Literary Kinds

The openness and encouragement of exploration and conversation that exists in our classroom and online are, to me, this class's distinguishing characteristics. I (as is evident from how late this post is) have some growing still to do to take full advantage of this, but it's a fantastic environment that makes it possible for this growth to take place. I feel like this class is very well suited to thinking/working instead of formula-memorization (for writing and thinking). The class format is also pushing me to learn from others in the class as much as I learn from the material we study, which is a new idea in my education and seems pretty wonderful.

these are just a couple of relevant pictures i found

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 So there is this great movie that I've watched in two of my math classes called Donald in Mathmagic Land. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 1959 and became the most popular Disney educational films. Basically Donald Duck goes into this "wonderland" of math and learns a lot. I learn a lot with him when I watch this, and I suggest it- its only 27 minutes.

At the beginning of the course I remember being the one of the few to claim the necessity of genres and clarifications in the literary world. Although I still stand behind my statement I have realized that the way I viewed classification systems in January is not how I see them now. On Thursday (03/18) when we were discussing Alice in Wonderland being a fantasy vs. narrative vs. parody I realized that the lines boxing in the different kinds of genres are not as defined as I once believed. That being said I do not think that they have no use. Similar to Anne (please correct me if I misunderstood your words), I think that if one looks at genre for purpose rather than truth then they are very helpful.

Well, we have now reached a milestone: we at least "officially" know each other's names.

At the beginning of class the final three students listed the names of everyone else in the class (we are hoping that, unlike Alice, they remember their own names and identities). We then discussed the evaluations that were posted here, taking special note of complaints of self-editing and the interface of Serendip.

Our discussion turned to reactions to Wai-Chee's visit. A few students noted that they had been surprised by her definitions (either finding her definitions too narrow on some points, to wide for others).

Class started out with a brief discussion about spring break, and surprisingly no one had thought about genre during the vacation.

Then our thoughts turned to Wai Chee Dimock, a Yale English professor taking the generic world by storm through thoughtfully-written essays (one of which we read in the beginning of the semester) and a growing Facebook group called "Rethinking World Literature."  ShaynaS asked Dimock about her decison to delve into/question genre, to which Dimock replied that she is a "close reader" and genre analysis allows her to stay close to the text while "reaching outward" and bringing many interesting, popular texts into the foreground.

I wanted to say this in class, and yet the idea of contradicting Professor Dimmock wasn't appealing to me. I really enjoyed her visit.

Last semester, I took a class, creatively entitled "the novel," in which, among many other topics, we discussed what it is that actually makes a novel a novel. After reading several thigns that had no plot, no narrative, no coherent characters, and perhaps no artistic merit, we were forced to conclude that a novel is really defined based on it's length. A novel is just a prose (or even a poetry) piece of a reasonable number of chapters. Feel free to disagree with me on that score, but that seems to be how publishers and bookstores are choosing to define it.