Vive le subjonctif ! Qu’il renaisse et s’infiltre dans toutes les langues, ainsi que tout ce qu’il représente. Que le « que » soit la clé.
An introduction to the subjunctive in French
teaching and learning
it’s that time of year again
a very short fable about medievalism, #medievaltwitter, and teaching
(February 2016 – August 2017)
Medievalists struggle with popular misconceptions. This, for example:
And these, which are not Medieval but Early Modern:
From Charles McNamara, “In the Image of God: John Comenius and the First Children’s Picture Book,” in the Public Domain Review; on Comenius’s “Orbis Sensualium Pictus (or The World of Things Obvious to the Senses drawn in Pictures),” 1658.
On textbooks, midterm blues, and other truths of social justice
SYLLABUS PART 3: HELP (2017)
LAST UPDATED: 2017-09-09
(The second general-purpose appendix to any syllabus.)
If in doubt, if you have any questions or worries about anything, please ask!
- this course, your class, and your instructor are a safe space and here to help
- if I don’t know an answer—I’m merely human—I’ll help you to find someone who does
- this is a community of care
SYLLABUS PART 2: THE RULES (2017)
It’s that time of year again. Time for updating the general-purpose appendix to all syllabus for all courses…
LAST UPDATED: 2018-02-15
QUICK NAVIGATION (more…)
This is education
Today is the anniversary of the death of Ken Campbell, anarchist polymath genius.
Reader of everything. Writer. Performer. Creator. Stand up comedian, speculative fictioneer, improviser, paranomasiac, marvelling revelling adventurer in existence.
Public outreach educator and life-long learning experimenter in ways beyond the wildest imaginings of Proper Professionals in these fields before they or these fields even existed. The next time you consider using words like “innovation,” “innovative,” “innovator”: have some respect. Think first. Check with reference to Ken. If philology provides a theoretical meaning, it is Ken who provides—incarnates—a reference-point for lived active practice.
As we academics start the new year, welcome new students, and train new graduate-student Teaching Assistants, please consider giving half an hour of your time to Ken; from whom one can learn more, and more deeply, in that time than in a year’s worth of Professionalisation Training Programmes by Proper Education Specialists.
I miss Ken.
I love this video and hope you do too. May watching Ken again become an annual ritual, a commemoration to bring in the academic new year.
(TW: Contains death and diddling, and Latin and love.)
Make the essay Montaignian again (2)
This started out as a short post about worrying. It is dedicated to my FREN 220 students who will be sitting their final exam next week, to other students preparing for and sitting exams (notwithstanding amusing attempts to undermine our exam season), and to students more generally. You are why faculty are here. And we are here for you. We worry. We want to help: in respectful support.
Make Essays Montaignian Again
Image credit: Antony Gormley
(TW: includes cannibals, zombies, bilingualism, and other monsters.)
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