I humiliate kittens

Leroy as Santa

Tom Selleck as his unhappy reindeer

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Accumulating Knowledge

When I write final exams, I do not write cumulative exams, in that I don't ask questions specifically about material covered prior to the midterm exams. So, for example, in my Introduction to Literary Studies class, I didn't test the students on specific literary terms that students had to learn prior to the midterm. My exams, however, are really cumulative in the sense that all the knowledge that students have gained over the semester carries through to the end. Again, in the Introduction to Literary Studies class, I expected that students would be able to use some of the critical lenses we talked about prior to the midterm -- I didn't test them specifically on them, but expected that they would be able to explicate a poem more proficiently than they could at the very beginning of the semester, or even at the midterm.

All that preamble is to bring out something I've been thinking about a great deal lately -- and something I dither about periodically, as I plan new classes. It's been on my mind because of a conversation I had with a colleague a couple of weeks ago. We're both teaching Critical Thinking 102 next semester, which is a course wherein we'll teach students some of the basic concepts of critical thinking as well as some of the basics of our own discipline. Bradley and I are team teaching the course and we're going to be focusing on literature of witness (a take on Carolyn Forche's book title, Poetry of Witness). The course is supposed to be more concept-based than content-based, which is what my colleague - who's a biologist - and I were discussing. She's concerned about what she's going to have to leave out. And in fact, she suggested some concern for how a person would make the decision of what to leave out.

I fully understand that concern, particularly in the sciences, since most of the information/skills in science is built sequentially and cumulatively. (Or at least that's my recollection of taking science classes in high school and college).

At the same time -- and I told her this -- there's something oddly easy about cutting back on content in literature courses. For example, as I've been planning the Survey of British Literature course after 1800, I've realized that I'm trying to cover far too much in 15 weeks. I've got my reading list basically set, but I'm going to trim at least 10% before I finalize everything. I feel like students will still get the essence of the 200+ years of literature, and will have the basic awareness of what they should look for in order to further explore, should they so choose.

This all really gets me to thinking about what it is that we really teach in literature classes (see: I told you I was dithering about this). It also gets me thinking about my own accumulation of literary knowledge (see the previous post on only just reading The Great Gatsby). What are the most important things that students should take away from an English course? From the English major? Are there really authors that students should absolutely have to read before graduating from college?

I'm not sure.

Partly, that's because I think I see what we do as something we really continue to do over our entire careers -- and that highlights an essential difference between the intellectual process of science and the humanities. We continue to accumulate knowledge through our entire reading lives; and it's cumulative only in the sense that we see the connections as we read things, as we're exposed to things. Perhaps that's part of why I've always liked the field.

Vanity Fair and The Great Gatsby

This semester's personal reading was a bit sparse. Or rather, I decided that since I'm teaching a survey of British literature after 1800, I ought to read more of the fiction, and that reading took a lot longer than expected.

I spent the better part of November and December reading Thackery's Vanity Fair, which was only a long read because I had so very little time to do it -- I would read about a chapter before I fell asleep at night. So, slow going.

I finished Vanity Fair last Wednesday and then turned to Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby (one of the more embarrassing gaps in my literary knowledge). I finished that in about a day. Granted that it's significantly shorter, but I also had much more time to just sit and read.

It's an odd pair to read back to back -- and both are great in their own ways. I particularly like the dry wit of Vanity Fair. One of my favorite lines in the novel comes when the polite society ladies of London are shocked and appalled by Becky Sharp's appearance in their circle (despite having been friendly with her in Brussels during the war): Thackery writes "Indeed, Lady Bareacres exchanged terrified and angry looks with her daughter, and retreated to a table, where she began to look at pictures with great energy" (473).

And Gatsby strikes me as particularly taut -- and the one good act done by any of these unlikeable (not to say unsympathetic - Jay Gatsby is sympathetic) people is met with death. The book is also one of Bradley's favorites, and he's been hounding me for ages about the fact that I hadn't read it.

The two together remind me, once again, that novels are so often about people being bored. The scene that introduces Jordan Baker is remarkable for that sort of boredom -- and of course, the characters in Vanity Fair are also working to fill their immense leisure time with activities that verge on the dull. It's that moment of wondering how these characters survive -- when do they work? Where does that money actually come from?

Remarkable, in that vein, was the moment in Gatsby where I started to ask that very question -- do these people do anything other than go to parties and sleep in? -- that Nick breaks from his narrative to explain that he didn't just go to parties and that he actually worked. It was a nice moment as a reader.

Thus, that's where the reading is. I'm hoping to get a lot of reading done over the break (we're out until January 12), but I know that there's much else to do (those articles I'm working on aren't going to write themselves; nor will next semester's classes plan themselves). Still, on my list: Chekov's short stories; Tess of the d'Urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Idylls of the King and some Sherlock Holmes. As I mention at the beginning of the post, I'm teaching the Brit Lit survey -- and my base knowledge of the Victorians could be a bit better. Plus, I just picked up some very cheap copies of those novels at the used bookstore.

Library discoveries

Earlier this semester, I taught my Intro to Lit Studies students about various 20th century critical schools. (I use Rob Pope's The English Studies Book, which includes a succinct description of each of the major schools). In an effort to teach the students about some of the major figures, I typically check out some of their books from the library and find pertinent passages from them to start discussion of the school.

In that effort, I checked out The Well Wrought Urn.







Upon opening the book, I found this interesting piece of paratext:


Who knew we had such things in our library?


(You can tell what sort of semester it was, since it's taken me since September to scan and post these images.)