Mayhap Musings
On Aesthetic Appreciation
One of the biggest misconceptions I deal with in introductory classes (literature or film) is that “appreciation” has to equal “liking.” Now my students, despite their sly claims to the contrary, are well aware of the fact that formal study requires both knowledge acquisition and the deployment of proper terminology. Many, though, sadly operate from…
Movies I Love: Midsommar (2019)
When I first saw Midsommar, visions of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam danced in my head. In my defense, the film’s protagonist, Dani, does spend a majority of the movie as An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry. And her exhaustive journey through…
On being hip with the kids
Whenever I hear someone say that we need to engage student interest by “meeting” students where they are, this is what I see: Now, don’t get me wrong–actual student interest is awesome, and there’s almost no limit to what can be achieved in the classroom if it is tapped–I just don’t think we’re doing ourselves,…
A series of unfortunate events
Or “why this blog exists.” The instructional pivot we made in March 2020 made me realize how habituated I had become to a certain variety of online instruction. It’s one thing to routinely teach graduate students asynchronously online. It is quite another to interact with undergraduate students remotely, especially after you’ve just spent ten weeks…
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