Tag Archives: adolescence

Moving Beyond Adolescent Fantasies

By Robin Bates | Published: September 15, 2010

Sometimes I will discover that two different works start talking to each other simply because I happen to be teaching them both at the same time. This week Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (from my Jane Austen first year seminar) and John Keats’ Eve of St. Agnes (from my British fantasy course) engaged in one of […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Thru Zombie Flix, Our Kids Fight Back

By Robin Bates | Published: August 27, 2010

Night of the Living Dead  Film Friday Many of my students are fans of zombie movies (of all things). The genre has, in fact, taken off in recent years—a sure sign that one can never predict which symbol systems are going to grip our minds from one moment to the next (and why movie making […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Jane Austen’s Emma as Teenpic

By Robin Bates | Published: August 13, 2010

Alicia Silverstone in Clueless  Film Friday I’m currently preparing to teach a first year seminar on “Jane Austen and the Challenges Faced by Regency Teenagers.” For years it didn’t strike me forcefully enough that most of Jane Austen’s heroines are either teenagers or recent teenagers. That’s because (1) Austen heroines seem fully adult and (2) […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Escape from Adulthood

By Robin Bates | Published: August 6, 2010

Film Friday In the spirit of the final weeks of summer when Americans are going to the beach and visiting theme parks, I thought I’d turn to a thoroughly enjoyable film where a magical transformation takes place at a carnival. The film is Penny Marshall’s Big (1988), starring Tom Hanks as a 13-year-old (Josh) who […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , | Comments closed

The Magic Flute and Teenage Hormones

By Robin Bates | Published: July 16, 2010

Film Friday The nature of Spain’s World Cup victory over Holland seems to have stuck with me all this past week.Spanish elegance won out over a Dutch “kick ’em in the legs” strategy (check out the state of hero Andres Iniesta’s legs here), and I have been writing about Prospero triumphing over Caliban and John […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , | Comments closed

Managing Midsummer Madness (i.e., Sex)

By Robin Bates | Published: June 29, 2010

Midsummer Night’s Dream provides good instruction for the parents of teenagers. First of all, don’t think that you can tyrannically dictate your children’s choices (say, by threatening them with execution). On the other hand, they need guidelines and guidance. There’s no telling how they’ll behave once they are set loose in the forest of their […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Donne as an Aid to Teenage Angst

By Robin Bates | Published: January 21, 2010

Well, the semester is underway.  Yesterday I began teaching one of my favorite classes, the early British Literature survey (Literature in History I).  Along with Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Wife of Bath, Doctor Faustus, Twelfth Night, King Lear, and Paradise Lost, I will be teaching the poetry of John Donne.  I […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments closed

Using Twilight to Teach Antigone

By Robin Bates | Published: December 18, 2009

Having compared Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight yesterday with Frances Burney’s Evelina, I feel I owe my readers an apology and an explanation. The apology is that I violated one of my principles for the website and judged the book by the movie. All I’ve read of Twilight is the excerpt on amazon.com. If I sell the […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments closed

Comparing Evelina and Twilight

By Robin Bates | Published: December 17, 2009

We talked about the movie Twilight in the last gathering of my British Restoration and 18th Century Couples Comedy class. That and France Burney’s epistolary novel Evelina (1775). Hang on as I spell out the connection. If you don’t know about Twilight, then you are probably neither a teenager nor the parent of a teenager. […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , | Comments closed