My course description for English 380 next term:
Section 002 – Schwartz
This course will introduce you to the methods, techniques, and theories associated with analyzing and writing about literature. We’ll deal mainly with three genres: the short story, the poem, and the novel. You’ll become familiar with literary terminology, a selection of basic critical methods—including “close reading”—and we’ll occasionally touch upon the relationship between literature and its contexts, mainly the political and social milieus from which texts originate.
Requirements for the course include a midterm and final, as well as 2-4 medium-length papers and one longer paper (+/- 10 pgs). We’ll read short stories by Faulkner, Joyce, O’Connor, Wright, and Melville; poems by Whitman, Dickinson, Stevens, Toomer, Auden, Yeats, and Keats; and Thomas Pynchon’s first novel, V. (1963)
Friday, October 24, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The Freshman
This might be my last term teaching freshman composition. I just received word I'll be teaching English 380 next term, a class required for the University's English majors. I've taught lit courses before, a summer lit and film course, for example, and I've assisted in a couple larger survey courses, but I've never had the chance to teach my subject area, during the school year, to a group of majors, and design and conduct the course myself.
It's a "literary analysis" class, which is much different from teaching composition almost every term, and cringing three to four times a term when I have to sit down with a stack of 50 papers and wonder why and how some of these students got into college. Once in a while, at least, the writing is so bad that cringes turn into laughs.
I always try to remind myself, however, that these kids are 18. It's difficult for me to remember my exact mindset when I was 18 years old, but I know that the stuff I'm asking them to think and write about, are the exact same things I was not very interested in 12 years ago, either. Man I feel old writing that. I usually just hope I'm able to teach them something. Usually I think I do, but only if they want to learn something. In a class full of business and nursing majors, however, that isn't always the case.
So I'm hoping that teaching majors will at least have the advantages inherent to teaching students who actually want to be in the classroom. Which will mean they'll also have a teacher that wants to be standing in front of them.
PS. On a sidenote, my efforts at becoming more calm are working, for now at least. As anyone reading this blog knows (is anyone actually out there?), I have been pretty obsessively keeping up with the presidential campaign. That is still true, but I've decided that given Obama's poll numbers right now (which are about as good as he can hope them to be), I'm just going to relax on the political posts for awhile so that I can keep my blood pressure down. Let's hope they're mostly accurate, as they mostly were in the primary campaign. Or else, two weeks from now, I might just finally erupt. Serenity now, Sam. Serenity now.
Upcoming post:
A review of Oliver Stone's W.
It's a "literary analysis" class, which is much different from teaching composition almost every term, and cringing three to four times a term when I have to sit down with a stack of 50 papers and wonder why and how some of these students got into college. Once in a while, at least, the writing is so bad that cringes turn into laughs.
I always try to remind myself, however, that these kids are 18. It's difficult for me to remember my exact mindset when I was 18 years old, but I know that the stuff I'm asking them to think and write about, are the exact same things I was not very interested in 12 years ago, either. Man I feel old writing that. I usually just hope I'm able to teach them something. Usually I think I do, but only if they want to learn something. In a class full of business and nursing majors, however, that isn't always the case.
So I'm hoping that teaching majors will at least have the advantages inherent to teaching students who actually want to be in the classroom. Which will mean they'll also have a teacher that wants to be standing in front of them.
PS. On a sidenote, my efforts at becoming more calm are working, for now at least. As anyone reading this blog knows (is anyone actually out there?), I have been pretty obsessively keeping up with the presidential campaign. That is still true, but I've decided that given Obama's poll numbers right now (which are about as good as he can hope them to be), I'm just going to relax on the political posts for awhile so that I can keep my blood pressure down. Let's hope they're mostly accurate, as they mostly were in the primary campaign. Or else, two weeks from now, I might just finally erupt. Serenity now, Sam. Serenity now.
Upcoming post:
A review of Oliver Stone's W.
Friday, October 17, 2008
The New McCarthyism
Hmm. I'm liberal. I work on a college campus = I hate America!
It's the perpetual smile that's so loathsome. She's in congress. How could anyone vote for this person?
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Who would I emulate in a crisis?
I've been working on keeping a cooler head about things lately. Something I've noticed about myself in the last five years or so is that I'm sometimes oversensitive and too easy to perceive any potential slight as a more serious attack on me that what it usually is.
Not to sound ridiculous, but this is why I'm so attached to my sports teams, to the novelists I love, my political opinions, and to basically anything else that deserves my loyalty. I don't think I'm going to change this about myself, but I'm trying to be cooler and calmer lately.
It's not that I run around frothing at the mouth--actually those who know me only casually might assume the opposite about me: that I don't show much emotion at all. But while I'm good at hiding my emotions physically, I'm terrible at containing them within myself. When something is bothering me, I lose sleep, I obsess, I seethe.
I don't want to sound too much like a partisan hack here, but the best role model out there for someone like me, who simply needs to calm down and roll with the punches, is Barack Obama. I find it incredible that a politican, and a presidential candidate nonetheless, has been able to inspire me. How long has it been since an American president's demeanor and carriage can be described as laudable and dignified? How long has it been since an American leader behaved like a leader?
The double-edged sword here is that I've become so invested in his candidacy, that the very model of serenity I'm hoping to emulate is the very cause of most of my restlessness lately. The polls are looking good, but this thing is far from over. And I'll be so glad when it's over.
Right now, as a nation in turmoil, we need someone calm, assertive, confident, and capable. For all their disparaging of Obama as a risky choice (now they're just outright calling him a terrorist), Obama is not the risky choice in this campaign. Whatever his ideology, we know this much: the man can take heat. The Clintons threw it at him (Bill still is, indirectly), the right wing's thrown it at him, and now the Barbie Doll from Alaska is throwing it at him.
He's been living in the kitchen for two years, and no matter how hot it gets, he just keeps getting better.
Not to sound ridiculous, but this is why I'm so attached to my sports teams, to the novelists I love, my political opinions, and to basically anything else that deserves my loyalty. I don't think I'm going to change this about myself, but I'm trying to be cooler and calmer lately.
It's not that I run around frothing at the mouth--actually those who know me only casually might assume the opposite about me: that I don't show much emotion at all. But while I'm good at hiding my emotions physically, I'm terrible at containing them within myself. When something is bothering me, I lose sleep, I obsess, I seethe.
I don't want to sound too much like a partisan hack here, but the best role model out there for someone like me, who simply needs to calm down and roll with the punches, is Barack Obama. I find it incredible that a politican, and a presidential candidate nonetheless, has been able to inspire me. How long has it been since an American president's demeanor and carriage can be described as laudable and dignified? How long has it been since an American leader behaved like a leader?
The double-edged sword here is that I've become so invested in his candidacy, that the very model of serenity I'm hoping to emulate is the very cause of most of my restlessness lately. The polls are looking good, but this thing is far from over. And I'll be so glad when it's over.
Right now, as a nation in turmoil, we need someone calm, assertive, confident, and capable. For all their disparaging of Obama as a risky choice (now they're just outright calling him a terrorist), Obama is not the risky choice in this campaign. Whatever his ideology, we know this much: the man can take heat. The Clintons threw it at him (Bill still is, indirectly), the right wing's thrown it at him, and now the Barbie Doll from Alaska is throwing it at him.
He's been living in the kitchen for two years, and no matter how hot it gets, he just keeps getting better.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
The Debate
I watched last night's debate and I've been digesting the reaction to it all day, via the news sites and blogs I frequent. A few of my own impressions:
1) McCain is a much better debater than he is speechmaker. I was impressed by his breadth of knowledge, at least about international relations and general world history. I thought his rantings about earmarks were laughable, given their relative insiginifance in the larger scheme of things.
2) While McCain's knowledge of the world is impressive, I thought that Obama did not give much ground to him on foreign policy and the Iraq War. I remain impressed that Obama was one of the few prescient ones in 2003 whose first inclination was to question whether Iraq was really a place we needed or wanted to invade.
3) I grew tired of McCain's obvious disdain for Obama. He did not, even once, look him in the face. Not once. He seemed patronizing and contempuous. Obama stayed respectful, as he always does.
4) I was watching the debate on CNN and they have this neat little tracker on the bottom of the screen that gauges audience reaction in real-time. You get to watch the reaction of 35 people to every moment in the debate. When they like something they turn the dial up, and when they don't like what they hear, they turn the dial down. They were evenly splite among Democrates, Republicans, and Independents, and you could watch how each separate group reacted. Anyway, the most intresting thing I noticed was that when one of the candidates went blatantly negative, all trend lines would immediately go down. McCain was far more negative (or, as those sympathetic to him might say, "aggressive") than Obama. Whenever he got snide, the audience generally reacted negatively.
5) I don't think anyone who has already made their mind up will change their minds as a result of the debate. The two basically repeated things they've already said before. However, their body language, their basic demeanor, and their temperaments were on display. Obama was calm and collected. McCain was annoyed and dismissive, as if to say, "how do you even share this stage with me?" Clinton did that too.
She lost.
6) Palin (and McCain) better hope that she does better with Joe Biden than she did with Katie Couric.
7) In the end, people generally see what they want to see in these kinds of things. I'm no exception.
1) McCain is a much better debater than he is speechmaker. I was impressed by his breadth of knowledge, at least about international relations and general world history. I thought his rantings about earmarks were laughable, given their relative insiginifance in the larger scheme of things.
2) While McCain's knowledge of the world is impressive, I thought that Obama did not give much ground to him on foreign policy and the Iraq War. I remain impressed that Obama was one of the few prescient ones in 2003 whose first inclination was to question whether Iraq was really a place we needed or wanted to invade.
3) I grew tired of McCain's obvious disdain for Obama. He did not, even once, look him in the face. Not once. He seemed patronizing and contempuous. Obama stayed respectful, as he always does.
4) I was watching the debate on CNN and they have this neat little tracker on the bottom of the screen that gauges audience reaction in real-time. You get to watch the reaction of 35 people to every moment in the debate. When they like something they turn the dial up, and when they don't like what they hear, they turn the dial down. They were evenly splite among Democrates, Republicans, and Independents, and you could watch how each separate group reacted. Anyway, the most intresting thing I noticed was that when one of the candidates went blatantly negative, all trend lines would immediately go down. McCain was far more negative (or, as those sympathetic to him might say, "aggressive") than Obama. Whenever he got snide, the audience generally reacted negatively.
5) I don't think anyone who has already made their mind up will change their minds as a result of the debate. The two basically repeated things they've already said before. However, their body language, their basic demeanor, and their temperaments were on display. Obama was calm and collected. McCain was annoyed and dismissive, as if to say, "how do you even share this stage with me?" Clinton did that too.
She lost.
6) Palin (and McCain) better hope that she does better with Joe Biden than she did with Katie Couric.
7) In the end, people generally see what they want to see in these kinds of things. I'm no exception.
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