MacAgy worked at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco for 14 years. Over the span of those 14 years she held "positions ranging from curator to acting director". Throughout her career at the Legion of Honor she established a reputation for her exhibitions that were presented in a new and dramatic style, as well as her focus on the museum's educational outreach.

In 1955, she became the director of the Contemporary Arts Association of Houston. She has been "attributed with re-inventing the space", especially by her use of new and diverse platforms of display which included potted plants, beds of gravel and hark, temporary partitions, scrims, theatrical lighting, and pedestals of all shapes and sizes combined in unusual ways”. Her exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Association include, Mark Rothko in 1957, The Trojan Horse: The Art of the Machine in 1958, The Common Denominator: Modern Design, 3500 BC- 1958 AD in 1958, and Romantic Agony: From Goya to de Kooning in 1959. Her first exhibition in Cullman Hall was in 1951 and it was entitled Totems Not Taboo: An Exhibition of Primitive Art, after which she continued to curate three more exhibitions at the location. She left her position at the Association in 1959 in order to "teach art history and curate exhibitions for the University of St. Thomas".

http://offcite.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2010/03/SeeingWasBelieving_Cite40.pdf

  • “MacAgy came to Houston as director of the Contemporary Arts Association in 1955”
  • “Previously she had spent 14 years at the the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Serving in positions ranging from curator to acting director”
  • she built a reputation at the Legion of Honor for her dramatic exhibitions and her focus on education through exhibitions
  • attributed with “re-inventing” the space of the Contemporary Arts Association and incorporating new platforms for display  “included potted plants, beds of gravel and hark, temporary partitions, scrims, theatrical lighting, and pedestals of all shapes and sizes combined in unusual ways”
  • such exhibitions as Mark Rothko 1957), The Trojan Horse:- The Art of the Machine ( I958), The Common Denominator: Modern Design, ISOO B.C.-19S8 A.D. (1958), and Romantic Agony: Goya to de Kooning (1959)
  • Totems Not Taboo: An Exhibition of Primitive Art (19591 was MacAgy's first installation in Cullman Hall
  • In 1959, MacAgy left her post at the Contemporary Arts Museum to teach art history and curate exhibitions for the University of St. Thomas
  • she curated three more exhibitions in Cullman Hall
  • “Each MacAgy installation was unique, and its understatement belied her thoughtful and demanding approach”

The Genesis of Online Discourse Discourse Communities Online and in the Digital Age

A discourse community can be viewed as a social network, built from participants who share some set of communicative purposes. [1] In the digital age, we can examine social networks as their own branch of discourse communities. In which, a genesis of online discourse is created through four phases: orientation, experimentation, productivity, and transformation. Just as the digital world is constantly evolving, "discourse communities continually define and redefine themselves through communications among members", according to Berkenkotter[2]. A community of practice requires a group of people negotiating work and working toward a common goal using shared or common resources. [1]These virtual discourse communities consist of a group of people brought together "by natural will and a set of shared ideas and ideals" [3]. The virtual discourse communities becomes a separate entity from any other discourse community when, "enough people carry on those public relationships long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace" [4]

To Add to: Designing a Discourse Community

The way in which a discourse community is designed, ultimately controls the way in which the community functions. A discourse community differs from any other type of grouping _____ because the design will either constrain or enable participants. [5]


  1. Plato's Phaedrus, Sections 277b- 277c [1]. Beginning with the words of Socrates, this passage begins to breakdown the sort of essence of a discourse community. It speaks to the importance of understanding the language of the world that you are involved in, and the ways in which your own discourse adapts to your environment.
  2. John Swales, Genre Analysis, The Concept of Discourse Community, Part 2 Key Concepts [2]. This article helps to break down the components of a discourse community, and helps to explain what would qualify as an example of a discourse community.
  3. Erik Borg, Key Concepts in ELT, Discourse Community: A very simplified version of the necessity of discourse communities comes from this article, "we do not generally use language to communicate with the world at large, but with individuals or groups of individuals." [6]
  4. [7] critique of discourse communities and their reach
  1. ^ a b Kehus, Marcella1, Kelley2 Walters, and Melanie3 Shaw. "Definition And Genesis Of An Online Discourse Community." International Journal Of Learning 17.4 (2010): 67-85. Education Source. Web. 30 Oct. 2015.
  2. ^ Berkenkotter, C. (1993, October). A ‘rhetoric for naturalistic inquiry’ and the question of genre. Research in the Teaching of English, 27, 293-304.
  3. ^ Kowch, E., & Schwier. (1997, February 21). Building learning communities with technology. Presented at the National Congress on Rural Education. Saskatchewan, Canada.
  4. ^ Rheingold, H. (1993). The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
  5. ^ Kehus, Marcella1, Kelley2 Walters, and Melanie3 Shaw. "Definition And Genesis Of An Online Discourse Community." International Journal Of Learning 17.4 (2010): 67-85. Education Source. Web. 30 Oct. 2015.
  6. ^ "Discourse Community" (PDF).
  7. ^ "Issue Brief: Discourse Communities".