Serendib Teaching

Today I shocked my students by telling them that marital rape was legal throughout America until 1975. “Marital rape in United States law, also known as spousal rape, is non-consensual sex in which the perpetrator is the victim’s spouse. It is a form of partner rape, of domestic violence, and of sexual abuse. Today, marital […]

We’re covering feminist theory in my intro to lit theory class today. I’ve taught an entire course on women & lit., so prep for this week was mostly distilling down 15 weeks of material to 1 week. No biggie. Argh. I did get to give them my ‘rage interview’ assignment, though. They read some theory,

I am amused by an assignment I came up with for my English theory class this week — in addition to their academic reading on postmodernism, I’m having them watch an episode of reality TV, and write a journal entry on how well it does or doesn’t represent reality. I’m also asking them to consider

“In Idaho, a public university abruptly cancelled dozens of diversity-related classes as lawmakers advanced a budget cutting funding, threatened further cuts, and added provisions barring Idaho universities from using state funding to support “social justice” activities, clubs, events, or organizations…. ….In addition to the $409,000 cut — which one lawmaker said “borders on censorship” —

Career update stuff, just in the interests of transparency; I’ve decided to wait a year for my attempt to go up for promotion to clinical full professor, mostly because while I have the Jump Space book under contract, it’s not due to be published until the fall (or early next year), and it’ll be a

Doing another revision pass on my c.v. this morning, preparatory to a meeting with my chair — it turns out that I keep forgetting to list things I’ve done. Hm. But mostly noting that I paused to wonder whether one should list sensitivity reader / cultural consultant work on a c.v. It’s such a new

It has been a long stretch of grading papers, and I admit I am feeling pretty exhausted and when this last paper is done, I’m going to go lie down for a while and think of nothing — but I do appreciate the title of my last student’s paper. It made me laugh. Thanks, student.

Woot! Taught Derrida for the first time. Was fun, as it turns out. . Although I admit, for my 200-level students, I did simplify quite a lot. But we managed to get to differance and the trace, and I think they might have understood it? Perhaps. We’ll see what happens in their final papers.

I used to be a get-up-at-5-to-6-a.m. girl as a default when I lived alone. With Kevin and the kids, that tends to slip later, and an hour or so later feels fine, if not quite as good. But the pandemic sometimes had me staying up ’til 2 a.m., and that was not good for me

I’ve set aside 15 minute slots to do little writing coaching sessions with my students mid-semester, and it’s great, I wish I’d done it last semester. With all the remoteness, it’s so nice to actually see their faces and chat one-on-one for a bit. I miss my munchkins.