Think for 2 mins, Pair for 2 mins, Share for a bit:

We’ve done a lot of close reading of literary critical essays this term (with two more to come next week). What skills have you developed? When confronted with the narrow, specialized form of the critical essay, what are you able to do with it, as a reader, that you couldn’t a few months ago? How might this impact your ability as a writer of your own critical essays?

Two TPSs today: one on research, one on Offill:

What’s your usual procedure in kicking off research, once you have a prompt or a self-generated question or thesis? How did that procedure differ this time, if at all? How did you initiate the search for sources? Did you have to modify your search as you went?

In The Great Derangement, Ghosh points out that the realist novel grew out of an era of great faith in “incrementalism,” the belief that nature evolves in a slow-moving, predictable way. Just as novel plots that rely on sudden, unmotivated decisions by characters or implausible, atypical disasters (like the tornado he experienced in his youth in New Delhi) seem “unrealistic” and cheap, scientific hypotheses that rely on unpredictable, sudden changes (like the once-scoffed-at notion that a meteor triggered the mass extiction of the dinosaurs) were rejected out of hand.

How does Offill’s novel relate to this idea? How do its form and themes engage the questions of what’s “realistic” in the Anthropocene?

This is especially for the little handful of students interested in writing about Offill for the final project, but:

• Check out this winsome longish piece on Offill in the NYT when Weather was published
• And this review of the novel from LA Review of Books, which emphasizes the “prepper” theme in ways that connect the novel to Butler’s work (and especially Clausen’s reading of it)

Despite everything, I enjoyed our discussions today: I love my job and students like y’all are like 98% of the reason why. The work we do together may feel irrelevant or hyper-specialized or not remunerative, etc. at times, but I fervently believe that learning to read rigorously and write searchingly is “equipment for living” (as Kenneth Burke said), and I’m grateful that we can work on it together this term (yes: I’m still learning how!).

Given our discussion of the macro picture today, you might be interested in an interview published in the NYT today between Linda Polgreen and Tressie McMillan Cottom. They’re both great writers, and Cottom is one of my heroes in academia now: her book LOWER ED is an ethnography of students’ lives at the non-selective and often exploitative for-profit colleges that an increasing share of working-class students started to attend in the 2000s and 2010s. She was one of them, and her brilliant analysis exposes the seductions and the cynicism of the model.

She’s smart as a whip about politics, and this piece has Polgreen and McMillan doing a post-mortem of Kamala’s campaign, but also taking a much broader view of where things might go from here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/opinion/presidential-election-2024-democrats.html

It’s paywalled, but remember that all CUNY folk get the NYT for free here.

Take 15 minutes in small groups and designate a “lifeline,” if you have one, to present the group’s findings:

1. What are some differences between Nayar’s approach and Jones’s? What character/s are most central to each critic? What kinds of evidence do they use to prove their case? Do you have a name for the critical approaches in each case? If not, can you describe the methodologies or critical “schools” in play for each?

2. What is the “uncanny”? What theoretical tradition does Nayar draw from in finding “uncanny” elements in Ghosh’s text? How does Nayar relate “uncanny” to “canny” throughout the essay? What are some of the terms Nayar uses to modify both “canny” and “uncanny” (as in the  ____ canny or the _____ uncanny), and how do those modifiers point to important features of his argument?

3. How does the space of the Sundarbans look different, depending on who is doing the looking? What makes the Sundarbans “uncanny” for some, and is this a universal or a variable and subjective attribute?

4. What are some of the strengths and weaknesses of Nayar’s argument? Are there aspects of the novel that the argument ignores or undersells, in your view? Do you find Nayar’s or Jones’s argument more compelling? Why?