tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27054305.post3007557829367972585..comments2023-12-23T04:56:29.702-05:00Comments on Ferule & Fescue: Oddball appealFlaviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17832765671541392835noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27054305.post-7310775421877881432007-09-23T20:28:00.000-04:002007-09-23T20:28:00.000-04:00I've often thought the field of Weird Stuff Studie...I've often thought the field of Weird Stuff Studies would be very popular among a certain subset. I'd be fully into it.<BR/><BR/>The overwhelmingness of the material written on Big Name writers is what scared me off from my guy for a long time. Until I realized that the market for Webster scholars is not good. My way in, though, has been to look at Weird Stuff <I>in</I> big name's canon. It's amazing how monolithic the criticism is on on some of Shakespeare's plays--which is where Weird Studies can be really useful in expanding the possibilities of the field.<BR/><BR/>Or so I tell myself as I slog through a chapter on some of the most dire stuff in my Big Name.St. Ephhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11611680292576283192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27054305.post-50247569539101243462007-09-22T23:30:00.000-04:002007-09-22T23:30:00.000-04:00My thinking is that it seems easier to you not bec...My thinking is that it seems easier to you not because it's inherently less difficult but because you're swayed that way. If you forced yourself to work on canonical Shakespearean texts and you didn't have proclivities toward it, that would be hard work. It's a genius that weird stuff comes easy to you. Revel, I say.Nikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15795554401570611521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27054305.post-44132913101539598462007-09-21T19:59:00.000-04:002007-09-21T19:59:00.000-04:00On another note... next library instruction sessio...On another note... next library instruction session I teach I am *totally* using "WEIRD and STUFF" as my demo keyword search. :) (Then we can also try "weird stuff" and see whether Boolean operators make a difference or not.)RLBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05790888934803058264noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27054305.post-39655419497723343722007-09-21T16:08:00.000-04:002007-09-21T16:08:00.000-04:00Dr. C: I'm sure you're right about 1 & 2 in many c...Dr. C: <BR/><BR/>I'm sure you're right about 1 & 2 in many cases--and I had a plagiarist in a class that I TAed for at INRU who did something very similar--but it's less likely in the courses that I teach in my field. I mean, if *I* (or my one Renaissance colleague) didn't assign the work, it's generally not the case that a student would have studied it elsewhere. Okay, sure: a Shakespeare play or one of Donne's love poems--but a Milton sonnet so minor that I doubt more than a couple dozen pages, total, have been written about it in 350 years? I can tell you that <I>that's</I> not being taught in America's high schools! <BR/><BR/>Still, your point #3 may be relevant. I should have mentioned that the student in question is actually in the process of applying to grad schools--so, he's smart and has intellectual aspirations--but at the same time he's not so amazingly smart that I'm sure this was pure intellectual curiosity. He may well have been trying just to stand out.Flaviahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17832765671541392835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27054305.post-88867024417503528892007-09-21T08:51:00.000-04:002007-09-21T08:51:00.000-04:00As for students who choose this stuff, I'm going t...As for students who choose this stuff, I'm going to give my cynical answer that comes from having dealt with this a bunch of time now. Why do student pick texts we've not worked on about which to write, if it's not misunderstanding the assignment?<BR/><BR/>1. It opens up more possibilities for plagiarism. They think that you're less likely to catch them because no one else will plagiarize the same paper, you will be so dazzled by their "originality," whatever.<BR/><BR/>2. They've studied the text in another class and so they think that they are experts on it. This even (sometimes especially) if they've studied it only in high school. So they spit another prof's notes back out at you in their paper, again thinking that you will perceive them as highly original and astute.<BR/><BR/>3. They think that they will be rewarded for initiative and originality, and, as you said, they think it's easier to achieve those things when they're not writing on one of the assigned texts. This isn't really about intellectual curiosity, though, in most cases: it's about thinking that they can do less work for a better grade.<BR/><BR/>Yes, there are those rare students who really do have intellectual curiosity about something that seems odd or at the very least off the beaten path and they want to write on those things in order to explore them and to flex their critical muscles. You were one of those students. I was one of those students. It's no mistake that we went to grad school and are now professors. But the vast majority of our students? They are not this student.Dr. Crazyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12457967076373916629noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27054305.post-25648322792651996282007-09-21T07:35:00.000-04:002007-09-21T07:35:00.000-04:00I am so there! I chose my field precisely because ...I am so there! I chose my field precisely because it was beyond the norm, and rather unfashionable. I looked at the works on French history and thought "why would anybody want to do that!?" and wandered off into the quieter and less traveled Balkans. Well-fished waters are not my thing; I prefer the quieter backwaters were I can muck in peace.<BR/><BR/>Of course, that was in the late 1980s, and I chose Yugoslavia. I discovered, to my own bemusement, that it was about to blow up in my face. By the time it did, I was already too far into the backwater to do more than watch in horror.<BR/><BR/>So good for you. We're the pepper in the soup.Bellehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10849272391043604637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27054305.post-66007104840741582482007-09-21T00:36:00.000-04:002007-09-21T00:36:00.000-04:00That last comment about being fascinated by someth...That last comment about being fascinated by something you don't understand made me think about *possibility*. When you're working with an understudied, obscure text that has no received meanings attached to it in a critical tradition, there is a sort of intellectual possibility that one rarely feels - and that is pretty invigorating. I am working on understudied texts right now, and that's something of what I feel...Hilairehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09033740943173352249noreply@blogger.com