User:Tfarrell
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Thomas J. Farrell is the world's leading authority on Walter Ong's work and the author of Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication (2000). Farrell has also co-edited and contributed to seven other books, including An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry (2002).
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[edit] Biography
Thomas James Farrell was born in a hospital on the banks of the Hudson River in Ossining, New York, on March 17, 1944, but grew up after his father returned from World War II in Kansas City, Kansas. Ossining was his father's hometown; KCK, his mother's. After attending Catholic schools, he entered Rockhurst College (now Rockhurst University) in the fall 1962. In the fall 1964, he transferred as a junior to Saint Louis University and took a course there on Practical Criticism: Poetry from Walter J. Ong, S.J., himself a native of Kansas City, Missouri.
Farrell completed three degrees at Saint Louis University: B.A. 1966; M.A. 1968; Ph.D. 1974. When he was in the Jesuit order from 1979 to 1987, he did post-doctoral studies in philosophy at Saint Louis University and in theology and biblical studies at the University of Toronto. He has taught at Saint Louis University, Webster Groves High School (in suburban St. Louis), St. Louis Community College at Forest Park, City College of the City University of New York, Rockhurst College (now Rockhurst University), and, since 1987, the University of Minnesota Duluth, where he is a professor in the Department of Composition and the Director of Graduate Studies for the M.A. in English program.
[edit] Contributions
Farrell's most important contribution is his book-length study of Ong's thought, Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies (2000), mentioned above. Even though Ong is a world-class thinker who is known today as an honorary guru among technophiles, the range of his 400 or so publications can be bewildering. What are we supposed to make of somebody who has written on such a wide range of subjects?
To help readers get their bearings about Ong's work, Farrell first provides an overview of his thought and then supplies a detailed account of his life and professional career. Next, Farrell surveys eleven of Ong's books and selected articles in roughly chronological order. After a final assessment, the book includes endnotes, an extensive bibliography, and a detailed index. In addition to summarizing and contextualizing Ong's books, Farrell often discusses related works by others.
Farrell's second most important contribution is his lengthy introduction to An Ong Reader (2002: 1-68), mentioned above. In this piece Farrell contextualizes the 28 selections by Ong in the reader. The selections are organized around two broad themes in Ong's extensive body of writings: orality and rhetoric.
Most of Farrell's articles and contributions to books can be styled as Ong studies. For example, in "Faulkner and Male Agonism" in Time, Memory, and the Verbal Arts: Essays on Walter Ong's Thought (1998: 203-21), Farrell has drawn on Ong's insights about male agonism in Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (1981) to explore both Faulkner's life and some of his novels.
Both Farrell's 1977 College English article "Literacy, the Basics, and All That Jazz" and Ong's 1978 ADE Bulletin article "Literacy and Orality in Our Times" are reprinted in A Sourcebook for Basic Writing Teachers (1987: 27-44, 45-55, respectively).
Farrell's 1986 Pre/Text article "A Defense for Requiring Standard English" is reprinted in Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries (1995: 667-78).
Farrell has also contributed to the Wikipedia entry about Walter J. Ong and to other Wikipedia entries as well (e.g., Marshall McLuhan, Petrus Ramus, Robert L. Moore).
[edit] Publications
[edit] Book by Thomas J. Farrell
Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000.
[edit] Books Co-Edited by Thomas J. Farrell
An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry. By Walter J. Ong. Ed. Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2002.
Faith and Contexts, 4 vols. By Walter J. Ong. Ed. Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992-1999; now distributed by Rowman & Littlefield.
Communication and Lonergan: Common Ground for Forging the New Age. Ed. Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup. Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1993; now distributed by Rowman & Littlefield.
Media, Consciousness, and Culture: Explorations of Walter Ong's Thought. Ed. Bruce E. Gronbeck, Thomas J. Farrell, and Paul A. soukup. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1991.
