[This winter, I started taking the bus instead of driving--which is, in a sense, an origin of this blog. I live in Echo Park and work at UCLA, so the bus ride means a trip through Silverlake, Hollywood, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills--so many different kinds of city. I love this part of my day. Today, here's how I spent it.]
Conditions:
Weather:
Cloudy. Illuminated like LA is when it’s cloudy.
Traffic:
Happily not disturbed by wet early-morning weather.
My Door to Office Door:
One hour, ten minutes.
Subjects:
Teaching:
It’s my last week teaching Moby-Dick. Am trying to decide between competing lesson plans: Follow up discussions of interpretation, individuality, and community with discussion of money. Chart movement of key terms (hand, loom, phantom, queer) through novel and OED. Talk about 1956 Movie version, and what it would mean to translate this book to visual medium.
Facebook:
More on Moby-Dick. Also, it’s May Day! As my friend Kelli says: “Happy May! And don’t worry — the distress signal “Mayday” is actually from the French “m’aidez,” so there’s no reason to worry.”
Also, Chris sez: “Tom Paine is Shane McGowan of Early American LIt.” I love this, and it makes me wonder about Tom Paine’s teeth.
Twitter:
Some good stuff here! In addition to more discussion of Moby-Dick, I goaded Drunken Bee and JacobTWOP into helping me sort through some of my ideas about “Girls” (which is made harder because I haven’t seen it, ugh, cf: Games of Thrones, Moby Dick). Since I don’t want to steal the wisdom of others, I’ll just post my part here. Should add that these two folks are SUPER SMART, and the chance to talk with them both is a testament to the worthwhileness of twitter.
One thing that teaching Gender Studies/Popular Fiction really makes you realize is how narrow the categories we have for women’s narratives are. This is obviously just a beginning, but I think many of the issues raised here–especially the point about how the difficulty in positioning someone like Lena Dunham on a spectrum with Bella and Katniss reveals the inadequateness of that spectrum–is worth more examination.