 7th Computers, Literature and Philology (CLiP) conference:'Literatures, Languages and Cultural Heritage in a digital world'Centre for

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1128981070391676962005-10-10T16:17:00.000-05:002005-10-23T13:09:08.583-05:00

From Fr. Ong's MLA 1984 presentation on literacy studies, given in the panel "What is Literacy Theory," which exists as a 5 page double-spaced typescript (handwritten revisions are blue): It is certainly crucial that the study of literacy, and of orality-literacy contrasts, be familiar to those working in the history and theories of education, cognitive-development psychology, psycholinguistics,

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1128966398291039672005-10-10T12:44:00.000-05:002005-10-10T12:46:38.296-05:00

Dennis G. Jerz has already linked to and quoted my favorite passage from Matthew Kirschenbaum's "Lost and Found in Cyberspace," so let me quote from another passage: In terms of challenges to future historians, Donadio cites Steven Kellman who has just written a new biography of Henry Roth; he suggests, rather indisputably, that “Our understanding of the Constitution . . . would be quite

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1128716633558196432005-10-07T15:18:00.000-05:002005-10-07T15:23:53.563-05:00

I've come across two accounts by Fr. Ong of Saint Louis University in the late 1930s and early 1940s, which covers the time he was here as an M.A. student studying under Marshall McLuhan and as a Jesuit scholastic. They are:-"Reminiscences concerned with Saint Louis University in the Late 1930's and Early 1940's" which Fr. Ong dictated in 1966 at Fr. Faherty's request-"Recollections and

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1127852672291785982005-09-27T14:34:00.000-05:002005-09-27T15:25:55.410-05:00

First was The Iliad and Troy. Then came Beowulf and Sutton Hoo. Now, The Odyssey and Odysseus' Ithaca. According to a Sept. 27, 2005 article in the Madera Tribune, Odysseus' tomb and his Ithaca was on the Island of Kefalonia rather than the modern day islet that bears its name.POROS, Island of Kefalonia, Greece - The tomb of Odysseus has been found, and the location of his legendary capital city

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1127497314824223232005-09-23T12:24:00.000-05:002005-09-26T15:28:59.130-05:00

9/26 Update: Talking with my boss today, I learned that Jack Foley had sent us this material back in August 2003. At that time my boss knew they'd be hiring someone to process the collection, so he put it aside and forgotten to pass it on when I was started the job almost a year later. When I posted this last week, I saw the August 28 date on the accompanying letter and didn't pay attention to

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1126140442604264162005-09-07T19:20:00.000-05:002005-09-07T19:47:22.620-05:00

VirtualDayz has a number of posts on memory, new media, and memory and new media make it a blog to keep an eye on. The focus is on personal memory and narrative rather than the cognitive and social, which are my particular interests, but it's difficult to build strong walls in memory studies. Personal memory is always socially constructed and social is always, in some ways, personal. And the

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1126040620022664352005-09-06T15:49:00.000-05:002005-09-06T16:03:40.023-05:00

Of late, I've been reworking through old stuff, meaning that I'm making a second pass through Fr. Ong's papers to divide the collection up into its permanent folders (we want, roughly, no more than 25 items per folder -- right now, some folders have well over 100 items) and to begin the process of describing the collection, which, for the most part, is done at the folder level. I'm sure I'll come

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1124947050968662902005-08-24T22:01:00.000-05:002005-09-06T16:03:29.486-05:00

We've finally got most of the collection moved into my office, so I have easy access to Fr. Ong's papers again. We put up a couple of ranges of shelves to hold the boxes. There's still some room, but I know it's not going to last long. As I start going through these boxes a second time, I'm going to be adding a lot of folders as we want to have 20-25 items, which means at least half the current

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1124293175723470032005-08-17T10:11:00.000-05:002005-08-17T10:41:21.483-05:00

Ong seems to have kept his syllabi and course notes on index cards. As I've mentioned before, he could print extremely small, and thereby pack an index card full of information. The courses I've found:-Orality and Literate Cultures-The Origins and the Study of Literature-Polemic in Literary and Academic Tradition: An Historical Survey -The Practice of Interpretation of Prose/Practical Criticism:

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1124217798970375652005-08-16T13:34:00.000-05:002005-08-16T13:43:18.976-05:00

Found on an index card labeled "Ong's Laws":The longer you wait to throw something away, the sooner you will have immediate and urgent need for it.Everything used to be something else. (E.g., a bone in the inner ear having to do with hearing in human beings evolved from a bone serving originally as a support for the gill slits of a fish; horses' hooves evolved from claws; etc.).Total verbal

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1124141888152251712005-08-15T16:14:00.000-05:002005-08-15T16:38:08.160-05:00

I've been working through and writing up preliminary descriptions of Fr. Ong's research, address, teaching, and bibliography cards. Off hand, as I haven't kept a running total, I wouldn't be surprised if there are over 20,000 of them, and I'm certain that there are over 15,000. I haven't been counting individual cards but "items" which may be an individual card or a bundle of cards. Judging by

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1123268095946538042005-08-05T13:54:00.000-05:002005-08-05T13:54:55.953-05:00

At Ghost in the Wire, Kenneth Rufo has a interesting analysis on the trope of media technology displacement and obsolescence. In part, he writes:The other examples don't even come this close. With the Half-Blood Prince still flying off shelves, it's hard to say that either hypertext or video games have ended the culture of book reading. Newspapers are everywhere, with blogs largely parasitic off

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1122914517600749992005-08-01T11:34:00.000-05:002005-08-01T11:42:45.703-05:00

The 2005 Saint Louis University conference "Language, Culture, and Identity; The Legacy of Walter J. Ong, S.J." is now available on DVD:Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2005 08:59:30 -0500From: Sara van den Berg Reply-To: MEA@lists.ibiblio.org, Sara van den Berg To: MEA@lists.ibiblio.orgSubject: [MEA] Ong Conference DVDs now availableA six-DVD set of the Walter Ong Conference held last April at Saint Louis

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1121727799261695242005-07-18T17:45:00.000-05:002005-07-19T15:56:32.073-05:00

Below is a provisional schema for the Walter J. Ong Manuscript Collection. Chances are I will reorganize this plan as the year progresses. While I'll probably continue to refer to the collection as the Walter J. Ong Collection, its formal name is the Walter J. Ong Manuscript Collection. It's also been given the provisional collection number DOC MSS 0064. Assuming that doesn't change (it probably

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1121126474262360702005-07-11T18:59:00.000-05:002005-07-11T19:01:14.270-05:00

Tonight debuts the first episode of Guns, Germs, and Steel, a three-part PBS show based on the book of the same name. If you miss it, episode one repeats later this week. (Your local station's dates and times and dates may vary.)From the PBS Web site:Based on Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, Guns, Germs and Steel traces humanity's journey over the last 13,000 years –

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1120708983065250202005-07-06T22:21:00.000-05:002005-07-06T23:03:03.073-05:00

I finished off the unfiled material today and tackled a box the Jesuits had labeled "Invitations." Inside were 7 ream-of-paper-sized cardboard boxes and a microfilm box. The 7 boxes were all labeled "Invitations Accepted and Not Accepted," had dates on them, were numbered 1-7, and had a note explaining that the file was not complete but close to it, and that the invitations were in reverse

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1120706484134204572005-07-06T22:05:00.000-05:002005-07-06T22:21:24.140-05:00

I moved back into my workroom yesterday. We got me a real desk to add to my worktable, so I now have drawers to store things in, and I kept two of Fr. Ong's filing cabinets as well. I don't need nearly this much storage space, but the tops of the cabinets provide much needed counter space.The work room itself, or at least the half of it that doesn't house the pre-1800 printed books looks nice.

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1120172267857945122005-06-30T17:57:00.000-05:002006-07-13T12:14:52.623-05:00

In 1974, Fr. Ong was the Lincoln Lecturer for the United States Board of Foreign Scholarships in Central and Western Africa. As the Lincoln Lecturer, he traveled and lectured, both in English and French, in Cameroun, Nigeria, Senegal, and Zaire. The Lincoln Lecturers were established to commemorate the passage of the Fulbright Act, which in 1945 established an ongoing educational exchange program

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1120003556815014692005-06-28T18:52:00.000-05:002005-06-28T19:05:56.820-05:00

The new floor in my workspace is down and the walls were painted today. Tomorrow they put down a protective layer of wax on the new tiles, and then I'll get to move back in.I came across a letter, dated 3 March 1999, from Ong to Bill Moyers. Moyers was interested in interviewing Fr. Ong for a project but at the time couldn't get the funding. What I found most interesting was Ong's suggested

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1119849636085776602005-06-27T00:20:00.000-05:002005-06-27T00:22:09.116-05:00

"Claude Shannon's Information Theory, Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, and Jean Baudrillard's The Ecstasy of Communication are very dissimilar works. Shannon's paper, A Mathematical Theory of Information, was published in The Bell System Technical Journal in 1948 as a framework for engineers to approach problems related to transmitting information content through

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1119470255285840452005-06-22T14:23:00.000-05:002005-06-22T16:37:23.930-05:00

I'm still working on doing a first run through the unfiled material. I'm not sure how much more time it will take, but I've gotten through a couple of the boxes. I was on vacation much of last week, and the time I spent in the St. Louis Room was mostly spent preparing the collection and my work area to be moved. My half of the work room is getting new flooring as I type this. They old cork tiles

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1118191526125510212005-06-07T19:24:00.000-05:002005-06-07T19:45:26.130-05:00

Came across folders for SLU-based lectures Ong gave from 1990-1996. Included are folders for the 1990-1991 and 1991-1992 English Graduate Student Symposium series. Both Symposium series files contain a general overview, talking points for each symposium, and supporting materials (from handouts for the graduate students to essay's Ong draws from).1990-91 Series"History of English as an Academic

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1118190250162135532005-06-06T20:49:00.000-05:002005-06-07T19:24:10.226-05:00

I read the text from Lance Strate's "The Flight of MinErvA'sOwl," which was his Presidential Address to the Second Annual Media Ecology Association Convention. It's a great piece which, while clearly rooted in the occasion, makes a number of excellent observations about media ecology and media ecologists from Plato on. The title, a play on Innis' essay "Minerva's Owl" from The Bias of

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1118032946663827512005-06-05T23:14:00.000-05:002005-06-05T23:45:31.470-05:00

An interesting study by researchers at Ohio State University finds that there is a direct inverse relationship between "lack of knowledge" and recognition memory:"Verbatim memory is often a property of being a novice," said Sloutsky, who is also associate dean of research at the university's College of Human Ecology . "As people become smarter, they start to put things into categories, and one of

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1117750503416882002005-06-02T16:54:00.000-05:002005-06-02T17:21:44.593-05:00

I started tackling the unfiled material yesterday. I originally thought I'd try to integrate it into the publication and general files which were in the filing cabinets, but we've decided not to do that at the moment. We may decide to integrate some or all of it later, or we may decide to leave it as its own series. This material comes from Fr. Ong's desk, from papers stacked on the filing

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1117667598389503332005-05-31T16:42:00.000-05:002005-06-02T12:21:48.456-05:00

Spent some of the day reading essays on databases and text encoding in A Companion to Digital Humanities. I'm reading the essays because I'm supposed to help with getting Dr. Thomas Walsh's Ong Bibliography online by playing interpreter between the techies (Information Technology Services) and non-techies (people in the English Department), and because the University Archivist is contemplating

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1117560592754763602005-05-28T15:22:00.000-05:002005-05-31T12:30:19.706-05:00

Yesterday, Dr. Jim Scott, a SLU English professor and a documentary film maker, came with a small crew to film the Ong Collection exhibit and interview me about the collection and the April Ong Conference. They asked basic questions like who I was, what I was doing, what kinds of materials one could find in the collection, etc. Questions about the conference were mosly geared towards getting

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1117249788225212722005-05-27T21:51:00.000-05:002005-05-27T22:19:23.310-05:00

Posted to TechRhet by Clancy Ratliff on behalf of the Computers and Writing Online 2005 conference organizers:When Content Is No Longer King: Social Networking, Community, and CollaborationThe 2005 Computers and Writing Online Conference begins on Tuesday, May 31, and runs through Monday, June 13. This is the first-ever online conference in our field to be open-access, Creative Commons-licensed,

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1116716178972386362005-05-21T17:24:00.000-05:002005-05-21T17:56:18.976-05:00

What disturbs me most about Michael Bugeja's Inside Higher Ed piece The Medium is the Moral is that he characterizes McLuhan's "the medium is the message" as a truism "based on 40 years of communication scholarship." Bugeja's basic argument, or at least his conclusion, is that Duke's iPod experiment failed because "even the power of this compact device --- its incredible storage and future

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1116701811778148562005-05-20T23:05:00.000-05:002005-05-21T17:24:00.330-05:00

One of the projects I've had to put on hold in order to finish my dissertation is "Memory and the Art of Database," a study of database technologies through history and what light these earlier technologies might shed on computerized database design and use. I'm particularly interested in the inventional aspect of databases which Mary Carruthers explores works such as The Craft of Thought:

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1116564117116730632005-05-19T23:29:00.000-05:002005-05-21T15:50:09.286-05:00

Steve Krause has a nice short piece on the fear of blogs which made me think of Ong's "The End of the Age of Literacy," which I wrote about on 6 Aug 2004. Among other claims made in the article to which provoked Steve's response is the claim that online communication like blogs are keeping students from learning how to "interact socially in the normal way through verbal communication'" [emphasis

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1116702237764963392005-05-19T15:30:00.000-05:002005-05-21T16:06:02.036-05:00

I reached a milestone today. I've made it through all the big filing cabinets. There's still the index card cabinets to work through, but I think I'm now going to try to integrate all the unfilled papers into the one of three established categories: Publications (includes publication specific correspondence), General Files (includes general correspondence), and Ong sessions/Off-prints. I know it

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1116710940283786712005-05-18T17:25:00.000-05:002005-05-21T17:06:18.216-05:00

Yesterday, I gave a long preface to this post, a definition of medium theory from Joshua Meyrowitz's "Taking McLuhan and 'Medium Theory' Seriously: Technological Change and the Evolution of Education" (Technology and the Future of Schooling: Ninety-fifth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Part II. Ed. Stephen T. Kerr. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996. 73-110).Meyrowitz

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1116707510019790462005-05-17T14:07:00.000-05:002005-05-21T15:52:09.356-05:00

I particularly fond of the term medium theory as a description of one of my major research interests, though I'm often met by blank stares when I use it. Time and again, I'm told that "media studies" would be a much better term. To me, to say one does media studies is like saying one studies literature or rhetoric. True in and of itself, but not overly useful as a short label used to explain the

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1115827946682590342005-05-11T10:29:00.000-05:002005-05-21T15:54:23.286-05:00

I had my first full look at Ong's folder on Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, the Jesuit paelontologist, theologian, who was one of the discoverers of Homo Pekinensis (Sinanthropus), more commonly known as Peking Man. Fr. Ong met Fr. Teilhard in Nov. 1950 when Ong arrived in Paris. The two both lived in the Jesuit house Etudes, 15 Rue Monsieur, for about a year, until Teilhard left for the

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1115752318752595212005-05-10T14:01:00.000-05:002005-05-21T15:55:39.333-05:00

I finally finished working through the letters of reference yesterday.Today's finds:7 folders of retreats and sermonsRetreat and Sermon MaterialConferences for ReligiousPrayer Groups3-Day Retreat (2-Day Retreat)Tridra, Days of RecollectionDirected Retreats8-Day RetreatsPsychiatry and Literature seminar material, in the folder SLU: Psychiatry, Department ofJesuit | Psychiatry | Psychiatry and

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1115248744976111162005-05-04T17:39:00.000-05:002005-05-21T15:56:44.963-05:00

I've mentioned the fact that our plan is to mark up the collection finding guide in Encoded Archival Description for easy searching (2 Feb. 2005, 12 July 2004). It's got me thinking about the use of tagging metadata as a mnemonic function and an excellent way for managing data, and I'd even thought about trying to create a set of key words to mark entries in this blog to easiily find subjects by

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1115182104687706702005-05-03T22:27:00.000-05:002005-05-21T16:00:46.290-05:00

I've been working through the two drawers of letters of reference files -- slow going as most are just one page and I have to create and label a new folder for each person. As most of these files are confidential and as access to them will be restricted, there really isn't much to say about them other than it is slow, labor-intensive work. I am learning something about the letter of

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1114957909850294652005-05-02T08:44:00.000-05:002006-07-13T13:29:14.680-05:00

Question five from the interview:Q5. Walter Ong is most recognized for his book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. What is the essence of this text that really engages people? I can really only speak for myself here, or maybe I'm just better off speaking for myself and my relationship to this book so I will. The book is so clear, I think. Or it seems so, but more on that in a

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1114981941476365352005-05-01T15:22:00.000-05:002005-05-21T16:02:12.066-05:00

It seems a Montana State University course on oral traditions required students to keep online journals:Oral TraditionsThe Oral TraditionOral TraditionsMemories of a Myth-TellerResponses to ThoughtsOral TraditionsMLS 337 ORAL TRADITIONSOral TraditionsOral TraditionOral TraditionsThe Power of OralityOral Traditions E-JournalStory TimeGuy With the Cowboy HatI have mystical visions and cosmic

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1114957303542193552005-05-01T09:13:00.000-05:002006-07-13T13:31:26.000-05:00

Question four of the interview:Q4. Apart from the Walter Ong Project, a site hosted by Saint Louis University, there does not seem to be much information about Ong available on the Internet, as compared to many other media thinkers. Why do you think this is so? This is a hard question and one I'm not sure I can really answer. What ever I'm going to say is going to be speculation on my part, and

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1114732695265857792005-04-29T20:13:00.000-05:002006-07-13T13:20:54.723-05:00

Here's the third interview question and response:Q3. What is it about Professor Ong's work that particularly fascinates or inspires you? The breadth and depth of his knowledge, which was truly staggering in its scope. That and his sense of wonder. It's clear to me, from what I've seen in his files and from talking with people who knew him much better than I, that he never lost the wonder that

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1114731924466354172005-04-28T18:20:00.000-05:002006-07-13T13:23:09.300-05:00

Yesterday was my intern's last day. She has been a great help. She's worked through over 2/3 of the books, entering their bibliographic information into a computer. I still don't know the exact number of books in the collection, and it will ultimately depend upon whether or not some of religious books (such as books on the Spiritual Excersises; rules of the Jesuit Order; handbooks for the various

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1114725557083173582005-04-27T20:22:00.000-05:002005-04-28T17:08:57.136-05:00

I was interviewed by Eira Joy Aringay, a Media Studies student at RMIT University in Melbourne, for a course project she is working on -- an Ong Wiki that I'll link to once it's finished. She sent me six questions to answer, and I'll post them and my responses over the next few days. Here's the first:Q1. How did you first come across Walter Ong? I first came across Fr. Ong's work back in early

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1114724704841162212005-04-25T16:40:00.000-05:002005-04-28T16:45:04.843-05:00

I came across a videotape today titled "Out of Orbit: The Life and Times of Marshall McLuhan." It appears that Ong was interviewed for the program.I also found a 16-page booklet titled "An Introduction to the Crayfish of Missouri" published by the MO Department of Conservation. It lists 28 different varieties. It seems that MO has the world's smallest, the American dwarf crayfish, which grows as

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1114706879717872042005-04-22T19:22:00.000-05:002005-04-28T16:40:06.253-05:00

During the summer of 1929, a 16-year old Walter J. Ong, Jr. and fourteen other Boy Scouts, most from Kansas City, attended the 1929 Boy Scout World Jamboree outside Birkenhead, England. The "Heart of America Troop," as they were known, was the only group from the United States to consist entirely of Eagle Scouts. On their way to and from the jamboree, they also visited a number of sites in North

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1114145156656591182005-04-21T23:36:00.000-05:002005-04-21T23:45:56.656-05:00

There's a post with a few links at Kairosnews.org about the Kaiser Family Foundation's report Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds. One of the finds in the report is that because of multi-tasking Generation M's use of newer media is not necessarily reducing their exposure to older media.

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1114102317959550902005-04-21T11:47:00.000-05:002005-04-21T11:51:57.960-05:00

Browsing through files for a quick break -- something I do less and less these days -- and I found a small file for Alice B. Toklas. There's a small note and an audio cassette. Fr. Ong visited, and it appears interviewed, Toklas while in Paris in 1953.

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6000652.post-1114102031160261082005-04-20T14:39:00.000-05:002006-07-13T13:24:45.940-05:00

I came across Ong's Guggenheim Fellowship and renewal applications today. An interesting bit of history.

Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08185659717579864049noreply@blogger.com0