Postprint Copy of Years of Teaching Dangerously: Interfacing Thomas Cromwell in Canon and Fandom, Michael Drayton, “W.S.,” and Hilary Mantel

When Sir Thomas Bodley founded the Bodleian Library, he sought to keep “baggage books,” “riff-raff books,” and distasteful literature off the shelves. The question of keeping literature in or out of a library or canon is never simply about literature; it is also about class-based criticism and notions of defending culture and taste against unauthorized popular versions. Teaching dangerously opens the early modern classroom, theorizing it as a type of literary fandom that is both personally engaging and socially conscious: this type of teaching does not forget academic rigor; it remembers human impact, by enfolding scholarship and theory. Putting early modern texts into play alongside contemporary literature and social issues moves learning in unscripted, surprising, and dangerous directions. This article models these dangerous practices by interfacing affect theory with the fandom of Thomas Cromwell as he appears in Michael Drayton’s poem The Legend of Thomas Cromwell, the apocryphal “W.S.” drama The Life and Death of Thomas Cromwell, and Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies. This type of ‘magic’ is not so far removed from J.K. Rowling’s wizardry, and teaching dangerously with affect theory empowers classroom fandom that engages and changes the world as we know it

Excerpt: Concordance A

Excerpt: Concordance A from L. Ringer, ‘A Select Concordance of Some 400 Middle English Texts: A Study of Wycliffite Discourse with Particular Discussion of the Issues of Contemporary Poverty, Pious Practice, Substantive Law, and Anticlerical Style’ (unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of Hull, 2007, Supervisor: Veronica O'Mara)

“With Teeth:" Beyond Theoretical Violence in Gothic Studies

This article collides St. Apollonia’s medieval passion narratives – manuscript illustrations, church screens, and paintings by Francisco De Zurbarán and Carlo Dolci – with A.L. Kennedy’s contemporary short story “Story of My Life” to find out what happens when we move beyond the theoretical violence imposed by traditional approaches to gothic studies

Excerpt: Concordance B

Excerpt: Concordance B from L. Ringer, ‘A Select Concordance of Some 400 Middle English Texts: A Study of Wycliffite Discourse with Particular Discussion of the Issues of Contemporary Poverty, Pious Practice, Substantive Law, and Anticlerical Style’ (unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of Hull, 2007, Supervisor: Veronica O'Mara)

Entangled States: Putting Affect Theory into Play with Nnedi Okorafor and Ann Leckie

Whatever your theory and whatever your fandom, you don’t have to abandon it to do affect theory. This is because affect theory isn’t about telling you which side to pick in an agonistic contest; it’s about finding out what a body can do as it moves with other bodies in entangled states, whether or not we notice them. Affect theory offers more fluid notions of subjectivity, more flexible ways of reading, and the opportunity for research to surprise us in ways that science fiction and fantasy surprise us. These entangled states are like what happens in Star Wars when a pilot jumps from realspace to hyperspace, or in Star Trek when the captain switches from impulse power to warp speed. In those moments everything, including survival, is at stake. I’ve been exploring how affect theory works with speculative fiction, and part of my work includes collecting terminologies and finding ways to describe what affect theory does, in academic writing and in the university classroom. The best ways to describe what happens when we do affect theory come from science fiction and fantasy. So SFF is totally cannon for affect theory. Deleuze and Guattari collide bad B-movies with Virginia Woolf, folk music and bird song, math and literature, physics and art, geology and psychoanalysis, philosophy and speculative fiction, including witches, zombies, werewolves, and vampires. So the sentient spaceships in Nnedi Okorafor and Ann Leckie are right at home. It’s not that anything goes; it’s that affect theory notices things that academics aren’t usually in the habit of noticing

Poetry Study Guide: “The Painter Fabritius Begins Work on the Lost Noli Me Tangere of 1652”

A literary analysis and summary of John Burnside’s poem “The Painter Fabritius Begins Work on the Lost Noli Me Tangere of 1652” (2,570 words

The Silence Between Words: Events of Becoming through Trauma in A.L. Kennedy’s “What Becomes”

Au premier abord, ce qui attire l’attention dans « What Becomes », nouvelle d’A.L. Kennedy, ce sont les multiples traumas, ainsi que les silences pathologiques qui caractérisent ce récit presque sans dialogue. Cependant, une lecture plus approfondie, avec en tête la pensée deleuzienne et les théories de l’affect, laisse entrevoir un futur naissant pour Frank, le protagoniste. En effet, derrière tous les silences presque maladifs, on peut apercevoir les étapes d’un tournant affectif, celui promis par la théorie de Deleuze. Avec les traumas passés et présents, ce qui ressort des épisodes de la soupe, du sang et des pièces invisibles, ce sont un futur (re)naissant et une connexité à travers la capacité du corps de Frank à toucher et à être touché émotionnellement. Bien que communiquer avec d’autres personnes soit toujours difficile pour lui, il cherche à entrer en relation, avec son environnement et lui-même, grâce aux corps, objets et espaces autour de lui. L’évolution de Frank dans « What Becomes » est certes perturbante, mais aussi dynamique ; son rapport aux relations montre que cette évolution s’est faite avec/à travers/au côté de ses traumas passés. (Résumé traduit par Emilie Piarou

Canadian Winter

Abstract rendering: embodied experience navigating gusty winds and snow at -20

Draft Handout on Critical Note Taking on Becky Chambers' A Closed and Common Orbit: Reading 1

This draft handout accompanied in-class discussion and instruction. There are two key objectives: 1) to model the practices of critical note taking, including close reading, connection making, and question asking; and 2) to document the first assigned reading from Becky Chambers’ A Closed and Common Orbit. This handout covers the first three chapters (or through Kindle location 440)

Cigar Box Fiddle 1: Disassembled

Fiddlin’ John Hutchison learned to play on a fiddle made from an Old Virginia Cheroots Tobacco box. In a taped interview he calls it a "cigar box.