Archive for category Teaching
The Sound of Silence
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Adventure, Homelife, Teaching on July 10th, 2010
Wow. It’s hard to believe it’s really been a month since I posted anything here, but, well, on the other hand, I have been pretty busy.
I’m in Colorado at the moment. That begins to point toward the reasons for my quiet. My month of June was greatly discombobulated by a number of things, the first of which was my banishment from my office to (gulp) the cadet barracks. Wasn’t just me, mind you. Capers Hall, which houses several departments in addition to English, is shut down for the summer, undergoing some serious HVAC renovations. So our offices were summarily moved to an open building: Murray Barracks. It’s been quite strange.
In the meantime, I taught a rather intensive 2-week creative writing course. Pretty much an all-day affair.
In the midst of teaching that class — which went great, by the way, and thanks for asking — I got some requests for alterations for the Brunanburh Casebook. That blew out days at a time, because I had to get it turned around with all speed to keep it in the publication queue. Plus, I had to get ready to leave for…
Colorado! I’m in the midst of my annual pilgrimage to the Rockies. Got out here around the 1st of July, and it’s been great. Seen family, deer, elk, and even took a trip into Denver for a day at the Natural History Museum where we saw dinosaurs. The only downside so far has been one trip to the E.R. to have part of my son’s left middle finger reattached after it was summarily ripped off (nail and tip) in a door. Pretty gruesome, but the lad is in good spirits. When I have better internet connectivity and time — I can’t tell you how busy I’ve been for a man on vacation — perhaps I’ll share pictures. Lotsa blood.
Anyway, that’s where I’ve been and where I am. We’re heading out for even higher climes (current elevation 7700 feet above sea level) tomorrow to test some new Jeep parts. Research and development is a good thing.
The 2010 Shako Released!
Posted by Michael Livingston in Student Successes, Teaching on March 19th, 2010
My first year here at The Citadel I was made faculty advisor to The Shako, the Literary Magazine of The Citadel. It was a surprising thing for me, but I’ve tried to take advantage of it for the past four years. I like to think that the publication is better than ever as the result of my labors, though one can never really know such things. This year’s edition, my fourth, will be my last. I’ve worried that the publication will grow stale under my watch, so I’m passing the torch to another faculty member. She’ll know doubt take it to great places I didn’t imagine, and I’m really excited to see that happen.
At any rate, all this is prelude to the announcement that the 2010 Shako is now in the wild. It’s a terrific year, with some great fiction, poetry, photography, and even some artwork. Indeed, our cover art is the work of a talented freshman here on campus. I touched it up and added a bit of antiquity and mystery to the piece, but it was awesome raw material to work with — I’m greatly pleased with the results.
If you’re on campus, you’ll find copies piled around the lobbies of Mark Clark Hall, in the English office, in the sally ports, in my office, and being handed out around parade time tomorrow morning. Enjoy!
Front Cover of the 2010 Shako!
Mid-Semester Crunch Time
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Homelife, Teaching on February 23rd, 2010
If I’ve been a bit absent of late, there’s a reason: The 4 weeks or so that I’m right in the middle of at the moment are probably my busiest of the year.
First off, there’s the teaching load. Papers have been coming in for each of my classes, and having two new courses to teach this term that require “from scratch” preparation — my Tolkien lecture class and Medieval Outlaws — is sucking up a lot of otherwise free time. Oh, and I also have a couple of big mid-terms to write.
Second, there’s The Shako, the literary magazine of The Citadel. It’s a lot of fun to run, and through much of the year it’s a piece of cake. But for about a month of the year it’s intense work. This is especially true in the week or so leading up to the submission of the journal to the printer. That’s this week.
Third, there’s my annual review. Every year the department meets to determine whether I’ll be able to continue my employment here at The Citadel. (In a few years, after I hopefully get tenure, they’ll meet to pass judgment on my performance, but it won’t be quite the job threat that it is now.) For this meeting I have to put together a Personal Data Sheet (PDS), which is really a multi-page, single-spaced narrative of what I’ve done this year along with all the supporting documentation thereof: tests, graded papers, publications, work in progress, student evaluations, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Fourth, there’s the Brunanburh book I’m putting together. It’s in the last gasps as we heave toward the finish line, legs and lungs are burning. That’s good news, of course, but it also means lots of last-minute, must-act-now items.
Fifth, there’s the family that one doesn’t dare lose track of in the tumult. As busy as I am, time must be found to run around with the kids. Or, as I did this morning, to walk the boy to preschool.
Sixth, there’s the 10 minutes I set aside to write this summary. Actually pushing 13 minutes now, which means I need to take my leave.
Life This Week: Brunanburh, Broken Bones, Bubbling Butts
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Homelife, Teaching on February 6th, 2010
What’s my life like these days? Well, here’s a selection of snapshots from my life this past week:
Saturday, 2:54 pm. Idly thinking about what Wednesday’s Tolkien lecture will focus on, I begin to ponder the possibility of a new philological reading for a line in The Hobbit. The idea is scribbled on a slip of paper upon my desk, where it will languish among the dozens of other article topics I don’t have time to write up.
Sunday, 4:02 pm. Our 9-month-old daughter is a guided missile for the staircase. Set her down on one side of the house and — zoom! — she’s fast-crawling like a Marine, headed for the foot of the stairs. Up and up to the top, giggling to herself. Catch her, set her down in a new place, and she’ll head back to it. Spin her around, try to confuse her, and like a carrier pigeon it won’t matter. My iPhone and my baby are both GPS-enabled.
Monday, 7:08 am. I wake up feeling the twinges of an illness coming on. The subsequent week will find me fighting off some plague caught from my cadets and/or my son; as a result, my voice teeters on the edge of breaking and I’m far more tired than I’d like. The need to project across the 30+ kids of my Tolkien class does not help, but I love them (and the class) anyway.
Tuesday, 9:15 am. My daughter sets a new personal record by standing unaided for over a minute. You go, girl.
Wednesday, 11:38 pm. I’m poring over manuscript readings for the Old English Battle of Brunanburh poem, trying to determine which rune I should use on a given line of the casebook’s edition. For the record, I decide on an eth.
Thurdsay, 9:04 am. The little girl decides to try walking. Two steps, boom! Stands up. Three steps, boom! Stands up. Four steps, boom! Crawls for the next few minutes.
Thursday, 6:10 pm. Sitting down at the dinner table, I reach across to tussle my son’s hair. He smiles through a face splattered with burrito stuffings. “Can I have your hair?” I ask.
The boy stops chewing, and his innocent eyes look up at my shaved head. Then one of his hands rises to pull upward on a fistful of his own thick locks. “No, Daddy,” he says. “It’s really stuck.”
Thursday, 7:18 pm. Burrito + hair = boy in bathtub. Baby sister joins him for a bit of clean-up (her problem is smushed graham crackers) and the fun lasts a few minutes before the elder child is booted from the bathroom for refusing to share bathtoys. Much screaming ensues.
Friday, 5:11 pm. After a long afternoon of working on some stressful Brunanburh matters, I arrive home to two rambunctious kids. The boy wants me to swing him around. The girl wants me to watch her latest attempt to climb the stairs while carrying a rubber duck. I tell everyone to hold off while I go change out of my uniform. Within five minutes I will have broken two toes on my right foot.
Friday, 11:01 pm. The pain of my toes sends me to bed early. I spend some time thinking through a novel idea (literally an idea for a novel). I decide the idea is sound but still in need of revision. It is subsequently pushed to burner #5 in my mind.
Saturday, 8:46 am. I notice some very fascinating patterns of color on my toes. The next ten minutes are passed in a close examination and a series of flexing exercises to determine how much I can live with the pain. Wife advises urgent care. I decide in favor of some mole skin and an old roll of athletic tape. In hindsight, I’ll wonder if duct-tape would have been more appropriate for the mood.
Saturday, 7:32 pm. I’m putting my son to bed, just getting him tucked in, when he (shall we say) passes wind rather loudly. He giggles a bit, but I try to ignore it (the time for high-fives will come later). But then he suddenly sits bolt upright in bed. “I saw something,” he says.
“Oh? What did you see?” I ask, expecting him to say shadows.
“I saw something bubbling,” he says.
“Bubbling?”
“Don’t worry,” he says, “it was only my butt.” And he laughs and laughs and laughs.
Prepping for Classes
Posted by Michael Livingston in Teaching on January 11th, 2010
Well, they’re baaaaaaaaack. The cadets have returned to campus. Classes start on Wednesday.
I can’t say that I’m quite ready. With so much of my break taken up by Brunanburh I’ve hardly had a chance to think about the coming semester. I’ve drafted syllabi, but not much beyond that. I’d had dreams, pre-break, about getting all the PowerPoint presentations done for my Tolkien class — it’s a big class, so I’ll be using prepped material far more than I usually do — but I got, um, only the first week’s worth done. Oh well.
On the plus side, it’ll be good to see the kidz again, brimming with their excitement to learn.
Hear that, cadets? I want to see brimming on those faces. Brim! Brim!
Tolkien Enrollment
Posted by Michael Livingston in Teaching on November 20th, 2009
As some readers are aware, I was finally able to teach Tolkien here at The Citadel as an Honors class last Spring, which was great fun. Happily, this opened the door that I’d been banging my head against for quite some time: the chance to teach Tolkien as a 200-level general elective course open to all students.
Some folks (I won’t say who) expressed concern that this class would “make” — which these days means you need a minimum of around 15 students in the seats — but they went ahead and put it on the books for the Spring anyway, to see whether it would live or die.
Well, the registration season is officially open here at El Cid, and I’m pleased to say that the results look to be rather positive. As of this morning, Tolkien had 33 students on board, which is pretty phenomenal for a class on its first run hereabouts. Enrollments will bounce around a bit by the time January hits, so I’m still hoping to crank it up even further. I think 40 is a good round number…
Cameron Matthew Anestis: A Remembrance
Posted by Michael Livingston in Student Successes, Teaching on August 20th, 2009
The news came to me from Citadel cadets via Facebook about an hour before midnight: LCpl Anestis had died.
I immediately went through several stages, from thinking it was some sort of sick joke to hoping it was someone other than my former student Cameron Matthew Anestis — selfishly hoping it was the loss of a young man I didn’t know rather than one I’d grown to respect so deeply.
After midnight, I had the confirmation I feared via a brief online obituary:
Aphra Behn Article Accepted
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Teaching on March 21st, 2009
A spot of good news just now. I received word that I’ve had another article accepted for publication, this time a brief piece on Aphra Behn in The Explicator. Happily, this is my third academic acceptance in as many months (believe me, that streak will not last). You may recall my joking reference — after learning that my H.G. Wells and Darwin article was recently accepted for publication — that I was going to try to publish something about every century of the Common Era. Not true, of course. That would be quite quixotic. Still, if I was going to do that I could now cross off the Seventeenth Century, too.
This particular article, “Aphra Behn’s ‘The Disappointment’ as Ring Composition,” is by no means a stroke of lightning to the field (few ever are). Nevertheless, I hope you’ll indulge me to talk for a bit about its genesis, since I think it speaks quite directly to what I love not just about teaching but specifically about doing it here at The Citadel.
I am not, of course, a scholar of Aphra Behn. Though she’s a quite famed Restoration-period writer, I had honestly never read anything by her — I was a History undergrad and so missed the kind of general-reading English education I ought to have had — until I came here to El Cid and was asked to teach our “Brit Lit I” course using the venerable Norton Anthology. We’re given wonderfully free reign in the design of our courses here, far more than you might imagine given the military milieu. Indeed, I daresay we have more freedom as teachers than the vast majority of our peers at other institutions. So it wasn’t like I had to teach to a particular syllabus when assigned the class.
My first draft of my syllabus, therefore, was to start from scratch, thumbing through the Norton and jotting down texts that I felt I was already prepared to teach. Inevitably, there were holes in the survey after I was finished. Big ones. The Middle Ages, naturally, were covered quite well (I’m a medievalist, after all). The Renaissance looked good, too. The Seventeenth Century? Not so much. I also noted that there weren’t as many female writers on the syllabus as I would have liked. To kill two birds with one stone, I went back through the Norton, looking for a seventeenth-century female writer I could fit into the syllabus.
It didn’t take me long to find Aphra Behn and her poem “The Disappointment.” It was (is) a perfect match for my survey course, which takes delight in exposing the students to some, um, somewhat amorous poetry. I quickly jotted her poem into the syllabus and moved on to other gaps in the survey.
Skip ahead a few months, and the time to teach Behn had come ’round at last. The class filed in, and at once I set to going through the poem with them line by line, expounding and extracting, teaching — as I almost always do — without any prepared script or notes. The “lecture,” as I recall, was going really great. The students were into it, simultaneously laughing and learning, which is always a wonderful combination. There was a lot of good discussion and even the occasional “lightbulb” moment for the cadets. (To the teacher, these typically are recognized by a sudden raising of eyebrows and widened eyes, followed by the furious scribbling of some profound insight into the text. I love ‘em.)
Now, it just so happened that I had recently written a completely unrelated paper for a medieval conference in which I argued that the fourteenth-century poem The Alliterative Morte Arthure was, like its contemporary poem Siege of Jerusalem, a ring composition. The paper had been well received and so I had ring compositions somewhere in the back of my mind that morning as I turned around at one point and looked at my mess of a board — they’re always messy — and saw something unexpected in the rough “outline” of the poem’s key events that I’d scribbled up there.
“Huh,” I said.
There was a pause, I remember. The students were quiet for a minute, probably wondering if my battery had finally died. And then my own lightbulb lit up. “It’s a ring composition!” I cried out.
I know. It’s not quite Archimedes running naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting “Eureka!” But it was a cool moment to me nonetheless. I spent the next few minutes trying to explain what I’d noticed, sharing it with the class. Then time was up and they went their merry ways. I found a spare slip of paper and wrote down my little theory before erasing the board and heading off to teach another course.
That little slip of paper sat in my Norton, and the idea percolated somewhere in my brain, for another year. But the next time I taught “The Disappointment” I presented it as a ring composition. And it worked so darn well that I decided I’d collect a little bit of Aphra Behn scholarship to see if anyone had ever noticed it before. Surely everyone knew this, I figured. But still good to check. If nothing else, doing the research might help me teach the piece better next time.
Well, it turns out that no one had talked about Behn’s poem in terms of a ring composition. Not in print, anyway. So I took a weekend last June and threw a short article together explaining it. And now it’s being published.
I’ve no idea how other folks get their ideas. It’s no doubt different for us all. I certainly can’t even begin to explain how these things occur to me, other than to call it the dumb luck of happenstance (the H.G. Wells piece is the result of an even stranger stroke of luck).
I do know, however, that regardless of my inspiration, many schools would react to the news of this publication less with joy and more with consternation that I was publishing outside my medieval field. The Citadel is a special place, I think, for allowing me the freedom not only to have such random inspirations in class, but also to take the time to research them and publish them. And I’m most glad for that.
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