ANDREA A.LUNSFORD

Professor Andrea Lunsford
Office: 460 Denney Hall
Phone: 292-7696/ 262-1629
Email: lunsford.2@osu.edu

Course Description:

As the fourth of the classical canons, memoria played a major role in Greek, Roman, and Medieval rhetorics.  Yet the growing dominance of print increasingly relegated memory to lesser and lesser importance, so much so that by the twentieth century attention to the canons of rhetoric focused almost exclusively on invention, disposition, and style.  This seminar aims to reclaim the canon of memory for composition studies, first by tracing its history and then by exploring the role memory plays in writing and in the history of writing from several perspectives--rhetorical, biological (including gendered), cognitive, social, political, artistic, pedagogical, and cultural.  Participants in the seminar will choose one perspective on memory to focus on for a term project and presentation; in addition, each of us will conduct a case study on our own uses of memory. Finally, working together, we will build a bibliography on memoria for which we will derive the subcategories and provide annotations and which we will (attempt to) post on a class website.

Class Bibliography

Web-based Discussion
To return to syllabus, press back button.

Course Texts:

Cixous, Hélène and Mireille Call-Gruber.  Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing.  New York: Routledge, 1997.

 Luria, A. R.  The Mind of a Mnemonist.  Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1968, 1998.

 McConkey, James, ed.  The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology.  New York: Oxford UP, 1996.

 Reynolds, John Frederick, ed.  Rhetorical Memory and Delivery : Classical Concepts for Contemporary Composition and Communication.  Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993.

Course packet - available for copying on the bookshelf in 421 DE

Course Requirements:

Weekly postings to class listserv; several "conversation starters" on particular readings (distributed to class one day in advance); one formal class presentation (20 minutes minimum); two peer responses; case study on memory; class bibliography; term project.

Course Schedule:

Historical Perspectives on Memory

Week One:
 TH 9/23 make a metaphor/simile for memory Calendrillo, "Memory" (packet)
 Carruthers, "Memory's Room" (packet)
 Crowley, "Modern Rhetoric and Memory" (Reynolds)
 Begin personal case studies and class bibliography
 

Week Two:
T    9/28
 Carruthers. Chapters 2 & 6 (packet)
 Sappho (packet)
 Plato excerpts from Phaedrus and The Republic (packet)
 Havelock, excerpt from The Muse Learns to Write (packet)

TH 9/30
 excerpts from The Rhetorical Tradition: Vico, Quintilian, Bacon, and Campbell (packet)
 Welch, "Reconfiguring Writing and Delivery in Secondary Orality" (Reynolds)
 Middleton, "Oral Memory and the Teaching of Literacy" (Reynolds)
 Francoz, "Habit as Memory Incarnate" (packet)
 update on case studies and class bibliography
 Can we build a memory website?
 

Week Three:
T   10/5
 Gronbeck, "The Spoken and the Seen" (Reynolds)
 Allen, "The Faculty of Memory" (Reynolds)
 Reynolds, "Memory Issues in Composition Studies" (Reynolds)
 Hesford, "Autobiography and the Politics of Pedagogy" (packet)
 Establish categories for bibliography if possible: assign tasks

TH 10/7
 Memo regarding term project due
 McConkey, pp 2-17; 173-89; 391-400
 Soyinka,  from The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness (packet)
 Bal, "Introduction" to Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (packet)
Week Four Scientific Perspectives
 

Week Four:
T   10/12
McConkey, pp 25-40; 47-63; 123-42; 147-62

TH 10/14
 Kandel and Hawkins, "The Biological Basis of Learning and Individuality" (packet)
 Sacks, "A New Vision of the Mind" (packet)
 Bliss, "The Physiological Basis of Memory" (packet)
 Edelman, "Memory as Recategorization"; "Memory and the Individual Soul: Against Silly Reductionism" (packet)
 

Week Five:
T   10/19
Draft of part of term project due: peer response
Squire, "Memory and Brain Systems" (packet)
  Lynch, Larson, Muller, and Granger, references from "Neural Networks and Networks of Neurons" (packet)

TH 10/21
 Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist
 Excerpt from personal case study of memory due
 

Literary Perspectives

Week Six:
T   10/26
 McConkey, The Anatomy of Memory.  Essays to be selected by class

TH 10/28
 McConkey, The Anatomy of Memory.  Essays to be selected by class
 

Week Seven:
T   11/2
 McConkey, The Anatomy of Memory. Essays to be selected by class

TH 11/4
Paris, from Pagan Grace (packet)
Nabokov, from Speak Memory (packet for one; McConkey for the second)
 

Week Eight:
T   11/9
Morrison, "The Site of Memory" (packet)
Mura, from Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality, and Identity
  (packet)
 Bibliography entries due

TH 11/11   No Class: Veteran's Day

Week Nine:
T   11/16
Draft of term project due: peer response
Cixous and Calle-Gruber, Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing

TH 11/18
Cixous and Calle-Gruber, Rootprints
 

Technology and Memory
Week Ten:
T  11/23
Chapters 3 (Sloane), 21 (Eldred), and 23 (Moulthrop) in Selfe and Hawisher, Passion, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies (packet)
"The Electronic Scriptorum" (packet)

TH 11/25   No Class: Thanksgiving
 

Week Eleven:
T   11/30
Term Project Due
Selfe and Hawisher, cont. –selections to be chosen by class.
Bolter, "Hypertext and the Rhetorical Canons" (Reynolds)

TH 12/2
Course Evaluations
Make a metaphor/simile for memory
Reports on projects
 

Allen, Virginia. "The Faculty of Memory." Rhetorical Memory and Delivery: Classical

Concepts of Contemporary Composition and Communication. John Fredrick Reynolds, Ed. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993. Mike Sasso

Allen argues that rhetorical approaches to memory were vital to turn of the century innovations in psychology, communication, and human development. For Allen memory "mediates between our perception of the flow of disconnected sense data… and our knowledge or understanding of reality" (46). She believes that theories regarding memory must be studied whole and faithfully examines the competing theories of the psychology of the mind that arose at the turn of the 20th century and thoroughly expounds upon Aristotle's faculty psychology. Aristotle said that memory is evident in a being when she is able to perceive the passage of time. Allen then divides animals with only memory with those that are able to recollect. Aristotle says that recollection is a sort of reasoning. Allen adds that memory is not perception or conception but a process subsequent to both" (50).

Allen's discussion of memory as a faculty is followed by a description of Aristotle's exposition of memory. Dividing memory into similarity, contrast, and contiguity, Allen reviews Aristotle's laws of associationism and cites the objections and additions to his theory by Descartes, Locke and Berkley. Allen continues to revise Aristotle's notions through the insights of James Mill, Christian Von Wolff, Hume, Kant, and Bain. Allen's argument fuses the ideas of memory as a faculty and an associative mental activity and finally repositions memory and the study of rhetorical memory in the teaching of Priestly and Whately. Allen also makes some interesting connections between the study of memory and the debate over the mental abilities of women that took place as women's universities began to proliferate in the late 19th century.

Angelou, Maya. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." The Anatomy of Memory. Ed. James McConkey. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1996. 254-264. Aaron Oforlea

In her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou reconstructs the events surrounding her junior high school graduation. In her autobiography, she describes the racial atmosphere, the hopes of her classmates, and the bigotry of the commencement speaker. His words, Angelou says, "fell like bricks around the auditorium and . . . settled in my belly" (McConkey 261).

As the commencement speaker tells the few opportunities for African Americans or the places in society where white Americans prefer and tolerated their presence,-- while ignoring the girls, he encourages the boys to be athletes. During his address, Angelou says that "the proud graduating class of 1940 . . . dropped their heads . . . Professor Parsons sat . . . rigid [devoid] of will or willingness, [and]. . . teachers examined the flag. . . or their notes." Notwithstanding, the atmosphere changed dramatically. Absence of faith or optimism, Angelou wished the whole world dead.

After the speech, Angelou writes, "[I]t is awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense" (262). However, the singing of the "Black National Anthem" returned hope, honor, and cultural appreciation to the ceremony. "We were on top again . . . We survived. The depths had been icy and dark, but now a bright sun spoke to our souls. I was no longer simply a member of the proud graduating class of 1940; I was a proud member of the wonderful beautiful Negro race" (264).

The anthem function as symbolic memory--the anthem remembers the oppression of African American. Also, the anthem combats the speech of the commencement speaker. In summary, this chapter by Angelou is largely anthologized because it is so rich with description and meaning. Besides brilliantly introducing readers to her memories as a young girl growing up in Arkansas, she memorializes African-American poets' presence in America.

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: the New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987. Mick Weems

Anzaldúa weaves histories, legends, languages and her own personal accounts into this text to show us a psychic borderland, physically situated between northern Mexico and the southwestern US and present in the identities of many of its residents. This borderland both separates and unites Anglo, Tex-Mex, Aztec, lesbian, gay, la raza, rich, poor, Indian, straight--all of these and more besides. The author does more than stand at this border; in a very real sense, she is the borderland, with all of its contradictions, memories and dreams. By using several voices (ethnographer, queer activist, the Latina, storyteller, and poet among others) and by switching languages (Castillian Spanish, English, Nahuatl and Tex-Mex plus other variants), she shows that the elements which comprise her identity are not in peaceful coexistence, but nevertheless live together in one person as well as within a society.

As a text on memory, this book gives one way in which different (and dissonant) cultural influences and personal orientations can be reconstituted and remembered within personal experience as valid, even necessary, sites for identity.

Atwood, Margaret. "In Search of Alias Grace: On Writing Canadian Historical Fiction." The American Historical Review 103 (1998): 1503-16. Ser Jackson

This essay, originally delivered by Atwood as the Bronfman Lecture in Canada, deals explicitly with history, memory, and fiction writing. Atwood discusses the genre of the historical novel "insofar as it has to do with the mysteries of time and memory," asserting that in such novels particularly, and in fiction generally, individual memory and collective memory are melded together. This is inevitable, for "We have to write out of who and where and when we are, whether we like it or not, and disguise it how we may." While Atwood explicitly deals with Canadian fiction and history, her essay does a wonderful (and entertaining) job of troubling the relationship between fiction writing and history writing, asserting that, in both, we find the intersection of private and public memory.

Augustine, Saint. "from Confessions." The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. 5-8. Sarah Adams

This excerpt from Augustine's Confessions records the character and life of his mother in the context of her death. I find this a particularly moving passage both in the Augustine's expressions of grief and the strong hope of God's faithfulness which both he and Monica express. As a memorial and a memoir this section is notable in that it shows Augustine's strenuous efforts to make this a genuinely confessional work, that is, one in which he does not conceal or construct his memories but confesses to them as they really were to the best of his ability. Several times in this section he mentions lapses in his memory or prefaces dialogue with statements that this was the tenor of the conversation but not its exact wording. Augustine's narrative also relies on God as a transcendent Rememberer, as

when he writes "You knew, O Lord, how I suffered but my friends did not." He pleads with God to accept the incompleteness of his confession, knowing that he (Augustine) can not fully confess and examine his life because he cannot fully remember it.

Bacon, Francis. "From The Advancement of Learning." The Rhetorical Tradition. Eds. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's P, 1990. 625-630. Melissa Ianetta

Bacon divides the mind into the constituent faculties of reason, memory and imagination. In this framework, memory is both those facts carefully stored in the mind and the remembrance of past personal experiences. Expressing a disdain for the over-development of that quality of mind responsible for the retention of facts, Bacon compares an overly developed memory to "tumblers, funambuloes, baladines; the one being the same in mind that the other is in body; matters of strangeness without worthiness" (628).

Once he articulates the need for the integration of critical thought with retained factual data, Bacon goes on to subdivide the memory in the "Prenotion" (our capacity access mental information) and the "Emblem" (our ability to formulate mental images). This subdivision of memory is symptomatic of Bacon's belief that memory is "weakly studied" and that better attention needs to be paid to this often-overlooked faculty.

Bal, Mieke. "Introduction." Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1999. vii-xvii. Hilary Harpe

Bal has collected articles which analyze the way in which cultures create cultural memories, particularly those involving trauma. The book is organized under three sub-headings: Helpful memories (articles which highlight memory's healing qualities), Dispersed memories (which deal with memory and place), and Memories for the present (which concern the active aspects of remembering in the present). In the introduction to these articles, Bal differentiates between traumatic and narrative memory, and suggests a model for the transformation of the personal memory into the collective. In this model, Bal emphasizes the acts of performing and witnessing.

Baldwin, James. "A Stranger in the Village." The Anatomy of Memory. Ed. James McConkey Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1996: 243-253. Aaron Oforlea

In his essay "Stranger in the Village," James Baldwin remembers and compares his experiences as a Black man in America and Switzerland. To a group of Swiss people in a "small Swiss village," Baldwin is a living "wonder." The Swiss children and adults are intrigued by his hair and skin color (245). Thinking his skin is "tar," the adults constantly touch his body to see if it will come off (one adult suggests that he "lets" his hair grow long enough to be harvested for a coat) (245). Attempting to be understanding, Baldwin says that "I knew that they did not mean to be unkind" (246). However, he is less forgiving of America. Baldwin criticizes American white men for stripping the identity of Black men. He says that this stripping has caused Black men to be forever distrustful and suspicious of White men. Regardless of white men's effort to restore civility between the races, it's possible that they will be subjected to the "rage" of Black men.

Baldwin contends that while the identity of the "American Negro" is created by the "estrangement from his past," American white men fantasize of regaining "a state in which black men do not exist" (252). This fantasy is not only an illusion but is a dangerous error. White men must understand that the battle they engaged in to maintain their identity has forever changed it. Therefore, white men should stop envisioning a world absent of reality (a world without "darker forces") this vision is "dangerously inaccurate and perfectly useless" (253). Also, this vision may protect a state of superiority, but it compromises ones grasp of reality-- not accepting reality is self-destructive.

In his essay, besides exploring and articulating the social position and state of mind of Black men. Baldwin traces the creation of Black men's identity from American slavery to 1953. He says "the identity of the American Negro" originates from an extreme situation (250).

Black, Pam. "Keeping Memory Lane Unclogged." Business Week. 8 Mar 1999. 116- 118. Ben McCorkle

A popular media conception of memory¹s importance in today¹s world that stresses both the preservation and enhancement of the faculty (akin to the Time article introduced in the beginning of the quarter). Suggests that memory, the result of synaptic firings throughout the entire brain rather than in one localized zone, is a process that generally slows with age; this process can allegedly be combated with a variety of behavioral modifications (changes in diet and exercise), holistic remedies (ginkgo biloba, for example), and synthetic medicines (NSAIDs or estrogen therapy, often used to ward off Alzheimer¹s). Perhaps useful as an instance of the popular discourse surrounding the assumptions that help inform an understanding of memory.

Bliss, Tim. "The Physiological Basis of Memory." From Brains to Consciousness? Essays on the New Sciences of the Mind. Ed. Steven Rose. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998. 73-93. Ben McCorkle

Bliss's article is an extremely difficult piece of neuroscience, concerned with how the brain's chemical/physical makeup is altered as memories (what he defines as a "neural presentation of the event to be remembered and which is all that the brain can know about that event. . .") move from short-term to long-term memories (73). Bliss suggests this move is in some way facilitated by the presence of Long-Term Potentation (LTP), an alteration in synaptic pathways situated primarily in the brain¹s hippocampus.

Bolter, Jay David. "Hypertext and the Rhetorical Canons." Rhetorical Memory and Delivery: Classical Concepts for Contemporary Composition and Communcation. Ed. John Frederick Reynolds. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993. 97-112. Nikki Hamai

Although this article explores the ways that hypertextual delivery affects all of the rhetorical canons, I have chosen to focus on the faculty of memory for the purposes of this bibliography (107-10). According to Bolter, writing has long been characterized as a means of extending memory because it externalizes language and the memories embodied therein

(107). But with each new technology of writing comes a different relationship-or gap-between memory and the writing act (108). Bolter envisions the ideal of the hypertextual revolution in writing as a closing of the cognitive gap between memory and writing: "automatic searching techniques, concept maps, and [especially] 'friendly' interfaces" will allow readers to move effortlessly between what they remember and what they can find in the hypertextual environment (108-09). Moreover, readers may move between memory and writing in a nonlinear order and thus create networks of relationships, texts, meanings, and possibilities (110).

Boswell, John. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe. New York: Vintage Books. Mick Weems

Already notorious for his book, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, Boswell's follow-up is even more controversial. He was roundly criticized for his first book from both queer and Christian Right thinkers for juxtaposing "gay" with "Christian." The Gay Christian public, however, loved him and still do. This text gives the argument that, not only were there Gay Christians in antiquity, there were also Church-sanctioned unions bonding women with women and men with men.

Boswell argues effectively that Christians have "forgotten" these unions and the rituals which effected them, just as they have forgotten their own Gay saints, kings, queens, and clergy. This book is used in some same-sex unions today by Gay Christians who wish to affirm their love in the context of time-honored traditions, excavated by a scholar who was one of their own.

Bush, Vannevar. "As We May Think." The Atlantic Monthly. July 1945:101-108. http://www.theatlantic.com/atlantic/atlweb/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm J. Chambley

Vannevar Bush's project in this essay is to urge the reconfiguration of technologies developed during the World War II for peace time use. His main concern is that the proliferation of scientific knowledge that had accumulated during the war had made a great store of ideas available, though increasingly inaccessible. His recommendation is that the current technologies be combined to produce the Memex, "a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility" (10). "As We May Think" provides, not only a thick description of the technologies developed during the war--advanced photography, microfilm, voice activation--but also Bush's vision for the future of external supplements to memory. This is one of the foundational articles in hypertextual studies, and Bush himself is considered by some to be the "father of hypertext."

Calendrillo, Linda T. "Memory." Encyclopedia of Rhetoric. Ed. Theresa Enos. New York: Garland, 1996. Haivan Hoang

Memory is one of the five classical canons of rhetoric. Three major scholars: Plato, Cicero, and Quintilian. Plato privileges natural memory over artificial since natural is reflective of your soul. Aristotle deals with memory v. recollection. Two systems of memory: (1) loci mnemonic - architectural, and (2) Quintilian patterning, text analysis, and rehearsal. Today, scholars study memory's impact on the other canons, in particular: invention.

Calle-Gruber, Mireille and Hélène Cixous. Hélène Cixous, Photos de Racines. Paris: Des Femmes, 1994. Frank Darwiche

Calle-Gruber and Cixous' book self-consciously troubles Cixous' image as an author from its very beginning. A certain circularity is evident in the title itself where the book is the author, the author the book, and the game of language the world within which they exist in phenomena that escape forms and essentialism. In this regard, the first words in this work are quite accurate: "Nous sommes déjà dans la gueule de livre (We are already in the jaws of the book)." We enter a work that is concerned with existence within language and its games. The self is presupposed, and can only act, as dispersed in the book. It is constantly deferred along with the language it works with(in), around, and along.

A conversation/interview between Cixous and Calle-Gruber occupies the larger part of the book. It reveals Cixous' words at work within a context and a language game that defer ever more authorial identity. The notes from Cixous' diary that appear at random in the text emphasize the constant splits the self undergoes and the creation of the self through language games. One is here reminded not only of Derrida, whom Cixous mentions and of whom one essay is included in the book, but also of Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion of language games: In language all is constituted, but nothing is set in stone, nothing is permanent; every conversation and even every monologue is a new language game that recreates feelings and selfhood in a different way.

There are essays, in Rootprints, by Calle-Gruber on Cixous' works. They give yet a different Cixous, whose presence is now mediated, but no less strong.

The final part of the book is a short autobiography in images and words that Cixous gives after a work where she showed us her self in the "jouissance" of her loss in the text.

The reader finishes the book with a few questions. Cixous moves in this text between a poet and a poem, a self that is only itself within the selflessness and the power of the text. There is however some attempt at recuperating that self in the last, autobiographical part. Cixous gives details, dates, faces, and names. A well-defined identity seems to emerge at the end or is at least hinted at. Was this in Cixous and Calle-Gruber's plans? Is the reader supposed to see the last chapter as an attempt at salvaging the text? Or is the fact that we are left with a question of this sort itself further proof of the dispersion-a happy loss of the self-in the text? After all, is not the arrangement of the book, which attempts to depart from reality, a gesture toward a phenomenologically textual self?

Campbell, George. "From The Philosophy of Rhetoric." The Rhetorical Tradition. Eds. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's P, 1990. 749-795. Melissa Ianetta and Ben McCorkle

In Campbell's system, memory is the means by which we achieve our understanding of the world. Through the incremental evidence of our memory we gain understanding of common sense i.e., that which we know to be true. Evincing the tremendous impact of faculty psychology, the Campbellian memory is not so much concerned with retention or access of information but the manner in which remembered experience constitutes our understanding of the world.

Although the model of memory discussed in this text appears individualistic, Campbell does presuppose some universals that will appear problematic to the postmodern reader. That is, while admitting a difference between the "lively signatures of memory, which command an unlimited assent" and those "fainter traces," he asserts that "no man stands in need of such assistance . . . to distinguish between them." In other words, Campbell posits a self-verifiable inner truth to memory that a post-Freudian, postmodern audience may find hard to accept.

Conway, Jill Kerr. When Memory Speaks. New York: Knopf, 1998. Mike Sasso

Conway assumes that memoirs often include events and thoughts that reveal the author's perception of how they see themselves, frequently excluding known aspects of their lives. Believing that autobiographical writing "is the most popular form of fiction for modern readers," Conway's study considers the selectivity of autobiographical memory and expounds on the nuances of the genre as a production of memory. She examines the memoirs of St. Augustine, St. Teresa of Avila, Benjamin Franklin, and Frederick Douglass with great sensitivity for the cultural climates in which they were written. Then she includes more recent autobiographical works by Lee Iacocca, Ellen Glasgow, Gloria Steinem, Frank McCourt, Jean-Dominique Bauby and Kathryn Harrison. Conway studies how these autobiographical productions of memory reflect the views of their eras and through that provide a historical perspective on our own. Conway gives "close attention to the forms and tropes of the culture through which we report ourselves to ourselves" and through that project contemplates the inchoate complexity of memory's manifold voices. This study unravels the interdependency of autobiography, memories, and culture in a way that opens the scholar to further inquiry in the literary production of identity and history.

Crowley, Sharon. "Modern Rhetoric and Memory." Rhetorical Memory and Delivery. Ed. John Frederick Reynolds. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993. 31-44. Haivan Hoang

SC criticizes modernists in their effort to privilege "individual" reason over collectivist ethical values. She references Plato to assert that memory of a tradition is very intertwined with invention. If you ignore this memory-as-invention, then you ignore a large part of rhetoric. With increased literacy, memory arts have declined, and the "sovereignty of the individual" creator has risen. However, collective memory ought to play a larger role in our contemporary rhetoric discourse.

Damasio, Antonio R. "Descartes' Error and the Future of Human Life." The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. 60-63. Haivan Hoang

AD claims that emotions are integral to reasoning, but we don't understand how emotions inform logic. He bases this conclusion on studies of neurological damage in brain systems. Damaged instruments of emotion cause individuals to make irrational personal and social decisions. Therefore, we cannot split reason from emotion from biological foundation.

Dillard, Annie. "Teaching a Stone to Talk." The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Mark Letcher

While not specifically about memory, Dillard's essay does touch on the ways in which our memories can shift with time. Primarily, the essay deals with the silence that surrounds modern humanity, since we have excluded God from our conversations. Dillard hears the silence ("the absence of God's voice from nature," in McConkey's words) everywhere, and claims that all we can do now is attempt to teach our own language to other creatures or objects, such as chimpanzees and stones. When writing of her several visits to the Galapagos Islands, Dillard realizes the power that time exerts on memory. On her initial visit, she had ignored the Palo santo trees on the islands in favor of the more entertaining sea lions. On her return visit, she sees the important significance of the trees, as witnesses to all that occurs, and she draws on her memories of the trees to fill out her definition.

Dubos, Rene. "From So Human an Animal." The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. 25-33.

Some evolutionary remains are reflected in human behavior and can be traced back to historical survival attributes; therefore, important to examine environment and changes. "Eventually, a change of environment leads to a change in habits, which in turn modifies characteristics of the organism" (27). Culture can act against or with physical environment in selective processes - implication that we should be more conscious of what whether we act for or against certain selections. "Populations of primates have been repeatedly observed in nature to learn entirely new habits from one of their members - for example, washing food or unwrapping and eating caramels. Changes in habit may eventually alter the structure of animal societies and affect genetic constitution through selective processes" (29).

Dubus, Andre. Broken Vessels. Boston: Goding, 1991. Mike Sasso

Broken Vessels is a series of autobiographical essays that are written and collected from the perspective of the author's reckoning of an accident that left him a paraplegic. The essays are a celebration and inquiry into the memories that constructed the author's identity and conclude with the title essay where Dubus attempts to redefine himself as a father and agent in a new kind of life rather than the victim of a random accident. The title essay, also included In McConkey's anthology, The Anatomy of Memory, discusses Dubus' life as a disabled father, author and survivor of a paralyzing injury. The discussion is unique because Dubus writes from a position of discontent and personal searching rather than from the position of reconciled memories and identity. The essay is useful as a study of the reconstruction of memories for the sake of establishing a revised identity following a traumatic and permanent injury.

Edelman, Gerald M. "From Bright Air, Brignt Fire." The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. 47-54. Haivan Hoang

The Enlightenment served to bring reason and science to the forefront but failed to recognize humanism. It is ridiculous and impossible to explain human behavior solely in terms of biology - we must acknowledge social and developmental interactions. GE differentiates between high order (conceptual) consciousness and primary (immediate) consciousness. Such a distinction means that we operate on different points in time - human freedom and uniqueness. This recognition might move us from the Enlightenment's reductionism to human freedom.

Francoz, Marion Joan. "Habit as Memory Incarnate." College English. 62.1. (September 1999): 11-29. Ser Jackson

Francoz takes up, at the beginning of her essay, the question of why the more recent scientific evidence surrounding memory-which suggests that memory is dynamic, "biologically unique, and yet, equally shaped by social environment"-has been largely neglected in the field of composition studies and rhetorical theory. In order to arrive at a possible answer to this question, she discusses the various metaphors that have been used for memory since classical times, exploring the ways in which the idea of habit is incorporated into such images. In this sense, it is a very useful piece, for it traces our historical, literary, and scientific perceptions of memory over time. The three main images for memory, according to Francoz, are the containment model, the hydraulic model, and the biological/body model. Of these metaphors, Francoz favors the latter, and she uses this image to propose an answer as to why postmodern rhetorical theory has rejected memory.

Freud, Sigmund. "My Contact with Josef Popper-Lynkeus." The Anatomy of Memory. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. 41-46. Ben McCorkle

This excerpt makes a handy complement to Freud's seminal Interpretation of Dreams, giving us in Freud's own words a context for the reasons and goals surrounding the book¹s creation--a handy "Cliff¹s Notes" abbreviation, only written by the author himself. Beyond that, Freud goes on to reflect on his impressions of Popper-Lynkeus, an anomaly in Freud's mind owing to Popper-Lynkeus' own account that his dreamscapes remain uncontaminated by illogical components or bizarre themes and imagery. This produces a kind of reverent awe in Freud¹s person, who see this as evidence of a complete lack of repression, trauma, or any of the other Bogeymen he's made a career of unearthing; consequently, Freud became consumed with reading the fellow Jew's prolific ouvre, which consists of works addressing such global themes as social and political issues of reform, humanistic endeavors, physics, and theology, among others.

Gronbeck, Bruce E. "The Spoken and the Seen: Phonocentric and Ocularcentric Dimensions of Rhetorical Discourse." Rhetorical Memory and Delivery: Classical Concepts for Contemporary Composition and Communication. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993. 139-56.

Nikki Hamai

Building upon Aristotle's discussion of (retentive) memory versus recollection (as well as the theories of rhetoricians like Longinus, Bacon, Campbell, and Ong), Gronbeck equates memory/remembrance with sight (when we remember, we resee or visualize) and recollection with speech; thus the remembered/visualized and the recollected/spoken are complementary in nature and represent the union of the social and personal/psychological in our affairs.

Gronbeck locates television as a site in which we can study the union of the phonocentric and ocularcentric (for television fuses the spoken and the visualized-recollection and remembrance-in a "unitary discourse"); in addition, he feels certain that further theoretical grounding of his tetrad "THE VISUALIZED:THE REMEMBERED::THE SPOKEN:THE RECOLLECTED" will enable us to: (1) appreciate better Ong's theory of secondary orality; (2) "recanonize" memoria; (3) "rebeatify" Aristotle (for his wisdom in De Memoria et Reminiscentia), and (4) "explore the wholeness of rhetorical discursivity" (154).

Grossman, Pamela L. The Making of a Teacher: Teacher Knowledge and Teacher Education. New York: TCP, 1990. Mark Letcher

Grossman's book, which argues for the relevance of formal teacher education programs, builds on the idea that Rorty introduced in 1975: the apprenticeship of observation. Grossman defines the term as those memories from a student's own time in school, which may be difficult to overcome as the student prepares to become a teacher. She goes beyond simply recognizing the phenomenon, however, and offers suggestions for teacher educators to overcome the apprenticeship. Among these strategies is overcorrection, basically replacing one apprenticeship of observation for another. For example, Grossman notes one episode in a teacher training course in which "[b]y focusing on the disjunction between their own experiences as avid readers and the reading habits of typical teenagers, the course corrected for the tendency of prospective teachers to assume that their own interest in books was representative" (p. 130). While the book treats the apprenticeship of observation as something which needs to be overcome, it may be more helpful to value the importance of teachers' memories of their schooling, in order to build a stronger connection between the ways in which they were taught, and the ways they hope to teach their own students.

Hampl, Patricia. "Memory and Imagination." The Anatomy of Memory. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. 201-11. Nikki Hamai

According to Hampl, memoir "is not a matter of transcription . . . [and] memory itself is not a warehouse of finished stories, not a static gallery of framed pictures"; rather, memoir blends personal history (memory) with invention (imagination/creativity) (205). Writers and readers alike should not expect memoir to be a textual rendering of unadulterated truths and memoirists are not transcribers of factual information; instead, we should view memoir as a rendering of circumstances and details that a memoirist both remembers and invents to reveal a symbolic truth and give meaning to life (for "memory is a personal confirmation of selfhood" and memoir "is both spiritual and historical, for a memoir reaches deep within the personality as it seeks its narrative form and also grasps the life-of-the-times as no political treatise can") (211).

Hesford, Wendy S. Framing Identities: Autobiography and the Politics of Pedagogy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Hilary Harpe

Framing Identities is Hesford's argument for the acknowledged necessity of multiculturalism to be meaningfully enacted in the pedagogical realm. She indicates that examining both personal and collective memories is a starting point for this process. As examples, she illustrates uncomfortable moments of memory within academic settings, covering writing classrooms, conferences, student protests among other situations. The negotiation that follows a clash of memory, is too often and too subtly "won" by the traditional powers, setting back what most academics inside and out of that structure would deem a goal. Her solution is a self-critical approach to autobiography, in its various forms, in which teachers think, as well as teach their students to think, of their own autobiographies (personal, familial, and cultural) in terms of the larger social history.

Hongo, Garrett. "Kubota." The Anatomy of Memory. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. 299-309. Nikki Hamai

In his memoir, Hongo explores the complexity of shared memory between members of the same family and/or culture. He begins by recounting his own memories of his maternal grandfather memories: Kubota, his grandfather, was a first generation Hawaii-born Japanese American who founded and ran a Japanese-language school for the children of his community. Although Hongo compellingly recalls his grandfather's love of fishing and "talking story" (the Hawaii-equivalent of the term "chewing the fat"), I was most fascinated by his memories of his grandfather's memories: Hongo retells his grandfather's many stories of being persecuted by the FBI after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Hongo also shares the lesson his grandfather included in these stories: "'Study ha-ahd," [Kubota would] say with pidgin emphasis. 'Learn read good. Learn speak da kine good English.' The message is the familiar one taught to any children of immigrants-succeed through education. And imitation" (303).

From these familial memories, Hongo discusses the memories (particularly of Pearl Harbor) that Japanese Americans share and which shape them as a community. For instance, Hongo notes that although Japanese Americans were affected by the bombing of Pearl Harbor and have searing memories of internment camps (either first hand memories or memories passed down to them by elders), most choose to [pretend to] forget those memories: know the history, but do not dwell on it; do not give voice to the experience (304).

On a personal note, Hongo's memoir resonates for me because I, too, and a fourth generation Japanese American who was born in Hawaii. I, too, have similar memories of my grandfathers (and their memories). And I, too, share in the cultural memory Hongo describes-and find myself dwelling on it, writing about it, voicing it even though I have been taught to be silent and forget.

Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. 82-6; 108; 153; 199; 261. Frank Darwiche

For Hume, all ideas are formed from impressions. Ideas are thus never first in the chain of perception-they come second, from impressions. Ideas eventually form complex relationships on various levels. Moreover, some ideas, for instance those belonging to memory, are more vivid than others, such as those belonging to the imagination. Hume contrasts memory with the imagination, the former being different "in its superior force and vivacity" (85). However, although the ideas stored in memory are vivid, they may so degenerate that they are taken as belonging to the imagination. On the other hand "an idea of the imagination may acquire such a force and vivacity, as to pass for an idea of the memory" (86). This phenomenon is especially interesting when Hume connects it to liars "who by frequent repetition of their lies, come at last to believe and remember them, as realities." This explains how belief can prove misleading if not dangerous: since it always attends memory, if memory holds within itself false images and ideas, than belief will be informed by and built on them. Moreover, belief, according to Hume, discovers and produces personal identity: a belief based on falsehood will thus create a false or distorted identity (261).

Hume privileges memory over cause and effect. Since "force and vivacity are most conspicuous in the memory" then we should trust it more than any other faculty: memory's "assurance equals in many respects the assurance of a demonstration" (153). Causes and effects, on the other hand, are elements of our faculty of judgement, which relies on less vivid ideas. Nevertheless, Hume still regards conclusions we derive from causes and effects as important, and he places them right below those we derive from memory.

One should finally note that despite Hume's placing of memory on so high a level, his empirical approach is throughout informed by skepticism, a fact that eventually renders even memory suspect, as his account on belief obviously shows (86).

James, William. "From The Principles of Psychology." The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. 136-142. Haivan Hoang

A man is distinguished from "brutes" in his ability to form associations. "Genius, then, . . . is identical with the possession of similar association to an extreme degree." Because of our limited capacity to think, we lean towards one side of the distinction between the analytic (scientific) and intuitive (aesthetic); a genius can grasp both ends of the spectrum.

Joyce, Michael. "Beyond Next Before You Once Again." Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies. Ed. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe. Logan: Utah State UP, 1999. 399-417. J. Chambley

Joyce weaves together memorial, elegy and critique in this essay, calling upon the relationship he shared with his mentor, the late poet Sherman Paul. Through his memory of Paul's affirmation of his work as "within the Green Tradition," Joyce moves into a critique of electronic culture in general, and hypertext in particular, which works toward "repossessing and renewing" the medium/culture, and validating our experiences within it. In an attempt to sustain the natural in the emergence of electronic culture, Joyce employs metaphors of nature - wood, light, air, and water--as well as a number of voices - Irigaray, Cixous, Haraway, Tikka, and others--to remember the connections between body, self, and location. These moves are aimed at overcoming the claims of those lamenting the "late age of print" (such as critic Sven Birkerts whose implicit "distrust of the human community" challenges the hopefulness that drives Joyce's critique [405] ). Situated, as he has been in the past, at the center of the "supplant and supplement question" (416), Joyce finally posits a third term "succeed, with all its senses," suggesting that the ambition of hypertext to succeed itself will be no less than that of the linear narrative (416). The landscape of electronic culture, for Joyce, has as much possibility and promise as that of print culture.

Kandel, Eric R., and Robert D. Hawkins. "The Biological Basis of Learning and Individuality." Scientific American (Sept. 1992): 79 - 86. Mike Sasso

Kandel and Hawkins' article discusses the operation of memory from studies of brain mapping to cellular biology and investigates how the cognitive and neurobiological operation of the brain is effected during the formation of memories. Kandel and Hawkins argue that the brain changes in physiological structure through environmental sensory input. Therefore they believe that the human mind is as physiologically unique to the body that contains it. They also conclude that the neurobiological development and arrangement of neurons in the brain evolves through the experiences of an individual.

Kandel and Hawkins divide memory into two categories, declarative or explicit and non-declarative or implicit. "Explicit learning requires structures in the temporal lobe of the brain and implicit memory is thought to be expressed through activation of the particular sensory and motor systems engaged by the learning task" (132). Kandel and Hawkins argue that repeated motor tasks are memorized through long term potentiation (LTP) of the neuronal synapses that control the action. Repeated actions follow a predisposed neural path through the body. This places implicit memory within the body as a whole. In addition, the authors suggest that "there might be a cellular alphabet for learning whereby the mechanisms of more complex types of learning may be elaborations or combinations of the mechanisms of simpler types of learning." In line with their theory, Kandell and Hawkins also divide memory into two types, conscious and unconscious. Higher reasoning requires conscious deliberation while unconscious learning is what the authors believe is a kind of synaptic predisposition. Learning and memory that is of a higher cognitive nature is stored through the interaction of the cortex and hypothalamus, locating complex thought, memory and learning in the brain rather than in the body.

Kelley, Mary. "Making Memory: Designs of the Present on the Past." Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Ed. Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer. Hanouver: Dartmouth, 1999. Haivan Hoang

MK discusses how women have depicted the accomplishments of historical female figures and had "designs" on their audience. The women meant to shape their contemporary women, so they remembered with intent. MK's point is to show us how the past can impact our present depending on how we shape it. She says, "Having tread upon 'the Republican ground of Greece and Rome,' as Edmund Randolph describe his contemporaries' engagement with the past, Randolph and other members of the Revolutionary generation insisted that later generations do the same. In the decades following the Revolution, convictions akin to Randolph's were displayed in seemingly endless admonitions to read, to meditate upon, to learn from the past. Obviously, its lessons had become a means by which to secure the newly established American Republic" (220).

Kingston, Maxine Hong. "From The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts." The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford U P, 1996. 274-285. Melissa Ianetta

In this excerpt from The Woman Warrior Kingston's mother tells the author the story of the "nameless" aunt, a woman who has been deleted from the family history because of an extramarital relationship and a subsequent bastard child. As Kingston notes, her mother tells these family stories to instill cultural values: "Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories." The author appropriates and revises this familial tale, constructing alternative memories of her aunt in which she is, respectively, a rape victim and a sexual aggressor. Through these alternate remembrances, Kingston looks to a fictional memory for help: "Unless I see her life branching into mine, she gives me no ancestral help." As does her mother, then, Kingston appropriates her aunt's memory for her own purposes.

The model of memory seen in Kingston's story demonstrates the regularizing power of cultural memory. Issues of control permeate the model of memory in this narrative: Kingston's mother attempts to her daughter through memory; Kingston attempts to control her own world through her memory of her aunt; and society itself attempts to control Kingston's aunt through the erasure of her existence. In sum, although this section of The Woman Warrior does not explicitly deal with the rhetorical uses of memory it nevertheless provides a powerful example of its regularizing and subversive uses.

Lane, Patrick. "The Unyielding Phrase." Canadian Literature 122-123 (1989): 57-64. Ser Jackson

Interspersing his own memories and poetry with the work of other Canadian poets, Lane deals with some of the reasons that authors often write imaginatively about history. Canadian writers, he proposes, have needed to write their history into existence, and this sort of re-imagining or remaking actually transforms present knowledge of Canadian history and geography, helping to give Canadians an identity. He particularly discusses the poetry of John Newlove and Margaret Atwood, asserting that poets such as these create a sense of place through their imaginative combination of images and memories, which in turn helps to foster cultural memory.

Lemonick, Michael. "Smart Genes?" Time. 13 Sept 1999. Haivan Hoang

Scientists are starting to isolate the parts of the brain that make memory work. The question is: if you can improve memory through biological knowledge, should you? Will doing so increase levels of intelligence?

Luria, A. R. The Mind of a Mnemonist. Trans. Lynn Solotaroff. New York: Basic Books, 1968. Haivan Hoang

Psychologist ARL writes a narrative of the case study of S, a patient of a memory disorder. S remembers and perceives language via synestheia, or experienced sounds through multiple senses. However, S does not consciously choose to perceive meaning in this manner. The disorder did not allow him to function in terms of logical reasoning. There is a blurred line between reality and imagination.

Marc, David. "Mass Memory: The Past in the Age of Television." Rhetorical Memory and Delivery: Classical Concepts for Contemporary Composition and Communication. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993. 125-38. Nikki Hamai

Marc argues that technology has diminished the necessity of memory: books have shifted emphasis from "reciting" to "citing"; thesauruses (and, I would add, spell and grammar check options) in word processing programs may be detrimental to our vocabularies; teleprompters provide the illusion that actors and newscasters are speaking from memory (even though they are not actually exercising that rhetorical faculty). In this article, Marc focuses on the role of television as an external public memory that "continuously delivers and creates history in the form of the news . . . [and] continuously represents and interprets history in the form of dramatic programming" (127). According to Marc's perception of television, TV promotes continuity by "shaping and creating a public sphere for new data" even as it introduces change into the flow of public consciousness (133).

By drawing from the four prerequisites of Hans Magnus Enzensberger (in The Consciousness Industry), Marc delineates the ways that society can be ruled by media:

(1) People must believe that intellectual enlightenment is the highest form of human achievement and that such enlightenment is best (or only) achieved by receiving information from TV and other playback devices; (2) There must be a collective memory of an event that proclaims "equality and human rights as official rhetoric" (regardless of reality); (3) There must be economic prosperity (because a society that is "hungry" may be distracted from the media by their hunger/needs and thus may not be hypnotized by the manipulations of the media); and (4) Technology must be able to invade every facet of life with its electronic messages. (133-35)

As Marc notes-and as we can plainly see-American society falls prey to the media on all four of the above levels. Moreover, Marc believes that media and many of American society's ills-such as the rising rates of clinical depression, rape and suicide (and other acts of random violence), divorce and child abandonment, and new psychosomatic ailments (for example, Epstein-Barr Syndrome)-are "evidence of a population that has been disconnected from the roots of its organic capacity to remember: to recall, to reexperience, to recuperate, to recreate itself" (137).

McClane, Kenneth. "A Death in the Family." The Anatomy of Memory. Ed. James McConkey. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996: 265-273. Aaron Oforlea

While reminiscing about the life and death of his brother, Kenneth McClane tells what he learned from his brother's lifestyle. He learned relationships between siblings, friends, parents and children, and husband and wife are often complex and complicated. McClane had an uncivil and hostile with his brother Paul-- who died of alcoholism at age of twenty-nine. McClane says that their verbal and physical fights was "so angry and hate filled" that on one occasion "he contemplated killing his brother" (266).

In this essay, through memory McClane reconstructs, evaluates, and examines his brother self -destruction and wonders why he and his parents, who had the "power," didn't intervene and stop Paul's self-destruction (While his brother was dying, his father avoided confronting his brother and his mother chose optimism to fatalism. McClane chose to be objective-- bordering insensitive). After Paul dies, McClane says that than he knew how much he admired his brother's self-love and honesty. And, his brother's circumstance was the consequence of living in a weak world.

McClane avoids being critical of his brother's behavior or lifestyle. He tells and explains about the anger and contempt Paul held for those who loved him-- he threatened the life of his brother insulted his father and mistreated and misused his girlfriends. However, Paul's behavior, McClane blames on the cruel world instead of further examining or exploring his own memories to answer tough penetration questions like: Which memories haunted Paul? And, in what ways do these memories manifest themselves. Another avenue he failed to explore is his memories of his family's interaction with Paul.

Middleton, Joyce Irene. "Oral Memory and the Teaching of Literacy: Some Implications from Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon." Rhetorical Memory and Delivery. Ed. John Frederick Reynolds. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993. 113-124. Haivan Hoang

JM throws out big names in oral memory: Brandt, Goody, Havelock, Lentz, and Ong. She claims that we should NOT make orality and literacy discrete, and she uses both Toni Morrison and Frederick Douglass illustrate this idea. Morrison's Song of Solomon reflects cultural and generational conflicts resulting from a declining oral memory. For Milkman, writing externalizes culture whereas oral history is a means for him to gain identity and "voice." Douglass, too, uses orality to gain literacy, thereby freeing himself. He learns from the oral tradition of American revolutionary orators. Middleton claims that, today, we must look at orality as part of memory b/c it facilitates the link between inner and outer speech. We must eradicate the false dichotomy and hierarchy between written and other kinds of memory (e.g., oral).

Montaigne, Michel. "On Death." Anatomy of Memory. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Sarah Adams

Montaigne's essay meditates on the fear of death and the importance of self-examination for better understanding and courage against death. He describes various instances of a meditative or scholarly attitude dispersing the fear of death and recommends that men examine their own near death experiences, such as sleep and physical trauma, as a means to learn what actual death will be like. Montaigne justifies the use of his own near death experience as an example by arguing that man's ultimate source of information about the world is himself. For the purposes of this class the process by which Montaigne's own memory was restored after his accident is particularly notable. It raises both issues of the pre-existent self and the constructed aspects of memory. His memory of his accident came back only after several days in which his friends described and redescribed the incident but when he did remember he recalled details, which had been deliberately kept from him.

Morrison, Toni. "The Site of Memory." Inventing The Truth. Ed. William Zinsser. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1998. 185-200. Simone Poindexter

Toni Morrison discusses the slave narrative as a form of autobiography that is of significant importance to her own literary heritage. The two principal purposes of the narratives were 1) to record the historical life of a slave and at the same time, represent the race, and 2) to persuade other readers-usually white people, of slaves' humanity and to plea for the abolition of slavery. Objectivity was a key element of an appropriate and effective slave narrative. Morrison explains the characteristics of the slave narrative and the necessity of concealing their [the slaves] interior lives. Morrison's self-appointed job is to "rip that veil" and make public that which had been "too terrible to relate (191)."Because she must trust her own recollections and also rely heavily on the recollections of others, memory and imagination play key roles in accessing the interior lives of slaves. Morrison explains that for her, it is not an issue of "the difference between fact and fiction, but the distinction between fact and truth (193)." She further explains that due to the nature of her work, it is most productive for her to work with recollections "that move from the image to the text. Not from text to image (194)."

Moulthrop, Stuart. "Everybody's Elegies." Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies. Ed. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe. Logan: Utah State UP, 1999. 418-424. J. Chambley

Moulthrop's response to part four of this compilation, Searching for Notions of Our Postmodern Literate Selves in an Electronic World, addresses the ways in which the essays of Wysocki, Johnson-Eilola, Amato, Eldred and Joyce exhibit the tension between recollection and the "need to tell and consider stories of the near as well as the distant past, or about events that are still unfolding" (422). Moulthrop turns to Joyce's metaphor of stream and parallel banks, a well-known representation of the hypertext/print culture divide, to highlight the need for attempting "[s]tories from the near present" (422). He then contributes his own elegy, reflecting on a recent decision to withhold a collaborative hypertext, authored by grad students, from publication in the on-line journal Postmodern Culture. This reflection opens into considerations of the boundaries between hypertext and print, and expression and commodity. Finally, Moulthrop calls upon us to "think about the future as well as the past" (424) in our considerations of what publication means in both print and electronic culture. In doing so, we should note that one thing publication means is that the thing published will be remembered in particular ways unavailable to things that are rejected for publication. Thus the politics of publishing effects what gets officially remembered.

Mura, David. "Prologue: Silences." Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality, and Identity. New York: Doubleday, 1996. 2-20. Mike Sasso

"Prologue: Silences" discusses Mura's personal quest for identity as an Asian American Jewish male in contemporary American society. The essay is written as a memoir that recounts the stories and personal experiences that Mura believes is the substance of his racial and sexual identity. He describes every event in his memoir as though he was consciously present. Much of Mura's memoir is constructed from family stories that range from his birth to the Japanese concentration camps that the USA operated during WWII. Mura's military and patriotic affiliation and conflict is explored without substantial reflection. Mura also ventures into a first person account of the way American culture shaped his sexual orientation and his marriage to a white American woman. In reference to raising his own children, Mura balances his multi-ethnic heritage with contemporary American living. He also wrestles with the question of his parent's past and his own identity. He writes, "I know there are connections from my parent's past to mine, to my childhood and who I've become. Our stories can't be separated really. We are mirrors for each other. (18). Mura compares his memory project to the work of a bricoleur, a handyman who makes due with the fragments and tools that are available for him to work with to assemble a workable history that informs his own sense of identity.

Mura, David. Where the Body Meets Memory. New York: Doubleday, 1996. 2-20. Simone Poindexter

David Mura contemplates his parents' willful disremembrance of Japanese internment camps, his parents and his own assimilation into the dominant white culture, and what type of identity issues his bi-racial children will encounter. Mura's writing is significantly influenced by his inner struggles between the values that white dominant culture has imposed upon him and the values that have developed as a result his own self-identity searches. The two main themes of Mura's writing are: 1) his parents refusal to remember and acknowledge the wrongs of the Japanese internment camps and; 2) his uncontrollable obsession with his wife's "whiteness." Due to his parents eager assimilation into American culture, Mura knew little about his Japanese American heritage until, as a young adult, he spent a year in Japan. This experience awakened a strong desire within Mura to examine his identity as a Japanese American and also to examine his position in society. Much of his identity examinations are centered around miscegenation. While Mura is obviously aware of his obsession with the fact that he married a white woman, he does not seem to recognize how he objectifies her through what seems to be an inability to look beyond color. Forever perplexed by the construction of race and cultural codes in the United States, Mura questions how his children's multicultural heritage will affect them and their identity choices in the future. Like Toni Morrison, Mura also questions what should be "passed on." He resolves that he cannot vouch for the truth of his versions of the past-he can only say that they are his (19).

Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Mark Letcher

This selection contains excerpts from Speak, Memory, a collection of Nabokov's remembrances of his early childhood in St. Petersburg, to his move to the United States in 1940. Nabokov elicits these images, even though he labels it as "my desperate attempt" (p. 95). The language in the selections is Nabokov at his finest, evoking memories long past, as clearly as if they had happened just recently. Of particular interest are his loving descriptions of Mademoiselle, Nabokov's French governess in his early childhood. The detail with which Nabokov renders Mademoiselle is striking, yet a reader cannot help but be reminded of Nabokov's allusion to his own fiction, and wonder where the exactly is the line between our "true" memory, and the memory that we construct.

Oakely, Todd. "The Human Rhetorical Potential." Written Communication 16.1 (Jan. 1999): 93 - 128. Mike Sasso

Oakley's article links the rhetorical structures of meaning to the structures of the brain, body and the world. By exploring the recent neurophysiological research of Sereno and Damasio on the cognitive operation of memory, Oakley believes that "meaning making" cognitive activity is linked to the presence of somatic markers in the brain. These somatic markers indicate the primacy of emotive value judgments in the process of the storage, retrieval and meaningful association of memories. Oakley suggests that the brain can be physically stimulated by rhetorically arranged sensory input that invokes the reassociation of memories in the formation of significantly new ideas. Oakley explores the journalistic rhetoric that surrounds the metaphor "tombstone technology" to show how the invocation of values and emotions can bring an array of culturally significant memories into the process of cognitive reasoning. Oakley's article argues that "a useful theory of meaning construction must be tied to the circumstances of physical embodiment and, ultimately, applied in detailed empirical studies of discourse production."

Pert, Candace B. Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Feel. New York: Scribner, 1997. Ser Jackson

Pert's piece, as the title indicates, takes up the idea of a biochemical basis for emotion, emotion being inclusive, in her definition, of many things: memory can be what we typically associate with the term (anger, joy, etc.), sensations such as pleasure, drive states such as hunger, or what Pert calls "intangible, subjective experiences" such as "spiritual inspiration." She challenges the traditional "neurocentric assumption" that emotions are controlled in certain parts of the brain in favor of a theory in which neuropeptides and their receptors are more actively involved in the process of emotion. Pert goes on to address the famous James-Cannon debate-over whether the emotions originate in the body or in the brain-concluding that, "it's both and neither! It's simultaneous-a two-way street!" While some of the scientific language in the piece can be challenging, the article is of great value, in that Pert expresses-in an accessible and joyful way-that emotions and bodily sensations are intertwined; she confirms that there is such a thing as bodily memory, and, in fact, all emotional experience is just this.

Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: Norton, 1997. MIT. Ben McCorkle

Psychologist Steven Pinker's best-selling book draws heavily upon pop culture references-- The Far Side, Star Trek, Magic Eye posters--as well as more conventional disciplines such as history, literature, and science to develop a popularly digestible theory of cognitive neuroscience. His approach suggests that as a species, human beings have evolved biolinguistically, echoing similar sentiments found in the thinking of some of the biologists anthologized in McConkey's book, such as René Dubos or Lewis Thomas--the species¹ development of social memory and other intellectual activities as a collective entity is not unlike, say, a termite colony.

Plato. "Phaedrus." The Dialogues of Plato. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. New York: Livelight, 1954. Frank Darwiche

Plato emphasizes, from the very beginning, the importance of the situation in which the dialogue will develop: location, rather than a written text, evokes certain memories that help and inform the dialogue (435-7).

Later, rather than present the book's power as inherent in its text, Plato, in the guise of Socrates, places the book's authority in its being a physical object that can take him all over the world and thus place him in many different situations (439).

Then comes an allegorical description of love and the various types of souls, the most noble being that of the philosopher, who is thus the most able and appropriate rhetorician, the one who informs his rhetoric by good and noble ethics so that he might enlighten other souls (442-60).

Finally, Socrates turns to writing and compares it to painting, whose creations "have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence" (461). Writing captures but a moment and cannot go beyond itself: it is dead because it is still, unchanging, like Egypt. Socrates contrasts this static image of writing to the power of the "word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent" (462). The oral then, which is plastic, is superior to the written: the former allows for memory to develop, the latter announces memory's demise (464). This is an important issue to Plato, for whom the soul, who has left her heavenly abode, needs to remember the days when she was near her creator, so that she may finally return to a position as close to him as possible.

Plato's problem, however, lies in the fact that he himself wrote his work: if anything he once wrote has been committed to memory today, it is because it was written down. Moreover, even though his words are now present on paper, they are not memorized word for word; rather, they are read, discussed, and critiqued dialectically, much as the oral epistemology he advocates. It is just as hard to see orality operating alone, as it is to see textual work as static or logocentric.

Poincare, Henri. "Mathematical Creation." The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. 126-135. Haivan Hoang

Questions HP poses: if math is pure reasoning, then how come some are not good at math? Need memory and need to re-invent solutions. Therefore, math equals inventing and discerning.

Pope, Mary Elizabeth. "Teacher Training." The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers Of/On Creative Non-Fiction. Eds. Robert L. Rest, Jr., and Michael Steinberg. New York: Allyn & Bacon, 1999. 434-439. Mark Letcher

Pope's piece, which originated in a graduate nonfiction writing class as a journal activity, recalls the author's initial experiences as a graduate teaching assistant. In front of her first freshman composition class, Pope transports the reader to her first meeting with Mrs. Crane, her fifth grade teacher. The events in the two classrooms parallel each other, and the reader can easily trace Pope's feelings for her early teacher, from infatuation to frustration, to resentment and anger. Meanwhile, Pope's actions in her composition class illustrate how she has used Mrs. Crane as a model for her own teaching, but not as a positive one. Pope's actions in her own class utilize the opposite of the strategies that Mrs. Crane used on her, and the effects on Pope's students are much more encouraging. Pope, in effect, draws on her negative apprenticeship of observation in the fifth grade, to give herself a model to work against in her composition classroom. The differences between Pope the fifth grader, and her own freshmen are evident, and it is obvious that Pope has learned something valuable from Mrs. Crane. This article is valuable not only for the creative use of dual memories, but also for the way in which it illustrates the powerful grip that school memories can hold on teachers, years after the fact.

Proust, Marcel. "From Remembrance of Things Past." The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 190-200. Frank Darwiche

If anything, Proust's work, A la recherche du temps perdu, gives voice to the philosophical investigation of memory. There is an intertwining herein of memory and imagination. If anything, this intertwining works out in narrative, and thus more extensive terms, the close relationship Hume draws between memory and imagination. Indeed, Proust's novel, as it is typified in this excerpt, goes further ends up presenting these two faculties as inseparable; it thus gives the memory a plasticity that takes it outside its definition and into its work within the cognitive and the inventive spheres of mind activity. We should however note what this portrait, as it arises from the novel, of memory does to the question of reliability in autobiography, all the more so as Proust's novel is presented, especially the first book, Du côté de chez Swann, in the words of a narrator, who is and is not Marcel Proust: the distance between the two Marcels can be seen as a metaphor of the distance between the reality of past events and the memory who tells its story by re-collecting some events and re-creating others.

Quintilian. "From Institutes of Oratory." The Rhetorical Tradition. Eds. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's P, 1990. 297-364. Melissa Ianetta and Ben McCorkle

As it focuses upon the education of the young rhetor-to-be, Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory has a pedagogical emphasis. Thus, the discussion of memory found in this text focuses on the development of memory in rhetorical training as well as the appropriate use of the well-developed memory. While this model of use follows the storehouse paradigm, Quintilian cautions the reader against setting boys to memorize general speeches: "For what can such men produce appropriate to particular causes, of which the aspect is perpetually varied and new? How can they reply to questions propounded by the opposite party?" Clearly, there are limits to the usefulness of the storehouse of memory.

Quintilian does hold however that the best students excel at memory work. Accordingly, he argues that students should declaim the works of others, both for the practice in memorization and for the added benefit of internalizing material from the great speakers. If Quintilian is careful to point out the flaws of an uncritical over-reliance on memory, then, he also sees the need for this faculty to be well developed in students.

Reynolds, John Frederick. "Memory Issues in Composition Studies." Rhetorical Memory and Delivery. Ed. John Frederick Reynolds. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993. 1-15. Haivan Hoang

Reynolds opens anthology with overview of the function of memory and delivery in contemporary composition studies. There are five canons of rhetoric: invention (content, discovery), disposition (arrangement, organization), style (diction, elocution), memory (mnemotechniques), delivery (voice, gesture, presentation). Latin: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, pronuntiatio/actio. Greek: heurisis, taxis, lexis, mneme, hypokrisis. Although all five canons are essential to understanding modern rhetoric, we often ignore, separate, and/or oversimplify them, especially memory and delivery. In '65, Edward Corbett's Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student dismisses memory since it isn't necessary to written discourse. Since then, Frances Yates (The Art of Memory), Mary Carruthers (The Book of Memory), and Patrick Mahony ("McLuhan in the Light of Classical Rhetoric") focus more on memory.

Four areas of memory studies in composition:

1. Memory as mnemonics: to facilitate thinking, retention, and recall.

· Walter Ong and Eric Havelock discuss transition from oral to written, discuss visual space as part of adaptation.

2. Memory as memorableness: to make written words, ideas, phrases, and arrangements memorable so as to facilitate memory.

3. Memory as databases: to distinguish between natural and artificial memory.

· R. Cyperts says that natural encourages narrative while artificial encourages analysis.

· Richard Young and Patricia Sullivan discuss our writing b/c of limited memory.

· George Hillocks says short term influences style while long term influences ideas and structure.

· Linda Flower and John Hayes link memory to composition.

· Winifred Horner writes Rhetoric in the Classical Tradition text and employs all canons of classical rhetoric.

4. Memory as psychology:

· Linda Flower links neuropsychology and cognitive.

· Walter Ong and Eric Havelock say memory changes formation of psychological consciousness.

· Welch says psychological unconscious is link from past to present.

Sacks, Oliver. "A New Vision of the Mind." Nature's Imagination. Ed. John Cornwell. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. 101-121. Ben McCorkle

Sacks' article is a very accessible distillation of the comparatively dense work of Gerald

Edelman, the Theory of Neuronal Group Selection [TNGS], or "Neural Darwinism." Basically a paraphrasing of Edelman¹s work, Sacks describes how conceptualizations involve the recategorization of various cognitive "maps" in the mind and how these maps are constantly in dynamic flux with one another. Sacks goes on to liken this process to the classical model of memory, "in which a fixed record or trace or representation is stored in the brain--an entirely static or mechanical concept--but requires a concept of memory as active and Œinventive" (115).

Savin-Williams, Ritch. "... And Then I Became Gay," Young Men's Stories. New York: Routledge, 1998. Mick Weems

This text is composed of interviews with gay and bisexual youths about their memories of being different because of their sexualities. The stories are anonymous and brief, interspersed with graphs and comments as to how they fit into the project as a whole. The book is laid out in terms of "milestones," Important events in the development of their identities, such as "awareness of same-sex attractions," "first disclosed to other," and "first same-sex romance. The author wants to show the diversity of expression and experience in gay and bisexual youth, as well as the ways in which their stories form patterns and show groups within the group.

Selfe, Cynthia L. "Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution: Images of Technology and the Nature of Change." Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies. Ed. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe. Logan: Utah State UP, 1999. 293-322. J. Chambley

Cynthia Selfe's critical attention to the WWW continues, with this current article, to focus on floating the promises of the Passions discourse on technology alongside the representations that emerge in its proliferation. Of import is her sense of this selection of commercial representations as "laden with cultural information, shot through with the values, ideological positions, and social understandings that comprise our shared experience" (294). Selfe examines twenty-four images from a variety of technological marketeers through a series of narratives that she suggests reflects what we as Americans anticipate to be the value of technology. She couples these narratives--"The 'Global Village,'" ""Land of Equal Opportunity," and "The Un-Gendered Utopia"--with her own re-visions of the narratives--"The Electronic Colonial Narrative," "Land of Difference," and "The Same Old Gendered Stuff"--to explore the "forces of stasis" which complicate our relationship with technology (293). Here, as elsewhere, Selfe maintains that "educating students to be critically informed technology scholars rather than simply expert technology users" is the key to enacting the types of changes required in this new arena of cultural memory.

Soyinka, Wole. The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness. New York: Oxford, 1999. Mick Weems

This is a collection of lectures given at Harvard University in April of 1997. Soyinka addresses the issues of racism, tribalism, slavery, religio-colonial domination, massacre, political oppression, and what to do about the wrongs committed in the past, both those which happened prior to living memory and those atrocities which are recent enough that the perpetrators are still with us. It is about problems of restitution, reparation, and identity, written by a man who has seen his own share of jail time as an activist in Nigeria. With unblinking candor and a strong sense of humor, Soyinka takes us throughout Africa (both continental and diasporic) and across time on a spiritual/transpolitical pilgrimage of human injury and requite, giving his own controversial and insightful take as a poet, voice of conscience, Black man, African, Nigerian, international scholar, and Yoruba elder.

Squire, Larry R. "Memory and Brain Systems." From Brains to Consciousness? Essays on the New Sciences of the Mind. Ed. Steven Rose. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. 53-72. Hilary Harpe

In this article, Squire divides human memory into two biologically distinct yet cooperative memory systems: declarative and non -declarative. The article focuses more on what neuroscience has been able to discover about the forming of non-declarative memories. Squire uses case studies of amnesia patients who have lost the ability to form declarative memory to establish exactly which functions are included in the non-declarative memory sphere. These include habit forming, priming, classical conditioning, and non-associative learning. According to further studies he cites, non-declarative memory formation depends upon the brain's plasticity, unconscious mind, and time. He links this facility of mind to evolutionary processes, as well as the formation of identity.

Sturken, Marita. Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Hilary Harpe

Sturken uses two sources of national trauma, the Vietnam War and the AIDS epidemic, as case studies in the formation of national cultural memory. Sturken acknowledges the multitude of voices within a nation and focuses her inquiry into how those voices negotiate over acceptance into "national" memory. In her model for this process, she situates cultural memory in between personal memory and history. Whereas history is the officially sanctioned narrative (or more often group of narratives) which strives for closure, cultural memory remains dynamic, getting its authority from agreements or similarities among narratives of survivors or their families. Sturken argues that artistic and political performances of cultural memories are the answer to the postmodern challenge of memory, as well as a prescription for healing from national trauma. Finally, she places primacy on negotiating cultural memory by citing examples of trauma survivors whose personal memories are, through time, usurped by collective cultural images.

Vico, Giambattista. "From On the Study Methods of Our Time." The Rhetorical Tradition. Eds. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin¹s P, 1990. 711-727. Melissa Ianetta and Ben McCorkle

Vico rejects Cartesian logic - which he terms "modern philosophical critique" - by emphasizing the relationships among language, knowledge and the individual. Cartesian logic, he argues, rejects varied thought for a limited range of mathematical and scientific models. Instead of relying exclusively on this "modern philosophical critique," he concludes, the scholar should draw upon a variety of models, both Cartesian and rhetorical.

Reflecting the influence of Francis Bacon's division of the mind into "faculties," Vico talks about the processes of imagination, reason and passion as they relate to language. Intriguingly, Vico nearly collapses memory and imagination into one another. These virtually identical forces are, he argues, most dominant in the young, and so students should be exposed to those disciplines of study that will exploit these forces, rather than being unnecessarily restricted to a Cartesian-based curriculum.

Warner, Esther. "Excerpt from The Crossing Fee." The Anatomy of Memory. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 104-114. Hilary Harpe

At least two perspectives of memory can be examined in Warner's account of her experiences in Liberia. Through Warner's story, the reader gains some access to the village chief, Konsuo's memory. Konsuo, as a reaction to a changing Liberia in which "things" suddenly gain disturbing importance, relocated his village and re-constructed from his memory a village which operated according to his version of traditional values. On another level, the reader can examine Warner's own re-construction of this village as a sort of memory, which raises issues as to who has the right to remember. Warner laments the encroaching materialism that will soon turn the village into a museum. The piece has implications for the way in which capitalist societies will impose frames, i.e. those around tourist sites, on societies of any other kind.

Welch, Kathleen E. "Reconfiguring Writing and Delivery in Secondary Orality." Rhetorical Memory and Delivery: Classical Concepts of Contemporary Composition and Communication. John Fredrick Reynolds, Ed. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993. Mike Sasso

Welch's article repositions the classical rhetorical cannons of memory and delivery within contemporary literacy, writing practices and a culture of secondary orality. Welch says that western culture's approach to process oriented writing instruction has squelched the connections between traditional literary study and the traditional study of writing and consequently changed scholarly concepts of the role that memory and delivery traditionally played in the five cannons of rhetoric. Welch disagrees with the standard explanation that memory and delivery, which was once very important to orally dominant cultures, is not relevant to cultures of written literacy. According to Welch "Memory and delivery do not wither with the growing dominance of writing; rather, they change form" (19). Welch traces the transformation of the cannons of memory and delivery because of the influence of writing textbooks that ignore their importance and changing role in the composition process. Welch accuses textbook producers of imitating one another's mistakes.

By positioning memory and delivery within Ong's concept of secondary orality arguing that this new communication trend demonstrates a culture that has not eliminated either writing or the oral traditions of discourse. Welch says that there is not so much a loss as there is a change. She discusses the tropes of classical rhetorical rhetoric that are present in the repetition, formulaic and additive practices in the secondary orality of our culture. Like Ong, she compares the rhetorical moves of "NBC Nightly News" to those of the Odyssey. Her argument concludes with an argument that electronic discourse needs to be retheorized in writing textbooks in a way that accounts for memory and delivery as it exists in secondary orality. She suggests that the "discourses of real life and school life partake of the same thing" and therefore should be considered the material for new pedagogies of writing that re-envision the roles of the cannons of rhetoric.

Whitfield, Charles L. Memory and Abuse: Remembering and Healing the Effects of

Trauma. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications Inc., 1995. Mike Sasso

Whitfield explains the processes of memory as well as the clinical and experiential implications of traumatic experiences and traumatic memory for adult survivors of traumatic childhood experiences and seeks to explain the resultant implications on adult memory. The author is carefully avoids re-traumatizing individuals but is interested in discovering why it is so hard to find real stories of childhood trauma. He explores false memory syndrome and accusations against a therapist's role in constructing the memory of patients. Whitfield carefully and comprehensively provides information on memory and describes dissociation, repression, denial, and sorts out untrue from true memory, explains memory and traumatic stress, and provides a chapter on verifying and corroborating a memory. Although the book primarily deals with childhood sexual abuse it provides valuable information about the dubious operations of memory and the recall of past experiences.

Woolf, Virginia. "A Sketch of the Past." An Anatomy of Memory. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Mike Sasso

Woolf's essay is presented as an experiment in memoir writing. The author distinguishes between "being" and "non-being" in the course of a life. To Woolf being occurs when life is consciously lived out and savored consciously and remembered specifically. Non-being comprises those hours of routine living that are not remarkable or memorable at all.

Woolf also discusses the liberation of her memories of her mother through her composition of To The Lighthouse. She says, "when it was written, I ceased to be obsessed by my mother. I no longer hear her voice; I do not see her" (325). Woolf's memoir is punctuated by comments regarding the operation of her memory and her creative process. She says "I suppose that my memory supplies what I had forgotten, so that it seems as if it were happening independently, though I am really making it happen" (318). This essay is valuable to any mnemonic scholar who seeks to reconcile the aesthetic presentation of memories in both fictive and autobiographical literary genres because of the way Woolf mates creativity with the expression of memories.

Yates, Frances A. "The Art of Memory." The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology. Ed. James McConkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. 9-17. Haivan Hoang

Three major descriptions of memory:

1. Cicero, in "De Oratore," gives story of Simonides and importance of order for memory; claims that sense of sight is the strongest.

2. Quintilian known for architectural mnemonic system; series of loci.

3. Ad C. Herennium, libri IV, (ca 86-82 BC) said that there are two kinds of memory: artificial and natural. Yates explains that author gives a "how-to" to students of rhetoric. Choose a good loci that is not cluttered, paint it with distinct images, and associate the images with things. Remember the sequence.