[Englecturers] Results of yesterday's meeting

Sun May 8 11:21:08 PDT 2005

Hi Gray.  I have a simply insane schedule this quarter so I've not been able to attend any discussions, but I do have a question; is Hamlet already dismissed from the 1C list?  I've had my very best luck with that, and it would be a great disappointment to me.  Anyway, if you could let me know I'd appreciate it.

David Hinckley

englecturers at lists.ucr.edu wrote:
Hello all,

Time to update everyone on the 1A/B/C book list following yesterday's afternoon meeting. We have, out of a desire to solicit more feedback, put off making any firm decisions on delisting or new listings until we give folks another chance to speak up in defense of the texts they are using. 

Here's the list of works still in doubt, by class:

1A: Zami
1C: Paradise
1C: Native Speaker
1C: Text Book

Of the books above, two in particular (Zami and Paradise) seem to have little interest. I'd be interested in hearing what people are doing with them -- if anything. Barring a defense of the above from some quarter not hitherto heard from, the above works might well be bumped from the list. We don't want to remove a book that's seeing use, but neither do we want unsightly cobwebs on our bookshelf. 

I will briefly make a comment on Text Book myself, one that seems fairly consistent with what I'm hearing from others: It seems that those of us who are inclined to use Text Book at all only ever use a few pages from it, and so usually we just distribute a handout or assign a reading or two on Reserve from the book. Is that a fair assessment? 

You'll also recall that I distributed some descriptions of texts that might be considered for inclusion on future lists; we have trimmed down the list only slightly. It now includes the following works:

1A: Having our Say
1B: Reefer Madness (this is another book by Schlosser of Fast Food Nation fame)
1B: The Hungry Woman
1C: Rereading America (a reader)
1C: Farewell my Lovely (for use in combination with Devil in a Blue Dress)
1C: In the Belly of the Beast
1C: Cruddy

Two texts seemed like possibly interested additions, but have been put off until an experiment can be made of them: 
1C: Reading Lolita in Tehran (I screwed up and left this one out of the last list; its description appears below)
1C: The Diamond Age 
If others are willing to give either of the above a test drive, keep us posted.

The remaining texts, listed below, were on our "endangered list" earlier, but appear to have been rescued:

Always Running (1A) 
Twilight (1B) 
Medea (1B) 
Tortilla Curtain (1B) 
Heroes and Saints (1B) 
Confessions of a Justified Sinner... (1C) 
Dreaming in Cuban (1C) (Someone at our meeting pointed out that this particular text's author is a professor on campus. Given this fact, and the possibility that interested instructors might be able to nab the author as a guest speaker or visitor to their classes, we thought that we should keep it around a little while longer, in the hopes that it might be able to get better use than it has been getting so far.)
The Dispossessed (1B)

Lastly, here is a description and recommendation of the aforementioned Reading Lolita, a text that I sloppily left out of the last batch of descriptions. At the moment, it does not look as though we will be adopting it, but we'd be interested in input from those who experiment with the work. The paragraph below is in the recommender's own words (not mine).

Reading Lolita in Tehran, A Memoir in Books  

I highly recommend Nafisi’s book Reading Lolita in Tehran, A Memoir in Books (2003, IBSN 081297106X, 384 pages). I found it last spring when I was searching for just the right book to give as a gift to a young relative of mine preparing to go away to college. I thought this suited her, and for the same reasons our students, because it approaches literary analysis from a perspective of examining how books impact the lives of readers. In addition, the topical nature of the setting is relevant and informative as an aid for our students, and all of us, as we seek to better understand a part of the world that has become so integral to our own politics and culture. Even though it belongs most naturally in a 1C class, I hope that we will include this text in our program somewhere, even if the 1C portion of the program is eliminated, because it is so powerful. Given the memoir bent of the book, I think that it could function quite well as a 1A text too. Below, I’ve pasted a review of the
 book from the Barnes & Noble web site (where, by the way, the text is ranked at 95 for B & N sales). It provides a brief summary of the text and a positive assessment of the writing.

Library Journal

Nafisi taught English literature at the University of Tehran from 1979 to 1981, when she was expelled for refusing to wear the veil, and later at the Free Islamic University and Allameh Tabatabai in Tehran. In 1997, she and her family left Iran for the United States. This riveting memoir details Nafisi's clandestine meetings with seven hand-picked young women, who met in her home during the two-year period before she left Iran to read and discuss classic Western novels like Lolita, The Great Gatsby, and Pride and Prejudice. The women, who at first were suspicious of one another and afraid to speak their minds, soon opened up and began to express their dreams and disappointments as they responded to the books they were reading. Their stories reflect the oppression of the Iranian regime but also the determination not to be crushed by it. Nafisi's lucid style keeps the reader glued to the page from start to finish and serves both as a testament to the human spirit that refuses to be
 imprisoned and to the liberating power of literature. Highly recommended for all libraries. [For an interview with Nafisi, see p. 100.]-Ron Ratliff, Kansas State Univ., Manhattan Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. 

Okay, that's all I have for you in this report. Please let me know if you have any strong feelings about the first list of texts above. 

- Gray Scott
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