From: Gene Doty (gdoty@fidnet.com)
Date: Wed 23 Jun 2004 - 15:16:11 GMT
Here's a little background on my interest in memetics. Any suggestions,
comments, questions, cautions are welcome.
My interest in memetics started with reading Dawkins and Dennett. I've
read (and reread) Blackmore's _The_Meme_Machine_.
I write poetry and teach writing and literature. I introduced the
concept of memes in Fantasy Literature this past semester. I'm also an
advocate of naturalizing the ghazal as a form of poetry in English.
I have in mind several things. First, I simply want to understand
memetics better. Then, I want to see if memetics has any value in
literary studies. (I'm sure it does; I'm just not sure I'm the one
who can develop it.) Along those lines, it seems to me that literary
forms (the ghazal for instance, or the sonnet or haiku) can be seen as
memes. And last, it should be possible to use memetics as a framework
for discussing specific works of literature.
Fiction depicting inventions is a clear example. Last Spring, I used
memetics in discussing the material and social inventions in
_Water_Ship_Down_ (Richard Adams) and _Small_Gods (Terry Pratchett).
The students were responive and seemed to find the concept meaningful
and usable. I'm hoping for a paper out of this material.
Gene
-- Gene Doty http://www.umr.edu/~gdoty http://www.ghazalpage.net =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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