Introductory Reading Assignment

NHR Introductory Assignment

My need to take Expository Writing stems from the completion of my degree, which happens to be in Business, which is seemingly unrelated. On the surface, it may not appear important for me to take this course because I have the sufficient writing skills necessary to succeed in a professional career, due to taking numerous advanced classes in composition throughout high school. These ideas can be contradicted, however, on the basis that Expository Writing will give me an extraordinary English foundation, comprised of understanding and analysis skills, that will be applicable inside and outside of my career field, making me a better informed and better-equipped contributing member of society. 

In order to be the aforementioned contributing member of society, one must be able to have innovative thoughts and ways of completing different things, which could easily be influenced by texts one reads and analyzes. The excerpt describes this as "us[ing] writing as a way of thinking new thoughts." This quote essentially means to use one person's ideas to ignite a spark in your own brain that will blaze a path never forged before, causing your mind to wander into undiscovered territories of unique thoughts. This also relates back to the excerpt's theme of connection, causing the reader to connect his or her ideas with the author's in order to create new ones. 

One quote that sums up the main rationale of the New Humanities is "the current generation of college students and teachers needs to reinvent the university itself, not by replacing one department with another, but by forging broad connections across areas of knowledge that still remain in relative isolation" (pg. xxii). From the section of the book that was read so far, it seems apparent that this book prides itself in refocusing the current state of education on collaboration and connection among the different disciplines, as well as promoting innovative, comprehensive thought, as opposed to the current idea of separating everyone based on their professional end goal. This also relates to the concept of the "shared horizon," which is essentially incorporating knowledge from different backgrounds to enhance what we can do as a population, rather than relying on one group of "experts" to tackle global issues. A shared horizon is extremely important because tapping into various resources of knowledge provides new insights into issues that may not have been solvable by only knowing how to find an integral or only being able to calculate financial risk or only knowing how to translate Dante's Inferno from Latin. The combination of all of these abilities is when people truly begin to discover new solutions. 

An unfamiliar term to me from the New Humanities was the concept of creative reading, or the idea that reading should spark a conversation and that the reader should "become an active co-creator with the writer" (pg. xxvi).  In high school, reading was done mostly out of necessity to comply with curriculum, and came alongside with concrete interpretations of the text given to students by the teacher. "Creative reading" provides a new way to tackle reading and think about what one is reading from an entirely different, more interactive perspective.

In summary, the New Humanities presents a new way to think about "English class" and really explores the positivity in unique thought, collaboration, and connection. The excerpt presented numerous unusual, but inventive, ways to take reading out of the context of the past, and move it into the present and what we as the world's future can do to solve complex 21st challenges, as opposed to solely dissecting love and violence in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.