Coming back to New York City after hiking 500 miles in "the green tunnel" of the Appalachian Trail was extremely difficult. I was cranky even at my best, and felt guilty for having been out of touch with my loved ones for so long. It was as if we had been in Narnia, Moose would say, … Continue reading Music as Thinking: Going Back to the Trail with William James
Stream of Thought
Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” & Star Trek
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJn0ZPd6mYo&w=560&h=315] It's the end of the semester, and we've finally arrived at our poetry unit. After wrapping up Chopin's The Awakening, we spent two days on Dickinson, discussing death (in an unintentional transition from Chopin's controversial ending), the im/materiality of Dickinson's imagery, and, of course, the metaphorical meanings in Dickinson's punctuation, her masterful dashes. I introduced … Continue reading Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” & Star Trek
Teaching The Awakening + One Speed Writing Exercise
I've been teaching Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899) in the Intro to Writing About Literature course for two years, and I've found it fits a shorter paper assignment better than it does a research paper (you can read my writing prompt for the short paper here). However, this semester I taught Chopin immediately after the long research paper … Continue reading Teaching The Awakening + One Speed Writing Exercise
