At this time of year, I sometimes wonder why I signed up for this gig. Stacks of ungraded essays are strewn “far and wee” across my study, and only the knowledge that I have completed my student essays in the past assures me that I will make it through this batch. In my hour of […]
Tag Archives: teaching
Essay Grading and the Great Wall of China
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged After Apple-Picking, Franz Kafka, Great Wall of China, Robert Frost, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Work Comments closed
Regency Teens, Same Issues as Today
Seldom have I enjoyed a course more than my current first year seminar on Jane Austen—specifically “Jane Austen and the Challenges of Being a Regency Teenager.” The title of the course isn’t historically accurate since young men and women in the early 19th century didn’t think of themselves as teenagers. Adolescence wasn’t as prolonged as […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged adolescence, Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility Comments closed
American TV, the World’s English
Image from Poltergeist I am pleased that Jason Blake, who teaches English at the University of Ljubljana, is becoming a regular contributor to this website. As an English speaker living in Slovenia, Jason is particularly sensitive to questions of language. In the following essay he triggers memories for me when he talks about how television, […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Bald Soprano, English Language, Eugene Ionesco, George Mikes, How to Be an Alien, Language Acquisition, Romeo and Juliet, Television, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Donne as an Aid to Teenage Angst
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 "Good Morrow, adolescence, John Donne, Margaret Edson, New Criticism, W;t Comments closed
Don’t Underestimate Students
I begin my two literature classes today and, as always, am filled with trepidation. Will I be the teacher my students need me to be? Margaret Edson’s play W;t reminds me that, if I stay true to the literature, all will be well. W;t, functions in part as a criticism of those college literature professors […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", John Donne, Margaret Edson, W;t Comments closed
Using Twilight to Teach Antigone
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 adolescence, Alexander Pope, Antigone, Dunciad, Father-daughter conflict, Sophocles, Stephenie Meyer Comments closed
