Sunday Afternoon Potpourri: Home Stretch Edition

We have two weeks of class left this semester, followed by finals, with Commencement on 14 May. It’ll be the first one I’ve attended in a couple of years, as the college attempted to reduce indoor crowds during the height of COVID. This year, for the first time in my career, the plan is to hold the ceremony outdoors at the stadium. The downside of this will be that I’ll be wearing the Hefty Bag that is my academic gown on a South Carolina morning in May. I may request that we get the vapor coolers our football team uses and aim them at the faculty. But we’re not there yet.

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Two of my classes this term were small, so I’m hoping Gradeapalooza will be milder than usual this time around (he said, knocking wood). I’ll make up for it this fall, with three freshman-level classes (two FroshComps and an inquiry class on conspiracy theories), along with an upper-level course in contemporary/urban fantasy and magic realism. We’re expecting a pretty sizable incoming class, so the classes aimed at freshpeeps will likely be at or slightly above cap. It’s not nearly as bad as it once was — when I got here, Mondoville’s cap for FroshComp was 25, and these days it’s closer to 15 or 16. But it’s still a lot of Freshman writing to evaluate. Ah, well — beats selling tires and batteries.

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For years, I’ve included the following text in every syllabus I use:

PLEASE NOTE: THIS COURSE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN ENDORSEMENT OF ANY PARTICULAR CRITICAL/POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE. YOUR INSTRUCTOR MAY AGREE WITH ANY, ALL, OR NONE OF THE IDEAS EXPRESSED BY THE ARTISTS AND SCHOLARS WE EXAMINE, AND IF HE ACTS AS IF HE DOES AGREE, HE MAY BE FAKING IT.

YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO AGREE WITH ANY OF THESE WORKS OR SCHOLARS. YOU ARE, HOWEVER, REQUIRED TO REGARD THEM WITH RESPECTFUL ATTENTION. IF YOU DISAGREE WITH THEM AND CAN BACK IT UP WITH REASONED ARGUMENT AND EVIDENCE, COOL. IF YOU DISAGREE, BUT CAN’T BACK IT UP WITH REASONED ARGUMENT AND EVIDENCE? TOUGH BREAK – GET A HELMET. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE COMFORTABLE.

At the very least, I figure none of my students can reasonably claim they weren’t warned. (Granted, the odds of their reading the syllabus aren’t great, but that’s on them.)

In any case, I figured this was just part of my antediluvian approach to pedagogy, along with things like lecturing as a primary form of course delivery. But a couple of things have happened in recent months that made me raise my eyebrows a bit.

A former colleague of mine is now the head of a high school for exceptionally bright kids in another state in the Deep South. She reached out to me some months ago, asking me if I could pass her the boilerplate above. Apparently, many of her faculty members were terrified of saying something to which a student might take offense, with the tar-and-feather reaction that often makes the news these days. In the interest of instilling some spirit in those teachers, she passed my caveat to them, mentioning that I’ve used it all along. She told me later that some of her faculty hadn’t realized that this was an option. When she told them I’ve been including that since at least 2007 (and I think before that, but who the hell wants to go back and look? — Prof. M), jaws dropped. Good enough, say I.

Another data point emerged last week. I had to endure got to participate in post-tenure review this semester — a relatively new development here at Mondoville — and as part of that, I had to submit recent versions of my syllabi. I did my thing and promptly forgot about the whole business. However, I was startled the other day when a colleague from another department (who is on the post-tenure review committee) stopped by my office to tell me that 1) he adored that section of the syllabus, and had posted its ultimate line (properly attributed, thank you) both on his office door and just inside the door to his classroom. Now, this particular prof is one of the few who have been here longer than I have, but he’s a rather beloved member of the faculty, so if he’s endorsing my boilerplate, maybe there’s some hope?

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I got Pfizer #4 on Thursday, so I’m as fully dosed against the ‘Rona as one can get these days. Other than a bit of soreness in my shoulder (which could just as easily been a bit of chronic bursitis — that happens with drummers) and a touch of fatigue, I didn’t notice any particular ill effect. I’m still hoping for that prehensile tail, though.

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My film class watched Touch of Evil this past week, and last night I watched a documentary I discovered a few days ago: 2014’s Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles. Earlier in the week, my class and I watched a subtitled German documentary of Billy Wilder (who made three of the movies we watched this term.) I know I tend to melancholy in general, and the loss of a dear friend this week didn’t help a bit, but seeing these two remarkable artists being doomed to obsolescence late in their careers (and in Welles’s case, often finding his vision thwarted by the system of his era) only served to deepen the gloom. It did, however, remind me that I probably should buy Chimes At Midnight for the next time I teach the Shakespeare course.

Meanwhile, this morning I ran across an article by Steven Whitty, which I also shared with my film kids. In a lot of ways, the article presents my rationale for teaching the course. And as I read it, it reminded me of a point I’ve mentioned a number of times over the years, here and elsewhere.

The late Roger Scruton suggested that while good teachers love their students, great ones love their subjects, and are fired by the determination to make sure that information, those stories, those ideas, survive for another generation. I’m not a great teacher, I don’t think, but I do have the passion to make sure that my kids at least have a chance to learn about Welles and Wilder, or Edward Gorey, or in other courses, E.A. Robinson or the Pearl-poet, just so they don’t have to be imprisoned in the eternal, instantaneous present.

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And with that, I think I’ll close for a bit. But how about some music? I’ve written before about “Mop Top Mike” Markesich’s magisterial Teen Beat Mayhem!, a nearly encyclopedic compendium of ’60s garage rock. I leaf through it on occasion, and there are a couple of things that always attract my attention. One of them is when Markesich (who made trips to the Library of Congress to track down addresses of the songwriters) can’t tell me where an artist came from, and the other is when he describes a track as “crude”, or better yet, “Ultra-crude.” These guys check both boxes. So from Parts Unknown (like a masked professional wrestler), here are The 4th Amendment (not to be confused with Mobile, AL’s Fourth Amendment), with a swinging, folky little number from April of 1968 called “Whiskey Man” (no relation to the Who song.)

See you soon!