Yesterday we were talking about how grad students need to be self-interested readers, looking at least as much to advance your own projects as to be a good student who reads what he/she is supposed to. (I know we’re all “good students” in this group.)
Thinking back, I realized I had a perfectly good example of that sort of self-interested classroom behavior on my side. When we were talking about emptiness in “our revels now are ended,” I was (not quite consciously) thinking about the paper that I’m presenting at the end of the semester as George Washington U’s “TemFest II” event on Dec 3:
(Scroll down a little to get to TemFest II.)
Maybe I’ll use this paper as my “work in progress” for the seminar. I’m going to talk about gaps and vacancies in the play and its after life — my opening line will be, “The Tempest is full of holes” — with some attention to the Roman poet Lucretius and his “atomist” theories of matter and empty space.
I also note, if anyone wants to make a field trip, that the Dec 3 event in DC is open to the public & should be lots of fun.
Though I missed Tuesday’s discussion, if I understand the “self interest” idea properly, it’s actually been on my mind all week as I work on the prospectus. At times, I’m lucky and the germ of a thesis occurs to me early in a text; others, it doesn’t seem to emerge unless I yank it, kicking and screaming, from my uncooperative mind. The advantage of that first idea is clear: I can then read the text through that lens, culling evidence as I go along.
Though that approach is better for me as a paper-writing grad student, I wonder if it doesn’t also bring with the downside of focusing my attention on one aspect of the text to the exclusion of others, much as Prof. Mentz suggests a strict historicist approach may fail to grasp the complexity of a work.
You’re right, Matt, that such a self-interested focus sometimes can blind us to the “complexity of a work.” That’s a real issue, but also a price that’s worth paying, if what we get is a worthwhile project at the end. Witing is always an act of discovery — you missed that discussion in class too — you need a certain amount of focus to enable you to write effectively.
There are times, I must admit, when I love just reading with no writerly agenda, no feeling that I need to write something in response. That sort of pleasure reading is something I’m very interested in, both for myself & my students. But it’s not exactly what I’m asking us to focus on in this seminar.
I’d love to attend the TemFest seminar. Anyone else in?
This post caught my attention particularly beacuse of the first paragraph, although I will comment on the main purpose of this post, I’d like to say something related to the first part:
I strongly agree that students have to be “self-interested” readers because we always need to be thinking, analyzing, and re-applying knowledge that we know pertains to the subject. We need to be aware of what is consistent in the pieces that we are reading as well, to make sure that we finding information for semester projects, and even for the projects of others that stuck out in our minds. It seems that if we make sure to pay close attention to themes, although “themes” is a broad word, early on, we’ll have less to rack our brains with later, as we try to recall discussion points from an entire text.
When a student reads, it should be undivided. We should be in the book, understanding each word, even going as far as to hear ourselves talking each word silently in our head. Someone once told me that it was “essential” to read Shakespeare aloud, because it would make much more sense as you hear yourself say it. To this day, I read it aloud, and I must admit that it does have a certain advantage.