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23067. Ms. No - 12/2/2007 3:40:47 AM This is actually a history class, but there's a lot of literature involved which makes it especially engaging. Depressing as hell, sometimes, but most of this material isn't new to me. I don't know if I got this stuff through osmosis, or what. I think having family roots in South Carolina makes one a bit like a West German. 23068. arkymalarky - 12/2/2007 3:42:48 AM We read Their Eyes Were Watching God in my graduate American Novels class.
That is an incredible amount required for such a short paper. 23069. Ms. No - 12/2/2007 4:28:46 AM Yeah, it really is. It averages out to roughly four cites per page, three of them direct quotations. It bothers me because it doesn't allow me to really address any of the works other than in passing.
I've got all but one of my quotations compiled and my bibliography done. Now all I have to do is string them together in some semblance of coherent thought.
riiiiiight. 23070. Ms. No - 12/2/2007 4:29:39 AM It's pretty much directly backwards from the way I formulate papers. 23071. arkymalarky - 12/2/2007 4:36:09 AM Me too. And in fact, it's backwards from how I teach students to develop them. If I don't, their first research paper is often an empty cut and paste. 23072. Ms. No - 12/2/2007 4:50:08 AM Yeah, it's really strange. I don't know if maybe she did it to make sure that we did all the reading in the anthology. Seems to me, if she was worried about that the proper thing to do would be to have a test on that material and give us a little more leeway in writing the paper.
I suppose it'll make it easier to grade, though. The focus is so incredibly narrow that she can almost use a checklist to do it and then address any sort of thesis or argument (what little there's room for) almost as an afterthought.
All of which makes it sound like I don't enjoy this professor or think she's a good teacher, which just isn't the case. I'm just irritated by the paper a little bit because I feel like she's underestimating our capabilities while at the same time making the thing much more difficult than it has to be. 23073. arkymalarky - 12/2/2007 9:58:40 PM I suppose it'll make it easier to grade, though.
That's probably her chief motivation. Like you say, she can skim through them with a rubric and short checklist and be done. And I don't blame her for that, but she's trying to squeeze too much in. One, or even two sources per category if she wants you to show comparative understanding or analysis, and increasing the length to 8-10 pages would have done everything you're going to do with those constraints. And I very much understand her attempts to get students to be concise--as you will too, before much longer ;->--but guidelines and length requirements without cramming so much in would be the way to go, imo.
But, she's the teacher. And of course the most important thing is that she's a good one and you enjoy her class. I have a sneaking suspicion my last research professor barely looked at my paper, if he did at all--it wasn't a class, but a research problems requirement--but I just took my A and went on. I haven't seen the paper or him since, so I have no idea why I got an A.
I imagine you'll get an A and she'll be gunning for people who meander and fail to connect their theses and irritate her in an infinite number of ways only a poor paper can irritate a teacher who has a bunch of them to grade in a day or two, as they do at the end of the semester.
23074. arkymalarky - 12/2/2007 10:00:41 PM I do not assign research papers at the end of grading periods any more. Life's too short. 23075. arkymalarky - 12/2/2007 10:06:49 PM David, btw, I'm considering Invisible Man for my AP English class second semester, and I'd love your opinion/input. You think high school students would get it? In rereading it, I loved it more and it's one of my favorite books. In rereading Beloved I still don't see it. There's some good stuff there, but as a whole, I just don't. I'm still waiting for someone to explain it to me. The whole class loved it--nine women and a female professor--but me. The only other reading in that class that I'd already read was The Sound and the Fury, but I'm so familiar with that book from having read it and taught it so many times that I neither gained nor lost anything in the class. We also read The Sun Also Rises, Portrait of a Lady, and a Hawthorne that I thought was awful--I'd have to look it up to remember the title. I've successfully blocked it out of my mind. 23076. arkymalarky - 12/2/2007 10:07:39 PM Beloved is very popular for AP English classes, btw. 23077. David Ehrenstein - 12/2/2007 10:35:07 PM It's a teriffic book that's best taught in the simplest fashion. Don't hand it to the students as a "classic" or "important" work, just an interesting and well-written one. Then see what they say.
Actually I'd advise this for all teaching of literature.
Except for Proust of course. 23078. Ms. No - 12/2/2007 11:37:22 PM I haven't read Beloved, but it was mentioned in class as being based on a real-life incident in which Margaret Garner killed her daughter when confronted by slave catchers rather than have the child returned to slavery. 23079. arkymalarky - 12/2/2007 11:43:35 PM True! I'm reading Remembrance of Things Past right now. I started it several years ago and had to put it down when rl intervened.
Do you think they need workable background information on the historical aspects of IM? As complicated as TSATF is, you don't have to have much historical knowledge to get it. I didn't have much historical understanding the first time I read it. With IM I don't know. That's my biggest reservation about it. I don't want to have to teach a history unit before I teach the book, but there's so much great stuff that it seems people who don't have that background would miss. Not that it isn't great without it, but I don't know, because I didn't read it without that knowledge, like I did TSATF. 23080. arkymalarky - 12/2/2007 11:44:54 PM I think I read that too, No. The plot is fascinating, and many people whose opinions I greatly respect love it. But I've read it twice, and many of the things Morrison tries to do with it don't succeed for me. 23081. Ms. No - 12/3/2007 12:16:13 AM I don't know that I've ever gotten all the way through a Morrison book. I chalk that up to my lazy reading habits. 23082. arkymalarky - 12/3/2007 12:30:41 AM Surely not. Surely if she compelled you with her writing, you'd get through at least one.
One difference between myself and several other classmates, which had nothing to do with appreciating the book beyond how she handled it in her style, was they believed in ghosts. I won't go so far as to discount the possibility, but my skepticism evidently affected my perception of her approach to the ghost. I just didn't care for it. But when I tell people about the book who haven't read it, I myself am taken with the plot.
I think for me the bottom line is that I can't stand the feeling of the writer peering over my shoulder when I read a book. That's how her writing strikes me.
And I hate it, because Beloved was recommended to me by a very intelligent student whom I think a great deal of. 23083. Ms. No - 12/3/2007 1:14:36 AM I can't stand the feeling of the writer peering over my shoulder when I read a book
Yes! I think that's it exactly. Reading is a solitary experience for me. I want to be alone with the story and the characters while I'm reading. Discussing it with others later is great, but if the author's presence is too strong, I feel as if I'm being watched and consequently judged or condescended to somehow. 23084. arkymalarky - 12/3/2007 1:42:05 AM And there are some great moments in it, some beautifully written scenes, and in a lot of ways it's a great story. I still get chills thinking about the epilogue and the footprints. But for me, because she never disappears, Morrison just doesn't pull it off. But again, she does for many people. I'd love to have a discussion of the book here if we could get enough interested participants. 23085. arkymalarky - 12/3/2007 1:50:16 AM Wabbit and No, that's an open offer to host it, btw, if you think people are interested. I'll see what kind of response we get in here and maybe after Christmas? Or before? I'm easy now that I'm out of graduate school and activism. 23086. Ms. No - 12/3/2007 3:31:42 AM That would be pretty cool! I start vacation on Dec 18th --- I leave that morning at 6am for Baton Rouge and then I'm there for ten days, I think, so I could certainly read it in that time and participate either then or whenever we get a group up and going.
(As you can see I have been less than diligent about my paper today -- popping in here every little while and finding chores to do around the house.)
Okay, I swear I'm not coming back until I've got my paper together!
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