geek times two, or maybe three
This morning I re-read great wodges of Ian Watt's Rise of the Novel with an eye to bracing part of my own arguments about recent developments in the genre's history against his account of its origins.
Instead I ended up planning the first meeting of an entirely hypothetical 18th c. novel course. I already have several alternate reading lists worked out (I really want to include Clarissa, because it's much better than Pamela, but of course it's also fucking huge, so I have to give myself options), but I hadn't ever sat down and planned the first few days of class. Whereas now I have this fabulous opening discussion + backgrounds, and an intellectual framework for the course.
If I were allowed to submit syllabi instead of chapters, I would have been done with this degree years ago.
This afternoon I met with a student about his final paper for a course that I'm not teaching. Long story short: we've worked together in other capacities, and he wanted to talk over some detail stuff - he's happy with his argument, but is still thinking about how to situate that argument in relation to other scholarship, and is also struggling with some issues of organization and style (he's never done such a complex research project before, and this is also his first paper over fifteen pages).
We had a fantastic two-hour conversation that ranged from nuts-and-bolts stuff about how to signpost a complicated argument to much broader conceptual discussions of the history and current state of composition theory. He did a fantastic job of articulating a bunch of things that were only implicit in the paper, and at the end of it he had a plan sketched out of exactly what he was going to do, in what order, when he got home and sat down at the computer. I was really proud of him.
And tonight I'm going to go pick up tickets to the Dec. 17th midnight show of Return of the King. I don't anticipate quite the quotable fun of last year's ticket errand, since I'm not getting ten tickets this year, but I'm still looking forward to it.
In the meantime: curry!
Instead I ended up planning the first meeting of an entirely hypothetical 18th c. novel course. I already have several alternate reading lists worked out (I really want to include Clarissa, because it's much better than Pamela, but of course it's also fucking huge, so I have to give myself options), but I hadn't ever sat down and planned the first few days of class. Whereas now I have this fabulous opening discussion + backgrounds, and an intellectual framework for the course.
If I were allowed to submit syllabi instead of chapters, I would have been done with this degree years ago.
This afternoon I met with a student about his final paper for a course that I'm not teaching. Long story short: we've worked together in other capacities, and he wanted to talk over some detail stuff - he's happy with his argument, but is still thinking about how to situate that argument in relation to other scholarship, and is also struggling with some issues of organization and style (he's never done such a complex research project before, and this is also his first paper over fifteen pages).
We had a fantastic two-hour conversation that ranged from nuts-and-bolts stuff about how to signpost a complicated argument to much broader conceptual discussions of the history and current state of composition theory. He did a fantastic job of articulating a bunch of things that were only implicit in the paper, and at the end of it he had a plan sketched out of exactly what he was going to do, in what order, when he got home and sat down at the computer. I was really proud of him.
And tonight I'm going to go pick up tickets to the Dec. 17th midnight show of Return of the King. I don't anticipate quite the quotable fun of last year's ticket errand, since I'm not getting ten tickets this year, but I'm still looking forward to it.
In the meantime: curry!