Chalk it up to insomnia

When I went to sleep last night--and indeed, when I was unable to go back to sleep at 4 a.m.--I was aware that probably the most important thing for me to accomplish would be to copy the online materials for Nature in Lit from last semester to this semester so I can start making all the changes I will need to make (of which there are many, and all of which need to be done carefully and precisely). I gave up on falling back to sleep at about 6, got up, did some morning chores--and then fell asleep at about 10:30 and slept for two hours. When I woke up, that intelligent thought was completely gone; instead, I was concerned to make some needed changes to the Native American Lit assignment schedule, even though I'm less confident my work on that course will be required. (Seven students are now registered. Thirteen used to be the threshold at which a course would run but I think it's up to about fifteen now....)

The changes to the Native American Lit come because I've been doing more reading as a semi-scholar (my knowledge is woefully out of date), and I realized that there are potential problems in terms of the ethics of teaching "traditional" stories. I've been concerned about the fact of translation, which is an issue, but it turns out to be a minor one. I contacted a colleague from ASLE who knows infinitely more than I about these things, and here's what she said: "It depends on the story. What are your sources? Are they oral traditions? In most tribes, you can tell stories after the first frost. That's hard re: climate change, but roughly October. So, if you schedule them after October, and acknowledge that storytelling season starts AFTER the work of summer, then you are fulfilling an ethical requirement. I wouldn't dwell too much on the fact that they are now written, not oral, given that most stories are now put out by the persons who "own" them or are responsible for them. So if you are using the Heath anthology for example, they have done the leg work of asking the tribe."

The whole aspect of when it is appropriate to tell stories never dawned on me, nor had the need to respectfully ask the tribe whether it would be OK to share their stories. And because of the way I have the schedule constructed, it wouldn't work for me to wait until November to introduce the old stories. I'm essentially working by genre, not theme--and even if I were working on themes, I'd want to mix the old and the new--so, well, a reboot was required for at least a few classes.

Somewhere in all that sleeplessness, I decided to use some memoir and nonfiction as a start to the entire semester. (Another issue is that I want to be able to provide things in photocopy the first week or two, as it usually takes students a while to get the books and, despite my repeated stating that the books are available in the library, they won't read what is not immediately in their hands.) I made a very rapid decision today, picking a mix of older and newer stuff, but even that was a challenge. Some of the memoirs seemed too sentimentalized--although I understand why (trying to persuade a white audience that the old ways had been beautiful and worth keeping)--and at least one extract I read probably was a relatively accurate written transcription of what the author related orally but came across a bit too much as the stereotype of the "grunting redskin." Hard to find that sweet spot of engaging, pedagogically useful, and brief.

So, that was the fix for the "story" section of the syllabus, but then I thought there were probably similar problems around using "traditional" "poetry" (which would have been sung or chanted, of course, and not distinguished as a different "literary form" from the stories, just a different purpose and mode of delivery). So I scrapped that and chose a few additional poems instead.

One benefit to come out of the changes is I am now using more of the expensive textbook than I was originally. Paul makes the argument that owning books is always good, so the expense is worth it, but I don't want to try to make that case to students who probably are resistant to reading in general (and the few who love to read and love books wouldn't need to be persuaded anyway).

At any rate, I did do the work on the Native American Lit class; I even was able to adapt the first two essay topics from when I taught the class five years ago without too much difficulty, so that felt good. And I did at least submit the "course copy" in Blackboard for the Nature in Lit, so it will be ready for me to work on tomorrow. With any luck at all, I'll have something approaching a waking brain tomorrow. For now, I am simply too tired to think about another damned thing. The area around my computer here at home is a chaotic mess of printouts and books and other flotsam, but I can't even make sense of all that right now. I had hoped to last much longer than this, and if I'd slept, I probably could have lasted, but as it is? I am stick-a-fork-in-me done.