grading

This week marks the first week of grading final drafts. I find it helpful to divvy up the number of drafts I'll grade a day--usually anywhere from 8-12--and arrange the mini stacks along the window-filled wall of my living room. Then I can see each pile diminish and not feel overwhelmed by one giant stack. This process also helps me further subdivide the daily dose into smaller bits of grading--2 before lunch, 2 before the gym, and so on.

With a mug of tea or coffee by my side, and my trusty green pens handy, I am ready to write away. Final draft comments serve two purposes--establishing a clear grade, and showing students areas at which they excel and areas to which they need to devote more time.

The first essays--narratives all around--challenge students to break free from formulaic ideas of essay structure and think mindfully about word choice and that ever popular goal: being specific. Our next step is to return to a formal essay structure, but to be specific and descriptive even while being formal, analytic, and persuasive.

how to read

A sleepy, sunny Sunday morning. A mug of steaming coffee. A stack of homemade spiced waffles. A flowing pen. Quiet classical music in the background. An open mind. Empathy (or antipathy) for the protagonist. A good definition or two of key literary terms. All = my favorite ways to read for class. 

the namesake

The first novel in my English 278: Multicultural Literature in America class is Jhumpa Lahiri's *The Namesake.* We finished the novel last week, and watched the movie this week. I love hearing my students proclaim the movie second rate to the novel...as a bibliophile, of course I think novels offer a richer textual experience. However, the film adaptation is lovely--Mira Nair creates a world of contrasts, and plays up the transportation scenes to wonderful effect.

Tomorrow my students will entertain and delight the rest of the class with a multi-facted group project, one of the biggest projects in the class. I'm eager to see what they do with the text.

Next week, we begin reading *Like Water for Chocolate.*

My subtheme of the course is food, family and identity--topics both of these novels portray lovingly.

conferences

This past weekend I attended the SEASECS conference in Auburn, Alabama, my PhD alma mater. This conference is a regional meeting of the Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, which is not exactly my area of specialty. However, this year's theme of legacies and contexts worked nicely with my research on romance fiction and chick lit, and encouraged me to trace these contemporary genres back to some earlier authors and origins. The obvious draw of the conference: location! My circle of grade school friends and I all traveled back to Auburn to revisit some of our favorite haunts, see our former profs (now our colleagues!), and present together.

The social aspects of the conference lived up to my hopes--I dined on Mellow Mushroom pizza, talked American Lit with several former profs, and drank coffee (and more adult beverages) with my friends. Surprisingly, the professional aspects of the conference surpassed my expectations. I received helpful feedback for my ongoing project of tracing the lineage of Chick Lit back to the 18th century and legitimizing a derided genre. Also, my friends and I garnered possible publication interest in our project on new forms of the novel! Hoorah!

conferencing

This week I'm conferencing with my composition students. It's our first such meeting of the semester, and I find it a wonderful opportunity to touch base on a personal level. The first paper for both my 101 and 102 students is a narrative essay, and this personal writing encourages discussion of their lives as well as their writing. My 101 students are writing about their college identity--I want them to think about why they're here, how they came to be here, and where they're going next with a greater mindfulness. My 102 students are writing food narratives--rituals, diets, favorite meals, family connections...the possibilities and stories are as endless as food itself.