"the great sun has turned his face away"

[eldritchhobbit]

Happy birthday to two wonderful people, estellye and orenya! I hope both of you have terrific days and fantastic years to come!


FYI:

* SF Signal asked various "new guard" science fiction authors to define science fiction. Read the answers here (part 1) and here (part 2). (Thanks to kalquessa.)

* I have determined my upper-division seminar offerings for the Fall 2008 semester. (This semester I am teaching "Native American Identity in the U.S. Context" and "J.R.R. Tolkien in History, Political Thought, and Literature.") Both are new courses for me and for the university:

Worlds Gone Wrong: The Dystopian Tradition


Over the centuries, thinkers have used dystopias -- stories of worlds gone wrong, of worst-case scenarios -- to warn their contemporaries about what they viewed as dangerous trends in politics, economics, science, religion, and/or popular culture. This class will consider a variety of historical and current dystopias in literature, film, television, and music. Students will explore the specific conditions that inspired these dystopias, the general warnings inherent in them, and the broad trends in dystopias over time. Students also will generate and analyze their own dystopian visions and consider what they tell us about our understanding of and concerns for the world today.


Native American Film and Fiction


When Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday penned House Made of Dawn in 1968 (and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969), he inspired a new wave of contemporary Native American literature. Authors such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alexie, among others, have inherited his leadership role in contemporary Native literature, and they have used this medium to explore the historical experience and present-day realities of their people. Similarly, Cheyenne/Arapaho director and producer Chris Eyre, with his pathbreaking 1998 film Smoke Signals, ushered in a new era of Native American cinema. Today Native film flourishes through both major and independent productions; these movies capture the contemporary urban Native American experience as well as reservation life and historical memory. In this class, students will trace the development of modern Native American literature and film and analyze the artistic choices made in both in order to understand better the past and present of Native America.


Every winter,
When the great sun has turned his face away,
The earth goes down into a vale of grief,
And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables,
Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay -
Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.
- Charles Kingsley

Comments

[creehawk.livejournal.com]

I so want to take your Native American Film and Fiction course! Will it be available online at all? Or ... what's your reading/viewing list? *glee*

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! :) The entire course is online, actually, although all students must be enrolled at Belmont University. I definitely will post the reading/viewing list (and ask for additional recommendations) before the class begins. Thanks so much for your interest!

[agentxpndble.livejournal.com]

You almost make me want to go back to school... Almost. ;-)

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

LOL! Thanks.

[estellye.livejournal.com]

Oooh most cool offerings!

And thank you, my dear! I think it will be a splendid year. ;)

...and thanks for the virtual giftie!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! And you're most welcome. :)

[dracschick.livejournal.com]

Thanks as always for the cool links. I enjoy 'em:)

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

My pleasure! I'm so glad they're of interest.

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

*wibble* I want that dystopia course. I so want it.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Aw, thank you! I'll no doubt be posting a lot about it while I'm preparing my reading/viewing list.

[alicambs.livejournal.com]

Worlds Gone Wrong: The Dystopian Tradition looks interesting. At the present time, studying seems like a blissful option to work!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! I'm glad it sounds interesting. Let's hope the students think so, too. ;)

[fungus-files.livejournal.com]

I'd love to take any class you teach cos you have the magical element of Passion for Your Topic! It's sadly lacking around most universities with which I've had associations.

Would love in partic to take the Native American course. Any chance we can have a squizz at the recommended readings/viewings? I had to explain to someone the other night why the term "Red Indian" might cause offence. Just when I think progress is being made...

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Aw, thank you! I'm really fortunate to get to teach/write/speak about the things I love.

Are you interested in the "Native American Identity" or "Native American Film and Fiction" readings/viewings, or both? I'll be glad to post either or both, and I'm always grateful for suggestions and recommendations. Thanks a million for being interested!

I had to explain to someone the other night why the term "Red Indian" might cause offence. Just when I think progress is being made...

*headdesk* Sounds familiar, I'm afraid.

[fungus-files.livejournal.com]

Oooh, both if you're amenable to that! I've been meaning to get Smoke Signals on dvd. It remains one of my fave US films.

And LOL. I just saw your countdown ticker for Halloween. You got it bad, my friend. Ultra x 10.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

LOL! I couldn't bear to take down that countdown ticker after Halloween. I just couldn't. *hangs head* Yes, I'm made of Lame.

Thanks so much for being interested in the classes. I don't have the new one completely designed yet, but I'll post about it when I know the readings and viewings.

For the current "Native American Identity" class, the texts are as follows:
* Vine Deloria, Jr. Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, 1988 version
* Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance, 1999
* My "Tale of Tears" article, 1999 (Have I no shame?)
* Marijo Moore, ed. Genocide Of The Mind: New Native American Writing, 2003 (This has a lot of very thought-provoking content: I split this up over a couple of weeks so we can discuss it all.)
* Evelina Zuni Lucero, Night Sky, Morning Star, 2000
* One book of each student's choice from a list I provide - it includes recent autobiographies, histories of the American Indian Movement by participants, etc.

In the blog posts, we also go through a lot of up-to-the-minute news and editorial sites, such as newspaper_rock and Indian Country Today, etc.

We watch Incident at Oglala: The Leonard Peltier Story (1991) and Smoke Signals (1998), plus one film of each student's choice from a list I provide - some are Native-made, but others are mainstream Hollywood films (Pocahontas, Thunderheart, The Indian in the Cupboard, The New World, etc.) for the students to analyze using the new lens the class, I hope, has provided them.

[fungus-files.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, thanks so much for the refs. Have already skimmed around the links you provided.

And if you don't suggest that your students read the most enlightened material out there, A., you're not doing your job properly. ;)

You don't have to answer this if you don't want to: Do you find much resistance to the more confrontational material in the classes? I've taught theories of racialisation subjects in the past and there's always one or two in each class who declare issues over-blown and excessively dramatised. It's kind of interesting.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

You're most welcome! Thank you for being interested. :)

As for your question, it depends on the semester. Usually there is some debate as to how much specific issues matter (not Native America in general, for example, but say the mascot issue), and so it's an interesting debate. I haven't really come across anyone who devalues the issue as a whole, but then again I've usually dealt with a small group who have self-selected the subject, so they are usually quite interested and invested in the topic from the start. Do you have any tried-and-true strategies for dealing with that kind of resistance? I think I'd have to regroup and really think about it - it sounds like a delicate situation to handle without alienating anyone.

[fungus-files.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately no tried-and-true strategies here. It depends so much on their level of resistance, and their reasons as well of course. One of the courses I used to teach was an introductory one that was compulsory before taking more subjects in a women's studies major. There was an attitude among a few (only about 3 across my classes, thank goodness) that material about 'Third World' or black/ethnic women wasn't pertinent to them. And it was also when you'd hear things like "Well, they have heaps of kids, don't they? And with a high infant mortality rate, they can't really love their kids the way we do [in the West]". Trying to deconstruct notions of race privilege and class is so hard at that entry level. By the end of the course, though, it felt like I'd gotten somewhere and the bonus was that others in the class, while violently disagreeing with these few peers, really appreciated the fact that I didn't dismiss their comments as ridiculous and that I'd tried to engage with them. I must admit that I found engaging and trying to broaden their perspectives very hard work, which is part of why I escaped into the land of research-only.

[louise-bohmer.livejournal.com]

I'd love to take these courses. :) Sometimes, often, I really miss school. One day, I am going back to further my studies. And, one day, soon, I have to pick up some of your books you were talking about on here, a while back. The TBR pile always grows, but new books are always a pleasure, too. I'd rather have too many than not enough to read! :)

Take care, Amy, and hugs to sweet Virginia.

Louise ~

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much. :) I couldn't agree more: I'd rather have too many books than not enough to read, too!

Hugs to you!
Amy

[sittingduck1313.livejournal.com]

I think my favorite definition was given by Chris Roberson.

And hoo boy was John C. Wright ever long winded!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

I think Tobias Buckell's definition is probably my favorite.