In the summer of 2007 I took a seminar on Victorian literature. I wrote two papers of note which included a writeup on the introduction to Miriam Elizabeth Burstein's book Narrating Women's History In Britain: 1770-1902. This is a clever assignment I am using with my students this semester as well.
The second was my seminar paper, which discussed queerness in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's novel Lady Audley's Secret and whether the ending of the novel is "straight" or not.
Here is the last few weekend’s worth of weekend reading…
The Guardian offers a few excerpts from Susan Faludi’s The Terror Dream: Fear & Fantasy In Post 9-11 America. A lot of what is discussed in these excerpts were the sort of thing that freaked me out “post 9-11″ and prompted me to start writing notes for what would become War Prayers later.
The Nation recently reprinted one of my favorite Kurt Vonnegut pieces, The Worst Addiction Of Them All.
Two from The Quarterly Conversation: reviews of Junot Diaz and Vasily Grossman.
The Little Professor offers a lengthy, and very thoughtful, review of Marc Bousquet’s How The University Works.
Our weekly two from The Quarterly Conversation: reviews of Mari Akasaka and Jose Maria Eça de Queirós.
Mother Jones interviews Marjane Satrapi.
Three from The Quarterly Conversation: Natsume Soseki, Ron Currie Jr., and Selah Saterstrom.
Over at Grand Text Auto Scott Rettberg has put up some notes from the Remediating Literature Conference earlier this month in the Netherlands.
I have always been a big fan of Glen E Friedman’s photography ever since I first purchased Fuck You Heroes as a teenager. Via Boing Boing comes word that he has a new book which focuses on photos of the band Fugazi. While I am not a huge Fugazi fan, Friedman’s work is as good as usual and worth looking into.
The Little Professor links to a series of sites about mental illness and the Victorians. Right now I am doing some research and writing about the Victorian period for two papers I am working on. These links will be very useful.
Hey, how about some weekend reading!
Joyce Carol Oates reviews the recent reissue of The Handmaid’s Tale over at The New York Review Of Books. There is also some lovely discussions of Margaret Atwood’s other books including Surfacing.
Edwidge Danticat has a new story in a recent issue of The New Yorker.
Via The Little Professor, Ohio State has digitized some of their out of print books. I am interested in the texts about Shakespeare and Mildred Newcomb’s The Imagined World Of Charles Dickens because I am reading Oliver Twist this weekend for a class.
Recently, Little Professor blogged about attendance policies in the classroom. Her post got me thinking about my own experiences with attendance issues in the classroom. I think attendance is an important parting of the learning experience. How many absences a student may use should be up to an individual professor’s discretion based on how many they feel would not take away from a student’s learning experience. If this is one or five, that number is up to the professor. That said, no matter what the number is, as a student it is your job to suck it up and deal with whatever their policies are. Anyone who cannot deal with a stricter (let us argue two absences for an eleven-week semester is “strict,” and say, five or six is much more lenient) attendance policy shouldn’t take the course. I have never met a professor, especially here at Stockton, who is not willing to help and work with a student to deal with their issues and needs. I also have to agree with Little Professor’s sentiment that students who do come to class should not receive extra credit just for showing up when they are supposed to.