Marquette Warrior: Paper Titles From the Modern Language Association Meeting

Friday, January 11, 2008

Paper Titles From the Modern Language Association Meeting

The “MLA” meeting is a “scholarly” conference at which the especially politically correct humanities faculty get together to share their current research.

From Minding the Campus blog, some selected presentations:
I know this is almost too easy, but here are several nominees for the best paper titles at this year’s MLA Conference:

“The Buggering Hillbilly in the Buddy Movie: Male Sexuality in Deliverance”

“Giving Ourselves a Good Kick in the Assessment: Entering and Expanding the Outcomes Conversation,”
and my favorite:

“Queer in a Vaginal Economy: Global Capital and Heteropatriarchal Violence in Filipino American Gay Fiction”

The best panel titles were “Biomarxism” and “Scripting Brutality On The Queer Asian American Body”

I’m sure you’ll all write in for the paper abstracts.
This last one, remember, is not just one paper, it’s an entire panel!

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

They don't actually pay people for that tripe do they? Talk about a waste of money. Maybe if Government money was pulled from all Universities, the cost would come down, and we'd have less irrelevant crap.

12:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And your point is? Are we supposed to imagine you rolling your eyes or something?

If I had to take a guess the argument would be this:
1. Here are a few of the paper titles from a massive conference.
2. These seem crazy to me.
3. Therefore, the people who participate in this conference are crazy. (?)

Comments:
1. This is what's called an argument from anecdote, which is a type of fallacy. You cherry pick a few example tiles that you think support your point (whatever that is) and then generalize.
2. It does not follow from the fact that you think the papers are crazy that they actually are. That is a simple non sequitor. The claim that something is crazy is actually the sort of thing that needs support.

If this is not the implicit argument, then please clarify. And a response that appeals to the premise "Everyone knows that ..." or "It's obvious that ..." is not going to cut it.

2:08 PM  

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