School books: Spring 2018 edition part 2

This post is a continuation, chronicling a few more texts my students spent time with this semester!

 I had such high hopes for Dunbar! It's part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series, which asks contemporary authors to retell Shakespeare's stories, and it had strong reviews when released. I thought it would be nice for my students to read something new along with the plays. Unfortunately, this simply isn't well written. The storm language is interesting, but the characters are flat and there isn't much in the way of a plot. I won't be reusing it in future classes.

Lear is my favorite play, but I wonder if I didn't make a mistake in saving it for the end of the semester. My students (the best of my classes, actually) started to burn out on me and our conversation began to get stilted. They did really enjoy the mathematics of Lear losing his knights for some reason, though!

I recently saw a few articles arguing that we should retire Conrad from the classroom, which made me uneasy when I assigned him. I think as long as the racism in the text is addressed, it remains valuable for introducing students to a psychoanalytic reading and to extended metaphor, but I'm open to hearing an argument that will change my mind!

Students love Hamlet. They love the Freudian reading of it (which made me recoil as a freshman), they love the ghost -- they even love the military honors at the end. Always a good time!

I've never become entirely comfortable with teaching Othello. This year, my class split between those who pitied the Moor for being manipulated (seeing him as a tragic hero) and those who hated him on behalf of poor Desdemona. I don't know what this response means, but it was interesting!