Classroom Takeover: Alterations, Rewrites, and Inspirations

 Posted by Anastasia on July 6, 2011  8 Responses »
Jul 062011
 
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Welcome to July’s installment of Classroom Takeover, a monthly feature here at Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog! Every month, a new blogger creates an ideal college class featuring a subject, author, or genre that they think doesn’t get enough attention in mainstream college classes.

This month’s classroom takeover comes from Brooke of Books Distilled. Brooke is currently getting her MFA degree through Fairfield University’s low residency program and is working on a novel. She also lives in Long Island, NY, and I’m totally jealous. SO. JEALOUS. Let’s move on before I smash something:

Alterations, Rewrites, and Inspirations

Intro

If someone gave me control over the syllabus of a college English class, I’d rub my hands together and cackle wickedly. (Which I did when I started writing this post.) Then I realized I had to put some actual thought into crafting a class that would be interesting, fun, warrant close reading and encourage great discussion.

I thought back to some of my favorite English classes in college, and they had something important in common. All three were loosely grouped by a larger theme, and pulled books from a broad range of styles, author nationalities, content, and time periods. I took a class on Gothic literature my freshman year, and we read classic Gothic novels (The Castle of Otranto, Northanger Abbey), as well as more modern books like Rebecca. We also watched Rosemary’s Baby and Scream (and I didn’t sleep for a night or two).

One of my all-time favorite classes was Urban Literature, which was cross-listed as an Urban Studies class. We spent the first half of the semester reading urban theory (which, in my dorkiness, I completely loved) and the second half reading novels that represented excellent writing about urban space: Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (Chicago and New York at the turn of the 20th century), Sandra Cisneros’s House on Mango Street, Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker, Richard Wright’s Native Son. Good stuff. Continue reading »

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 Classroom Takeover, Misc

Classroom Takeover: Anthropomorphism 101

 Posted by Anastasia on June 1, 2011  13 Responses »
Jun 012011
 
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Welcome to June’s installment of Classroom Takeover, a monthly feature here at Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog! Every month, a new blogger creates an ideal college class featuring a subject, author, or genre that they think doesn’t get enough attention in mainstream college classes.

This month’s classroom takeover comes from Jill of Fizzy Thoughts! You may know her better as “softdrink”– anyway, she’s got a class ready that I wish someone would actually teach, because I really want to take it. When I think of “anthropomorphized animals” I normally think of cutesy kids books; things I occasionally enjoy reading, but nothing I’d really want to take a class on. But Jill? Has totally picked out the cool anthropomorphized animals books. These books don’t just have talking animals in them: they also kick your brain into high gear and make you think deep thoughts. Check it out:

Anthropomorphism 101

Intro

There is a long literary tradition of anthropomorphism (applying human characteristics to non-human or non-living things), especially when it comes to animals. Aesop’s Fables is a great example of an ancient literary work that employs anthropomorphism. Yet, there have been a spate of dog and cat narrated books that seemingly owe some of their popularity to the “uniqueness” of having an animal tell their story. Continue reading »

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Classroom Takeover: Journalists Who Say “I”

 Posted by Anastasia on May 4, 2011  15 Responses »
May 042011
 
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Welcome to May’s installment of Classroom Takeover, a new monthly feature here at Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog! Every month, a new blogger creates an ideal college class featuring a subject, author, or genre that they think doesn’t get enough attention in mainstream college classes.

Look! Look! It’s a takeover post by Kim of Sophisticated Dorkiness! She finally caved to my whining on Twitter and made a post! And look! Look at it! It’s amazing!

Kim is a Professional Journalist who Gets Paid and Everything, so she knows what she’s talking about when she’s talking about narrative nonfiction. If Kim had taught the sole journalism class I took in college, I know I’d have enjoyed it way more than I actually did. And I know Kim wouldn’t have made me buy a $90 book that’s both unreturnable and worth about $5 used just because she wrote it. Right, Kim? Right?

Journalists Who Say “I”

Intro

Right now, there is no place within college English or journalism departments to discuss the literary merits of narrative nonfiction (loosely described as nonfiction that uses the techniques of fiction to tell true stories). English departments mostly focus on analyzing fiction, while journalism departments generally discuss narrative nonfiction in terms of the journalistic elements — reporting, editing, or ethics. However, narrative nonfiction writers are producing interesting work that could be considered in the same ways we often think about fiction. Continue reading »

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Classroom Takeover: Science in Fiction

 Posted by Anastasia on April 6, 2011  10 Responses »
Apr 062011
 
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Welcome to April’s installment of Classroom Takeover, a new monthly feature here at Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog! Every month, a new blogger creates an ideal college class featuring a subject, author, or genre that they think doesn’t get enough attention in mainstream college classes.

This month’s class comes from the lovely Fyrefly of Fyrefly’s Book Blog, who very helpfully caved to my pleas for help last month and sent in this post. Fyrefly is one of my favorite bloggers, not least because she sent me a Classroom Takeover post. She’s also an excellent book reviewer, with a writing style I’m totally jealous of and would in fact steal if I could get away with it.

So, without further ado, Fyrefly’s April class:

Science in Fiction: So You Want Your Lit Class To Count As A Science Elective (or vice-versa)

Intro

Arts & Sciences. So often lumped together into a single unit within a university, and yet, so frequently seen as polar opposites.

Distribution requirements are often equally problematic for majors in both fields; but here I am, ready to bridge the gap with a class that focuses on novels that come with a full semester’s-worth of biology built right in, plus some extra-credit reading from across the sciences.

Reading List

1) Ecology: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s officially three interrelated stories involving the inhabitants of a small rural town, and the meaning of family, and interconnection. But Kingsolver’s got a degree in biology, and she really lets it shine: the Appalachian mountain environment is just as much of a character as any of the three leads.

2) Parasitology: Peeps by Scott Westerfeld. Vampirism isn’t the result of demonic possession, it’s the result of a sexually-transmitted parasite infection. Cal’s a carrier of the parasite who’s immune to its effects, and he has to hunt down his former girlfriends who have all become vampires. Bonus points for the inclusion of tons of information on real-world parasites.

3) Cell Biology: A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle. In order to save her little brother – and possibly the entirety of creation – Meg must journey inside his mitochondria.

4) Marine Biology: Fluke by Christopher Moore. The main character is a biologist who has spent his life looking for the hidden meanings in humpback whale song. When he encounters a whale with “Bite Me” written across its tail flukes, he knows he’s stumbled onto something much bigger.

5) Evolution: The Darwin Conspiracy by John Darnton. When a biology graduate student unearths a diary belonging to one of Darwin’s daughters, a diary that hints at some terrible secret involving Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle, he soon comes to realize that he might have stumbled across one of the greatest cover-ups in the entirety of the history of science.

6) Genetics, Endocrinology, and Development: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Part family saga and part coming of age novel, this book traces the path of a recessive mutation that causes Cal Stephanides to be missing an enzyme that’s required for normal masculinization, causing him to be raised for most of his life as a girl.

Extra Credit

- Chemistry: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.

- Physics: Schrodinger’s Ball by Adam Felber and The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman.

- Computer Science: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow.

- History of Science: Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett.

Final Exam

1) Discuss the plausibility of Jurassic Park, paying particular attention to the fossilization of insects and the mechanisms of sex determination in amphibians.

2) In the graphic novel series Y: The Last Man, something happens that kills all the male mammals worldwide.
a) Give a plausible mechanism by which this mass gender-cide could occur.
b) Assuming that no solution is found, discuss the ecological ramifications of this event in twenty years, one hundred years, and one thousand years.

3) How does the Municipal Darwinism in Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines support and/or contradict the principles of evolution by natural selection as described by Darwin?

Who else got horrific flashbacks to final exams they hadn’t properly studied for? Anyone? Or was I the only one who half-assed studying for anything? Sometimes I’m surprised I actually graduated college.

Thanks so much to Fyrefly for providing this lovely Classroom Takeover post! It makes me feel somewhat better for not taking more science classes while I could.

If you’d like to create your own Classroom Takeover post, there are plenty of free spots available! Quite literally, because I don’t have any Classroom Takeovers for May-December. This makes me very sad and I may have to resort to begging on Twitter again for posts, which is never pretty to see. So, if YOU’D been wanting to create your own class, please check out this post here and then get to emailing me!

For previous Classroom Takeovers, check out the Classroom Takeover tag. Happy learning!

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 Classroom Takeover, Misc

Classroom Takeover: American Indian Lit

 Posted by Anastasia on March 2, 2011  5 Responses »
Mar 022011
 
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Welcome to March’s installment of Classroom Takeover, a new monthly feature here at Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog! Every month, a new blogger creates an ideal college class featuring a subject, author, or genre that they think doesn’t get enough attention in mainstream college classes.

This month’s class was created by Tasha B. of Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Books! Tasha always writes such wonderful reviews; it makes me horribly jealous of her. I DREAM of the day I’ll start writing as good a post as the kind she puts out– especially since she’s doing it while still in school and I’m OUT of school and still somewhat lackluster. It’s enough to make me cry, sometimes.

Just kidding. Or am I?

No, I’m totally kidding. Maybe. (Insert vaguely spooky noises here! Also if you could pass me a pack of tissues, please.)

Intro

For over two centuries, American Indians have been eloquently expressing themselves and their cultural beliefs through poetry, prose, and essays. Their writing comprises an important part of the American experience and the struggle for equality and human recognition that many people experience all over the world.

Reading List

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Alexie is probably the most famous American Indian writer of our time, and for good reason. His novels and poetry are at once funny, poignant and meaningful. It’s impossible not to root for his characters and admire his wit. Plus, his books are just simply entertaining.

Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto by Vine Deloria, Jr.
This book became an important part of the American Indian Movement because it challenged white stereotypes of Indians and helped define Native American political goals of sovereignty without assimilation. It’s also surprisingly humorous for such a serious work–as represented by the highly sarcastic title.

Walking the Rez Road by Jim Northrup
I love Northrup’s writing style, which is warm and poetic and funny and clever. In this collection of short stories, he writes about the experiences of a Vietnam vet.

American Indian Stories by Zitkala-Sa
This is an autobiography of a remarkable woman who grew up in turn-of-the-century US and became a concert violinist and renowned writer. Zitkala discusses her childhood growing up on the reservation and contrasts it with time in government boarding schools. Like Deloria, Zitkala-Sa’s life story is a model of independence and non-assimilation–which was an unusual position for the time.

House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
Based on Momaday’s own experiences of growing up in and around the Jemenez Pueblo in New Mexico, this novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 and is widely credited with creating a market for American Indian literature in mainstream publishing.

Graduate Course

Indian Singing by Gail Tremblay
Both a poet and a visual artist, this collection of poems is presented with reproductions of some of Tremblay’s art.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
One doesn’t want to pass up the opportunity to read more Sherman Alexie.

Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart by Gerald Vizenor
An early example of the Native American Renaissance, the explosion of literary fiction by American Indians that began in the late sixties with Momaday’s novel. Vizenor is also one of the best-known professors of American Indian Studies in the country.

“A Son of the Forest” and Other Writings by William Apess, ed. Barry O’Connell
Apess was one of the first Indians to write extensively in English about the American Indian experience.

Thanks so much for participating in Classroom Takeover, Tasha! I’ve only read part of an essay by Zitkala-Sa, but I’ve been meaning to read a Sherman Alexie book for forever. How about you all? Have you delved more deeply into American Indian Lit than I have?

Right now I don’t have any Classroom Takeovers for April-December. This makes me very sad, so if YOU’D been wanting to create your own class, please check out this post here and then get to emailing me!

For previous Classroom Takeovers, check out the Classroom Takeover tag.

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 Classroom Takeover

Classroom Takeover: Race in Fantasy

 Posted by Anastasia on February 2, 2011  16 Responses »
Feb 022011
 
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Welcome to February’s installment of Classroom Takeover, a new monthly feature here at Birdbrain(ed)! Every month, a new blogger creates an ideal college class featuring a subject, author, or genre that they think doesn’t get enough attention in mainstream college classes.

This month’s class was created by Clare of The Literary Omnivore. Clare’s one of the most thoughtful and insightful book bloggers I know; she’s always thinking about books on about five different levels, and her class choices reflects that perfectly.

Intro

Fantasy, as a genre, is perceived as sparklingly white, to the degree that fantasy that is explicitly non-white often gets whitewashed when transferred to the screen—according to this 2007 USA Today article, Neil Gaiman has turned down offers to adapt Anansi Boys to the screen, as studios want to turn the predominantly black cast white (even though that would severely cripple the story). And let’s not forget M. Night Shamalayan’s The Last Airbender or Sci-Fi’s Legend of Earthsea, which did just that with characters of color. (DiMartino and Konietzko will not talk about what happened to their show and you can read Le Guin’s thoughts on the whitewashing of her books here.) Speculative fiction has the power to force us to look at our own beliefs and society, but I think the power of fantasy to examine race is vastly underrated. But to explore that, we must also investigate the evolution of the depiction of people in color in fantasy, stemming from post-Tolkien racism by white authors to modern authors of color creating realistic depictions of people of color in fantasy.

Reading List

The Horse and his Boy, C. S. Lewis
While the racism in The Last Battle is much worse—the dark-skinned Calormene are revealed to be devil-worshippers—there’s so much going in that book (such as the problem of Susan, which could easily derail discussion into gender in fantasy—a worthy topic, of course, but not pertinent to this class), The Horse and his Boy has Aravis, a girl of color, as one of the main characters and spends more time with the Calormene culture, allowing us to see more problematic elements than a novel set entirely in Narnia. Lewis himself considered this book to be about “the calling and conversion of a heathen”—while the heathen he is referring to is most likely the white Shasta, the idea that Calormen is heathen remains. The Horse and his Boy is a good example of racism in fantasy.

Banewreaker, Jacqueline Carey
While the Lewis can be downed in a day, I would probably have the students simply read the pertinent passages from Banewreaker. Carey, in thoroughly deconstructing The Lord of the Rings, also deconstructs race in fantasy by literalizing the Renaissance theory that black skin is charred skin. I think this is a good way to discuss European medieval or Renaissance views towards race and how fantasy, in often being based on medieval or Renaissance Europe, can absorb or leave unquestioned those views.

Magic Under Glass, Jaclyn Dolamore
Magic Under Glass is a young adult novel that follows a woman of color from an India-inspired country operating in a Victorian London-esque setting. I’m awfully fond of colonization being addressed in fantasy, especially from the perspective of the colonized. There’s a moment in Magic Under Glass where Nemira explains to her employer that, in this society, he’ll always be above her. It also addresses exoticification of women of color, as Nemira makes a living trading in on that very concept.

The Gaslight Dogs, Karin Lowachee
The Gaslight Dogs explores colonization more readily, as it was inspired by American relations with Inuit tribes during the American Civil War. While Lowachee turns this on its head, she uses her fantastical setting to explore the ramifications of what happens to people of color treated as brutally as the Native Americans, as well as intertribal interaction, as well as the co-option of Native American and Inuit spirituality by white folk, which was one of my favorite stories in The Gaslight Dogs.

Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman
By my own strict literary taxonomy, Anansi Boys is supernatural fiction rather than fantasy fiction, but Gaiman is beloved by fantasy readers and this book is brilliant, so there… me… In any case, Anansi Boys, in following the adventures of the children of the African spider god Anansi, naturally focuses on black characters—black Britons, African-Americans, and people of Afro-Caribbean descent. But it’s not simply the cast that makes this a good novel to study in terms of race; it’s the depiction of race. Only white characters are tagged racially, and while the characters are obviously of African descent, it’s never pointed out.

Racing the Dark, Alaya Dawn Johnson
Johnson’s universe in Racing the Dark is utterly devoid of white people, hence its selection as the last book for this class. The culture is a blend of ancient Japan and Hawaii, with more Japanese inspiration in the inner islands, where Lana, the main character, is forced to go, as well as a Native American-inspired culture later in the book. Divine beings also complicate the racial spectrum here. While the pace can be slow, I think it’s a good example of non-European based fantasy worldbuilding as a contrast to the huge amount of European-based fantasy worldbuilding in the genre (which is often a conscious or unconscious imitation of Tolkien). An alternative to Racing the Dark could be a showing of an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the aforementioned fantasy series based on Asian and Inuit culture.

Thanks so much for participating in Classroom Takeover, Clare! It was a pretty freakin’ amazing class, if you ask me. I’ve only read two of the books Clare mentioned, but I definitely want to read the others! How about you lot?

If YOU’D like to create your own class, check out this post here. For previous Classroom Takeovers, check out the Classroom Takeover tag. I’ll probably end up doing a page for all the Takeovers later on?

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 Classroom Takeover

Classroom Takeover: Early 20th Century Children’s Lit 101

 Posted by Anastasia on January 5, 2011  10 Responses »
Jan 052011
 
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Welcome to the first installment of Classroom Takeover, a new monthly feature! Every month, a new blogger creates an ideal college class featuring a subject, author, or genre that they think doesn’t get enough attention in mainstream college classes.

For my class, I decided to focus on something that I really enjoy reading: children’s literature from 1900-1950!

Intro

Children’s literature, like all other forms of literature, went through different stages in its history. In the late Victorian era, children’s literature really started to be written for children. Previously, “children’s books” were more like books that had been written for adults but could feasibly cross over into the kidlit sphere as well. Even the Grimm fairy tales were originally written for adults, and only became children’s stories later on. By the time the Victorian era was spreading into the Edwardian and later eras, however, children’s literature as a genre was starting to really take off.

The children’s books that appeared from 1900-1950 are arguably some of the most important books ever produced, not only because of their cultural and literary merit but also because of their impact on the generations of children who read them. Furthermore, the adults who were writing the books included their own understanding of the world they lived in within their texts, and they passed that understanding down to their readers (whether the readers even knew of the hidden messages or not). Children’s literature is so much more than a mere comforting blanket to retreat to when the world gets too tough; it is also a reflection of the times and the people that created it, and a thorough examination of the major trends in early 20th century children’s lit along with the more usual adult literature studies is desperately needed. Continue reading »

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