I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about this from CAST any minute, but the final schedule is out (which I had a hand in personally delaying–sorry everybody!) for the rest of Faculty Development Week (aka Faculty Summer Camp) taking place at HWC from 9 to 3 this Wednesday through Friday (as in tomorrow).
I also wanted to highlight one of the sessions (MINE!) and give a little more info about it.
On Wednesday, Kamran and I are bringing back our Great Books Discussion (by popular demand…well more specifically demand from Jackie Cunningham which is enough for me since she brings enough enthusiasm for five or six people at least). This year we’ll be talking about Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and probably be doing a little meta discussion about the Great Books Shared Inquiry Approach. That will happen at 1pm in room 1046.
If you’ve read it before and remember the whole thing, that’s great and you should come! If you’ve read it, but don’t remember it real well or never read it but, either way, have about six hours to read tonight, then click on the link above and read the whole thing–you’ll love it! If you’re in some other category, check out this summary (read or skip those first two or three slides as you wish):
Then read the section that seems most interesting to you! They’re all pretty short (20 to 30 pages) and pretty straight forward, colloquial, really. We won’t cover them all, most likely, but they’ll all be relevant to whatever we talk about, I’m sure. Even if you don’t look at anything but the summary, you should still come if you’re interested. Better, though, if you read a little.
My recommendations, if you can’t decide, would be to try Chapter 1 and focus on her project and methods, or maybe try Chapter 2 for a look at the cultural domination and institutional sexisms of then (and now?), but my personal favorite is Chapter 3, featuring the thought experiment of “Shakespeare’s Sister.” Chapters 4 and 5 offer some interesting literary criticism on Jane Austen and on (the fictitious Mary Carmichael) respectively, and the last chapter focuses on the claim that literature of genius requires a non-fragmented, fully integrated and fully androgynous mind, “a marriage of opposites,” freedom and peace, which is to say that the last chapter opens up some interesting questions about Great Literature, Sex/Gender, and the relations among them.
The main thing is that you bring your interests, your curiosity, your prior knowledge, and your willingness to share all of the above.
Can’t wait!
The Harold Lounge 