Be My Guest

I'm giving a lecture in an English unit later today: I've taught in this unit in the past, though this time I'm just doing the one guest lecture. I think that I'm coming down with the flu that is going around (I'll blame Sanna, despite the fact my sister is the more likely culprit!), but I'm taking drugs and have a box of tissues on hand, which might be enough to get me through the day.

Guest lecturing is a strange position, I'm finding. This lecture, in particular, is a convenient way to think about my development as a teacher and lecturer; it was my first ever lecture, inherited with one week's notice when the person supposed to be delivering it was unable to do so, and I wrote it out word for word, down to 'Hello, I'm Karen'. Looking around my computer yesterday for notes, I found the transcript for the second time I did the lecture. More emphasis on the headings and subheadings, with strangely incomplete half-sentences and paragraphs - moving away from the word-for-word but still clinging to its reassurances. I was surprised at how the arguments for the first remembered version had mutated, shifting from a perhaps for simple attempt to build a sustained and convincing argument about the topic to starting to think about that argument as a way to model ways to engage with the topic.

For this third, and hopefully lucky, version, the text I'm lecturing on has been changed (a different part of a series) and so much of the old material, centered around a close reading of one passage, is no longer directly relevant. Having looked over the text on Sunday morning, I pottered around for a few hours letting the ideas simmer away subconsciously. There is a lot to say, one central thing being that the structure of the text doesn't match the thematic drive. This structural mismatch for some reason also seemed to make it hard to conceptualise a clear lecture structure. In the end, I've made the tension between structure and theme the key to the lecture, and am running a deliberately provocative reading to the text, only gesturing to alternatives. I feel a little uneasy about this reading - not because it isn't valid, but because it is partial and I know exactly how to pull it apart. Still, all reading are partial and the way I want to perform this lecture is to make that point about the inadequacy of a single reading. This time, I'm working off a set of powerpoint slides, video clips, and one sparse page of handwritten notes (words and phrases).

As a guest lecturer, I'm conscious of how the lecture I've designed plays to an implied audience: I'm relying on the students having a particular set of interests and knowledges that I can guess from past experience that they are likely to have - but I don't know them, I don't know that for sure. One advantage, perhaps, of minimal preparation is that I'm less wedded to an exact content and can shift a little according to audience response. On the other hand, as a guest lecturer I can hope for some novelty value and the freedom to deliver the lecture and walk out without having to then worry about the next tutorial. Compared to the earlier versions however, pedagogically I'm now more interested in what students will do with the material I'm giving them - the connections that they will make not only within the context of the unit, but outward, in terms of vocation and skills and critical thinking and engagement with a subject matter that goes well beyond the academy.