Here's what the future holds for 36 lucky freshmen.

Instead of grading the intimidating stack of papers sitting on my desk, I'm thinking about the classes I'm going to teach next semester, particularly the readings I'm going to assign in those classes. This has distracted me all evening, so I feel the need to write about it.

First, here's why I'm thinking about my future classes instead of those I'm currently teaching. Unfortunately for me, I don't happen to be one of those (usually) contented individuals who "live in the present." Most days, from my point of view, the present sucks. But, lest I sound too pessimistic, it is also true that I generally count on the future to bail me out--even though the bailing out hardly ever happens when the future becomes the dreaded present, thus beginning the vicious cycle again. So, I'm thinking about the spring semester because it still exists in the future and is therefore infinitely more interesting and promising than the present. Four months from now I'll be writing a similar blog about fall '07.

So here's what I'm thinking about assigning.

Because I teach "Imaginative Literature and Critical Writing," an introductory literature course, I'm required to include the major literary genres: poetry, drama, and fiction. However, I do get to pick the subject matter for my classes, which means I can torture my students with the stuff that I love. Last time I taught this course, I decided to be gutsy and join the course cluster entitled "Oppression, Resistance, and Protest." I made my students read literature about how few rights individuals around the globe--particularly in America--actually have. Included were classics such as Miller's The Crucible and Steinbeck's The Pearl, but I also decided to take a few risks with Kushner's Angels in America and Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars. The class turned out to be...interesting, especially since there were quite a few conservative political science majors in the class (dudes in love with their own voices, of course). I don't regret using that topic, but I think I'm going to be a bit more subtle this time.

But not too subtle: a bit of controversy and discomfort can be a good thing in the literature classroom. I think I'm going to start with a brief unit of creative non-fiction, which will definitely include David Sedaris (right now I'm thinking "i like guys" or "me talk pretty one day"), Annie Dillard (probably from An American Childhood), and a healthy dose of modernist expatriate memoirs. Then I may force them to explore the line between fiction and non-fiction with Capote's In Cold Blood. Of course, there will also be fiction by a handful of my favorite writers (John Updike, Flannery O'Connor, and Rosario Ferre, to name only a few). As for poetry, I think I'm going to take a leap and make them read some Eliot (maybe Prufrock? One of the Four Quartets?) but also some of the Victorians he hated, such as Christina Rossetti (Goblin Market?) and Robert Browning. Oh, and a few contemporary poets who pepper the generalist anthologies, for good measure. (Not to downplay the contemporary: I really do like some of it.) Finally, I think I'm going to bring back Angels in America because it's hilarious and forces them to see the world from a very different perspective (and it's set in the '80s, so I get to do my "I love the eighties" lecture). But I'm also thinking about adding Wit and A Doll's House, or maybe something by Tennessee Williams, since I'm preoccupied by Southern literature right now.

Anyway, this is the first time I've thought about the spring, so the list will definitely morph into something else by the time January comes. But brainstorming my future syllabus is SO MUCH better than grading papers that are currently cluttering up my present. And because the pile isn't exactly dwindling (I've been doing any number of unpleasant tasks to avoid it), you'll probably see another blog about future possibilities--in the classroom and out--posted here soon.