Ending with a Boom/ Beginning with Slow Food

It was the last regular day of 121 for my classes today. We ended on a great note, especially in my 10 am class. They were so intensely interested and interactive, it was tremendous. We laughed and joked and learned. I was totally delighted by the experience and I hope some of them will end up in my 214 class. 

In my own work, I've been pleasantly surprised to find that very little has been done addressing food and ecocriticism. In my brief preliminary search I found only a few links. One of the most interesting was a Call For Papers that I wish I'd found sooner.  Even this however does not make the link between food, ecocriticism and fiction. It seems much more interested in the literature of slow food or locavore movements. 

I am eager to really begin the paper, hopefully my enthusiasm will last. 

I also need to find a copy of "Loving Ourselves Best of All". A brief glance at this article has me pretty excited.

Gearing Up to Teach: An Ode to Indices

As the time to teach approaches I've been thinking more and more about how to best get my students involved mentally and perhaps even, dare I say, emotionally in their largest project. Last term I had some success with this by prompting them to write a 10 minute rant about something that as always interested or fascinated them. This could be something they really love, such as the word fork, or something that has bewildered them, such as: why isn't there a licence to reproduce? Or why do some dorm students find being rude to housekeepers acceptable? These topics produced amazing papers which shows me that this quick write was useful and worth repeating.

Now I am trying to think of ways to address other issues I see in my student's work. One issue that seems perennial is the fear of the book. This paper has a number of source requirements which the students must meet in order to succeed. One of these requirements is a book source. All this means is that all WR 121 students must find a book which they can use information from in order to produce their paper. Simple right? No. 

When I started teaching this class roughly one year ago I was certain that this requirement would be the easiest. Surely all my students know what a book is and how to find one. Wrong.  They understand the difference between credible and non-credible web sources with ease. They even have a reasonably firm understanding of peer-review journals and how they differ from magazines by the time the paper is due. What they often don't get is how to find a book that is suitable for their paper.

Fading print literacy? I can't say, but what I can say is that I am hoping to teach at least one full class in the library this coming term. My plan right now is to have each of my classes meet me in the library as soon as topic selection is done. There we will have a quick refresher on how to get around the building, how to shelf read library of congress, and how to look things up effectively in the catalog. After this there will be 10-15 minutes of time for them to gather up at least two possible book sources. We will then reconvene at an appointed location for a talk about indices and why they are your friend. 

As I was saying to Bird the other day I sometimes think the index is the most important part of a book. When I take out a book from the library and it is brimming with pages but no index I just want to scream. I'm thinking "Who are you to offer me so much information and no way to find it without reading this whole damn thing!?!"

So yes, I love indices and I want to share this love with my students. Hopefully the combination of being physically in the library with them and guiding them through the process of determining how useful or not useful a particular book is will help them to find new ways to approach the "problem" of a book source.

On the topic of books, I stumbled upon a blog today where the following video clip was posted. I was deeply amused by it. 

Dialouge and Commodity: an ending

Today in the grad only meeting of Women't Lit class we started discussing Linda Hutcheon's Theory of Adaptation. In the course of this discussion we read where Hutcheon states that "sequels and prequels are not really adaptations...nor is fan fiction" (9).  I found this comment somewhat bewildering. Although I realize that in some ways the three excluded modes do not substantially depart from the "original" or "adapted work", I think that they do fit the three primary criterion Hutcheon establishes earlier in the text (8). Furthermore I think that it might be interesting to pay some attention to the rather recent phenomenon of creating print spin-offs of film and television productions. For me this shift in media strongly suggests adaptation. 

I mentioned this in class by specifically referencing CSI which began as one television program, and is now three television programs which have been the source for a number of paperback novels, magazines, video games, board games etc... This topic brought us all rather quickly to the issue of commodification. Since CSI is a television show produced to make money (not "art") how does this effect the idea of the CSI novel as adaptation? Are the novels:

1) Not adaptations because they are part of a moneymaking franchisee phenomenon?

2) Not adaptations because they are like prequels, sequels and fan fiction?

3) Cross media adaptations which meet the three major criterion set out by Hutcheon regardless of her later caveat and the market forces behind CSI?

I'm voting three. There is no real point in arguing high culture v. low culture since all modes of communication and literature can be valuable sources of information, the study of which can provide the scholar with critical insights. Furthermore regardless of whether it is Dean Koontz or Edith Wharton or the Bible for that matter, market forces play a role in the availability and production of texts. 

Our little group briefly talked about how the idea of dialogue separate from commodification might benefit entry level academics (i.e. freshmen). Although I can imagine the value of such a worldview, where learning and texts are cherished and explored for no real "market" reason, I have a difficult time envisioning this. If everything is subject to the market in our time and place, then what dialogue is there that is not impinged by the market?

I like to think that I do what I do because I love literature. Ultimately this is probably about 85% true. Somewhere in there you can add in egotism and money, then you'd have a fuller picture.

Today my summer term partially ended. 

Tomorrow more Pendleton.