English/PoetryOctober 9, 2010
Zehmer Hall
8:30-3:00 p.m.
In the Yukon the other day miners found the skeleton of a lemming curled around some seeds in a burrow: sealed off by a landslide in Pleistocene times.
Six grains were whole, unbroken: picked and planted ten thousand years after their time, they took root within forty-eight hours and sprouted a candelabra of eight small leaves.
—from “Foundlings in the Yukon,” A K. Ramanujan
Poetry readers know well that emotions preserved in words can live again in our own minds and bodies. Love, regret, anger, hatred, pleasure, amazement: the strong feelings of poets take root in readers as we reanimate marks on paper into breath, sounds, and silences. The formal qualities of verse slow us down and speed us up, calibrating the sensory experience of the poem even as we discover what it says. Readers bring their own strong feelings about poetry to the poem (we may be wary, skeptical, even disdainful, as often as we feel open or full of anticipation). How can we practice reading poetry in a way that gives it the light and oxygen it needs to thrive?
The workshop will involve presentations and discussion of practical resources and experiences in the task of overcoming students' frequent resistance or bafflement in the presence of poetry and of putting them in touch with the way it stirs our most powerful emotions and convictions. During the morning three English professors from UVa and Washington and Lee will share various techniques that they use in teaching college undergraduates. Suzanne Keen will demonstrate how her list of Questions to Ask a Poem can open up the apocalyptic passion of a political poem of Shelley's precisely by coming to terms with its formal qualities. Herbert Tucker will introduce his new online program for understanding the prosody of English verse generally. Lisa Russ Spaar, a well-known poet in her own right, will talk about her own long experience guiding students in the writing their own poetry. Gordon Braden will moderate; attendees will be encouraged to share their own experience of what has and has not worked for them. After a break for lunch, Margo Figgins, Curry School of Education Professor and Director of the UVa Writers Workshop for teenage writers, will offer a workshop focused on using the poem as a "mentor text," which involves writing strategies that can return students to the poem as more engaged readers while also motivating the writing of their own poems.
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French Workshop
November 6, 2010
Zehmer Hall
8:30 - 3:00 PM
Francophone Films and Literatures
Francophone films and literatures provide windows onto the cultural experiences of peoples of Africa, America , and Europe who share a common language. Francophone films and literatures offer a platform and perspectives for reflection on global events and trends that contribute to shaping the world. How can these texts and films be used to enhance the teaching of Francophone histories and cultures?
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