Following up the week’s semester reflections series, here are a few upcoming things—teaching-wise and otherwise—I’m looking forward to!
1)
A Return to Honors Lit: I’ve got lots of
upcoming classes of course, including one over the summer (a quick version of American
Lit II) and the usual balance of things in the Fall (a couple First-Year
Writings and another Am Lit II, for example). But one for the Fall semester for
which I’m especially excited is my return to our Honors
Literature Seminar, after a number of years where other folks have taught
that course. I gave brief thought to reinventing the syllabus a bit (something
we should always at least consider I believe), but at the end of the day I can’t
imagine a more relevant Fall 2025 subject than America
in the Gilded Age, and I’m really excited to work with another group of our
amazing Honors students to read and discuss and analyze literary, cultural, and
historical texts from that all-too-familiar era.
2)
A Public Scholarly Website: When it comes to
my own scholarly work, I remain uncertain about when and whether I’ll return to
book-length projects, at least in writing—I’m definitely interested in another “season”
of my podcast, as I discussed in that post (and for which I’d still love
suggestions!). But I’m also excited about another scholarly project, one my
wife and I have begun discussing: creating a public scholarly website that can
host each of our work in multiple forms, but also and especially serve as a
community that can both share others’ existing work and offer folks a place
where they can create and publish new work. Much more on that to follow, but
please let me know, here or by
email, if you have interest, ideas, anything you’d like to contribute to
that evolving conversation!
3)
Two Sons in College!: Do I need to say more?!
Actually, I definitely do, but I’m drafting this post before we have a definite
answer about where my younger
son Kyle will end up, and I’ll add a further note once that’s settled. But
what I can say no matter what is that, sad as the thought makes me in some ways
of course, I’m also really excited to have both boys be part of these
communities and conversations, and to be able to share here all the places
their education and lives take them.
Next
series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What’s
coming up for you?
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