Syllabi for the second half of the survey are all ready to go. (Alas, I finished photocopying them half an hour before I found out that Misnomer U. is getting a writing center this semester -- but I'm not redoing them, and anyway, I'm not sure I quite believe in this writing center until I actually see it operating.)
The big changes from last year are: a) North and South will be our Big Novel instead of Persuasion; b) there will be one full-length essay, a midterm, and a whole slew of mini-papers instead of three essays; and c) we're on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule this time. Since there are so many more days of class, I kept getting tempted to toss in extra readings, even though I know on an intellectual level there's not really more time in the semester. Mostly, I restrained myself, although I will be taking a shot at "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and a couple of Hardy poems. (I may live to regret this, since twentieth-century poetry is way, way out of my comfort zone. Oh dear.)
One unintended consequence of the Great Novel Swap was that the Victorian section of the course started to look top-heavy and the Romantic section ridiculously brief. I've added Mary Shelley's "The Mortal Immortal" and cut "Goblin Market," "The Old Nurse's Tale," and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (none of which I was really feeling the love for, although they teach well). I added a couple of the Sherlock Holmes stories, including "The Speckled Band," so that the students could still have their object lesson in How To Talk About Creepy Sex Without Openly Talking About Creepy Sex. (If I get really ambitious, we might even end up talking a bit about canonicity and Why Sherlock Holmes Is Not In The Norton Anthology, and whether he should be. Or by that point in the semester, we might just end up talking about the movie, especially if I've actually seen it by then. A lot of my ambitions don't pan out.) Anyway, that should give us our requisite dose of proto-science-fiction / mystery and horror / general weirdness.
Should be a fun class. I'm looking forward to it.
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3 comments:
Sounds interesting, and the Sherlock Holmes stories will have built-in interest if your students are moviegoers.
I love North and South. It's a great read. And actually, in deindustrializing America, it might resonate in rather odd ways...
I think some of our brain waves much have co-mingled in the blogosphere, and I recently posted on a similar topic. Or perhaps it's just that we're all gearing up again . . .
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