Archive for the ‘Scholarship’ Category

January 24, 2010 3

On Learning To Write (Without All the Usual BS)

By Robert Minto in Education, Rhetoric, Scholarship

I have experienced far, far too many writing courses. When I was homeschooled for a while in high-school, I read dozens of books on How to Write — How to Write Essays, How to Write Stories, How to Write Poetry. I read Zinsser’s book on non-fiction, Gardner’s book on fiction, and Williams’s book on style. [...]

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December 13, 2009 3

The Electronic Side of Note-taking

By Robert Minto in Organization, Scholarship, Strategy

Given certain off-line comments I received in response to my recent post about note-taking, I thought that in order to be as useful as possible to interested readers I ought to write briefly about reference management systems.
So you take lots of notes—you write summaries and compile indices, focusing on your most important topics of interest, [...]

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December 10, 2009 0

A Defense of Rash Exposure

By Robert Minto in Blogging, Prospects, Scholarship, Thinking

Why in the world would I publish something as open to criticism as that last post?
While formulating my own critique of what I had said, I had to ask myself that question. The answer is that I have suddenly become impressed by the idea that the real danger of the kind of education I’m pursuing [...]

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November 17, 2009 1

Notes on Note-taking

By Robert Minto in Organization, Scholarship, Strategy

Ann Blair’s article “Note-taking As an Art of Transmission”, has finally kicked me in the direction of explicitly formulating my own method. My method has been developing over the past two years; now, I have finally achieved a level of technical proficiency such that I no longer look back on books and lectures with regret [...]

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October 26, 2009 3

Notes Toward a Thesis: Theologies of Sickness

By Robert Minto in Education, Plans, Scholarship, Sickness

The time has come to write my sample essay for graduate school applications. I’d like to take it as an opportunity for substantial theological work that will—I hope—successfully involve careful historical theology, exegesis, and personal theological reflection.
The topic I’m going to write about is Sickness & Theology. There are three possible relationships here, I think:

Special [...]

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September 26, 2009 4

Some Prospects

By Robert Minto in Blogging, Plans, Retrospects, Scholarship, Strategy

Two (related) things I will likely be posting about soon:

God in the Gallery, by Daniel Siedell. Because Dan himself was coming to visit Dordt College, to speak to art students and anyone else apt to listen, I took the opportunity to read his book. Good thing I did! It has prompted a lot of thought [...]

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August 7, 2009 2

About Reading the Bible & Theories

By Robert Minto in Obligation, Scholarship, Scripture, Theology

Theology is a kind of theorizing.
Many people don’t realize this. For some, a document like the Westminster Confession of Faith would be demeaned if it were called a collection of theories. To be theoretical is to be ephemeral, debatable, even disprovable. But confessions are theoretical—ephemeral, debatable, disprovable—even much more generally accepted confessions, such as the [...]

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July 22, 2009 4

The Best Christian Serial Publications

By Robert Minto in Periodicals, Scholarship

Below are my lists of the best and most important Christian Serial Publications. I update it as necessary—don’t hesitate to point out anything I’ve missed. My criteria for “best” and “most important” include competent writing, thoughtful engagement rather than mindless championing of single perspectives, and range of influence.  I have marked my particular favorites with [...]

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June 30, 2009 2

The Culinary Model of Education

By Robert Minto in Criticism, Education, Scholarship

“Too many [...] colleges are places for lectures, rote learning, memorizing, regurgitation; St. Stephen’s encouraged random reading, individual note-taking, personal tutorials, extracurricular development. Elsewhere you learned to answer the questions; at college, you learned to questions the answers. Some of us went further and questioned the questions.” — Shashi Tharoor
I am tempted to claim that [...]

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June 28, 2009 0

In Defense of Self-plagiarism

By Robert Minto in Rhetoric, Scholarship, Thinking

I’ve been enjoying a brief Terry Eagleton kick this last week. My first exposure to the fellow.
First, I read Literary Theory: An Introduction: beautifully written, polemically brilliant, wonderfully informative. Then I worked through Walter Benjamin: Toward a Revolutionary Criticism: somewhat hampered by the jargon, but evincing great insight and interesting lines of thought especially in [...]

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