I'm trying not to blog until I finish writing a short story I've promised to an anthology editor. But I thought I'd post a few links to interesting reading I did online this winter, relevant to teaching.

Student Pressure and Your Average English Department by Sanford Pinsker. The 'Irascible Professor' raises some interesting points about the rise of pop fiction in the literary curriculum...and the potential hazards of bending the canon to the whims of popular tastes and trends. As a teacher of popular fiction, I felt a little insulted by this one. The author assumes that a text taught in a lit class will only be a model example of "good writing" and not a text that offers up valuable "critical analysis". But it's a thoughtful essay.

Over the winter break (which ended with today's classes), I read two books by Terry Caesar, who I have come to admire from his excellent columns in Inside Higher Ed. Those columns are always great reads, but to get real glimpse at his more radical English-professor side, I recommend reading "Affiliation and Mourning in a Career of Specialization" from Symploke journal online. In it, he deconstructs the function of "specialization" in the self-identity of the college professor, uncovering it as something of a myth -- and contemplates why the "accumulation of experiences" we make as generalist teachers often doesn't seem to "count." It's a complicated piece.

Finally, a link to lifehack.org, which espouses one primary rule, before all others: "Do the Work". And that's not saying "Just Do It."

And on that note, I better get back to my short story....

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