I have to disagree on some points here. While I have always felt that I get more out of a literature class where I am allowed to interpret as I please, I would prefer the professor to have at least a cursory knowledge of what's being taught. There is a difference between being open with interpretations and just winging it.
Morgan, I feel the same way Mark does. No offense to you, because you are quite smart, but I would be incredibly upset to find out I was paying for a class where a professor had less knowledge than I did, or had no real basic knowledge to back things up. As someone that clearly cares about literature in general, I find it hard to believe that you are comfortable teaching a class purely because of the money, not because you have anything to offer the students. Especially in a field like graphic novels, which is such a new and growing discipline. Whenever a discipline is just starting out, each and every foray into it is incredibly important, because it is going to be judged more harshly than say, another class on the inner workings of Hamlet.
I'm not exactly opening this up for debate. I'm teaching the class with a cultural perspective. I'm also teaching the class using texts that employ the same features as literary fiction and memoir--therefore, persepolis, maus, fun home, jimmy corrigan. I'm not teaching a class on comic-book-style graphic novels.
I'm not trying to be a dick. I'm just taken aback, as I would assume most people would be, by the fact that just being in grad school qualifies people to teach. Because there is no way anyone should let me teach, and if I put in the money, in a month I would be allowed to teach too. It's just that I had good and bad professors in college, and it was clear why the bad ones were bad - because they were not ready, or prepared.
This isn't a dig on you. It's a dig on the system. It's insane that it works this way.
Clearly, I am not going to breeze into class the first day and say "Huh. Graphic novels. Who knew?" I am working right now on a syllabus that will be for a May term class. But Livejournalland is not the venue through which I am going to expound upon my Ideas about Graphic Novels and Why I Am Interested In Them in Relation to My Field Of Study. Livejournalland is a heads-up on what I'm doing, and something that I consider a major success in my life thus far--obviously, not simply because I'm getting paid for something I've been preparing my whole life for, but because it will give me the invaluable experience of teaching a class.
Teaching and its relation to the college system is an odd thing. I value a way of teaching that not only exhibits my opinions, background knowledge, and ways of reading a text, but also exhibits my students' opinions, knowledge, and strategies for reading that same text.
I will never be a teacher who lectures on All The Things I Know, because those teachers are generally blowhards who don't know anything.
So graduate school does not qualify a student's ability to teach. But a student's ability to teach is not always contigent on the idea that he or she has to know everything there is to know about the course content. That can never happen--whether a person is in graduate school or has taught at Yale for 800 years. And I'd be wary of a teacher who does claim such things.
Do you get what I'm saying though? You are being allowed to teach because you are in graduate school - not because you are smart. Which you are. And I never said you weren't. What I'm trying to say is that I want different thins out of my professors than clearly you do - I want my money to not be wasted, I want to come out feeling like I couldn't have learned what came from the class on my own.
It was your response to Mark's question that irked me - the insinuation that you were doing this because it paid more than waitressing. And for that reason only. I did not post to be a bitch - rather to offer my opinion on something that I feel passionately about.
actually, it is a dig on morgan because you and mark are both assuming she doesn't know anything about comics. she might not know as much as a comic geek does about superhero comics, but the fact that she bases her class on jimmy corrigan, maus, persepolis, and fun home clearly show that she knows her shit when it comes to graphic literature. i think it's pretty arrogant and mean-spirited to assume that morgan would teach a class on a subject about which she was ignorant or unprepared. besides of which she's a student in one of the most selective nonfiction writing programs in the country and most of the texts she's teaching are significant works of contemporary nonfiction, so i think she'd be able to handle a class on them.
I never said that Tom. As someone who speaks passionately about many issues frequently, I know you value the ability to seperate your feelings for the person on the otherside of the argument from the argument itself. I have always had a lot of respect for Morgan and how she lives her life, and I made that explicitly clear in my comments. I understand getting carried away supporting a friend - because that is what I'm doing to a degree here. I support Morgan and the clear love she has for her field of study, and wish to offer constructive criticism about what she's doing now. Perhaps it was a little too on the criticism side and not enough on the constructive. But regardless, I know you understand how to support a friend in ways other than just kneejerk approval, and that's what I was trying to do here. Please recognize it for what it is and don't fan hostility that wasn't there in the first place.
As a side note, I think it's pretty arrogant and mean-spirited to knock all people who read comics regularly, calling them geeks, and those who read "superhero comics" as well. Though they may not be your cup of tea, they are certainly relevant to the study of graphic novels, as many of them are themselves.
i read comics regularly, including superhero comics. i even suggested marvel's run of _black panther_ in a comment above. in context, i was using the term "geeks" to refer to people who exclusively value superhero comics at the expense of other graphic literature.
and i do think, especially considering morgan's responses to previous comments, that there was perceived and implied hostility in the exchange, even if you didn't recognize or intend it. her original post acknowledged a lack of familiarity with some superhero comics and asked for any suggestions for titles that fit her theme of diversity; instead of suggesting titles or answering her question, you and mark criticized her for suggesting she was qualified enough to teach the course and lambasted the system that would allow someone as "unqualified" as her to teach. i read this as inappropriate and unhelpful, even if it was intended to somehow help morgan with her course.
The fact that you see a value in some superhero comics does not negate the fact that you chose to refer to a whole section of the public with a negative term. That's what I felt was a bit arrogant and mean.
There was hostility in my comments, yes - for the system. I really don't care if people I like are part of the system - it still bothers me that this is how it is. I don't agree with it. And that was the approach I presented from the beginning. I am sorry Tom, that you can not value my comments for what they were - one side of an argument about being able to teach at a college level. It bothers me that you are trying to make this into a situation where I was attacking someone (or Mark for that matter, who has said so much less). It's comments like these that don't help. But you can behave however you choose I suppose.
Morgan, I feel the same way Mark does. No offense to you, because you are quite smart, but I would be incredibly upset to find out I was paying for a class where a professor had less knowledge than I did, or had no real basic knowledge to back things up. As someone that clearly cares about literature in general, I find it hard to believe that you are comfortable teaching a class purely because of the money, not because you have anything to offer the students. Especially in a field like graphic novels, which is such a new and growing discipline. Whenever a discipline is just starting out, each and every foray into it is incredibly important, because it is going to be judged more harshly than say, another class on the inner workings of Hamlet.
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I'm sort of taken aback by this. But whatever.
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This isn't a dig on you. It's a dig on the system. It's insane that it works this way.
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Teaching and its relation to the college system is an odd thing. I value a way of teaching that not only exhibits my opinions, background knowledge, and ways of reading a text, but also exhibits my students' opinions, knowledge, and strategies for reading that same text.
I will never be a teacher who lectures on All The Things I Know, because those teachers are generally blowhards who don't know anything.
So graduate school does not qualify a student's ability to teach. But a student's ability to teach is not always contigent on the idea that he or she has to know everything there is to know about the course content. That can never happen--whether a person is in graduate school or has taught at Yale for 800 years. And I'd be wary of a teacher who does claim such things.
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It was your response to Mark's question that irked me - the insinuation that you were doing this because it paid more than waitressing. And for that reason only. I did not post to be a bitch - rather to offer my opinion on something that I feel passionately about.
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and i do think, especially considering morgan's responses to previous comments, that there was perceived and implied hostility in the exchange, even if you didn't recognize or intend it. her original post acknowledged a lack of familiarity with some superhero comics and asked for any suggestions for titles that fit her theme of diversity; instead of suggesting titles or answering her question, you and mark criticized her for suggesting she was qualified enough to teach the course and lambasted the system that would allow someone as "unqualified" as her to teach. i read this as inappropriate and unhelpful, even if it was intended to somehow help morgan with her course.
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There was hostility in my comments, yes - for the system. I really don't care if people I like are part of the system - it still bothers me that this is how it is. I don't agree with it. And that was the approach I presented from the beginning. I am sorry Tom, that you can not value my comments for what they were - one side of an argument about being able to teach at a college level. It bothers me that you are trying to make this into a situation where I was attacking someone (or Mark for that matter, who has said so much less). It's comments like these that don't help. But you can behave however you choose I suppose.
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