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Jeff Karon
 

Areas of assistance:

English (including composition, literature, and rhetoric)
Philosophy
Linguistics

  • Topic selection
  • Content organization
  • Proofreading
  • Format consistency
  • Editing/revising for clarity
  • Editing/revising for development

EDUCATION

M.A., Ph.D., English, Rhetoric and Composition Specialization
University of South Florida.
Literary Concentration: Modernism, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Dissertation: The Ethics of Writing.
Thesis: Cohesion as Logic: The Possible Worlds of Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress."

B.A., Philosophy (May 1981).

RELEVANT EXPERIENCE

Consultant, Adjunct Professor, The University of Tampa
Created and taught web-based Critical Thinking course that encourages skepticism and problem-solving; required service-learning component so that students contribute directly to their community, workplace, or discipline. Taught Professional Writing and
Research Techniques and Essentials for Business and Technology Communication to
Graduate Business majors. Hired as consultant by the College of Business to develop a Professional Communication course that would be required in the undergraduate
Business curriculum.

Assistant Professor, The University of Tampa
Rhetoric and Composition I and II; Honors Global Issues course on "Universal Human Rights and Cultural Identity" (Web-Enhanced using Blackboard, Writing-Intensive); integrated technology including Web-based software; provided symposia and workshops on writing for colleagues; developed innovative approach for teaching strategic writing ("TheHonorableClassroom.com").

Instructor, University of South Florida
Freshman English I and II (including Computer-Enhanced), Honors English II, Technical Writing, Professional Writing, Narration and Description (creative writing), Study Skills. Taught at-risk students in Summer Bridge Program: Freshman English and Study Skills.

Adjunct Instructor, University of South Florida, Continuing Education (1993­1994).
CLAST (College Level Academic Skills Test) English Review.

Writing Tutor, University of South Florida Writing Center (1992).
Tutored students in composition, literature, and general test preparation.

Writing Tutor, University of South Florida, Athletics Tutoring Center (1991­1992). Tutored athletes in composition, literature, and general test preparation. 

CONFERENCES

"The Myth of the Fearless Warrior: The Japanese Fighting Code in Literature, Film, and Popular Culture," Fear and Awe: 21st Annual International Conference on Literature and the Visual Arts, Atlanta, Georgia, November 2-4, 2006.

"‘Secret’ Fighting Manuals of the Renaissance: On Selling a Fantasy," Arms and Letters: 20th Annual International Conference on Literature and the Visual Arts, Atlanta, Georgia, October 27-29, 2005.

"The Ethics of Deception: East Versus West," Truth and Mendacity: 19th International
Conference on Literature and the Visual Arts, Atlanta, Georgia, October 22-24, 2004.

"In Praise of Paper" (Chair and Presenter for panel, "Hold Your Horses: A Plea for the Virtues of So-Called ‘Outmoded’ Technology"), Florida College English Association Conference, St. Petersburg, Florida, October 16-17, 2003.

"The Good Liar: Notes toward a New Theory of Deception," The International
Conference on Literature and Psychology," The University of Greenwich, England, July 2-7, 2003.

"The Hope and Failures of Technology: Dignity in First-Year Composition" (Chair and
Presenter), College English Association Conference, St. Petersburg, Florida, April 3-5, 2003.

"The Warrior Mind: On the Impossibility of Eliminating War-Like Thinking," South
Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference, November 15, 2002. 
"The Hopes and Failures of Technology: Dignity in First-Year Composition" (Chair and Presenter), Florida College English Association Conference, Gainesville, Florida,
October 18, 2002.

"The Liar’s Paradox: Deception and Cheating in The Great Gatsby." The 6th Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference, St. Paul, Minnesota, September 19-22, 2002.

"Psychological Realism Regained: Cognitive Psychology Versus Phenomenology in
Modern Literature." The International Conference on Literature and Psychology,
University of Sienna at Arezzo, Italy, June 26-July 1, 2002.

"Deception in the Classroom: Re-Thinking the Ethics of Deception." Florida College
English Association Conference, Sanford, Florida, October 2001.

"Reopening Old Wounds: Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited and the Moral Life." International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference, Asheville, North Carolina, September, 1998.

"Going to Hell in Hyperspace: Nastiness in the Networked Classroom," 14th Computers and Writing Conference, Gainesville, Florida, May 1998.

"In the Tracks of the Sophists: Skirting the Epistemological Quagmire," Conference on College Composition and Communication, Nashville, March 1994.

"Frankenstein in Pain: Living Corpses, Dead Robots, and Tortured Cyborgs," International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, March 1993.

WORKSHOPS AND PRESENTATIONS

"The Creative Life: An Arts and Creativity Workshop" (for Hillsborough County
Magnet school administrators), Lyon’s Eye Institute, Tampa, Florida, June 22, 2007.

Poetry and Performance Workshop, Trinity Preparatory School, Orlando, Florida, February 9, 2006.

"The Honorable Classroom: A Workshop for Creating and Maintaining Excellence" (co- presenter), The Florida Council of Teacher’s of English, Orlando, Florida, October 13-15, 2005.

"Lying and Cheating in F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Mark of ‘Good’ Literature," The Sarasota Institute of Lifelong Learning, Sarasota, Florida, March 10, 2004.

Creative Writing Workshops, Blake High School for the Arts, 1999-2004.

Honors Symposium Presenter, "To Live By the Sword: A Short History," The University of Tampa, October 22, 2002.

Honors Symposium Presenter, "The Ethics of Deception: East Versus West," The
University of Tampa, October17, 2001.

"Writing Intensive Revisited" (co-presenter), The University of Tampa, March 22, 2001.

Technical Writing Workshop for Institutional Research and Planning, University of South Florida (presenter), September­December, 1996.

"True Ease: A Writing Workshop for Artists" (co­presenter), The Arts Council of Hillsborough County and the Tampa YMCA Writer's Voice, March 1996

"Where's Waldo?: Giving the Professional Writer a Face" (presenter), Hillsborough County Summer Institute for English Teachers, June, 1995.

PUBLICATIONS

Scholarship

The Honorable Classroom. Under Review.

"Deception and Intentional Transparency: The Case of Writing," Philosophy and
Literature 27 (2003): 134-150.

"Science and Sensibility in the Short Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut." At the Millennium’s End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut. Ed. Kevin Alexander Boon. New York: SUNY, 2001.

"Cohesion as Logic: The Possible Worlds of Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress,'" Style 27 (1993): 91­105.

Review of Dorothy Seyler's Read, Reason, Write in Composition Studies 20 (1992): 104­07.

Nonfiction

"Passion, Civility, and the Case of Al-Arian," FCEA On-Line Newsletter, March 2002.

Reviews of James Lee Burke’s Burning Angel, Robert Crais’s VoodooRiver, Lawrence Block’s A Long Line of Dead Men in The Weekly Planet, May 30, 1996.

Poetry

Sonnets from the Andalusian Twilight. Chapbook under review. Currently working on multi-disciplinary performance.

"The Plains Are Filled with Men," White Pellican Review 3 (Spring 2002): 37.

"Stories from Under Your Bed" (co­writer), poetry and dance program for children, St. Petersburg Junior College, April 1997.

"Release from Nostalgia," Florida Suncoast Writers' Conference Anthology, 1994.
Summary

Jeff Karon is a writer, teacher, and consultant who has helped students and professionals for over twenty years.  He has edited, revised, and proofread publications that include reports, theses, dissertations, textbooks, proposals, essays, stories, and articles. His Ph.D. is in English with a specialization in Rhetoric and Composition, a choice that signals his devotion to clarity and power in language. Prior to his years as an English professor, he studied and taught philosophy, critical thinking, and logic, publishing in these fields as well as in literary studies. He has led writing and editing workshops for students, teachers, and artists. Currently, he is leading creativity workshops and developing ways to build honor in the classroom and workplace.  

As a writer and teacher, he believes that we should strive for excellence by practicing effective and fair techniques at all times. He has combined a life-long interest in the martial arts with writing: if you choose to work with him, he will ensure that your writing is powerful, not merely competent.
Feedback

Savoring life's most sumptuous flavors

Cancer treatment robs a prolific cook of her sense of taste, but it can't take away the bond of loving family gathering for a meal.

By Jeff Karon, Special to the Times
Published November 27, 2007

In the first months after surgery and radiation for mouth cancer, my mother-in-law subsisted on cans of Boost, a drink-in-a-can that promises complete nutrition. I imagine it as a sort of reverse infant-formula, something we might all be forced to drink in our last stage of life.

Clearly, Boost was not enough to maintain her body weight: Though she had to give up her lifelong pleasure of smoking, she did not gain weight, but steadily lost it until none of her clothes fit.

My mother-in-law, Belle - short for the lyrically Southern Lula Belle - is tough, however. She had entered no "last stage" but instead rallied enough to realize how lousy she could feel.

While Belle felt lousy, she looked better and better - indeed, close friends and family members repeat that she looks younger and healthier than ever. And this for a woman who already had a cardiac pacemaker.

She tolerated Boost at least: Most food had no taste, except for those odd items that now repelled her. Even pure water might be gut-wrenchingly bitter.

Taste had become a traitor, a false guide: Belle could not be sure what she was eating unless she examined her food like a visitor to some exotic land who has been forced to eat scorpions.

If the food was too spicy, she might suffer from ulcers burned into her gums. A simple dish could sting.

Before, during and after her cancer treatment, Belle navigated the labyrinth of medical insurance and managed care, a maze that required ceaseless wandering through phone calls, letters, bills, corridors and waiting rooms and with her deteriorating knees offering another source of pain.

As with anyone who undergoes prolonged cancer treatment, my mother-in-law endured undignified, nerve-wracking procedures. But one counts particularly as an episode of horror:

To ensure that the radiation doses targeted her mouth correctly, she was fitted with a fine mesh mask. Then she had to lie flat while this mask was bolted down around her head, so that she could not twitch.

This is the essence of enforced helplessness, no matter how kind or well-meaning the nurses and technicians might be. Belle was the cancer patient in the iron mask, and screaming or crying was not permitted.

But she never cracked. She demonstrated resolve and courage at the center of the labyrinth.

Back in her home, though, Belle no longer could find comfort in the food rituals that bind together holidays and birthdays. A Southerner who married into an Italian family, Belle cooked dishes that ranged from New Years' black-eyed peas to Neapolitan clams and macaroni.

Every holiday or party meant heaping platters or heavy casseroles whose contents would be determined by the end of the previous get-together:

After the dinner or brunch had wound down and the plates cleared, out would come pens and notepaper, while Belle and her three adult daughters floated possible appetizers, entrees and desserts like baseball trading cards.

Someone always clamored for oyster pie, and Belle would respond dutifully that she would make it once again.

She gradually weaned herself off Boost as she found a few palatable choices. Wendy's milk shakes made at a particular location tasted good enough that she bought extra and froze them. My father-in-law became a grand negotiator, charged with the unenviable task of insisting on a Friday that the restaurant make its milk shake exactly the way it did on Monday.

Belle still hated to eat, and she became frustrated with the doctors' vague prognoses. Maybe, the doctors said, she never would regain her taste.

Sometimes my mother-in-law weeps - very rarely, she weeps all day. Such days seem to be tangles of wistfulness, regret and the overwhelming fear of mortality. She occasionally weeps over the very act of weeping itself, believing that it causes pain in those around her.

Certainly, I have seen the frustration that my wife and her sisters feel when their mother is inconsolable.

But for my part, I do not think that these tears, and even the associated regrets and fears, are evils to be overcome and banished. They might reassure us that Belle is trying still to make sense of her life, as well as the lives of her family, as she faces an affliction that drains her existence of taste and piquancy.

My mother-in-law sometimes cooks dinner, or comes to our house for dinner, forcing herself to eat each time. Occasionally she will comment that she regrets losing one of life's great pleasures, but she always tries the food, and sometimes lately, a familiar taste briefly glimmers through.

Belle keeps cooking dinners for all of us and attending dinner parties, and trying as many of the dishes as possible. She laughs quite a bit more than I would in her place, refusing to wear the cancer patient's iron mask. She always thanks all the cooks.

My mother-in-law's suffering is quite real, but I am reassured when she comes to the table. In our home, we strive to remember that a fine meal is more than a plate of food: It is bright music, illuminated art and literature that one continues to ponder.

There is plenty of time between courses for laughing or weeping, for making sense of life and family, as Belle sees fit. Who are we to say what emotion can be removed from the recipe?

  
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