/lit/ - Literature

>>19366101
that's problematic

>>19366101
make sure you choose a 'classic' that was written by a woman, preferably black woman, if there is such

that’s problematic

>>19366101
> I have to turn in a 16-post Twitter thread criticizing a problematic “classic” novel of my choice
Now you realize how academic institutions are just there to teach you propaganda and how to spread it. Instead of writing an essay or presentation, they tell you to go straight to Twitter so that you can more quickly become a social watchdog (puppet).
>>19366107
Lmao this. Mary Wollstonecraft would be pretty funny.

>>19366127
he's fucking with us, it's not real homework... right? right?!

>>19366101
Danger hair one
>isn't it like, totes problematic that Sancho and don quixote's relationship is like, completely queer coded?
Danger hair strawman 2
>the master-servant relationship is fundamentally fraught as an allegory of sexual power. Cervantes must have known this, probably he was in the closet.
Danger hair strawman 1
>thank goddess, I felt like I was going crazy. Feeling hecking valid sisters, thanks. Now if only someone could have made Cervantes feel valid during his own lifetime. Will do a ritual for him #wiccan #witch #outandproud
Danger hair landwhale strawman 3
>heck yeah, the BDSM connotations of the relationship between the out of control master and the submissive servant is an intentionally overlooked element of Don Quixote by the establishment that wants to silence queer voices!

I could do this literally all day.
Imagine if i'd picked a book I'd actually read.

>>19366127
They said that the purpose of the assignment was to familiarize us with more contemporary forms of academically respected writing. I don’t think they necessarily expect me to align with them politically. It’s more so that I can learn to craft more succinct arguments through a medium that a lot of critics are using

>>19366101
Fake and gay.

>>19366159
>They said that the purpose of the assignment was to familiarize us with more contemporary forms of academically respected writing
>more contemporary forms of academically respected writing
>Twitter

>>19366147
I think it was like 2014 or 2015 that we had an American lit assignment to analyze a chapter of moby dick and make a five minute presentation in front of the class. My English classes were like 70% anime obsessed girls (of course they’re all non-binary now, but that wasn’t a thing back then) who did the chapter with Queeqeg or whoever sleeps with Ishmael and they talked about how both characters were gay and in love. Literally over half the class doing the same chapter and all making the same argument. It was the first time I heard the phrase “queer coded” and certainly a harbinger of the worst academic experience of my life over the next couple of years.

By the time we were seniors virtually the only things my classmates had written were fan fictions that were graded as original work. Unfortunately, this bullshit was heavily enabled by a faculty of obese middle aged women who encouraged the weeb-infested English student body to continue consuming nothing but the baby literature/media they were addicted to, and I believe it was so that the faculty could stay in good favor with the students who were clearly going to consistently be comprised of weeaboos for years to come.

The American lit professor who taught moby dick was an exception, though. He sat in the back of the class through like a dozen gay moby dick presentations and looked like he wanted to kill himself.

Going to college was a horrible idea

>photo of myself rejected by hotdudesreading instagram again

>>19366197
Should have gone to the effort of making friends with the mob dick professor.
I regret not bothering to make more connections with the actual academics I dealt with, would have come in handy for trying to get a job after.
Anyway, if OP's assignment is indeed real this should be laughably easy, since you can just make uo any old shit about a book and call it problematic by the standards of twitter discourse.

>>19366210
Yeah he was a cool guy. I won’t doxx him but he writes cool ghost stories now

>>19366101
Just pick Crusoe. That shouldnt be very hard.

>>19366159
you're not joking?
this isn't a meme??

>>19366133
Has to be. This is certainly parody, particularly the 16 post Twitter thread.

>>19366101
Criticism isn't necesarilly negative. Literary Criticism broadly refers to the analysis of a text. Are you sure it's supposed to be negatice criticism?

>>19366133
>he's fucking with us
A abnormal psychology professor said we would get extra credit if we signed up to use a social network website that he created

Anything dealing with colonialism would be an easy win. Just pick jungle book.

>>19366127
Mary Wollstonecraft problematic af and I used think bitches just didn't read her, but I think a lot of feminists did because they're middle class. I am very sure though that feminists do not read Beauvoir. When they recommend her I feel the onset of a stroke.

>>19367183
Every abnormal psychology professor is abnormally psychotic. I had one who turned on a video about starving children and started hysterically crying. Then, when we were obviously concerned, he started screaming “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU”

He got fired. Also I ran into his wife like seven years later and I was wearing a shirt that said “The Richard Gere Museum” and she just said “I love that place” as if she had been to this obviously fictional museum

>>19366101
There's no way this is real. It's a joke, right?

>>19366101
pick the narrative life of frederick douglass. Call it a christian apologist text that promotes white savior complexes. It's really short so you can read it in about an hour.

>>19366101

The implicit transphobia and gendernormative undertones of Finnegan's Wake

>>19367556
i think she was making a joke anon
sounds like you and prof belong together

>>19366107
>>19366127
This.

>>19367556
>I had one who turned on a video about starving children and started hysterically crying. Then, when we were obviously concerned, he started screaming “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU”

>>19367589
You could kind of make the case that HCE and ALP as purely male/female archetypes imply a gender essentialism. Then again Shem/Shaun occasionally swap genders I think.

>>19366197
>My English classes were like 70% anime obsessed girls (of course they’re all non-binary now, but that wasn’t a thing back then) who did the chapter with Queeqeg or whoever sleeps with Ishmael and they talked about how both characters were gay and in love.
They're not wrong

>>19367694
>in love
correct
>gay
wrong

There is nothing gay about a failed uppity black urbanite who detests his own race enough to flee from a church to a bar being fucked by a THICC MAORI BRO.

Men fucking men on the downlow is straight.

Gay is a culture.

>>19366101
Turn in a sheet of paper with I HATE THE ANTICHRIST handwritten on it instead

>>19366147
lmao, I love /lit/

>>19366159
The purpose is to force you to lie in public to reduce your self respect and to socially tie you to their revolution.

>>19366101
>English lit professor
>says I have to turn in a 16-post Twitter thread
Fucking clown world.

>>19366159
>the purpose of the assignment was to familiarize us with more contemporary forms of academically respected writing.
>16 post Twitter thread
Where the fuck did I leave my pitchfork?!

>>19366147
This would be way funnier to me if I didn't just get out of an English class at my university that sounded EXACTLY like this

is university even useful anymore?

>>19368231
Given that you're asking a question without knowing what use or utility denote, or what the university is: yes, yes it is.

>>19368219
Frank Zappa once said that if you want an education you should go to a library and that college or university is only for those who want sexual experiences.
I'm all the more glad I didn't pursue post-secondary education and stuck to working with my hands. I've been able to actually learn as a pleasurable pursuit while evading propaganda and attempts to brainwash.

>>19368231
Absolutely not, unless you want to wageslave.
I am in university, but simply because I am a neet outside of school, and am planning on continuing my education so I don't ever have to work, and this is all going to be funded by govt checks, which of course I will never pay, as there are no real consequences.

>>19368251
What constitutes a system of knowledge?
What's a domain of knowledge?
How do you establish and adequate system of verification of content within a domain?
What is a discipline (history, organisation, function)?
How do you determine whether a discipline is healthy?
Which disciplines are currently healthy?

There are plenty of reasons to go to university, none to do with course content or getting a job. I've surveyed how difficult it is to get this knowledge outside of universities, and your best bet is drinking at the pub all the academics go to.

>>19368330
>I've surveyed how difficult it is to get this knowledge outside of universities, and your best bet is drinking at the pub all the academics go to.
So you go to the library AND the pub.
Funnily enough it's still bound to be easier on the wallet.

>>19366205
You’re hot to me Anon <3

>>19368365
It will be easier on the wallet. Most people don't have the dedication to read in the library or talk seriously in the pub.

Then again undergraduates don't do their readings or contribute in tutorials.

>>19368330
>I've surveyed how difficult it is to get this knowledge outside of universities
Just because you need someone to hold your hand doesn't mean others do as well; you can easily look up syllabi from various university courses in order to build up a reading list. Even if you're officially enrolled 90% of what you get out of a given course depends on you anyway--the other 10% is getting along with whoever is marking you so you can parrot your way to a decent mark (notice that this has nothing to do with your own intellectual curiosity and you can't expect to be rewarded for creativity by the vast majority of TAs you're going to have to deal with). University has been reduced to an extended sleepaway camp toward the sole effect of maintaining the pretenses of a privileged class of midwits who can gab about a shared experience while they work service industry jobs that have nothing to do with whatever bullshit they studied.

>>19368460
>Then again undergraduates don't do their readings or contribute in tutorials.
Exactly the same reason I don't think public schools are something every kid should go to, those who want to learn will, those who don't, won't. Which is something anyone who's ever been to high school knows.

>>19367694
Not uncommon for a bunch of cold miserable pricks to cuddle in bed, it’s usually done out of necessity, heard some marine talk about it once, it’s not really done out of any homosexual or erotic desire

I took some pretty cool classes in college from professors who encouraged you to have smart readings of stuff and who chose novels off the beaten path of stuff. Like for American lit 1945-present, I had to read:
John Steinbeck - A Russian Journal
James Baldwin - Notes of a Native Son
Flannery O'Connor - The Violent Bear It Away
a bunch of poems by O'Hara, Ginsberg, Lowell, Rexroth, Di Prima
Norman Mailer - Armies of the Night
Joan Didion - Play it as it Lays
William Gibson - Neuromancer
some Amy Hempel and Raymond Carver stories
Brian Turner - Here,Bullet

>>19366101
Pick some faggy greek poet (preferably lesbian) and say it's anti-trans.

>>19368469
>Just because you need someone to hold your hand
My family were institutionalised, so Hegel at the table was basic. It isn't about hand holding, it is about being public humilitated and beaten down when you advance an unsustainable position. As I noted: a pub full of scholars is a suitable substitute.

>90% of what you get out of a given course depends on you
correct
>he other 10% is getting along with whoever is marking you so you can parrot your way to a decent mark
incorrect. You're still viewing the institution as a stamp on your job passport. The other 10% is getting meaningful review of your pre-disciplinary (undergraduate) and attempted disciplinary (post-undergradute, see Australian honours, etc.) conducts.

>expect to be rewarded for creativity by the vast majority of TAs you're going to have to deal with
Undergraduate work isn't about originality, but about attaining disciplinary competence.

>University has been reduced to an extended sleepaway camp toward the sole effect of maintaining the pretenses of a privileged class of midwits who can gab about a shared experience while they work service industry jobs that have nothing to do with whatever bullshit they studied.
I know you travelled through time from Oxford in the 15th century, but don't make it so fucking obvious.

Next tell me about how the university in Paris demands ideological conformity behind what is effectively state appointed political theologians. Just like in the 15th century.

You need to work on this joke. If you're not talking about how Town put a Crossbow Bolt through Gown during the last drunken examinations riot you're not really contributing.

>>19368501
High schools, since the 1910s, and except for gymnasium-model or type schools, are centres for training in labour discipline; and a chance to feel up some tit while you're way too horny.

>>19368522
All those texts are canon. Canon is broader than you think it is.

>retards can't even tell what satire is even after multiple posts

>>19366147
I can imagine a mildly ogre-ish lesbian tweeting this. I can smell their fucking kombucha breath as they keep interrupting a small group discussion. I can feel the stomach bursting out of their skinny jeans rubbing on my back as they go to take a liquid vegan shit.

Bro, here. Write it on Great Gatsby and its portrayal of women. Bam. Here:
https://www.ukessays.com/essays/english-literature/the-great-gatsby-a-misogynistic-tale-english-literature-essay.php

just steal these talking points and quotes.
Prof will eat it up.

Each tweet cant be over 280 characters. So you won't even be writing over like 5k characters.
This homework is laughably easy. This is for COLLEGE?

>>19368549
>getting meaningful review of your pre-disciplinary (undergraduate) and attempted disciplinary
Sure, and beauty pageants are about character. Convince yourself however you want too and I'll just respond by pointing out: opportunity cost.
>Undergraduate work isn't about originality, but about attaining disciplinary competence.
That's all academic work and competence is defined by echo chambers and journals no one reads.
>Oxford in the 15th century
No, it started with Cambridge in the early-mid 20th century. I hope your degree isn't history/education.
>blah blah blah [strawman] blah blah
Replication crisis...also Sokal Affair.
>You need to work on this joke.
It made you seethe and it wasn't a joke--the truth hurts.

Aside, I noticed you had nothing on building your own reading lists based upon readily available syllabi. I guess having your hand held at sleepaway camp didn't pay off.

>>19368549
>I...I got a degree and...and I learned valuable career skills babysitting 20 year-olds as a TA! You can't just...read on your own! You can't just...criticize academia! Education is a value in itself and I only know that because I'm educated! I have a degree! YOU NEED PEOPLE LIKE ME! I'M THE FUTURE!
>[goes back to grading 40 papers on why "x" is a social construct and dredging sources for his paper on embodied otherness at the intersection of gender fluidity and race in the work of Chaucer]

>>19368629
>and beauty pageants are about character.
You seem to be interested in the pageant, I am interested in being a slut with character. This is a case of different interests.

>That's all academic work and competence is defined by echo chambers and journals no one reads.
Remember how small the criteria of "originality" is in "original research" from your doctoral seminars? We're both right.

>No understanding of the history of the University.
Your loss, mine to continue talking with you regarding 700 years of the same shit in different clothes. Its your loss if you don't get the joke.

>Sokal
Targeting a ludicrous unpeer-reviewed journal?

>Syllabi
I've written too many of them to bother. Most of the Syllabi are only useful for their further reading lists and essay questions. These days both are locked behind pay-walls as the only useful parts of the course. Down the pub ask the academics how to identify "review-articles" in your discipline of interest: (usually titled "Review Article:" in the major journals). You use their bibliography as your reading list, and their statement of the state of debate as your course guide. Essay question access is harder, and getting real marking harder still. Learning to form meaningful essay questions is just as hard. Buy pints for questions, or get the guys at the pub to give you their questions. Marking: by this time you should be well enough loved as a heroic autodidact that you can wedge your way in to getting assessed.

Syllabi borrowing used to be effective up until about 2005 when Universities started pay walling them. Every time I've gone for syllabi recently I don't even get a weekly topic outline to give to the poor working class fuck asking for help.

>>19368676
I got out and work unskilled manual labour and only teach the course I want to for the various communist and anarchist parties in my major city.

You can't read on your own. Have you ever seen an autodidact? They're semi-psychotic.

>rest of your tripe
You ought to know how projection onto the other works mate. I'm sorry for you. See the other voice interloquating for a healthier way to make me eat shit. Yes I know you're both voices.

>>19368696
>See what I did! I took your metaphor and twisted it! I'm so fucking clever! Look how cheeky and clever I am! Also, I totally knew what you're referencing regarding Cambridge and uh, uh...and you didn't get my joke!
>Sokal doesn't count! I can name a journal as a counterexample! That 100% disproves there's any problem with them! (Please don't bring up the replication crisis again...)
>I've written syllabi and you can't just get them online! There are also essay questions and...and [nonsequitor about research for some reason] I go to pubs! I'm a cool academic! Did I tell you I'm responsible for writing a syllabi! I'm important!
Fuck off pseud. Go back to your useless life churning out journal articles no one will read and stop trying to convince strangers on the internet that you're clever.

>>19368750
You seem highly engaged and emotional.

>>19367026
i could see it

>>19366101
Moby-Dick. We all know what the great WHITE whale named Dick represents. It's problematic because the boatful of POC don't succeed in killing him. Maybe if they'd had a few females on board they would have fared a little better?

>>19368750
you're shitting yourself on an internet forum about grad programs you can't get into. which of you is supposed to be the psued again

>>19368704
My degree was in STEM. Also, I don't care about your political circle-jerking with fellow anarcho-communist fags...save it for the lonely boomer retirees you sell your community garden-grown vegetables to at the farmer's market. You can tell them how you let a NEET and his trust fund sidekick from 150 years ago give you a world view.

>>19368770
Why the fuck would someone go to grad school when they already have 6 figure skills alongside the ability to change industry paths whenever they choose?
>University has been reduced to an extended sleepaway camp toward the sole effect of maintaining the pretenses of a privileged class of midwits who can gab about a shared experience while they work service industry jobs that have nothing to do with whatever bullshit they studied.
I stand by that statement.

>>19368782
Claque would be more effective than class, but you can keep class because of the pretenses. I didn't disagree with this iirc because its true. My understanding was we were disagreeing over the best way to substitute a genuine education, my favouring the pub, your favouring a more autodidactic method.

>>19368782
>6 figure skills
LMAO

>>19367952
>falling for a rebooted copy-pasta
holy shit please wait until you're 18 to post.

>>19368794
Then why all the shit about "muh academic experience." There's an honest argument to be made regarding structured learning but it doesn't come from the same place as pie in the sky bullshit about the value of education as offered by colleges/universities.

>>19368795
Learn to code or learn to build. Writers are a dime a dozen and no one will ever publish you anyway.

>>19368823
Because if you don't have access to the pub I'm talking about, the University is the best place I can imagine to learn *inspite* of the University.

I've not ever been defending the value of the University: that was the point of criticising Oxford and Paris in the 14th century. The University has only ever been a geographic space where you can learn if you choose, not an institution which enables learning.

Yes it is more difficult because if you want to get into Honours/Masters/Quals you have to simultaneously do a "fake" degree in public to get access to the post-graduate stream.

My chief pedagogic source was drinking down the pub with fellow students who actually wanted to learn. You don't get in a competitive argument where you both go back and read holocaust theory to win a pint bet if you're an autodidact. It was easier in the mid 1990s to find people who'd bet beers over points of scholarship at a top 200 university in a cheap city.

I've not seen any communist party, hobbists, pub or network reproduce access to a library, combined with access to reading lists, combined with access to people who actually care about knowledge. That is: there is no real option other than to create something new by yourself, hopefully with some youthfully skinny eager to please people to fuck and dump nearby.

If you've got a better idea of how to set up a learning network for 19 year olds post it, because if The University is the only hope to find such a thing, a lot of people are going to be disappointed as we know.

>>19368844
But the thing is the vast majority of people in post-secondary aren't going to take advantage of the opportunities it offers. Given that, you could see common ground between a given gifted student who may do so and someone who is able to educate themselves using resources on the internet (it's extremely easy to find textbooks and other course materials online and it doesn't take very much to produce a reading list for any given subject--you can see evidence of the latter in the overlap between courses offered in a given discipline at varied institutions). Also, I respect your opinion more now but I'd have to point out your elitism regarding fellow company--which is a fairly common hubris among communist ideologues--isn't well-founded. Sure, in theory university campuses are a breeding ground for intellectual comradery but in practice you'll find one meaningful student group for every dozen+ that are merely social outlets with an academic pretense.

So, I guess I'd say that the "value" of university really just boils down to getting letters after your name. You need them in order to have any chance at a decent career that doesn't involve a trade. There are still opportunities available to a certain class of student who takes it upon themselves to seek them but that doesn't mean the same type of person can't work things out on their own according to their personal intellectual interests. Fuck, MIT basically lays out their courseware for anyone to take advantage and even shit like Khan academy can offer you a pretty solid background in basic STEM-related shit. Certain graduate programmes are better than others (especially if you're involved in research) and having a mentor is useful--but that doesn't mean one can't educate oneself and must therefore pay into the academic structure. That's just reverse justification for a life choice, be it personally beneficial or otherwise, and pathetically elitist.

>>19368921
>But the thing is the vast majority of people in post-secondary aren't going to take advantage of the opportunities it offers.
Concur.
>textbooks and other course materials online
Humanities is discussion dependent, and complex response (essay) dependent. The pedagogic purpose of tutorials is to develop argument in small (<5) groups. Yes tutorials don't work like that but you can taste part of it. Most of the learning is around the reactions of chatting about it, or the internal reactions of producing a non-original argumentative response. It is next to impossible to find this outside of the University, versus improbable to find it inside.

>but in practice you'll find one meaningful student group for every dozen+
Agree. But the only place I've found where people can find that is inside the institution. Outside it is again impossible. And the possibility in both cases is *despite* the institution not because of it.

Fuck if communist parties actually provided it I'd be suggesting them. But they don't. And they only did manage to do so 1890-1970. And from 1930-1970 they had problems with bias.

>So, I guess I'd say that the "value" of university really just boils down to getting letters after your name.
You're interested in winning the tit show.
I'm interested in having good character.
Neither one is going to get us a decent husband.

>in order to have any chance at a decent career that doesn't involve a trade.
You do realise we're talking about humanities degrees? A BA does *not* give you a decent career *at all ever.* Secondary teaching is not decent. Law is not decent. Academia is not decent. Government administration is not decent. Corporate middle management is not decent.

I have a better job as an unskilled manual labourer relying on quirks of character than knowledge. Now admittedly I learnt my quirks by myself at University through self-discipline. But the Fine Artist learnt them at art college. And the single mum learnt them with her tit bleeding. And the security guard learn them looking the otherway while criminal activity occurred. And only the fine artist is capable of a conversation going to the guts of scholarly issues. The others are surfacient because of their autodidacticism. (Pretty good surfacient, they're not dumb).

>in basic STEM-related shit.
HASS+T doesn't work like STEM+M. You can't pick up a textbook and a problem book in HASS+T. Go talk to someone from +T (Theology) who has read the bible alone without a priest or seminarian. Ask them about their "unique insights" into Christ. That lack of society of knowledge is why they believe in polygyny, immanent apocalypse, and the need to smash German Imperialism in 1534.

I don't care *where you find the chats for HASS+T* but you can't learn HASS+T without the chats. There are no problem books. Our problems look like "intentionalism versus functionalism: towards a new synthesis."

HASS ain't STEM.
Now I've gotta suck my wife's cunt, bbl.

>>19368558
Now I'm aroused.

>>19368844
I mean here we are on /lit/.

I did a science degree and half of it was making faggoty posters for "scientific communication" to convince grandma that climate change is real
people are fuckin gerbils

>>19366101
If this is the real deal, you should go with Venus in Furs. Then post the screenshots here

>>19366101
>a 16-post Twitter thread
The funny part is, I can't tell if this is a joke or something professors actually assign these days

>>19369116
I wouldn’t assign it. It sounds difficult to mark. Now a group exercise group assessment assess another group exercise yeah.

>>19367556
Based SpunkCity listener

>>19366101
>turn in a 16-post Twitter thread criticizing a problematic “classic” novel of my choice
Do Western universities really?

>Contemporary lit professor says I have to make a post about a book of my choice on Reddit and get at least 50 upvotes

>>19369018
/lit/ is a perfect example of the inability to produce the conversational environment required for pedagogic purposes. We're both educated and have mutually identified by conflict. Have you ever seen pedagogic responses like, "Nice idea, but your argument isn't supported by evidence because..." or "I'll go away and read that and see if it allows you to claim what you say you want it to mean..."

nope.

Shit, I've seen Browning cited numerously on the history of the East, and nobody brings up Ordinary Men, instead they stick with their fantasies from primary school or World At War's last few episodes. You know the episode.

Or, for that matter, the few memes we do have about deeper analysis of standard texts are viewed as *memes* not actually as readings that need to be simulated to understand how hostile reading, for example, works. What is it to be able to say that He rapes his wife, Edith, with evidence?

>>19366101
Please tell me this isn't a thing

>>19369640
>Have you ever seen pedagogic responses like...
Yes I've seen the first many times. The second as well even, though I've never seen it's successful completion. Oh I guess I've seen some protonmail address exchanges so maybe it happened. I have been a part of, or read arguments here then gone in to read the referenced materials and returned to stay a new thread on my readings, probably not with the same anons but maybe. And likely others do the same. You get out of it what you put in.

>>19367183
>abnormal psychology
>this pic
Begone weirdo/demon/whatever you are

>>19370623
Great books is a political meme run by a small bourgeois who got a lot of cash and thinks that his degree should be everyone’s. they’re good books but it’s a meh degree.