Notes and Teaching Plans

Professor Hudspeth once mentioned that he has often taught from notes he made while reading for his quals. I didn't ask what kind of notes he made; I supposed I knew that his comments would resemble the ones I scribble through most everything I own.

Now I wish I'd asked. I wonder what kind of notes people would prefer to teach from. If anyone has a very specific idea what matrix of notes he or she would most like to to prepare classes and curriculae, that might guide us in preparing entries here.


I find I enter a class hoping to teach a very few concepts, but to do so in a way that provokes students to rework methods and assumptions. Could I get away with just naming or describing concepts briefly, I could compress a semester to an hour or two, maybe less.

I've come to believe this is all normal for an English class, probably for the humanities in general.

In practice, what students get they produce themselves, most often quite apart from what I hope to impart. That process seems to involve long stretches of conversationally milling about one or another idea, and which idea will attract such attention seems hard to predict, since it depends on the students.

All of this requires an object or project on which a class may work communally, or with sufficient communality to engage discussion. In a literature class, said object must generally be a text; the projects, traditionally, are essays -- though I have seen blogs, websites, and wikis used. (I found one of the blogs particularly successful; the wiki may have even more potential, but I haven't really explored it.) So, if authors pre-prepare texts and students must prepare their projects, what do teachers prepare?

I'm thinking it amounts to whistle-stop itineraries through each text and through canon.

What's useful for those itineraries?

Post Labels

We should probably take advantage of the post labelling feature at the bottom right of the text-field in which one enters new posts (where it says "Labels for this post:"). This would eventually give us an indexed set of posts -- possibly a useful feature in a few months, if the posts build up.

(For all) Intents and Purposes

I hope to introduce a bit community into my readings by opening this as a forum for virtual discussion. The readings for PhD candidates at CGU will determine my own reading agenda until about January of '08, but other literatures remain of interest.