I wish I'd had a teacher like you and a class like that when I was in high school, Kristin.

What blew my mind was seeing Fishburne in Apocalypse Now and realizing it was him.

or, you know, Pee Wee's Playhouse.

Aw, thanks Susan. I'm proud of the curriculum even though it doesn't always make a lot of sense until you're in the middle of it. I swear it all goes together, though! We talk about the nature of religion and belief and civilization and power and gender politics and good/evil and it all somehow comes together in these books.

I love Luhrmann's R&J, especially once past the first 20 min.

Quine and Brecht. Brecht always claimed intentions far from what the audience got from his plays. You were supposed to have no sympathy for Mother Courage, Galileo was a coward and so on. This really fits Quine's theories about communication, whether Brecht was being truthful about his intent or not.

I really, really wanted to teach The Penelopeiad when I was teaching The Odyssey this year, but just not enough time. I just like the difference in perspectives.

Did you know that Ursula LeGuin's latest book, I think it's called Lavinia, is from the perspective of Aeneas' wife: not Dido (dead Dido, duH) but of the woman her married to found the Roman empire. I haven't read it yet, but I am always drawn to retellings of famous stories from the woman's perspective, even if the perspective is one I don't agree with in all particulars. (Mists of Avalon, I'm looking at you! Although I did love The Firebrand, which is Zimmer Bradley's version of Cassandra's story.)

The Lady's Not For Burning, there's a good play. I have to confess, I've never heard of Carly Churchill.

I do miss formal classes. All the night classes around here are for "useful" things taht will make you more "marketable", because as everyone knows, if it can't go on your resume it's worthless.

but I am always drawn to retellings of famous stories from the woman's perspective, even if the perspective is one I don't agree with in all particulars.

I think The Wide Sargasso Sea was one of the earliest examples of this.

What Vortex Said, re Lawrence Fishburne. Cowboy Curtis, dammit!

I get ND's point about the overteaching of Shakespeare, but only if you're looking at Shakespeare as a dramatist. As opposed to Shakespeare as literary and linguistic foundation. There's no other playwright (or writer of any kind, actually) even close to being as influential as Shakespeare in the latter regard.

You can teach a pretty good literary course just hitting the books which stole their titles from Shakespeare: Pale Fire, Sound and the Fury, Remembrance of Things Past (bit of a cheat as megan and amych will tell you...).

Seems like you could use a lot of Slings and Arrows scenes to teach Shakespeare too. Particularly Geoffrey's take on Ophelia and the outtake "Speak the speech" scene for Hamlet.

I was reading one of my other threads, and one of the people was upset because she and her family are going to a fancy resort in Mexico, and the restaurant does not allow sandals or sneakers. She was upset because she had to buy shoes for her sons (the dress code applies to children as well). I wanted to ask - why are the only shoes they own sneakers or sandals? do they never have to dress up? Or am I crazy?

I used a couple of scenes of Slings & Arrows to teach Macbeth. Worked ok, but the freshmen are a little young to appreciate a lot of the humor. I'm looking forward to using season 1 to teach Hamet to my seniors next year.