Flying Saussures
Sep. 7th, 2005 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharusWe had our first Canadian Lit course, yesterday, and had a bit of a surprise. Laura, the wonderful CanLit professor I had last year, has finally lost her voice permanently, and is now using a Stephen Hawking-style machine to communicate with the class.
Oddly, this isn't a bad thing. The only flaw of Laura's class is that she could hardly speak before, and when she spoke, it was so difficult to hear here that we missed half of what she said. She couldn't formulate her ideas properly.
She's gone in for highly creative course design again. The essays for her class are smaller, but we make three presentations instead of the usual one. There's also an oral lit part of the class -- when she was losing her voice, she started setting aside part of her courses to read portions of certain Canadian novels that were meant to be read aloud. This is one of the most enjoyable parts of the class, and it helps to appreciate a lot lit in a different way.
Even the Postmodern material is a little less painful this time around. She found a book that'll explain Saussure and Barthes in plain English to the newcomers, and it seems she's picking and choosing from the postmodern critics what she likes, rather than using it as a religion.
I think I'm going to like this course.
I should probably start making lists like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
laurange does. It seems to work for her.
Oddly, this isn't a bad thing. The only flaw of Laura's class is that she could hardly speak before, and when she spoke, it was so difficult to hear here that we missed half of what she said. She couldn't formulate her ideas properly.
She's gone in for highly creative course design again. The essays for her class are smaller, but we make three presentations instead of the usual one. There's also an oral lit part of the class -- when she was losing her voice, she started setting aside part of her courses to read portions of certain Canadian novels that were meant to be read aloud. This is one of the most enjoyable parts of the class, and it helps to appreciate a lot lit in a different way.
Even the Postmodern material is a little less painful this time around. She found a book that'll explain Saussure and Barthes in plain English to the newcomers, and it seems she's picking and choosing from the postmodern critics what she likes, rather than using it as a religion.
I think I'm going to like this course.
I should probably start making lists like
laurange does. It seems to work for her.