Literature Seminar Research Articles

(Re)Active Praxis: The Crop of Fall 2020: Rural Anxieties and Preservice Identities

This reflective piece draws on the author’s experiences of simultaneously teaching a college-level young adult literature seminar alongside an upper-level methods course on teaching literature in the secondary schools. While this was not his first time teaching the two courses during the same semester, what makes this particular experience unique was that he taught both courses face-to-face in the midst of a global pandemic. Additionally, his midsized, Midwestern university’s largely rural, first-generation student population responded to the complex chaos of 2020 in culturally specific and pedagogically profound ways.

“In the Midst of Experience:” Civic Education Through Narrative Creation

Through employing a narrative, reflective approach, I discuss how the experience of working with international students during a summer institute informed the developed and implementation of a civically minded project in a college Young Adult Literature seminar. The project sought to frame "America" as an actual teenager, relative to other, more "adult" countries in the world, and asked students to construct a conventional YA narrative featuring America as the primary character. Through this narrative, I explain the various successes of the project and ultimately argue that students' stories and original compositions offer a viable mechanism for progressive, democratic citizenship education and could ultimately counter the rise of nationalist sentiments and their corresponding ambiguous effects on citizenship development.

From Snaps to Maps: Using Literature, Mobile Applications, and Mapping Software to Design an Engaging L2 Curriculum

:This article demonstrates the pedagogical potential of two free digital tools: the mobile app Snapchat and Northwestern University Knight Lab's StoryMap. By combining Snapchat and StoryMap in the second language (L2) literature classroom, students adapt L2 language skills to twenty-first-century modes of communication, collaborate with peers, and creatively cross-disciplinary boundaries. Essential to this approach is the consideration of Snapchat (and image-based social media apps) as a twenty-first century literary genre (Bender 2020), and of mobile apps as interdisciplinary research objects (Morris and Murray 2018). From this point of departure, this essay offers a case study of a "medium-inflected DHL2" approach (Cro 2020) to a Spanish literature seminar. It demonstrates how non-traditional, DH-inflected assignments increase student engagement with literature by fostering creativity and productive language play in communicative and analytic contexts. At the curricular level, literature professors' essential role in second-language acquisition becomes visible and active, as DH tools bridge the "language/literature split" (Bernhardt 2001) in L2 pedagogy and curriculum design in higher education. A creative DHL2 approach that adopts an alternative view of traditional L2 literature content to generate non-traditional assessments will improve L2 literature pedagogy and make literary content relevant to students' personal and professional experiences

Snapping the Quijote: Examining L2 Literature, Social Media, and Digital Storytelling through a Cervantine Lens

This paper focuses on an advanced Spanish literature seminar I taught at Kansas State University dedicated entirely to Cervantes's Don Quijote de la Mancha. In an effort to appeal to twenty-first-century students in rural Kansas, I designed my seminar to explore traditional questions of authorship, translation and reading, metafiction, self-invention, and parody, but through the lens of contemporary pop culture, including the graphic novel and mobile applications (apps). Unlike a traditional research paper, this course's non-traditional final assessment required students to place academic scholarship in an alternative, accessible format. It also promoted innovative, analytic interpretations of the novel through the juxta-position of text, images, video, and sound in a medium in which students already excelled: Snapchat. In what follows, I describe this alternative Snapchat project and its pedagogical justifications, then reflect on the results, student feedback, successes, and limitations. Ultimately, I propose rethinking or reimagining the traditional Don Quijote seminar- and second-language (L2) literature courses and assessments more broadly- by embracing purportedly non-academic technologies like Snapchat, whose reliance on a variety of semiotic tools has the potential to teach traditional skills of literary analysis and increase students' engagement with and understanding of narrative processes.

Teaching Laboring-Class British Literature of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries ed. by Kevin Binfield and William J. Christmas (review)

Reviewed by: Teaching Laboring-Class British Literature of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries ed. by Kevin Binfield and William J. Christmas Lucien Darjeun Meadows Kevin Binfield and William J. Christmas, editors. Teaching Laboring-Class British Literature of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. The Modern Language Association of America, 2018. College-level courses increasingly include literary works by 18th and 19th century laboring-class British writers. While major publishers (i.e. Broadview, Norton, and Wiley-Blackwell) are incorporating them in teaching anthologies for eighteenth and nineteenth century studies and the Romantic and Victorian periods, there remains no major classroom anthology devoted to these laboring-class writers. In the absence of an established laboring-class canon, teachers pursue diverse and eclectic methods to bring these voices into the classroom. In this new volume, Kevin Binfield and William J. Christmas have collected thirtyone essays by professors and scholars who discuss their methods and inspire new pathways. The comprehensive introduction offers "a celebration" (19) of current means of bringing laboring-class writers into classrooms and stresses that "the key is to replace nostalgia with reflection" (3). In a time of growing awareness for diversity, equity, and inclusion, educators and students may be more comfortable engaging the topics of race, gender, and sexual orientation. These topics often are communicated as intrinsic characteristics deserving inclusion, while socioeconomic class may be perceived more as an external characteristic to be transcended by hard work and a strong ethic. Because of this, students, learning in the college environment where success and graduation are tied to socioeconomic improvement, frequently respond to laboring-class literature through a lens that distances personal nostalgia. Instructors are encouraged to guide them toward more critical, intellectual reflection. The collection's four major sections are all organized in rough chronological order: "Teaching Genres," with six essays; "Teaching Selected Authors and Works," with eight essays; "Pedagogical Strategies," with eleven essays; and "Types of Courses," with six essays. Binfield and Christmas ensured discussion on a range of literary genres, with nineteen total essays on poetry, ten on prose forms, and two on drama, a critical distribution that mirrors the creative distribution by [End Page 190] these laboring-class writers. Additionally, the collection's extensive final "Resources" section provides citations for finding primary texts, electronic sources, contextual aids, paintings, recordings, and sheet music, as well as annotations for the major databases Laboring-Class Poets Online and Digital Miscellanies Index to help scholars continue their engagement and course development. This volume is a valuable asset to emerging and established instructors. Many will benefit from Moyra Haslett's essay on framing and questioning works and identities through course design, raising the stakes (and opportunities) of course and syllabus creation. Others will find useful Fiona Wilson's case study on teaching James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) as a work of experimental fiction to challenge students toward new insights, or Florence S. Boos's discussion of her course on the poetry of Victorian working-class women. Several contributors share experiences in pairing a more canonical writer with a lesser-known laboring-class writer, such as Cassandra Falke's pairing of William Wordsworth with Christopher Thomson under the theme of 'wandering,' and Stacey Floyd's pairing of Elizabeth Gaskell with Thomas Wheeler to teach Chartist fiction, providing new routes into working with these writers. For instructors who may already incorporate laboring-class literature, the nuanced discussion of Corey E. Andrews on teaching the Georgic poetry genre through laboring-class examples, as well as Anne Milne's application of a labor studies approach to poetry, could deepen one's existing engagement with these writers and periods. Further, numerous contributors discuss how to include laboring-class works in courses beyond the upper-level literature seminar. Steven Epley shares his experience leading a service-learning course in rural Alabama that engaged eighteenth-century laboring-class poetry. Stephen C. Behrendt recounts his use of Romantic era laboringclass poetry to explore cultural archaeology. Vincent Caretta discusses teaching a cross-listed History and English course on Literature of the Early Black Atlantic. Numerous contributors, including Ellen L. O'Brien and Scarlet Bowen, share varieties of courses on literary production and...

From Classroom to Stage to Community: The Francophone Youth Theater Experience

This study recounts a unique collaboration in which an undergraduate French literature class was invited to perform the opening play for a theater festival geared toward high school foreign language students. What began as a traditional literature seminar evolved into a student-led performance project that allowed DePaul University to interact with the local community. The reading and analysis of plays, paired with process-oriented drama activities in the classroom, helped students gain the skills and confidence necessary to create, stage, and perform in their own production, and presented a valuable opportunity to promote the study of French to a younger audience.

Original Undergraduate Research in Classroom Contexts: Student Perceptions of a Scaffolded Approach

This article describes a model for supporting undergraduate research that can be adapted for very different classroom contexts; we implemented this model in a first-year general education composition class, a second-year Psychology class and a fourth-year English literature seminar. We examine student work created for each class as well as reflections and interviews to explore student attitudes towards and perceptions of research. While the scaffolded approach had an impact on students' understanding of the research process, the effects did not vary significantly by level and context as we had expected.

Replacing the Traditional Graduate Chemistry Literature Seminar with a Chemical Research Literacy Course

A new graduate chemistry course was introduced in the Department of Chemistry at The University of Alabama. The new course, CH584—Literature and Communication in Graduate Chemistry, replaced a second year graduate student literature seminar requirement. Course topics included chemical information resources, critical analysis, scientific writing, scientific presentations, and peer-review. CH584 was well received by both the chemistry faculty and chemistry graduate students. This article discusses the detailed implementation and content taught in CH584. Moreover, we present our experiences teaching CH584 as well as potential revisions.

Reading Elena Poniatowska’s Leonora in an Undergraduate Seminar

Description of an Honors literature seminar focused on a selection of texts by prominent Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska, including critical strategies involved in preparation, work required by students, and Poniatowska’s creative strategies in depicting rebellious women and other socially marginalized figures. A special focus on the biographical novel Leonora (2011) illustrates the pedagogical possibilities of this novel, and students’ analytical responses to the reading.

On Teaching Harriette Simpson Arnow

On Teaching Harriette Simpson Arnow Erica Abrams Locklear (bio) When I began doctoral study in English at Louisiana State University in 2003, I thought I knew a little something about Appalachian literature. I had read James Still, Lee Smith, Robert Morgan, and several other mountain writers, and I was vaguely familiar with a handful of other related sources, like Joyce Dyer's collection, Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers. Then I took a Southern literature seminar with John Lowe who, during one of our conversations about Appalachian literature, offhandedly remarked that he really loved Harriette Simpson Arnow's The Dollmaker. Before that day, I had never heard of Arnow or any of her works. Looking back on that conversation now, I wonder how this was possible. After my class ended, I read The Dollmaker and was astounded. I remember being completely enthralled by the story in general, but more particularly I admired Gertie's perseverance, empathized with Reuben and Cassie's longing to return home, loathed Mrs. Whittle's treatment of Reuben, and wanted to think more deeply about how Arnow portrayed the identity conflicts that ensued after the family moved to Detroit. I decided to write about it in my dissertation, and later in my first book. I was similarly moved by Arnow's other novels, especially Hunter's Horn. As I learned more about her work, I became increasingly confused as to why she is now read so infrequently by academics, students, and mainstream readers. Upon further investigation, I learned that The Dollmaker won wide critical acclaim during its time and was nominated for the National Book Award in 1955, losing to William Faulkner's The Fable (Eckley 44). Twenty-three years later, in 1978, Tillie Olsen lamented that, as a woman's "book of great worth, [The Dollmaker suffers] the death of being unknown, or at best a peculiar eclipsing" (40). Considering that the novel tells a powerful story about Appalachian out-migration and the consequences of moving from an agrarian society to an industrial one, all while dealing with issues related to education, gender, and so much more, the "eclipsing" Olsen notes is peculiar, indeed. When I talk about Arnow's work with fellow academics, I often hear similar explanations of why they have chosen not to teach her work in [End Page 53] their courses. They usually tell me that while they applaud novels like The Dollmaker, teaching such a long work of fiction seems overwhelming at best and impossible at worst. But in this brief contribution to a longer reflection on Arnow, I want to contest that belief and argue for the inclusion of novels like The Dollmaker on course syllabi for undergraduate and graduate students alike. Certainly The Dollmaker would make a great novel selection for a course on American or Appalachian literature, as it would for a class that explores issues of migration, industrialization, unionization, and labor struggles in general. But here I want to make a case that The Dollmaker is also an ideal candidate for Women's Studies courses, particularly those that rely on literature to broaden student understandings of women's lives and experiences. In 2009 I taught a special topics course at UNC Asheville called Working Women. In it, we explored real and fictional narratives that contained depictions of women's labor, and students interviewed women in the community so that they could examine how their interviewees' stories did or did not align with those that we spent the semester reading. Early in the course,, students responded well to Harriet Jacobs' slave narrative, to Tillie Olsen's Yonnondio: A Novel of the Thirties, and to other texts, but I was nervous about introducing The Dollmaker. Were they really going to read a six-hundred-plus page novel? I was not sure. To my surprise, the book was a splendid success, generating some of our best class discussions of the semester. When we encountered The Dollmaker, we had already talked about socially constructed gender roles and the often repressive reality of subscribing to gender binaries. Right away, students noticed Gertie's resistance to these limitations, and together we cheered her refusal to adhere to society's expectations...

A counseling center psychologist teaches a seminar for freshmen: “Life Lessons from the Writings of Alice Walker”

The focus of this brief report is on a literature seminar—especially designed for first-year students—taught by a counseling center psychologist. Carrying dual responsibilities in working both as a full-time psychologist and faculty member, the author writes of her experiences in helping to create a caring and intellectually stimulating class environment sensitive to individual development and group dynamics. The seminar has provided learning opportunities for students to read and discuss poetry and prose, analyze films and give formal class presentations. As a result of taking this course, students have spoken of acquiring an appreciation for poetry and other creative modalities as well as a keener understanding of the development of “voice” and psychological change.

Law and Literature Seminar, Draft Syllabus

This is a draft syllabus for an introductory seminar on law and literature. Courses in this area tend to focus primarily (often exclusively) on literary texts. My view is that literature can be more productively studied in a law school setting when literary and legal materials are placed next to each other. This approach does not treat law as the taken-for-granted backdrop that students already know, but instead makes explicit the similarities and differences between the two areas. Among other things, this approach may help to remind law students of what they know but easily forget - that what they have already learned about the law in their other classes is not inevitably alien to the qualities of literary writing and analysis. In that way, the course is not an effort to re-educate law students by illustrating passions and qualities that are presumptively absent from the rest of law school, but is instead designed to show how legal modes of thought are sometimes already present in literary texts and vice versa. To that end, my syllabus combines literary readings, literary criticism, judicial opinions, and legal scholarship. These materials are a work in progress, and I welcome suggestions concerning new readings and new juxtapositions of literary and legal texts and scholarship.

Always the Tragic Jezebel: New Orleans, Katrina, and the Layered Discourse of a Doomed Southern City

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Consider the following narrative: Just before the disaster hit New Orleans, authorities urged every able citizen to leave at once. Those with means fled to safer ground outside the city, while the recalcitrant and the poor stayed behind. Then, almost immediately, the disaster struck, spawning terror and chaos and sending city leaders scrambling for a plan. They sealed of all the roads and waterways and forbade anyone to enter or leave New Orleans without a pass from the governor. Officials in the outlying parishes had orders to shoot anyone who crossed the line. This probably sounds to many people like Katrina's harrowing collision with New Orleans in 2005. It is, in fact, the second half of the 1938 Belle Davis film, Jezebel. A Canal Street patrol the week after Katrina Department of Defense photograph by Sergeant Michael J. Carden, U.S. Army. Consider the following narrative: Just before the disaster hit New Orleans, authorities urged every able citizen to leave at once. Those with means fled to safer ground outside the city, while the recalcitrant and the poor stayed behind. Then, almost immediately, the disaster struck, spawning terror and chaos and sending city leaders scrambling for a plan. They sealed off all the roads and waterways and forbade anyone to enter or leave New Orleans without a pass from the governor. Officials in the outlying parishes had orders to shoot anyone who crossed the line. And authorities in the city began transporting everyone who needed help to a centralized location to the west--a place where recovery would prove harder, not easier. Gunfire and smoke fouled the night air as armed police guarded the more affluent neighborhoods. Search and rescue teams painted eerie symbols on the doors of houses so the dead could be counted and collected later. Compounding the tragedy, it was clear from the outset that none of this would have happened if the leaders of New Orleans had heeded warnings about the city's shoddy infrastructure. Because they didn't take proper steps to avoid it, a disaster of this scale had become inevitable. This probably sounds to many people like Katrina's harrowing collision with New Orleans on August 29, 2005. It is, in fact, the second half of the 1938 Bette Davis film, Jezebel. Set partly in 1853, Jezebel fictionalizes the yellow fever epidemic that devastated the city in that year. The last time I had seen this film before Katrina, I was still living in New Orleans, my home for eleven years until 2004. But when I showed it to my Southern Literature seminar in Virginia just two weeks after Katrina, the scenes I had forgotten surprised and frightened me. At the time, I had two close friends staying with me--New Orleans natives who had evacuated the city for the first time in their lives. So I went to the screening of Jezebel hoping for a little Hollywood escapism. Instead, as the epidemic gripped the city, I found myself watching a black-and-white reenactment of what I had just witnessed on the 24-hour news. This seemed more than mere coincidence. But how can an almost seventy-year-old film, sensationalizing an event eighty-five years prior, so accurately reflect the details of a present-day disaster? As I watched the film wind to its conclusion, I began to realize: the film wasn't depicting something analogous to Katrina as much as it was almost predicting Katrina. For in both cases, Jezebel and the media coverage of 2005 construed these tragic events as the inevitable results of the actions (and inactions) of the city and the people of New Orleans during the time leading up to these events. In hindsight, even close hindsight, New Orleans--and in Jezebel's logic, the South as a whole--must hold responsibility for the terrible things that befall it. The post-Katrina discourse of a perpetually doomed southern city evokes a myth that suggests a pattern in which New Orleans will succumb to tragedy over and over again. …

Helicopters, Jigsaws, and Plaits: Revealing the Hidden Language and Literature Curriculum

In the United Kingdom, programs that allow students to study both English literature and English language (such as Combined BA, but also a number of other English degrees) are increasingly popular with applicants for a number of reasons, including the joint English language and literature A level, the marketing of such degrees as a pathway to a teaching qualification (a response to widening participation, introduction of top-up fees, and employability agenda), plus a belief that these subjects complement each other. For pedagogic reasons, and increasingly for employability reasons as well, the language and literature subject teams at the University of Central Lancashire hold that their third-year students should be given the opportunity to use classroom activities and assessment to reflect on their program of study (in ways that move beyond describing what they did in previous modules) and to articulate the skills they have developed as students of language and literature (in a more meaningful way than in merely generic and general terms). This core module, named the English Language and Literature Seminar, was designed largely to distinguish the BA in English language and literature from language and literature studied on the Combined Honours Programme. Its aim is to provide “a focus on the interface between language and literature,” as well as to enable students to compare and reflect critically on the underlying assumptions and intellectual structure of their studies of language and literature at earlier stages of their program and to relate this to the historical development of language and literature as academic subjects. As a tutor for the last three years, I have increasingly conceived of this seminar as an opportunity to expose the hidden curriculum of the language and literature program and to find out from students how they experience their degree and the relationship between these two interrelated yet often quite specific disciplines.

Redescribing Christian Origins

Redescribing Christian Origins, edited by Ron Cameron and Merrill P. Miller. SBLSymS 28. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature; Leiden: Brill, 2004. Pp. xvi + 539. $49.95/$235.00. ISBN 1589830881/9004130640. This is a rather unique and fascinating volume. It contains not only papers delivered over three years of meetings of Society of Biblical Literature's Seminar on Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of Christian Origins but also some very honest, heart-searching reflection on results of this, its first phase of operation. The project has been an attempt to offer a different (that is, a historically more reliable) account of Christian origins than that provided by canonical traditions, book of Acts in particular. Acts gives only one version of story, a version that strains credibility beyond endurance. The documents and Gospel of Thomas provide evidence of a different story, one not focused in Jerusalem and without reference to a kerygma of cross and resurrection. The task, then, is to rediscover Christian origins that lie behind these documents, implication being that there was no single origin of Christianity but multiple origins and that a more responsible historian must reckon with emergence of diverse Christianities. The theoretical basis is that texts are juncture of myth making and social formation, so that careful scrutiny of them from that perspective should provide details that go to make up alternative stories. Throughout published essays, discussions, and reflections, influence of Burton Mack and Jonathan Z. Smith is frequently acknowledged and is repeatedly evident. The first stage (when project was still a Consultation and not yet a Seminar) was to gain a clearer perception of community, or Galilean Jesus Association, Willi Braun prefers. The assumptions already at this point are rather worrying: is a literary document whose contents and full extent are clear; it emerged in a series of at least three chronologically successive compositional phases (with due acknowledgment to John Kloppenborg); from content and character of a Q community can be read as an increasingly self-conscious and fairly sophisticated research collective (p. 48). Moreover, compositional phases allow such a mirror-reading not only for a whole but also for pre-Q^sup 1^ phase well three compositional phases (p. 83) and even for Q's opponents (p. 71). This mirror-reading gives the virtually unavoidable conclusion that Q^sup 1^ and certainly a whole represent intellectual/scribal of people who had both competence and means for such labors and strongly suggests that document Q^sup 1^ was work of a social group from ranks of an urban retainer class of middling status, a Galilean small-town scribal intelligentsia (p. 57). William Arnal, to whom link between and village scribes is largely indebted, elaborates social situation behind compositional stages of Q: in particular, that Q^sup 1^ was intended to address relative loss of status among village scribes (what Braun describes the burden of alienation and deracination [p. 63]), an intention that failed because persons in question had lost too much authority and were unable to exert sufficient influence to halt further loss (p. 84). I know that hypothesis, or rather hypotheses, were being taken read by Consultation and Seminar, but I do wonder whether they provide a sufficiently secure and substantial basis for Seminar's undertaking. The content and extent of are not clear. The assumption that a Q^sup 1^ not only can be discerned but can be confidently regarded a single, coherent document is most contentious. And suggestion that any early Christian assembly had only one document (or nothing more than some collection of Jesus' sayings) and that character of community/congregation can be read off from that document/collection demands a lot more self-critical appraisal than it has so far been given. …

Ethnic identity and Chicano literature: How ethnicity affects reading and reading affects ethnic consciousness

This article interrogates the impact of readers’ ethnicity (Latino and non-Latino) on meanings crafted from Chicano literature. This article addresses the effect of Chicano literature on ethnic identity and worldview formation. The data source is participant observation and interviews with eighteen students in a college-level Chicano literature seminar in the United States. Latino students found that the literature spoke to their experience as Latinos, inciting a sense of membership in a community that merits inclusion in a college course. This connection with the literature transmuted into ethnic validation for nearly all Latino students. Non-Latinos, hindered from relating to the course content on an ethnic level, discovered alternate entryways into the texts that allowed for identification on other particular levels. Non-Latinos ascertained how ethnic distinctions partially shape human experience and that this understanding is critical to cross-cultural appreciation and empathy. Non-Latinos additionally perceived that a common humanity tunnels beneath ethnic difference.

Spaces for Voices: A narrative of teaching outside our disciplines

In this paper, we discuss an experiment that we conducted in our teaching practice. Without teaching experience in the other's subject (Gardner is a graduate tutor in English literature; Turner is a graduate tutor in psychology) or prior knowledge of the formal curriculum, Gardner taught a psychology seminar and Turner taught an English literature seminar. We videotaped these seminars and, alongside the students we worked with, participated in two inter-personal process recalls (IPRs) facilitated by a third-party enquirer. Our goal was to understand the extent to which teaching without subject knowledge affected the experience of teaching. In the form of a dialogue, we reflect on the thoughts and feelings stimulated by these IPRs, as well as the process of interdisciplinary research in teaching. We find ourselves confronting some assumptions about models of teaching, and questioning the espoused gap between teaching and research.

Planet of the Blind (review)

the youngest daughter amasses a collection of malaria piUs behind her bed instead of taking them. One of the girls is going to die, we learn early on, but it takes her forever to do so. In the long interval before the tragedy, the Prices engage in innumerable misunderstandings with the villagers, involving such issues as baptism, the rainy season, the care of chickens, courtship rituals, and gardening , among others. Kingsolver's previous novels showed an exquisite feeling for family ¦ (both natural and adoptive), a wry sense of humor, and a combatively liberal political perspective. In this novel, however, that last trait is her undoing. Nathan Price, a hidebound fundamentalist (and therefore highly susceptible to stereotyping), is a character as flat as recycled cardboard; onlythewomeninthe family change. Kingsolver's Congolese villagers all have a childlike dignity, whereas most of the whites (other than the Price women) are pictures of covert or overt malice. This is not to say that the novel is without redeeming features. If you can forgive the. political shrillness, you will find The Poisonwood Bible a marvelous rendition of another time and place—a place very difficult to render because it is so isolated from modern civilization, and so fragile. OS) Planet of the Blind by Stephen Kuusisto The Dial Press, 1998, 224 pp., $22.95 Kuusisto's memoir records a personal journey from pathology to peace, beginning with an etiological description of his blindness (retinopathy of prematurity) and moving to an account of a childhood spent sharpening a sixth sense that "fostered the impression in my parents and everyone else that I could see far better than I really could." Because of the stigma attached to blindness, Kuusisto's parents enrolled him in a public school that provided no education in reading braille or using a cane. Kuusisto spent his childhood cultivating his small window of vision, deciding that he would be dimly sighted and normal. The memoir circles around his sense of loss, not so much of the sense of sight as ofa life, so much ofhis having been spent resisting blindness. From a tired kid who used all his energies to cope grew a Fulbright scholar and talented poet. In a visit to the Prado in his early adulthood, Kuusisto was thwarted by guards and ropes that blocked his attempts to press close to the paintings in order to glimpse them. He notes, "Ofcourse, I should be carrying a white cane. But of course, I'm carrying nothing but my sense of not-quite-belonging, which I'm fighting like a man swatting hornets." Even so, Kuusisto persists in finding the humor and irony in his struggles. Arguing with a professor who insists that he has no business taking an English literature seminar, Kuusisto counters, "And I suppose Milton, Homer, James Joyce, they couldn't have taken a course in this department either?" Kuusisto uses his poetic skills to evoke the particularities ofhis world. Certain moments are unforgettable, almost unnerving, such as his description of a bird-watching trip when, rather than interrupt a sighted friend's The Missouri Review · 191 raptures, he pretends he sees through the binoculars: "I am looking into the blue dish of self. My field glasses are trained on my own optic nerves." There are moments, however, when the writing seems overedited, straining for a lyrical line that becomes a stilted non sequitur. Kuusisto's crisis, the climactic point of the memoir, comes when he is in a doctoral program and accidentally slices open his reading eye with a sharp bookmark. At this point he decides to stop fighting his blindness and get a guide dog. From here on the memoir is divided equally between expressions of relief and gratitude and explanations of a guide dog's working relationship with a blind person. In the end, to read Kuusisto's book is to imagine a planet of the blind, where no one needs to be cured. (KH) Breakfast on Pluto by Patrick McCabe HarperFlamingo, 1998, 202pp., $22 In McCabe's latest offering you'll find plenty of the transgressive and the gruesome, two qualities shared with his brilliant and utterly horrifying 1993 novel, The Butcher Boy. Both books were...

The Literature and Medicine Seminar for Medical Students

Literature and medicine (L-M) seminars have been used occasionally in psychiatric training programs, and their use has been sparingly described in the literature. A similar seminar designed for preclinical medical students, employing short stories focused on medically related themes, was offered as an elective in 1991. By asking enrollees about their future specialty choices, the author found that the L-M seminar predominantly attracted those students who were drawn to the "patient-oriented" specialties. In addition, both psychiatric expertise and sensitivity to student concerns and interests were necessary for the seminar to succeed. It is proposed, therefore, that the L-M seminar provides a novel opportunity for psychiatric educators to attract and encourage patient-oriented students to consider psychiatry as a future specialty choice early in their training.

Introduction

Martial offers not only an anatomy of Roman sexuality but an ideology of it.J. P. Sullivan,Martial: The Unexpected ClassicWhat persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology.T. Eagleton,Ideology: An IntroductionJohn Sullivan's last public engagement was to deliver a paper at the third USC-UCLA Seminar in Roman Studies on St. Patrick's day 1993. The subject of the seminar was ‘Literature and Ideology’, and featured Tom Habinek (USC), Carole Newlands (UCLA), myself as moderator, and John himself, who was to speak on ‘Martial and Flavian Ideology’. John's deteriorating condition prevented him from attending the seminar and a timely replacement was found in the person of a fellow ‘Patrician’, Patrick Sinclair of UC Irvine. The seminar was crowded with John's southern Californian friends and colleagues, and the three and a half hours of lively, rigorous, intellectually tough but friendly discourse were very much in the spirit of the missing speaker, whose absence was incontrovertibly the defining presence. I approached the speakers later with the idea of aFestschriftfor John, built upon the theme of the seminar and containing revised versions of their own papers. They warmly agreed. Such is the germination of this volume. To those initial three papers have been added two papers (those of Malamud and Winkler) from the Pacific Rim Roman Literature seminar organised by Frederick Ahl in honour of John at Cornell in August 1993, five specially commissioned pieces from other friends and literary colleagues, and the text of the first J.P. Sullivan Annual Lecture in Classics held at UCSB in March 1994. The aim has been to treat a topic which was becoming central to John Sullivan's own inquiries and to produce a volume with more intellectual and critical cohesion than is often the case with honorific collections. I wanted the result to be as worthy as is possible of the man and the values he embodied in work and life.