Intro
I wrote my teaching philosophy largely with composition in mind. But as I read through this very lit focused reading pod, I think much of my teaching philosophy can be integrated. The great part about covering authors like Beckett is that his work spans SO MANY GENRES. Yeah, I can help students practice analyzing literature and written works, but I can also get them involved in looking at plays, listening to radio plays (the original podcast), or watching films.
The other interesting thing about this group of absurdist authors is that they all focus on some pretty topical political aspects too. It would be so easy to use these books in conjunction with current events and get students to synthesize that way. They are also all concerned with language in some way and I feel like it would be easy to bring in my discussion about who gets to be the master or controller of language—Who gives language power? Addressing these kinds of topics should help students better define their own language and learn how to tailor their language in such a way to maximize it’s power in the real world.
Finally, I’m a big proponent of multi-modal projects and allowing students to practice their language in a genre of their choosing. The one absurdist literature course I took (an independent study course) allowed us to create a multi-modal project of our own for our final project. I chose to write a radio-play and to this day that radio play is one of mt favorite and most memorable works I’ve produced in academia. Because we would be covering so many genres in this course, I feel like there’s an excellent opportunity here to encourage students to step outside the traditional essay project and try their hand at something new.
My dream is to be able to lead a class on the literature of the absurd. I will say I'm having a slightly difficult time thinking about this course in terms of units, but I imagine starting off with some grounding theory primarily focused on Camus, Sarte, and potentially some Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, hitting a bunch of Beckett, some Kafka, maybe a Russian or two. For the sake of this assignment and the unit I am planning for, I will focus on talking about the grounding theory and some of the Beckett pieces I would want to cover. Beckett is a such a prime choice for this because his works are deeply absurd, but also we can explore the multimodality he has to offer before focusing on the absurd solely as text later in the course. Overall, I want the students to be able to answer, in their own way, "what is the absurd" and I would also love to explore the question "How is the absurd different from nihilism? Existentialism?" I also want them to be able to discuss how the absurd is worked with in different time periods, but that's less of a focused question for them.
My readings:
- The Myth of Sisyphus (and other essays) - Albert Camus https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/16.%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus.pdf
- We will probably talk about all of this and it will be the grounding theory for the course, but especially pages 23 and 24 will inform our understanding of the absurd.
- Endgame - Samuel Beckett
- I can think of few more fun absurd plays, and this one comes with the added benefit of my being able to show them the film version where Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) and Remus Lupin (David Thewlis) are the two actors, so that should excite them at least.
- Endgame, the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT2M9mu8p6Y
- Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett
- I feel like this is probably the most recognizable piece of absurd literature, so we probably have to cover it.
- The Theater of the Absurd - Martin Esslin https://www.jstor.org/stable/1124873
- This is the primary theoretical text talking about the absurd in theater. We will read this alongside Godot/Endgame.
- Embers - Samuel Beckett (a radio play)
- Embers (the radio edition) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRFSAHMaX8U
- Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre - Walter Kaufmann (editor)
- I would use this for some selected readings. This might be for later units in the course, but I want to touch on the existentialism of Kierkegaard and Sartre and the nihilism of Nietzsche so that students can compare each.
I envision this taking place in a higher level undegrad course, maybe grad level as well. As such, yes, I want them to read everything. But the great thing about all of the written works here is that they are pretty short, relatively speaking. Embers is only a few pages, and Endgame and Waiting for Godot are both less than 100 pages. They are also plays, so there's more white space on the page than a traditional piece of prose. I'm not terribly concerned about them getting the reading done. But the other great thing about Beckett is that we have the other modalities we can also assign. If time is truly of the essence, we might watch Endgame together while following along in the book or something. But these other modalities should help to get students involved as well. We will discuss throughout the semester how the texts operate differently between sound and text, stage and book, and screen and page. We will also try to pay particular attention to the ways in which the absurd affects us differently between the different modalities - does the silence of the aural modalities impact us more strongly than the silence written into the words? Do we sense different struggles and rebellions against absurdity between the different modalities?
I think the course would end up being broken up into 3ish units. Beckett up front, Kafka in the middle, and maybe some Gogol and Dostoyevsky on the back end.