Social Contracts

I'm putting together the documentation for some of my courses next year, and I'm trying to be very clear about what will be expected from students on a week-by-week basis (and what they can expect from me). I started writing down some things like You are expected to do the reading, you are expected to show up, you are expected to speak up in class, you are expected to respect your peers and not be homophobic/racist/transphobic/etc, and it occurred to me that some of you people reading this might have done this before and have some suggestions - do you have contracts or ground rules for seminars? What are they? Are they helpful?

Contemporary writing again

Here's a draft reading list for that contemporary writing course. The theme I decided to go with was, roughly, 'history' - works that deal with a sense of belatedness, or that rewrite earlier works, or that talk about the ways in which our "free" choices, as subjects, are constrained or determined by history, or all of the above. I've tried to get a mix of nationalities, ethnicities, genders, genres, forms, and decades (though I notice I've completely overlooked the 70s and the 80s only get one book on the list.)

(The odd book out is 253, which I just really want to teach. And I do think its experiments with narrative form and the differences between the Web and the print versions are interesting and "contemporary", I'm just not sure how it links into the "history" theme. But it sits nicely with Slaughterhouse 5.)

1. Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

2. Tom Cho, [selection of short stories - 'Dirty Dancing' and 'The Sound of Music'?] (2004-7)

3. Alison Bechdel, Fun Home (2006)

4. Geoff Ryman, 253 (1998)

5. Femi Osofisan, Tegonni: An African Antigone (1994)

6. Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)

7. Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966)

8. Derek Walcott, Omeros (1990)

9. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5 (1969)

10. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

All comments gratefully received. I know Ros & Guil and Wide Sargasso Sea aren't the most interesting texts in the world maybe, but on the other hand I don't know where I'd be today without them, and at least there'll be reams of secondary literature.

Geek Pride

Following this news, J and I are going to go to London Pride for the first time ever.

Contemporary Writing

Next year I'll be teaching a Contemporary Writing course to first-year English undergraduates. What should I teach? 'Contemporary' appears to mean 'anything from about 1950 onwards', and all texts have to be written in English (ie no translations.) It looks like I have to include poetry and perhaps drama, too (I'm not sure whether I'm able to set films).

Here's an example of a nicely-thought-through version of the course, taught by the exceptionally talented and lovely Ellen McWilliams. I like her approach to the selection of texts - things which contribute something in themselves and are interesting to read and to teach, but which will also allow the class to talk about some of the broader issues which have characterized the last 50 years of Anglophone literary writing.

Some of the things that have happened in the past 50 years which I find interesting are:*

• the invention and development of the Young Adult novel (from the 'first' teenage novel, Beverly Cleary's Fifteen [1956], to Pullman and Haddon's early-21st-century crossover books);
• the invention and development of the graphic novel (Bechdel's Fun Home is definitely going to be on the list);
• the women's movement (Woman on the Edge of Time?);
• the development of gay and queer literature;
• punk/avant-garde post-modern stuff (not as in, like, 'pomo', but as in William Burroughs' cut-up techniques which develop from modernist techniques. Dennis Cooper? But I don't know if I can face teaching his books - I mean, especially on a core unit... if students have specifically signed up for a sex-n-violence unit, that's one thing, but making, say, Frisk compulsory might be a bit much. I had to throw Frisk across the room and then leave the room when I first read it at the age of seventeen);
• the development of black and postcolonial literature.

But I don't want the course to be as tokenistic as that list risks being; nor do I want it to be a rerun of the 'Critical Issues' course I'm also teaching next year (one of those breakneck one-theory-a-week, sexual difference/queer theory/postcolonialism/ideology/deconstruction kind of courses). Maybe I need some sort of unifying theme -I wonder about something like boundary-pushing or intertextuality? The way contemporary literary/canonical writing engages with its 'outside' (the not-yet-adult reader; the visual; the popular; the colonized)?

Answers in a comment, please... (Anyone reading this via LJ feed, I'll make sure to check comments there too for once, so you don't have to sign up to Blogger to have your say.)

*I originally wrote 'some of the most important things', but then I read it back and realized that was a ridiculous thing to say. What I mean is, 'some of the things I would enjoy teaching about'.

and speaking of lesbians...

Go and vote in the Herald Sun's poll on whether lesbians and single women should have access to IVF treatment. You don't need to register, just scroll down a little way (the poll is on the left-hand side of the page, under a series of thumbnail photos in the OPINION column) and click.

Thank you for your time.

Leaving soon

We're leaving Melbourne on Thursday, so the next few days are full of packing and chores and loose-ends-tying-off. In my head, I am formulating blog posts about:

• the word 'lesbian', the word 'queer', and lesbian/feminist/trans solidarity and hostility;
• Melbourne and how much I love it;
• J's new book;
• writing, again.

Some of them may come to pass, but probably not until after I'm back in the UK from 15 June.

You Heard It Here First

J has just been taken on by an agent at Curtis Brown.

This new book is going to be big.

I'm very excited. J is asleep.