Monday, July 18, 2016

Summer School Started Today

Today, the second term of summer school started here at St. Olaf College. I did not teach the first term. Instead, I pursued my interests in Ernest Hemingway. I went to the J.F. Kennedy Library to do research in the Hemingway Collection, and, upon my return, read Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, The Sun Also Rises, and a few of his letters and stories.

Returning to the classroom today felt like embarking on a new adventure, even though the course I am teaching this time, African Literature, is familiar territory. I met my students and talked about myself and my teaching philosophy, and about basic issues of the course, starting with the significance of Africa as the cradle of humanity, language and story telling, which evolved as an oral tradition and later embraced writing.

Before we dispersed, I told the class that I would continue my introduction during our second meeting. I want to reflect on the evolution of written African literature, starting from ancient Egypt and moving into the colonial era, which created the conditions for the emergence of African literature in European languages.

Here are the works I have decided to use this term:

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, The Thing Around Your Neck.
Aidoo, Ama Ata. The Dilemma of a Ghost and Anowa.
Ba, Mariama. Scarlet Song.
Couto, Mia. The Tuner of Silences.
Fugard, Athol. Valley Song.
Mengestu, Dinaw. The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears.

Sunday, July 10, 2016

The Death of a Matador

Today came the shocking news that Victor Barrio, a famous matador, was fatally gored by a bull in Teruel, Spain. Viewers around the world saw the heart-wrenching television footage of the episode. What a sad day.

For me there is something uncanny about the news, coming when I was halfway through reading Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Riseswhich concerns, in large measure, the Spanish tradition of bull fighting. Having traveled from Paris, the characters in the novel have arrived in Pamplona for the San Fermin festival, and the story of the running of the bulls and bull fighting is in progress.

Readers of Hemingway know that he was an avid and very knowledgeable fan, an aficionado, of bull fighting, which served as a focus of his meditation on life and death, and which he held in high esteem as both a perfect exemplar of his ideal of courage and as a window into Spanish culture. He devoted a subsequent book, Death in the Afternoon, to bull fighting.

Reading The Sun Also Rises under the shadow of the tragedy that struck today in Spain intensifies my feelings arising from my reading. The intimations of danger in Hemingway's descriptions of the running of the bulls and of bull fighting assume an ominous aspect, and the coincidence between what I am reading and the tragic event will remain permanently etched in my memory.