| Mark Rylance in the Balasco Theater Production |
- ENGL3005 - 16th, 17th and 18th Century Literature
- FILM1002 - Introduction to Film Studies
- HUMN1001 - Digital Culture: Being Human in the Information Age
There are fifteen hours of teaching / contact time plus an assumed additional study time of thirty hours. Excuse me, that's more than my contractual obligations in my last job - than in any full-time job I've had.
There are no exams, thank goodness. But there are going to be as many assessed components as there are weeks in the semester. Maybe more once you count up - by which I mean me by the way - once I count up tutorial participation, tutorial presentations, workshop projects, weekly 'quizzes', obligatory essays and a creative writing portfolio.
Then there are the reading lists. Voluminous is a word that comes to mind. The required Week One reading looks like this (with plenty of 'further suggestions' in case boredom sets in).
- Orhan Pamuk, “My Father’s Suitcase”
- Rilke's “Letters to a Young Poet”
- Helen Garner, “I”
- William Shakespeare, "Twelfth Night" and "Sonnets" (not all of them, obviously)
- Corrigan, Timothy, and Patricia White."The Film Experience: An Introduction". Chapter 1 (Encountering Film) and Chapter 10 (History) plus two screenings
- Nicholas Carr, “Does the Internet Make us Dumber?”
- Douglas Rushkoff, “Narrative Collapse”, from Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
- Genevieve Roberts, “Google Effect: is technology making us stupid?”
Week One!
I must hope the answer to the questions posed by Nicholas Carr and Genevieve Roberts is a resounding "no" or I'm in trouble. Actually, I'm being disingenuous there. I already know the answer: of course neither the Internet nor technology are making us dumber.
But don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about any of the above (no matter how much mock-horror I may suggest). This is exactly what I packed-in my job for. Scary. Challenging. Exciting.
The best decision I've made in years.
Tally-ho.
