Readings: Week 7

Since only some of the people in my blogging cohort are in my book club group, it's a little confusing to talk about readings that some but not all of the folks reading this have read themselves, so this will be pretty general. My book club partner and I are presenting an article from the Chronicle of Higher Ed, but everybody else in my group picked selections of fiction, which is less my reading preferences, especially the sort of metaphorical works-- comics and fairy tales, that we're reading. So my thoughts don't come as easily, since I'm so unfamiliar with these sort of reading materials. So these are just going to be some initial thoughts; with some further conversation in the group I'm sure I'll have more to say.

First, the short story by Neil Gaiman. Most of our readings provide a lot of commentary on gender and gender relations. This story plays with the way gender is traditionally represented in fairy tales (like the other one we read), but the implications are sort of interesting in a lot of unexpected ways.

Next, were four web comics, which had a lot of commentary on gender, art, death, fear, and capitalism. (Think there's anything to discuss there?) I'm not sure what I think of them, but my initial thought is that they present a lot of things in pretty simplistic ways. But I'm open to discussion about the implications of the points the artist is trying to make.

The next reading was the black-and-white comic by a French artist. This one's chock full of commentary on gender and gender relations (and inter-gender relations). The first thing I wondered after reading it was whether the artist was male or female, and how that does or doesn't affect the message. I don't know. I'm also interested in seeing what people's impressions will be of what the societal pressures and constructs underlying the topics discussed are.

The last reading we did was the fairy tale of Donkeyskin. This is not a tale with which I had been familiar before, and I was amused by all the thoughts it triggered. As a history person, I was especially interested in the social and cultural circumstances that led to the origins of lots of the stuff it discussed, and this led me to thinking about similar things for other more well-known fairy tales, including those that are and aren't similar to this one. The annotations provided a lot of really interesting commentary on the recurring theme of gender and gender relations, so it'll be interesting to see where the conversation goes from those topics.

Overall takeaway: I don't have a lot of strong viewpoints on my own when it comes to these readings, though I have a lot of hazy thoughts. But I'm sure I'll have more distinct things to say if I'm in a group and I have other  people's opinions to feed off of. So it's a good thing we're doing book clubs for these!