Monday, June 18, 2012

The Benford Plagiarism Dossier 17



Begin forwarded message:

From: Stuart
Subject: Re: A reply from the OU re Joanne Benford
Date: 16 June 2012 15:55:53 GMT+01:00
To: Alex Keegan

Thanks Alex

Just had an email response from Gillian Swanson (currently Associate Professor Research (Cultural History), Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries and Education, University of the West of England) whose work was plagiarised by Benford in 'Feminist Film Theory And Female Spectatorship'.

She in now going to investigate this herself.

I've passed on your email to her so she may be in touch.

Stuart


:::


On 15 Jun 2012, at 19:42, Alex Keegan wrote:

Thought this might amuse you (by Joanne Benson)

I first used Sarup's guide in my early days at university and, at the time, thought this a concise, lucid and accessible introductory text. Later, after coming to grips with the seminal works of the thinkers in Sarup's guide, I realised just how much was taken and used from their texts without any direct references or acknowledgement!

I also feel however that sometimes Sarup's prejudices showed, in that certain thinkers and "thought" were given less attention than others according to his own discretion of who was siginificant and important in the academic hierarchy! His reading of Derrida is suspect, here it would be better to get your hands on "Deconstruction" by Christopher Norris as a primer to this essential thinker. Another gripe is the section on Michel Foucault! This is just not good enough. The ramifications of Foucault's work (especially with regard to feminisms, such as the works of Judith Butler and Susan Bordo, and David Halperin's text on Foucault and queer theory,"Saint Foucault"), are still being felt, as his genealogical and archaelogical investigations of power and knowledge, subvert and undermine hegemonies and discourses as we know them. This said, and all-in-all, Sarup offers a fairly comprehensive guide, albeit "very" introductory, of most of the thinkers and thought synonomous with postmodernism and post-structuralism.



On 15 Jun 2012, at 10:58, vade. wrote:

Just got a reply from the Director of Teaching English at the OU, who also Chairs a course in advanced creative writing there. He tells me they are investigating the matter.

Benford's publications are still on Amazon which I take to indicate she intends to stick this one out for the time being and that Lulu and Smashwords may have removed the Benford content due to complaints.

I'm going to email http://lit-tees.com/. It's a site specifically for local writers to advertise their services to the Tees area and contains the profiles of 'professional' writers there, including Benford's.

The site is a project of New Writing North (http://www.newwritingnorth.com/) which is a much bigger concern, being a registered charity that gets regular funding from the Arts Council.

Congrats on your becoming a grandfather and hope the exam went well.

Matthew


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