I was about to write that “The Flea,” one of Donne’s most famous, even notorious libertine seduction poems, changes its character radically when a woman reads it, but I don’t think that’s true. I think the poem stays the same. What changes, at least to some extent, is one’s horizon of expectations with regard to gender and/or sex. There are several ways to think about this:

1. the woman reads the poem against the grain, with an implied critique of the poem’s argument
2. the woman reads the poem with the grain (1), and the reading demonstrates Donne’s own witty or earnest or seriocomic critique of his own argument (i.e., self-consciously or not, Donne the poet writes in a way that subverts the poem’s argument)
3. the woman reads the poem with the grain (2), as a straightforward seduction poem, claiming the energy and wit and aggressiveness as her own

I don’t think I’ve exhausted the possibilities here by any means, and now that I mull this over, I see that these readings are available to men as well, depending on their own sexual ethics … but given that the poem’s original voicing is of a man seducing a woman, it’s easy to recognize why the reversal would stimulate thought.

Here’s Jess Rigel reading “The Flea.”

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In today’s Donne Seminar podcast, Charlotte Naas reads one of Donne’s less-well-known poems, “Witchcraft by a Picture.” Such is Donne’s sharply marked poetic character, though, that you could probably tell it was one of his even if I hadn’t told you. Try the experiment: play the poem for your nearest English major or poetry lover, and see if he or she can “name that poet.”

Click here to play Charlotte’s reading.

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Encouraging update on Pete Townshend’s web site:

The Who begin rehearsing in two weeks, during which time I have to finish the rest of the Who album with Roger – so again, I’m trying to keep the music simple and direct. Our new stage set will allow us to do some new things, and to help tell some stories as yet untold.

I’ll be in line with Alan when tickets go on sale.

By way of Dorine Ruter’s blog–at least, I think that’s where I found it, after taking a look at Dorine’s public Bloglines feeds (cue Donald Fagen, “I.G.Y.”)–I’ve been learning a ton lately from Kathy Sierra’s “Creating Passionate Users” blog. Because I’m always about one cognitive millisecond away from analogy-mode (I almost said allegory-mode) in most of my daily interactions, I have formed the unshakable conviction that Kathy’s blog is sending important messages about teaching and learning, as well as about the work I and my team do every day as we try to encourage and empower our colleagues to transform their work as scholars and professors.

Kathy’s blog post on “Which user’s life have you changed today?” is one compelling example of what I’m talking about. I’m betting that most writers, teachers, and students would find the post just as inspiring and insightful as I did. And during the tough days when I’ve got (at last count) 30 papers and 61 exams left to grade, along with discussion forum portfolios and a few other odds and ends, and that’s before I get to the admin stuff, this tale of a simple owner’s manual that changed a life gets my chin up and my determination on full. Thanks to Kathy for telling the story, and thanks to Nick for writing that manual (Nick says, “Our goal is that the user has to do something cool within 30 minutes”), and thanks to Edward for being passionate, and thanks to O’Reilly for rewarding that passion–and, it seems, prodigious talent.

None of this magic happens automatically. That’s one reason I’m so grateful for every human being who helps make it happen, despite the real possibility that he or she will never, ever know that magic was the result.

And thanks again to Dorine, one of the most recent additions to my personal suite of inspiring and trusted experts.

Here’s Zac Smith reading Donne’s “Elegy 3: Change.” Donne’s elegies (in the Renaissance, “elegy” could mean any discursive or meditative poem, and could include even bawdy, Romanesque poems, as Donne demonstrates) are particularly interesting as indications of his wit and his skill at arguing several sides of the same issue, sometimes all at once. “Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going To Bed” is Donne’s most famous in this genre, and it’s a great poem, but I was very happy to see students go for some of the less well-known elegies in Donne’s work.

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Web 2.0 is a heuristic, not a genre.

Among other things, this is why Web 2.0 is Web 2.0.

More on the way.

Here’s the second of the Donne Seminar podcasts from the class I led last semester. In this one, Emily Williams reads “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.”

I don’t want to comment on any of these readings in particular: the students already know my evaluation of their work, and listeners can form their own judgments. I will say, however, that producing the audio is proving to be quite poignant for me, as it brings back very vivid memories of each student and her or his part in this extraordinarily passionate and insightful class.

I can hear in the original raw audio some of the conversation I had with each student just before she or he began the recitation: my coaching and their nervousness and most of all the energy they were bringing to this moment. It reminds me how much commitment this seminar demonstrated throughout the term, and how at this moment most of the students were thinking more about John Donne than they were about either me or themselves (or, in fact, the grade). Some of the readings are quite breathtaking in their commitment. The audio, particularly the stuff you won’t hear (maybe we’ll save it for The Complete Donne Sessions), recreates the moment very, very vividly for me. If St. Augustine were still alive, he might well bring podcasts into his famous chapter on memory in his Confessions.

I’m also struck by these readings as capstones. We had spent a long time with one author, ranging over many texts, drinking deeply of the heady and disturbing brew served up by William Empson and other critics (but especially Empson), and pushing twice a week to see into the very heart of cognition in time, for Donne asks nothing less of us. The moment of recitation often became an uncanny combination of speaking through Donne and, at the same time, back to him, doing what intimates do when they repeat the words back to the beloved, puzzling, constant companion who uttered them.

Finally, I was intrigued to hear words that Donne himself attributed to his own “masculine persuasive force” coming at times from the lips of women, women who spoke them without a trace of irony. The experience reminded me of both the boundaries between the sexes and the intense commonalities of human experience. It was an experience of both alterity and deep community.

It was a privilege, is what it was, and it’s an honor to share it with you.

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Last fall I led a seminar on the poetry and prose of John Donne here at the University of Mary Washington. As part of my preparation for the seminar, I began my “Donne a Day” podcast series in the summer. As part of the culmination of the seminar, I recorded student readings of Donne’s work for later distribution as podcasts.

“Later” sometimes means “much later” with me, unfortunately, but here just before the academic year ends, I begin daily distribution of my students’ readings. I’ll begin with Anna de Socio’s reading of one of Donne’s most famous lyrics, “The Sun Rising.”

I wish now I had thought to have students talk just a little about why they picked the poem they did, but that’ll have to wait for the feature set of Donne Seminar 2.0. Good to have something to look forward to.

If you’d like to see something more of the class’s work, take a look at our seminar wiki. I’ll have more to say in future blog entries about how that little gem came about, and how what it became was what it needed to be for this class, not simply what I had envisioned. One of the things that fuels my passion for wikis is that they are uncanny reflectors of the group that produces them. I should mention that the students in this seminar were an inspiring bunch to be among. I had a wonderful time, and learned a ton from them. Sometimes I was so inspired by them that I couldn’t sleep at night–no kidding. Thanks, folks.

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We’re in full-on mode in preparation for Faculty Academy 2006. It’s our 11th annual Faculty Academy (“turn it up to 11!”), and this year we’re welcoming the New Media Consortium’s Rachel Smith and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Scholar-in-Residence Cyprien Lomas as our two special guest facilitators/presenters/workshop leaders (read: VIP cool folks). Bryan Alexander and Brian Lamb (or as we call them here, the Bri*ans) had these roles last year, and we’re excited to be able to continue that tradition of excellence with Rachel and Cyprien.

Did someone say “tradition of excellence”? To continue the winning string we began last year with Diana Oblinger’s inspiring keynote address on the “Net Generation,” we’re bringing in Jon Udell (“Saint John,” as oook calls him) to rock the house with a talk on “21st Century Literacy.” Read more about Jon’s presentation and follow the preparations for Faculty Academy on our DTLT projects blog, The Smooth Elephant.

Interesting piece today in the Chronicle (article available only to subscribers, unfortunately) about multimedia dissertations and the challenges they present. Usual suspects, few surprises: format, storage and retrieval, citation (that one’s pretty well under control), and copyright. Still, a very interesting set of examples and a useful overview of the state of the question. These dissertations will only become more numerous as time goes by. Sooner or later we must have some definitive rulings on fair use. Larry Lessig’s and his colleagues’ work at the Electronic Frontier Foundation is more important than ever in this respect.

The one wrinkle that I didn’t see coming was the authoring platform for this particular multimedia diss. The author had used TK3, but agreed to port the work to a truly open-source/open-standards platform currently under development called “Sophie.” As it turns out, the same folks who developed TK3 are also developing Sophie.

Perhaps librarians will save the day again, as they have so often in the past. If the archival standards mandated by official academic repositories specify open-source/open-standards platforms and public accessibility, uniform authoring platforms and fair-use claims will follow. Perhaps one day the materials with which we aggregate, shape, and present our digital creations will be as ubiquitous and interoperable as paper and ink–or close to it, anyway.