Lesson plan
I've decided to give my class a one-page chunk of an essay which spends part of its time looking at The Forever War through a Jamesonian lens, theorizing that it allegorizes the dislocation and alienation of postmodernity through its structural conceit of having Mandella go back and forth between space/combat and ever more changed and disorienting versions of Earth (thanks to the effective time travel he undergoes via time dilation). I actually had gotten the essay for my own thesis, so I'm pretty pleased that the two overlap like this.
As one might expect in a sci-fi class, this crowd isn't stridently anti-intellectual, like some of my students in 101 were, so I think they'll at least read it and give it a fair shot. (Last semester I eventually got so fed up with the kids whining about not wanting to "read too much into" their texts that I told them [in nicer terms], "Dammit, this is an English class. What do you think we do in here? Plot summary?") If nothing else, it will at least be a good exercise for paraphrasing, because in addition to sitting up front with a link to the OED online, once we discuss it and define all the field-specific terms, I'm going to have them write a paragraph summary in their own words. 'Cause some of these kids need the practice, if their endless irrelevant quotes in the last paper are any indication.
And if it completely backfires on me...well, this will be at the end of class, and no one will object to being let go a few minutes early, I'm sure. But I do hope they'll get something out of it.
As one might expect in a sci-fi class, this crowd isn't stridently anti-intellectual, like some of my students in 101 were, so I think they'll at least read it and give it a fair shot. (Last semester I eventually got so fed up with the kids whining about not wanting to "read too much into" their texts that I told them [in nicer terms], "Dammit, this is an English class. What do you think we do in here? Plot summary?") If nothing else, it will at least be a good exercise for paraphrasing, because in addition to sitting up front with a link to the OED online, once we discuss it and define all the field-specific terms, I'm going to have them write a paragraph summary in their own words. 'Cause some of these kids need the practice, if their endless irrelevant quotes in the last paper are any indication.
And if it completely backfires on me...well, this will be at the end of class, and no one will object to being let go a few minutes early, I'm sure. But I do hope they'll get something out of it.