Up till now uni has mainly consisted of lots of reading and a few assignments, three to be exact. Here's a rundown of what's been going on when I'm in uni -- two days a week (LOVELY).
Critical & Cultural Theory II, by far and away the most interesting and engaging of my units, although personal engagement is at a low due to its dense coursework. But this is something that the tutor's expect as the readings are so complex. Week in and week out we are focused on ethics and a specific theorist. Their work is then crossed with literature as a text is typically required to read alongside the ethical critique. Each theorist returns to the overall topic of the course dealing with Foucault's concepts biopoltics and biopower, and Agamben's writings on bare life. For the most part our discussions centre around issues including organ transplants, brain death, and what art's role in texts is used for. The texts selected on the unit are typically dystopian fiction ones such as Kazuo Ishiguro's
Never Let Me Go, Jodi Picoult's
My Sister's Keeper, while films like
Children of Men and
Dirty Pretty Things critique certain issues dealt in seminar.
I have completed one assignment, a 3,000 word portfolio, comparing Peter Singer with Giorgio Agamben. Both arguments then crossed paths with Ishiguro's
Never Let Me Go. Overall, the assignment focused on bare life, matters of life and death (where it ends, begins), and how society is naturally rendered bare life by its own terms.
Highlighted theorists: Hardt & Negri, Margret Lock, Peter Singer, Hannah Arendt.
Shakespeare is simply as such. It is a module that I have to grind through not because I do not like it, but because of the array of strange language. Shakespeare was a genius writer, but modern day English (or American) is definitely different than that of the Elizabethan era. But it was important to me that I take a Shakespeare unit because of his influence not just literature, but on psychology and politics, among other issues, as well. My favourite play will always be
Othello because of the nature in which it deals with politics, gender, and race. Since the module began in October, we have looked at a series of plays ranging different periods from his collection:
Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Coriolanus, The Tempest, to name a few. It is a bit of a silly lecture as the tutors are very much involved in their studies and interpretations of Shakespeare. Each brings a tone of the personal to the lectures and seminars with anecdotes or irrelevant information (which typically becomes relevant). The main lecturer is very theatrical in his movements and delivery which I like to see.
Our only assignment to date was a fifteen-hundred word analysis of two texts -- or in my case a comparison of
Hamlet between text and film. Bit of a cop out really... I won't lie. But for me, Shakespeare is great when set to stage so it seemed fitting to do. The grade back was a 60% (don't be afraid, that is quite decent as it is only 10% off a first), but that was only formative. Assignment A is to be resubmitted, edited, with a second essay, Assignment B, due in on February 17 as portfolio. The two will then be assessed a grade. I believe they will be marked as a duet rather than separately. Fingers crossed.
My tutor once woke up after New Year's thinking it was the 2nd. It was the 5th (maybe a wee hyperbole); to which she compared with A Midsummer Night's Dream. Grand laughter across the hall. Proves she's Irish nonetheless! John Wayne films make the head lecturer want to go pub and drink whiskey -- he's Scottish, mind you.
The most creative of the modules I take is
Reading & Writing Poetry on Friday afternoons. Whilst there are poets we focus on week to week like Paul Muldoon, Alice Oswald, Seamus Heaney, O'Hara and Ashbery, we spend most of the two-hour seminars finding ways to utilise their techniques within our own poetry. Note: not for verbatim, but the overall umbrella of subjective experience, constructing the 'I', narrative, place and history, or sequence.
These different topics are aimed at demonstrating the ways in which poets make use of technique whether it was their discovery to begin with or an adaptation of another's. The only assignment turned in so far dealt with these issues. Mine personally was a critique of place in Oswald's
Dart and Edmond Jabes'
The Book of Questions. Place for Oswald was physical as River Dart and her use of stories from those who live along the river dictated much of the context.
The Book of Questions was more emotional and complex. Both used experience as the construction, but the content changed what place was. This assignment was freshly turned in and is awaiting a mark.
My main excitement with this unit is a collection/portfolio of my own work to be turned in at the end conclusion of term. Maybe to then have some of it posted here... if the grade is decent enough!
THE MEATY BITS. The
dissertation. A year long project (who am I kidding, I feel I am falling behind researching!) that when completed will be 8,000 words. Though one-thousand will be split equally between a research plan and a reflection. My topic, which I am actually really interested in, is about America -- yeah, yeah, wanted a break from the country only to pick a topic about it -- and its necessity as a world superpower to have its own for of literature. The dissertation will look at canon formation and then critique the American canon, which I have been told is ironic to what natural literary canons do. ... to be discussed later as I learn more.
At the moment I have been reading up on Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 speech on
The American Scholar. Alongside that, I read Irving Washington's collection of short stories titled
Sketch Book. More to come on this subject though.
Southampton are 9th in the Premier League table on 36 points. One behind 8th place Newcastle. And I have missed the night's Manchester Metros game at Nottingham due to a knee injury. Carolina is on a 4-game winning streak -- welcome's Duke to the Hill on Wednesday. And it better be on ESPNUK.
