Category Archives: Thoughts

I am having students read aloud in two of my classes (in the third they are parsing grammar aloud). Last night we had three lovely readings in NightShakes. One student read a passage from Much Ado About Nothing. BeAtrice has … Continue reading →

I’m reading Shakespeare pretty constantly these days and have begun tweeting lines that I find particularly good: funny, meaningful, deep, quirky. Here are two of mine favorites so far from Taming of the Shrew: Sly. Well, we’ll see’t. Come, madame … Continue reading →

Ian, I’ve been a fan for a lot of years (I was a Freshman in high school when a cool Junior wrote Mott the Hoople on the board — since at least then). During college your albums formed a core … Continue reading →

This past Saturday I saw Bob Dylan in Big Flats, New York. He was playing the outdoor stage adjacent to the haunted house of Tagsylvania. The weather was perfect for a night concert. As the sun set beneath hills of … Continue reading →

I often go into the semester suspecting that one of my three courses will really stand out. Sometimes it does; other times an unexpected course grabs the spotlight — usually because the students are energized. This term I don’t lean … Continue reading →

It was suggested that many non-traditional assignments (especially those directed toward publishing course experiences) are particularly useful in the way they shift the audience. Students are no longer writing for an audience of two (themselves and their professor). In many … Continue reading →

Another way to look at the issue of traditional vs. non-traditional literature assignments is to wonder whether a movement toward the non-traditional is actually pandering to the likes of today’s tech-saavy, attention-deficit prone students. JPF suggested that at its best … Continue reading →

Paul Fussell died May 23, 2012. I’m sorry that he’s gone, but his influence lives on. Here’s a story I often tell students when I teach Senior Seminar. It goes back to my second-last year in graduate school. I was … Continue reading →

That I enjoy: The Argo A Short Stockton Stroll Broken Tree Art