Things to write about
I've been a bit sparse on LJ of late, so it follows that when I do actually have things to write about I can only post by crossposting from DW. Karma or something?
Officially there are no seminars/lectures/tutorials for MA students in the summer term. In practice I find that, as long as I don't mind being the only person not in possession of or working towards a PhD, there are lots of guest speakers, reading groups and seminars I can find to assuage my compulsive communicator leanings. There was a very interesting session last week about interdisciplinary gender studies, with a genuine range of disciplines, although a lot of time was spent debating inter/trans/cross and various other prefixly forms of disciplinarity, and the way it fits into the neoconservative/neoliberal project. (Are they the same? Am I the Good Slayer now?)
Yesterday I spent the morning playing with seven-year-olds, on the WWPS programme - a bunch of "tall writers" go into a primary school to work with children jaded by "literacy", to try to get them excited about writing. It is certainly needed - in the first session they were really concerned about the need to use compound sentences and put in lots of commas. :-( Yesterday my partner and I had them lying on big sheets of paper, drawing outlines of each other (no, we weren't setting up a murder investigation) and then considering the outside and the inside of a personality - Stanislavskian building a character, but more fun. And a boy who told us he hates literacy wouldn't stop writing to come to join the group by the end of the session - a result, I think.
It is so depressing seeing conscientious, committed, intelligent, experienced primary teachers having to follow official guidelines and drain the life out of creative writing when the children are seven. And it's so clear that they have no idea how sentence structures might work to improve their own writing - just parrot the terminology. That's all Mr Gove wants. Grrr.
Then back to campus - I'm providing an unofficial taxi service for some of the students who are campus-bound - and into the library for a couple of hours. It's almost worth what I'm paying to do the course just to have access to a decent academic library, with real books I can actually take out. I'm struggling to imagine Palace Green Library, the Durham main library of my era, with a coffee shop and panini available for study. But then, we 'ad it tough. Uphill, barefoot in the snow, both ways...
Then a postgrad reading group on Victorian material culture which was enormous fun. Properly interdisciplinary, it was hosted by Art History but had historians, lit and languages people as well. We discussed some amusing readings - a Victorian book advising people to collect rare books as a good financial investment, so very solemn it was hilarious; an article which could have been in Hello with very few changes, describing the tasteful home of a family of artists; an oleaginous description of a visit to her august Majesty's home at Osborne; some selections from Henry James. Lots of really interesting discussion of taste as a marker of class and education, attitudes to "new money", art as part of the financial nexus. I'm not even "doing" anything Victorian this year, but I was able to sustain my part in discussion if only because of decades of teaching novels at A Level. I was even able to point them to Gradgrind's rant on interior décor in Hard Times and show them a house referenced in one of the readings, which even the art historians hadn't heard of.
Today I had an enjoyable planning session with my partner, Robyn - we are going to take our "team" on an adventure next week - then to Bicester to visit
oxfordia, her mother, who is staying there this week, and the divine Miss G. It was lovely to chat in my somewhat rusty French and be plied with coffee and a small girl.
Now I have few excuses for procrastination. I have two thousand words of "reflection" to add to my creative writing submission, due Monday. I have had many months to do this. I will just check FB and then get to work. Though it's after midnight, so perhaps I should just get a night's sleep and be fresh in the morning....
Officially there are no seminars/lectures/tutorials for MA students in the summer term. In practice I find that, as long as I don't mind being the only person not in possession of or working towards a PhD, there are lots of guest speakers, reading groups and seminars I can find to assuage my compulsive communicator leanings. There was a very interesting session last week about interdisciplinary gender studies, with a genuine range of disciplines, although a lot of time was spent debating inter/trans/cross and various other prefixly forms of disciplinarity, and the way it fits into the neoconservative/neoliberal project. (Are they the same? Am I the Good Slayer now?)
Yesterday I spent the morning playing with seven-year-olds, on the WWPS programme - a bunch of "tall writers" go into a primary school to work with children jaded by "literacy", to try to get them excited about writing. It is certainly needed - in the first session they were really concerned about the need to use compound sentences and put in lots of commas. :-( Yesterday my partner and I had them lying on big sheets of paper, drawing outlines of each other (no, we weren't setting up a murder investigation) and then considering the outside and the inside of a personality - Stanislavskian building a character, but more fun. And a boy who told us he hates literacy wouldn't stop writing to come to join the group by the end of the session - a result, I think.
It is so depressing seeing conscientious, committed, intelligent, experienced primary teachers having to follow official guidelines and drain the life out of creative writing when the children are seven. And it's so clear that they have no idea how sentence structures might work to improve their own writing - just parrot the terminology. That's all Mr Gove wants. Grrr.
Then back to campus - I'm providing an unofficial taxi service for some of the students who are campus-bound - and into the library for a couple of hours. It's almost worth what I'm paying to do the course just to have access to a decent academic library, with real books I can actually take out. I'm struggling to imagine Palace Green Library, the Durham main library of my era, with a coffee shop and panini available for study. But then, we 'ad it tough. Uphill, barefoot in the snow, both ways...
Then a postgrad reading group on Victorian material culture which was enormous fun. Properly interdisciplinary, it was hosted by Art History but had historians, lit and languages people as well. We discussed some amusing readings - a Victorian book advising people to collect rare books as a good financial investment, so very solemn it was hilarious; an article which could have been in Hello with very few changes, describing the tasteful home of a family of artists; an oleaginous description of a visit to her august Majesty's home at Osborne; some selections from Henry James. Lots of really interesting discussion of taste as a marker of class and education, attitudes to "new money", art as part of the financial nexus. I'm not even "doing" anything Victorian this year, but I was able to sustain my part in discussion if only because of decades of teaching novels at A Level. I was even able to point them to Gradgrind's rant on interior décor in Hard Times and show them a house referenced in one of the readings, which even the art historians hadn't heard of.
Today I had an enjoyable planning session with my partner, Robyn - we are going to take our "team" on an adventure next week - then to Bicester to visit
oxfordia, her mother, who is staying there this week, and the divine Miss G. It was lovely to chat in my somewhat rusty French and be plied with coffee and a small girl.
Now I have few excuses for procrastination. I have two thousand words of "reflection" to add to my creative writing submission, due Monday. I have had many months to do this. I will just check FB and then get to work. Though it's after midnight, so perhaps I should just get a night's sleep and be fresh in the morning....