You might gather two things from the title of this post--that I've been much engaged of late with teaching, and that the experience has been less-than-pleasant. The first assumption would be correct; the second, well, you'll see. . .
I am wrapping up the second major work on the syllabus, after the introductory foray into poetry that always begins my lit classes. I love teaching poetry, but it has to be done early in the semester to allow time for the poetry paper-and-presentation combo that I generally assign. They can't work on those without some basic understanding of form, meter, and some basic steps of interpretation. Having wrapped up "Goblin Market" last week, we have been covering William Morris's utopia News from Nowhere because I just couldn't talk about feminism in a serious, unbiased way with Herland. I had a difficult time convincing students that the "it takes a village" method of parenting promoted in Gilman's book had any benefits. "No really!" I said, "Doesn't it make sense that the most competent women should be raising the children?" "Well yes," I said, "It would depend on your criteria for judging competency." And "Yes," I said, "that would be a rather difficult line to draw." And, "Oh by the way," I said, "Gilman was a big proponent of Eugenics." "Why, yes, the concepts are very complimentary, aren't they?" Besides, I'm a poster child for motherhood right about now. Talking about it theoretically gets to feeling a little, um, disingenuous. So I decided to tackle socialism instead. Well, not really.
Because, you see, Morris was a socialist politically, but his utopia basically does away with any form of economics. There is no "economy," just a willingness to share--a communalism (I don't want to say "commune" or "communism") that resembles a large-scale monastic existence (only the economics of it--for want of a better word) more than any other model. Marxists, socialists--they don't really want to see an end to economics. Money stays, private property goes. It may not have started that way--just ask Marx and Lenin. . .
What's interesting about this utopia are Morris's aesthetic ideas, including ideas about the aesthetic value of work. Well, this can be hard to impress upon a group of students whose self-stated purpose in life is to compete and to work to acquire "things." If this sounds harsh, I wish you could see the class discussion boards. I had someone grudgingly acknowledge that there are people who work because they enjoy their jobs, but most can't see why anyone in Morris's utopia would be inclined to work. They suggest instead that the mindset would, in reality, be more like those who "mooch" (my word--their sentiment) off of Welfare. Ooof. Well, considering the financial backgrounds of a lot of these students, I'm not all that surprised.
What is surprising to me is the way they harp on reality. I guess Morris's utopia is realistic enough and yet idealistic enough that the main question in their heads seems to be, "Could this really work?" With the implied answer being, "No, because people are. . ." (nasty, cruel, lazy, competitive--enter negative adjective of choice.) And many of these students are self-described Christians. I must say that it pains me to see students so young who are so cynical. I consider myself a pretty cynical person, but I realize more and more that I have a kind of idealism that runs pretty deep. At any rate, I do believe that there should be more to choosing a profession than the money one will make and the things that one will acquire by working in that particular job! And I do believe that there is a dignity in just knowing that one has a job and that there is a kind of despair that goes along with not believing that a job will ever come along--and that the despair leads people (not all, but some) to rely on social services. Why bother, when the world seems against us? Where I differ from many others who profess similar philosophies is in the solution--namely, that I don't claim to have one. I believe that the individual is the key--not the mass, and so to help the general, we must look for the one person who needs encouragement, then another, then another. My job here is just to get them to look beyond their social situations and their conceptions of reality and say, "Well, yes. . . I guess it would be better if people could do what work appealed to them and still be just as comfortable as the next person." Perhaps the next question might be, "Well, why isn't it like that, anyway?" At any rate, I actually mentioned the term "dignity of work" on the discussion boards, and pointed out that many people work who have no hope of ever gaining a Lexus, or even owning their own home--which so many people take for granted. And I asked why that might be, when many of the people in question do not enjoy what they do.
I guess this brings me to what a wonderful thing discussion boards can be if used correctly. Not that I'm a master by any means. I have modified how I moderate and assign the discussion boards from the beginning of the semester, and I have tried this in semesters past. Basically, I have to have them write questions about certain topics on certain days, and on alternate days, they answer others' questions. Then, depending on where their questions lead, I either use them as discussion-starters in class, or start my own discussion board and have them answer my thematic questions. The result is that they actually say more about the literature--when properly prompted, and when they don't get stuck on "how people really are" or "how the society works"! At any rate, the discussion can evolve much more naturally, and I like having the students set the agenda, since I'm not really trying to promote one (contrary to their expectations--when they saw the term "socialism," they expected the worst from me, I'm sure!!). I'm not a socialist, but at this point, you might have a hard time convincing them of that!
While this is a frustrating experience in some ways, it is also inspiring in a way. Here, I actually do have an opportunity to get them to imagine the world in a different way--which is, indeed, the point of a utopia, and the value of fantasy. C. S. Lewis once wrote that one who reads fantasy “does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted." Tolkien takes this a quite a bit further in his (much more scholarly) "On Fairy Stories," which promises to provide for a lot of good discussion in the coming week(s), by theorizing the nature of the enchantment (in a Christian context, which might inform some of the discussion board topics, but will probably not enter into class discussion).
As we wind down William Morris, who it seems we have barely started, and prepare to meet Tolkien, which meeting I look forward to eagerly, we have ongoing contemplation of poetry on an individual level as they prepare to write their poetry explications (with a fantasy twist). Today I met with a student who was so petrified of poetry that she was literally only reading words on paper, and wasn't really sure how they strung together to make meaning. This sounds harsh, but it is accurate. I have never seen such anxiety with regard to literature before. She was literally shaking as she answered my "What is this poem about? What's going on in this poem?" with a timid, "Well, it could be about . . . death?" I believe that answer seemed as likely as one of the other "Themes of Literature" she undoubtedly learned about in high school. But the beauty of assigning an explication paper is that it really allows the student a true opportunity to discover the meaning of the poem for him or herself--in this case, guided by me, but it was a good teaching opportunity. I believe I did "lead her to literature," and she does indeed understand this poem--and perhaps, by extension, all poems--better.
In short, I really love this syllabus. I hope that wherever I go next, I am able to continue my thematic course on fantasy. Maybe one day I will even be able to edit an anthology of British fantasy literature that can be used for such a course--you know, the Norton Anthology of British Fantasy or some such thing. . .
It's the idealist in me, perhaps (you know, the one I keep hidden like Boober fraggle and Sidebottom), but I think there might be some value in this reading and teaching literature thing after all. At any rate, this semester is giving me that feeling.
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Fantasy Reading: The Fall List!
I just submitted my book order for the fall (dangerously late according to the preference of the department, but they assigned me late, too). I am really enjoying the theme of fantasy, and while I am doing many of the same works, I have varied it a bit. I have to work around the constraints of the pregnancy, too, which means I have allowed a few weeks at the end of the semester for them to present poems to the class. I will have already graded & returned explications of these poems early in the semester after we have discussed poetic techniques, so they will have an idea of whether or not their interpretations are complete before they teach "their versions" of the poems to the class. So far when I have taught the course, interpretations were not too far off, but every now & then it does get a little sticky. . . These are not to be researched papers or presentations, so I want them to really engage with the poem, meet with me (preferably, though this never happens) and then write without any so-called "expert" opinions (or web site opinions) about the poems. And using Wikipedia (with or without acknowledgment) is a fail-able offense.
I am excited about being able to do more with my fantasy class because I can really see it being a possible asset on a job search. Not that universities are dying to have someone to teach fantasy, mind you, just that it's a creative idea for a special topics or an honors course, and the way that I teach it avoids the strictly "popular" (ooooh--bad word) fantasy novels and demonstrates how fantasy operates within canonical (ooooh--another bad word) literature. Okay, so it's not really canonical, after all, does anyone really teach Rossetti's "Goblin Market" as part of the traditional canon? No, but she's Victorian, female, and Pre-Raphaelite, so she can be classified according to the standard ways of classifying literature, and yet she is a marginalized figure, more or less, having been neglected for a while in favor of the male Pre-Raphaelites (who are also neglected in favor of bigger & better Victorians, but that's rather a different subject). It is primarily a British fantasy course (I would love to edit an anthology, know any publishers?), though I include some Americans and an Italian (Calvino). I'm thinking that I could expand to include some stuff from the Middle Ages--the dream visions could arguably be the first fantasies--and even Dante, both of which would set the stage rather nicely for Christian fantasy, if such a thing were desired at the university where I eventually teach. The possibilities are endless! This is a bit out of my exact field, but it touches on the boundaries of my field. And I've done work in fantasy & science fiction before. Truly, I would have gone in this direction, had I not thought that it would mean committing academic suicide. Fantasy? Taken seriously? Only as a hobby, and then I'll probably still be thought slightly odd. And yet, in my optimistic moments, I imagine that it'll be an asset. Eh, who knows?
So here's the list of actual texts they will purchase:
Many of my short stories make reference to Peter Pan, so I have made the tough decision to replace The Tempest with Peter Pan for drama. Tough decision, but Peter Pan is pretty classic, has been extensively interpreted through film, and suggests the ways in which innocent children's fantasy can be made much, much darker without being perverted too much. I have also replaced Gilman with Morris's News from Nowhere this semester, swapping gender for socialism (she was a socialist, too). We'll see how that works. I was just finding it hard to talk about her ideas in a fair way, especially when all the students were rather vehemently denouncing her communal motherhood ideas. It's hard to point out what's good about an idea that is, at base, scary and counterintuitive. But I feel that utopia is a necessary part of "fantasy" and needs to be addressed in my course.
Tolkien, of course, defined the genre of fantasy, though it preexisted him, with Lord of the Rings and his "On Fairy Stories." I would love to teach one of the three parts of LOTR in its entirety, but I prefer Two Towers, and don't feel comfortable teaching just that one. It's incredible how many students have not read them. So I will address Tolkien's definition of allegory in the Preface, discuss the locus amoenus (a sweet place of rest, most often in Italian literature--especially Dante--and Classics, not really discussed in English lit--I also like to think of them as "sanctuaries"--think Catholic, too) in some chapters of Two Towers (likely the ones dealing with Treebeard). I would introduce The Silmarillion, but really, would that be fair? (Trying not to make the course too Tolkien-heavy. . .)
Anyway, I would feel better about this if I thought that I would really be able to focus the necessary amount of time on the class--what with being 7, 8, or 9 months pregnant. But we'll see how it goes! It always helps to teach something you like!
I am excited about being able to do more with my fantasy class because I can really see it being a possible asset on a job search. Not that universities are dying to have someone to teach fantasy, mind you, just that it's a creative idea for a special topics or an honors course, and the way that I teach it avoids the strictly "popular" (ooooh--bad word) fantasy novels and demonstrates how fantasy operates within canonical (ooooh--another bad word) literature. Okay, so it's not really canonical, after all, does anyone really teach Rossetti's "Goblin Market" as part of the traditional canon? No, but she's Victorian, female, and Pre-Raphaelite, so she can be classified according to the standard ways of classifying literature, and yet she is a marginalized figure, more or less, having been neglected for a while in favor of the male Pre-Raphaelites (who are also neglected in favor of bigger & better Victorians, but that's rather a different subject). It is primarily a British fantasy course (I would love to edit an anthology, know any publishers?), though I include some Americans and an Italian (Calvino). I'm thinking that I could expand to include some stuff from the Middle Ages--the dream visions could arguably be the first fantasies--and even Dante, both of which would set the stage rather nicely for Christian fantasy, if such a thing were desired at the university where I eventually teach. The possibilities are endless! This is a bit out of my exact field, but it touches on the boundaries of my field. And I've done work in fantasy & science fiction before. Truly, I would have gone in this direction, had I not thought that it would mean committing academic suicide. Fantasy? Taken seriously? Only as a hobby, and then I'll probably still be thought slightly odd. And yet, in my optimistic moments, I imagine that it'll be an asset. Eh, who knows?
So here's the list of actual texts they will purchase:
- Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems (Dover)
- Morris, News From Nowhere (Dover)
- Paul Negri, English Victorian Poetry (Dover)
- Stanley Appelbaum, English Romantic Poetry (Dover)
- Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven and Other Favorite Poems (Dover)
- Bob Blaisdell, Irish Verse (Dover)
- J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan or the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up: A Fantasy in Five Acts (Dramatists Play Service)
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (Harvest Books/Harcourt)
- Tolkien "On Fairy Stories"
- Preface to Lord of the Rings
- "Riddles in the Dark" from Tolkien's The Hobbit--the original and revised versions
- selected chapters from Tolkien's Two Towers
- Lawrence “The Rocking Horse Winner”
- Forster “The Celestial Omnibus”
- Forster “The Other Kingdom”
- Woolf “Solid Objects”
- PatrÃcio “The Fountain Man”
- Bradbury “The Veldt”
- Murphy “Peter”
- Yolen “Snow in Summer”
- Barthelme “The Glass Mountain”
- Frazier “Coyote v. Acme”
Many of my short stories make reference to Peter Pan, so I have made the tough decision to replace The Tempest with Peter Pan for drama. Tough decision, but Peter Pan is pretty classic, has been extensively interpreted through film, and suggests the ways in which innocent children's fantasy can be made much, much darker without being perverted too much. I have also replaced Gilman with Morris's News from Nowhere this semester, swapping gender for socialism (she was a socialist, too). We'll see how that works. I was just finding it hard to talk about her ideas in a fair way, especially when all the students were rather vehemently denouncing her communal motherhood ideas. It's hard to point out what's good about an idea that is, at base, scary and counterintuitive. But I feel that utopia is a necessary part of "fantasy" and needs to be addressed in my course.
Tolkien, of course, defined the genre of fantasy, though it preexisted him, with Lord of the Rings and his "On Fairy Stories." I would love to teach one of the three parts of LOTR in its entirety, but I prefer Two Towers, and don't feel comfortable teaching just that one. It's incredible how many students have not read them. So I will address Tolkien's definition of allegory in the Preface, discuss the locus amoenus (a sweet place of rest, most often in Italian literature--especially Dante--and Classics, not really discussed in English lit--I also like to think of them as "sanctuaries"--think Catholic, too) in some chapters of Two Towers (likely the ones dealing with Treebeard). I would introduce The Silmarillion, but really, would that be fair? (Trying not to make the course too Tolkien-heavy. . .)
Anyway, I would feel better about this if I thought that I would really be able to focus the necessary amount of time on the class--what with being 7, 8, or 9 months pregnant. But we'll see how it goes! It always helps to teach something you like!
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Liars, Liars
Sometimes it really sucks to be the teacher. And these are the times when it's nice to have technology that you can rely on.
It's the last week of class, and I have a fairly good rapport with most of my 10 students. We have just finished a productive discussion of Invisible Cities, which, I believe, has caused them to exercise their brais more than is usual in a 200-level literature course. Yay for me.
As one part of their overall grades--15%, I think--I have them writing weekly journals on the work or works that we will be discussing during the upcoming week. These are to be submitted to our course management system--Moodle--as online writings before the Monday of each week, unless otherwise specified. There are 5 weeks of class and 4 Mondays, so there have been 4 journal assignments--each worth 25 points, or 1/4 of 15% of their final grades. This can literally determine a letter-grade and a half. So today I walk into class a bit late to the news that the class's journal assignments are, to quote a student, "floating around cyberspace," having been mysteriously "lost" after submission. There were a couple of other interesting claims, like "there was no submit button" (duh--there wouldn't be after the assignment deadline has passed!) and a couple of wide-eyed stares and random nods. Now, the only reason I entertained this story at all is that last semester, Moodle would sometimes log people out as they tried to submit their journal entries, causing data to be lost.
So this evening I received an email reminder of an appointment with one of the students that clued me in to the discussion that preceded my entry into the classroom, in which most of those present admitted that they didn't know when this week's journal was due (duh--see the syllabus). Can I give extra credit for honesty?
When I logged in to Moodle tonight, after seeing that 3 students had, indeed, submitted their journals successfully, I remembered that as the teacher, I could actually track student activity on Moodle--not just login, but which activities had been viewed and/or completed by each student. Guess what? The only students who had viewed the journal assignment after it was posted by me were those who had successfully submitted the assignment. And I told them so.
It's the last week of class, and I have a fairly good rapport with most of my 10 students. We have just finished a productive discussion of Invisible Cities, which, I believe, has caused them to exercise their brais more than is usual in a 200-level literature course. Yay for me.
As one part of their overall grades--15%, I think--I have them writing weekly journals on the work or works that we will be discussing during the upcoming week. These are to be submitted to our course management system--Moodle--as online writings before the Monday of each week, unless otherwise specified. There are 5 weeks of class and 4 Mondays, so there have been 4 journal assignments--each worth 25 points, or 1/4 of 15% of their final grades. This can literally determine a letter-grade and a half. So today I walk into class a bit late to the news that the class's journal assignments are, to quote a student, "floating around cyberspace," having been mysteriously "lost" after submission. There were a couple of other interesting claims, like "there was no submit button" (duh--there wouldn't be after the assignment deadline has passed!) and a couple of wide-eyed stares and random nods. Now, the only reason I entertained this story at all is that last semester, Moodle would sometimes log people out as they tried to submit their journal entries, causing data to be lost.
So this evening I received an email reminder of an appointment with one of the students that clued me in to the discussion that preceded my entry into the classroom, in which most of those present admitted that they didn't know when this week's journal was due (duh--see the syllabus). Can I give extra credit for honesty?
When I logged in to Moodle tonight, after seeing that 3 students had, indeed, submitted their journals successfully, I remembered that as the teacher, I could actually track student activity on Moodle--not just login, but which activities had been viewed and/or completed by each student. Guess what? The only students who had viewed the journal assignment after it was posted by me were those who had successfully submitted the assignment. And I told them so.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
An Exercise on Invisible Cities
I asked my students, who are currently reading Invisible Cities by Calvino, to work in groups to answer a few questions--challenges might be a better word--in order to approach a better understanding of this intriguing exercise in postmodernism. Invisible Cities is a book that requires readers to find their own conclusions--or not. The "point" of the book, which I was asked to give as if there were a single easy answer, is really the process of reading and thinking about its content with a mind that is willing to engage in the exercises of thought that the book requires. Am I crazy, you might ask, for teaching this in a sophomore-level course? Perhaps not.
The book is framed within the context of Marco Polo describing to Kublai Khan the cities in the Khan's empire. The relationship between the two is one aspect of the text, but the cities are infinite and fascinating. They are categorized as "Cities and Desire," "Cities and Memory," "Cities and the Dead," "Trading Cities," "Cities and the Sky," "Hidden Cities," and "Cities and Signs," to name a few. Within these categories are cities with names that repeat, but not within a single category, and each category is composed of 5 cities.
For one of their questions--or challenges--I asked the pairs of students (I have a small class) to do the following:
Pick 2 of the “categories” of cities (“Continuous Cities,” etc.) and explain what that category means according to the cities within the category. I will ask the groups to pick one at a time so that no 2 groups will have the same category. HINT: This must be a bit more complex than “Cities that go on forever.” You’re not just defining, you’re explaining.
They will post their explanations on the course web site, which is contained within a wonderful interface called Moodle. There are 5 groups, and 11 categories, so to make certain that all categories were represented, and to provide an example of sorts, I posted the following on our course "glossary":
Continuous Cities
The "Continuous Cities" of Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino may be found in chapters 7, 8 and 9, and occur on pages 114, 128, 146, 152, and 156 of the text. They have the names Leonia, Trude, Procopia, Cecilia, and Penthesilea.
The city of Leonia renews itself daily by discarding and replacing all of its possessions from the day before, while the possessions themselves accumulate beyond the boundary of the city and threaten to crush the city. The neighboring cities, meanwhile, await the destruction of Leonia in order to expand into their territory.
The city of Trude resembles all other cities, which are also Trude. From the suburbs, to the downtown, to the languages and goods, Trude is like all other cities, and all other cities are like it, perhaps because it IS all other cities, and all other cities are it, and they all combine to make one Trude, which has nothing unique.
The city of Procopia is one that Marco Polo has visited on numerous occasions, watching year after year as the once bare and agrarian landscape became filled with identical people who displace the features of the landscape itself and eventually fill the landcape, the window out of which Polo looks, and even the room in which he lodges.
In the city of Cecilia, Polo encounters a goatherd who does not recognize the city, but recognizes the green places in between, while Polo himself knows only the cities and not the lands that connect them. In long intervening years, Polo travels other cities and continent, but happens upon the same goatherd, who has never been able to leave Cecilia, and realizes that he, too, has remained within the city, going deeper and deeper, because Cecilia has mingled with all other places and is now everywhere.
The city of Penthesilea is contrasted with cities that have definite borders through which you pass and realize that you are now inside and no longer outside of the city. It is a city into which you continue, always on the outskirts, until you are heading out of the city through its outskirts. Neither the traveler nor those who work there know where the city is, other than that it is not where they are, and is perhaps further on. You wonder "whether Penthesilea is only outskirts of itself, " whether "outside of Penthesilea . . . an outside exist(s)," whether the entire world, like Penthesilea, is a limbo that you are constantly trying to pass through in order to get in or out.
The "Continuous Cities" call into question the nature of cities, asking specifically whether any given city or cities has/have a beginning, a middle, and an end, whether they are not all the same either because of expansion of the city, its people, its rubbish, its boundaries, or because every city is like every other city in its endless monotony. The continuity among cities is stressed, and makes individual cities as indistinguishable from each other (because all are one) as they are from their own rubbish, monotony, inhabitants, surroundings, or outskirts.
The book is framed within the context of Marco Polo describing to Kublai Khan the cities in the Khan's empire. The relationship between the two is one aspect of the text, but the cities are infinite and fascinating. They are categorized as "Cities and Desire," "Cities and Memory," "Cities and the Dead," "Trading Cities," "Cities and the Sky," "Hidden Cities," and "Cities and Signs," to name a few. Within these categories are cities with names that repeat, but not within a single category, and each category is composed of 5 cities.
For one of their questions--or challenges--I asked the pairs of students (I have a small class) to do the following:
Pick 2 of the “categories” of cities (“Continuous Cities,” etc.) and explain what that category means according to the cities within the category. I will ask the groups to pick one at a time so that no 2 groups will have the same category. HINT: This must be a bit more complex than “Cities that go on forever.” You’re not just defining, you’re explaining.
They will post their explanations on the course web site, which is contained within a wonderful interface called Moodle. There are 5 groups, and 11 categories, so to make certain that all categories were represented, and to provide an example of sorts, I posted the following on our course "glossary":
Continuous Cities
The "Continuous Cities" of Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino may be found in chapters 7, 8 and 9, and occur on pages 114, 128, 146, 152, and 156 of the text. They have the names Leonia, Trude, Procopia, Cecilia, and Penthesilea.
The city of Leonia renews itself daily by discarding and replacing all of its possessions from the day before, while the possessions themselves accumulate beyond the boundary of the city and threaten to crush the city. The neighboring cities, meanwhile, await the destruction of Leonia in order to expand into their territory.
The city of Trude resembles all other cities, which are also Trude. From the suburbs, to the downtown, to the languages and goods, Trude is like all other cities, and all other cities are like it, perhaps because it IS all other cities, and all other cities are it, and they all combine to make one Trude, which has nothing unique.
The city of Procopia is one that Marco Polo has visited on numerous occasions, watching year after year as the once bare and agrarian landscape became filled with identical people who displace the features of the landscape itself and eventually fill the landcape, the window out of which Polo looks, and even the room in which he lodges.
In the city of Cecilia, Polo encounters a goatherd who does not recognize the city, but recognizes the green places in between, while Polo himself knows only the cities and not the lands that connect them. In long intervening years, Polo travels other cities and continent, but happens upon the same goatherd, who has never been able to leave Cecilia, and realizes that he, too, has remained within the city, going deeper and deeper, because Cecilia has mingled with all other places and is now everywhere.
The city of Penthesilea is contrasted with cities that have definite borders through which you pass and realize that you are now inside and no longer outside of the city. It is a city into which you continue, always on the outskirts, until you are heading out of the city through its outskirts. Neither the traveler nor those who work there know where the city is, other than that it is not where they are, and is perhaps further on. You wonder "whether Penthesilea is only outskirts of itself, " whether "outside of Penthesilea . . . an outside exist(s)," whether the entire world, like Penthesilea, is a limbo that you are constantly trying to pass through in order to get in or out.
The "Continuous Cities" call into question the nature of cities, asking specifically whether any given city or cities has/have a beginning, a middle, and an end, whether they are not all the same either because of expansion of the city, its people, its rubbish, its boundaries, or because every city is like every other city in its endless monotony. The continuity among cities is stressed, and makes individual cities as indistinguishable from each other (because all are one) as they are from their own rubbish, monotony, inhabitants, surroundings, or outskirts.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
A Fantasy Class Update: Poetry and "Goblin Market"
Since it is occupying my mind a bit lately, I will post occasional updates on the workings of my Intro to Lit class, which is going extraordinarily well. At this point, I rather feel like I ever want to teach anything else, and that I always want to use this syllabus. It's the first time I have ever repeated the same syllabus in intro to lit, mainly because it is the first of my syllabi that I have felt was worthy of repetition. However, I am doing some things differently, simply because of the way the semester has been working, partly because every class dynamic is different. In this case, the dynamic is ideal. It's a small class, which can work either way. A small class of enthusiastic students can be better than a full class of students who are bored stiff and never say anything. But I've had small classes who were neither inspiring or inspired. It's never wise to underestimate classroom dynamic in teaching--the students' interactions with one another, their engagement with the material, the way they interact with and regard the teacher. It's why strategies that work with one class can fall completely flat with another. In this case, we have a good rapport, they are open minded about the course and the assigned texts, and seem to be making a real effort to understand the material being presented. I am thrilled!
My course, as I have said, has a fantasy theme. I begin with an introduction to poetry--what it is and how to read it effectively, the strategies poets use to engage the audience, including meter. I am a big fan of formal verse, and in my poetry-writing days, I favored formal verse above free verse. I still believe that learning to write formal poetry--sonnets and the like, iambic pentameter, iambic trimeter, effective uses of anapestic rhythms, the villanelle and the sestina--is the best strategy for learning the craft of poetry. It trains the ear and teaches the poet a certain amount of restraint. What makes amateur poetry so bad is frequently its sprawling quality--the words and emotions alike are unrestrained, and the audience in invited to wallow with the poet in something raw and unrefined. Good verse--even good free verse--avoids these pitfalls. Of course, I didn't treat my class to this soapbox, but I have been trying to build in them an idea of what makes poetry poetry--and not that it's boring and difficult to understand.
Having introduced poetry (without forgetting the theme of fantasy), with the aid of Shelley's "Ozymandias" and Yeats's "No Second Troy" and with the intention of turning each of them loose on a poem to present to the class and on which to write a paper (explication, more or less), we delved into a little-studied but still canonical poem, "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti. Now, as a rule I tend to avoid Rossetti poetry (especially her brother's), but this is a quirky little poem. Or, as one student told me, a not-so-little poem. How many Victorian poems do you know that were reprinted with original illustrations in a 1970s edition of Playboy? Yeah, didn't think you could name any others! Especially poems whose moral focuses on avoidance of sexual temptation. But consider these lines:
She cried "Laura," up the garden,
"Did you miss me ?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me:
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men."
Those are fun lines to read to a class full of undergraduates. It was rather difficult to suppress a smile, though. Th poem is didactic, and Victorian, and an allegory, and written by an incredibly pious poet, and a class full of undergraduates was fascinated, riveted, couldn't put it down. Truly, though I think the verse could be better, the story is compelling, and for that matter, this particular class taught me a certain appreciation for the rhythmic movement of the verse. I suspect it would be better read with a British "ear" rather than with American emphasis and intonation.
Class ended early today, which was fine, as we covered the poem and covered it well. Most of the students expressed surprise at being able to understand the poem and at being interested in the poem. Score one for literature! Classes like this make me realize why I like teaching (don't quote me on that--I frequently state the opposite!). But when I teach, I get a sort of adrenaline rush. Especially when I am well-prepared for class (which happens less than I'd like to admit), and when the student response is positive. A class like this makes it worthwhile to teach every day. It imparts energy rather than sapping it.
Tomorrow they select poems from my "fantasy list" for their presentations/papers. We will also start Gilman's Herland, also a curious piece of work in many ways. Herland is much less often read than "The Yellow Wallpaper," which I can't blame students for hating since they read it ad nauseum and since it is taught in a typically feminist way. Gilman may have some things in common with feminism, but in many ways, she is a poor poster child for the movement. I cite "The Giant Wisteria" as evidence. Hopefully the discussion of Herland will be as productive as "Goblin Market"!
My course, as I have said, has a fantasy theme. I begin with an introduction to poetry--what it is and how to read it effectively, the strategies poets use to engage the audience, including meter. I am a big fan of formal verse, and in my poetry-writing days, I favored formal verse above free verse. I still believe that learning to write formal poetry--sonnets and the like, iambic pentameter, iambic trimeter, effective uses of anapestic rhythms, the villanelle and the sestina--is the best strategy for learning the craft of poetry. It trains the ear and teaches the poet a certain amount of restraint. What makes amateur poetry so bad is frequently its sprawling quality--the words and emotions alike are unrestrained, and the audience in invited to wallow with the poet in something raw and unrefined. Good verse--even good free verse--avoids these pitfalls. Of course, I didn't treat my class to this soapbox, but I have been trying to build in them an idea of what makes poetry poetry--and not that it's boring and difficult to understand.
Having introduced poetry (without forgetting the theme of fantasy), with the aid of Shelley's "Ozymandias" and Yeats's "No Second Troy" and with the intention of turning each of them loose on a poem to present to the class and on which to write a paper (explication, more or less), we delved into a little-studied but still canonical poem, "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti. Now, as a rule I tend to avoid Rossetti poetry (especially her brother's), but this is a quirky little poem. Or, as one student told me, a not-so-little poem. How many Victorian poems do you know that were reprinted with original illustrations in a 1970s edition of Playboy? Yeah, didn't think you could name any others! Especially poems whose moral focuses on avoidance of sexual temptation. But consider these lines:
She cried "Laura," up the garden,
"Did you miss me ?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me:
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men."
Those are fun lines to read to a class full of undergraduates. It was rather difficult to suppress a smile, though. Th poem is didactic, and Victorian, and an allegory, and written by an incredibly pious poet, and a class full of undergraduates was fascinated, riveted, couldn't put it down. Truly, though I think the verse could be better, the story is compelling, and for that matter, this particular class taught me a certain appreciation for the rhythmic movement of the verse. I suspect it would be better read with a British "ear" rather than with American emphasis and intonation.
Class ended early today, which was fine, as we covered the poem and covered it well. Most of the students expressed surprise at being able to understand the poem and at being interested in the poem. Score one for literature! Classes like this make me realize why I like teaching (don't quote me on that--I frequently state the opposite!). But when I teach, I get a sort of adrenaline rush. Especially when I am well-prepared for class (which happens less than I'd like to admit), and when the student response is positive. A class like this makes it worthwhile to teach every day. It imparts energy rather than sapping it.
Tomorrow they select poems from my "fantasy list" for their presentations/papers. We will also start Gilman's Herland, also a curious piece of work in many ways. Herland is much less often read than "The Yellow Wallpaper," which I can't blame students for hating since they read it ad nauseum and since it is taught in a typically feminist way. Gilman may have some things in common with feminism, but in many ways, she is a poor poster child for the movement. I cite "The Giant Wisteria" as evidence. Hopefully the discussion of Herland will be as productive as "Goblin Market"!
Friday, May 25, 2007
Things I'm Thinking About. . .
Not grammar, clearly. No dangling prepositions here, no indeed! Well, I am packing and preparing for class next week, as the move and the first day of classes are both on May 29, so this isn't really a real post, it's just my way of getting down the things that have been floating around my head as I pack, especially since I have still been glancing at blogs, and even commenting on some, but not writing my own, which means the thoughts are accumulating and have to spill out at some point or another. So to save my husband my 1 A.M. insights into life and the universe, here's a little run-down!
1) The practical stuff: I am actually wondering if getting the UHaul on the 29th was smart. I probably should have reserved it for the 28th, provided they're open on that day, loaded it on Memorial Day and unloaded it on the 29th--the official move-in day. Hmmm. . . This is one of those thoughts that might require further action on my part. . .
2) I'm thinking about gender, though not in the way mentioned here. Actually, I am rather thinking about how my own perceptions of gender relate to the academic writings on the subject (represented very well by M's post, linked above) and the religious discussions on the subject that I have seen in various places, many of which I find disturbing in their characterizations of men's and women's roles. I fall somewhere in between. I can play "gender theory" with the best of them--you should see my paper on “Literacy, Patriarchy and Performance: Pedro Almodóvar on Writers and Writing” (it's a literacy-as-gender-performativity-thing)--but how I view things in the real world diverges somewhat from what I produce for conferences and courses. ADDENDUM: How I view things in the real world diverges somewhat from what I produce for conferences and courses where the subject of gender is concerned!
3) I'm thinking about how pregnancy hormones affect the mind. I've read in books that around this or that month of pregnancy, one can become "forgetful," "absent-minded," etc., but I've never seen anything about paranoia. Granted, I can be rather a worry-wort normally anyway, but seeing as how hormones are powerful creatures, it doesn't seem unlikely that they might be affecting my obsessive worrying about whether the baby is O.K., etc. In the middle of an obsessive moment the other night, it occurred to me how spoiled I am (we are?) by medical technology. It's one of the reasons I haven't wanted, in past pregnancies, to find out the sex of my baby. That and resisting the whole "must-buy-gender-appropriate-stuff" urge--I really resent the marketing push that reinforces the need for people to find out if they're having a boy or a girl, but I digress. . . Basically, I realize that my grandmother didn't have any special assurance that her 7 children were healthy and "normal." The doctors didn't even believe her when she said that she was having twins! (They had hiccups at the same time--out of sync!) My mother had to have an x-ray before delivering me at home to make sure my head would fit through her pelvis--the fit was exact. And that little doppler thing that they use to listen to the baby's heart now--how many women never heard their babies' heartbeats in utero? They just trusted that the heartbeat was there! (And somehow did not doubt that what was inside them was, indeed, a baby.)
4) I am thinking how nice it will be, for the first time, to teach a course that I have already taught--in the way I taught it previously. I have this bad habit of revamping each course I teach each time I teach it--thereby making more work for myself. But when I was pregnant for my daughter 2 summers ago, I taught Intro to Lit with a focus on fantasy as manifested in various literary genres. While I will rearrange the sequence somewhat and pare down the assignments some, I have left the syllabus mostly the same. Yay!
5) On the dissertation front, I am thinking about D. H. Lawrence's anxieties about gender and literacy--basically, if you were a scholar, could you also be a man? He seems to think not. In Lawrence, manly men are ignorant, country men, like his own father whom he hated. He left that background to become a writer. Evidently, he felt that he had sacrificed a vital part of his nature in doing so. I like Lawrence for this reason--in the midst of his machismo, he's so conflicted! Actually, I like Forster because he's conflicted, too, it's just different. . .
6) Another dissertation-related thought is what constitutes "literate activity." It's a central idea for me, which probably means I should keep it well-guarded and certainly not blog about it. Oh well! You see, though, different theorists and historians mean different things when they talk about "literacy." Some talk about the ability to read, while some focus more on writing. Some merely concern themselves with the presence of writing within a culture, whether or not anyone actually has access to the written materials. Some measure the ability to read by the ability to, say, sign one's name--this has been a traditional marker of literacy for historians, though we should be able to perceive some problems there. Then, there's "functional" vs. "advanced" literacy. I admit to bypassing a number of these questions, as "advanced" literacy is more my concern--I know, how elitist of me. But I'm focusing on fiction, after all. There is a certain assumption of literacy on the part of the author, who assumes that someone, somewhere will be reading this work, and writes according to his or her perception of the level of literacy of that reader. Which makes postmodern fiction either completely elitist, or an admission of despair. (I'm teaching Calvino's Invisible Cities this summer. Yum!) So I use the term "literate activity," which means that any time the author portrays someone reading or writing, I'm there. But I also contend that literate conversation--that is, verbal interaction between people that is informed by literacy (especially advanced literacy)--is also literate activity. If you haven't read the same books, you can't exactly talk about them now, can you?
7) And, then, Entropy has me thinking about the Holy Spirit & prayer and the role of the Gentiles in the development of Christianity, and I thank her for not letting me forget that Pentecost is approaching!
1) The practical stuff: I am actually wondering if getting the UHaul on the 29th was smart. I probably should have reserved it for the 28th, provided they're open on that day, loaded it on Memorial Day and unloaded it on the 29th--the official move-in day. Hmmm. . . This is one of those thoughts that might require further action on my part. . .
2) I'm thinking about gender, though not in the way mentioned here. Actually, I am rather thinking about how my own perceptions of gender relate to the academic writings on the subject (represented very well by M's post, linked above) and the religious discussions on the subject that I have seen in various places, many of which I find disturbing in their characterizations of men's and women's roles. I fall somewhere in between. I can play "gender theory" with the best of them--you should see my paper on “Literacy, Patriarchy and Performance: Pedro Almodóvar on Writers and Writing” (it's a literacy-as-gender-performativity-thing)--but how I view things in the real world diverges somewhat from what I produce for conferences and courses. ADDENDUM: How I view things in the real world diverges somewhat from what I produce for conferences and courses where the subject of gender is concerned!
3) I'm thinking about how pregnancy hormones affect the mind. I've read in books that around this or that month of pregnancy, one can become "forgetful," "absent-minded," etc., but I've never seen anything about paranoia. Granted, I can be rather a worry-wort normally anyway, but seeing as how hormones are powerful creatures, it doesn't seem unlikely that they might be affecting my obsessive worrying about whether the baby is O.K., etc. In the middle of an obsessive moment the other night, it occurred to me how spoiled I am (we are?) by medical technology. It's one of the reasons I haven't wanted, in past pregnancies, to find out the sex of my baby. That and resisting the whole "must-buy-gender-appropriate-stuff" urge--I really resent the marketing push that reinforces the need for people to find out if they're having a boy or a girl, but I digress. . . Basically, I realize that my grandmother didn't have any special assurance that her 7 children were healthy and "normal." The doctors didn't even believe her when she said that she was having twins! (They had hiccups at the same time--out of sync!) My mother had to have an x-ray before delivering me at home to make sure my head would fit through her pelvis--the fit was exact. And that little doppler thing that they use to listen to the baby's heart now--how many women never heard their babies' heartbeats in utero? They just trusted that the heartbeat was there! (And somehow did not doubt that what was inside them was, indeed, a baby.)
4) I am thinking how nice it will be, for the first time, to teach a course that I have already taught--in the way I taught it previously. I have this bad habit of revamping each course I teach each time I teach it--thereby making more work for myself. But when I was pregnant for my daughter 2 summers ago, I taught Intro to Lit with a focus on fantasy as manifested in various literary genres. While I will rearrange the sequence somewhat and pare down the assignments some, I have left the syllabus mostly the same. Yay!
5) On the dissertation front, I am thinking about D. H. Lawrence's anxieties about gender and literacy--basically, if you were a scholar, could you also be a man? He seems to think not. In Lawrence, manly men are ignorant, country men, like his own father whom he hated. He left that background to become a writer. Evidently, he felt that he had sacrificed a vital part of his nature in doing so. I like Lawrence for this reason--in the midst of his machismo, he's so conflicted! Actually, I like Forster because he's conflicted, too, it's just different. . .
6) Another dissertation-related thought is what constitutes "literate activity." It's a central idea for me, which probably means I should keep it well-guarded and certainly not blog about it. Oh well! You see, though, different theorists and historians mean different things when they talk about "literacy." Some talk about the ability to read, while some focus more on writing. Some merely concern themselves with the presence of writing within a culture, whether or not anyone actually has access to the written materials. Some measure the ability to read by the ability to, say, sign one's name--this has been a traditional marker of literacy for historians, though we should be able to perceive some problems there. Then, there's "functional" vs. "advanced" literacy. I admit to bypassing a number of these questions, as "advanced" literacy is more my concern--I know, how elitist of me. But I'm focusing on fiction, after all. There is a certain assumption of literacy on the part of the author, who assumes that someone, somewhere will be reading this work, and writes according to his or her perception of the level of literacy of that reader. Which makes postmodern fiction either completely elitist, or an admission of despair. (I'm teaching Calvino's Invisible Cities this summer. Yum!) So I use the term "literate activity," which means that any time the author portrays someone reading or writing, I'm there. But I also contend that literate conversation--that is, verbal interaction between people that is informed by literacy (especially advanced literacy)--is also literate activity. If you haven't read the same books, you can't exactly talk about them now, can you?
7) And, then, Entropy has me thinking about the Holy Spirit & prayer and the role of the Gentiles in the development of Christianity, and I thank her for not letting me forget that Pentecost is approaching!
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
It's always nice. . .
. . .when, after a mostly disappointing semester, one of the best students in the class (not a perfect writer, but with a lot of native intelligence and a will to learn) sits down and takes the time to tell you that he feels like the class really helped his writing, and that certain types of assignments helped in particular with his tendency to procrastinate. He seems to have enjoyed the class well enough (for a required class)--overall he was very positive--and says he will come back by to visit. Considering the number of times I have second-guessed myself this semester, these were nice things to hear. I am not the most devoted of teachers, I fear. I will make a good slacker-professor someday. I tend to start off the semester with a measure of ambition and enthusiasm, which wanes just before midway in the semester. (See the Reasons I Don't Homeschool post!) Of course, it is better with some classes, and this class just had a weird dynamic--or rather, no dynamic. Anyway, it's over. And it's nice to have a measure of appreciation even during an "off" semester!
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Defensible Space
The recent events at Virginia Tech have the effect of making me acutely aware of the number of windows and doors in the rooms in which I teach. Like 1 door, no windows. The proverbial "ducks in a barrel."
Monday, April 16, 2007
Opportunities for Dialogue
Thanks to the comment she posted on my blog, I discovered blogger Entropy's "Sphere of Influence," which raises a lot of good, Catholic questions. It is refreshing to see a blogger really engaging with issues of faith, including asking questions when questions need to be asked and seeking faithful answers. I am engaged at present with her questions for Traditionalists, on which post I have been embarrassingly outspoken. She asks and answers some good questions about Virginity in a slightly older post, and I have found any number of probing discussions by browsing around a bit.
In a more academic mode, I was able to engage with fellow grad-students & professors to give input about the standard syllabus for Freshman Composition--the bane of every incoming Freshman (who didn't test out) and the 2nd year grad students who have to teach it. My gripe--teaching a novel for one of the major papers when they haven't even learned what they need to about writing yet, and won't with the distraction of "Argument as Literature" or "Arguing about Literature." Introducing the novel to the course was part of a two-fold effort to engage the university with a community reading project and pacify grad students who wanted to be teaching literature. I would rather be teaching literature (except that it requires more prep work that I won't need with a new baby on the way and I'm finally fairly happy with my syllabus for the first time in 6 years of teaching). But pretending that a writing course can accommodate literature and all of its assorted teaching baggage--er, difficulties--strikes me as a little naive. Besides that the novels in question were not particularly compelling to me personally, and it's never fun to teach someone else's "pet issues." Sure, one involved literacy, but from the perspective of literacy-acquisition and racial injustice, which is not where I'm coming from at all, though it is interesting in its own right. So we discussed the issue of teaching a book, the particular writing assignments, and some general strategies for improving classroom interaction. All good.
After this meeting, there was a brainstorming session for the 4C's conference (College Composition and Communication), which will be in New Orleans next year and I need an easy-to-get-to conference on my cv. Being on home turf is always a good thing, especially since the family could come with me and I hate traveling alone (which would not be an option anyway since I will have a 4-month-old!). So we talked about possible panels and it looks like we will be organizing one around the people who are working with literacy theory. One person is doing literacy acquisition narratives, one is doing technology & literacy, and I am doing literacy as portrayed in literature. I was informed of an article that intersects somewhat with what I am doing--even down to the time period. Also, I was able to explain--in rather more detail than I expected, after being asked to elaborate--what I am writing about for the dissertation. This had the happy result of making me think about what I was doing. An hour or so later, in Cheddar's, we ran into a former professor of my husband's, who also asked for the dissertation-in-a-nutshell, and giving the quick & dirty account of one's research project is always a beneficial thing. So I find myself slightly more interested in thinking about work than usual--all in time to prepare for tomorrow's class. Oh well. That's how it works! But at least it will be a workshop-y class, which I advocated at the meeting today and which seem productive for my class this semester. Those classes have much less prep than the ones in which I really have to teach something.
Interesting that these on-campus meetings were possible because my son was home (he had a cold, but wouldn't have been going to school anyway). Otherwise, I would have missed the first meeting, which began at 3. I realize that I need a bit more of this talking-to-people about academic stuff. It's just a pain to drag myself to the meetings to interact with people. I need to work on that. Did you notice "sloth" as one of my major sins?
In a more academic mode, I was able to engage with fellow grad-students & professors to give input about the standard syllabus for Freshman Composition--the bane of every incoming Freshman (who didn't test out) and the 2nd year grad students who have to teach it. My gripe--teaching a novel for one of the major papers when they haven't even learned what they need to about writing yet, and won't with the distraction of "Argument as Literature" or "Arguing about Literature." Introducing the novel to the course was part of a two-fold effort to engage the university with a community reading project and pacify grad students who wanted to be teaching literature. I would rather be teaching literature (except that it requires more prep work that I won't need with a new baby on the way and I'm finally fairly happy with my syllabus for the first time in 6 years of teaching). But pretending that a writing course can accommodate literature and all of its assorted teaching baggage--er, difficulties--strikes me as a little naive. Besides that the novels in question were not particularly compelling to me personally, and it's never fun to teach someone else's "pet issues." Sure, one involved literacy, but from the perspective of literacy-acquisition and racial injustice, which is not where I'm coming from at all, though it is interesting in its own right. So we discussed the issue of teaching a book, the particular writing assignments, and some general strategies for improving classroom interaction. All good.
After this meeting, there was a brainstorming session for the 4C's conference (College Composition and Communication), which will be in New Orleans next year and I need an easy-to-get-to conference on my cv. Being on home turf is always a good thing, especially since the family could come with me and I hate traveling alone (which would not be an option anyway since I will have a 4-month-old!). So we talked about possible panels and it looks like we will be organizing one around the people who are working with literacy theory. One person is doing literacy acquisition narratives, one is doing technology & literacy, and I am doing literacy as portrayed in literature. I was informed of an article that intersects somewhat with what I am doing--even down to the time period. Also, I was able to explain--in rather more detail than I expected, after being asked to elaborate--what I am writing about for the dissertation. This had the happy result of making me think about what I was doing. An hour or so later, in Cheddar's, we ran into a former professor of my husband's, who also asked for the dissertation-in-a-nutshell, and giving the quick & dirty account of one's research project is always a beneficial thing. So I find myself slightly more interested in thinking about work than usual--all in time to prepare for tomorrow's class. Oh well. That's how it works! But at least it will be a workshop-y class, which I advocated at the meeting today and which seem productive for my class this semester. Those classes have much less prep than the ones in which I really have to teach something.
Interesting that these on-campus meetings were possible because my son was home (he had a cold, but wouldn't have been going to school anyway). Otherwise, I would have missed the first meeting, which began at 3. I realize that I need a bit more of this talking-to-people about academic stuff. It's just a pain to drag myself to the meetings to interact with people. I need to work on that. Did you notice "sloth" as one of my major sins?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)