Welcome back, Verons! It was so good to see you all this morning (even as we missed Brenda and Bekah). I'll be honest: when I woke up today I was not in the mood. But your smiling faces and serious engagement with the text reminded me of why teaching in the Vera seminar is my favorite part of my job. When I look at the syllabus brimming with creativity and critical thinking, I know I will miss some exciting weeks this spring. I wish you all the best of luck as you take the helm of the seminar and I look forward to hearing how we have some classroom legends in the making.
While there was much we didn't get to in our time discussing Grendel, it tends to lurk, rather like Grendel himself, around the margins of our subsequent conversations. Even today, we could see how Grendel's story was relevant to the effects of isolation, or to the stigma experienced by family members of criminals, or how a young "man" (?) eager to find himself might find his identity in violence, or how stories that are so attentive to some kinds of violence (it is a profound critique of war/war culture) can be rather blind to others (representation of women, for example).
I'd like at least to start off the blog by having you share something we did not get to at all: question #6. Taking either your topic for this semester or your agency, what might be a "Grendel" story? If Grendel asks us to question long-standing assumptions about the narrative of heroism (and its need for a monster), what/who would make you turn your topic on its head? What stories don't get told in the conversations surrounding your topic or within your agency? Are there things that just don't get questioned? Why might that be?
Feel free to respond briefly and then jump back in to continue the conversation with another comment later.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
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