Classroom
Ye Olde Englysh Classe
In this course, they still teach language the old-fashioned way.
English 320: Old English is a bit like linguistic paleontology. Students dig under the surface of the language they speak every day, sifting down through layers of change to find the verbal fossils that lie beneath. And from those fossils, they hope to reconstruct a dinosaur, the ancestor of their own tongue, even though it has a different vocabulary, different grammar, and even different letters.
“Essentially, Old English is a foreign language,” says Sherry Reames, the course’s professor. “That’s how we have to teach it. This can be quite a shock for students, many of whom think that they’re taking this course to learn to understand Chaucer or Shakespeare.” But Old English is much older than the language used by those writers.
Old English, which is also sometimes called Anglo-Saxon, began to develop in the fifth and sixth centuries, after various German tribes — particularly the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes — migrated across the North Sea into the British Isles. It became Britain’s dominant language until the Norman Conquest in 1066, after which an intermingling of French vocabulary and grammar turned English into something much closer to the language we recognize today.
English 320: Old English is a bit like linguistic paleontology. Students dig under the surface of the language they speak every day, sifting down through layers of change to find the verbal fossils that lie beneath. And from those fossils, they hope to reconstruct a dinosaur, the ancestor of their own tongue, even though it has a different vocabulary, different grammar, and even different letters.
“Essentially, Old English is a foreign language,” says Sherry Reames, the course’s professor. “That’s how we have to teach it. This can be quite a shock for students, many of whom think that they’re taking this course to learn to understand Chaucer or Shakespeare.” But Old English is much older than the language used by those writers.
Old English, which is also sometimes called Anglo-Saxon, began to develop in the fifth and sixth centuries, after various German tribes — particularly the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes — migrated across the North Sea into the British Isles. It became Britain’s dominant language until the Norman Conquest in 1066, after which an intermingling of French vocabulary and grammar turned English into something much closer to the language we recognize today.
The foreignness of Old English can come as a surprise to the average literature student, as many who enroll quickly find out. According to Reames, the class usually starts with thirty to forty students, but nearly half drop out within a few weeks. This year’s class, currently at twenty-four, is made up of about half graduate students and half undergrads — potential medievalists and linguists, according to Reames, “some of whom were inspired by [fantasy author J.R.R.] Tolkien and some who are language nuts.”
The class itself is a bit of a relic. “The way it’s taught hasn’t changed much in at least forty years,” says Reames. The curriculum is one she’s honed with Nick Doane, another professor of medieval literature. She and Doane alternated teaching the course each fall since the 1970s, but since his retirement in May 2006, the ranks of the UW’s medievalists have grown thin, and now the task of teaching beginning Old English falls to Reames every year. She spends eight weeks on grammar and the remainder of the course having the students translate various works — biblical and historical prose and poetry that ranges from liturgical to warlike — into modern English. By the end of the course, Reames says, students should be able to take English 359, now usually taught by John Niles, in which they read the epic poem Beowulf in the original.
Studying Old English might seem like an exercise in academic pointlessness — learning a dead language to understand poetry that few read and many have never heard of. One of the course’s textbooks, The Elements of Old English, is even out of print, and many students have to read a photocopied version of it. But Reames points out that the class offers students a new perspective on their own language, along with a glimpse of relics of the past.
The class itself is a bit of a relic. “The way it’s taught hasn’t changed much in at least forty years,” says Reames. The curriculum is one she’s honed with Nick Doane, another professor of medieval literature. She and Doane alternated teaching the course each fall since the 1970s, but since his retirement in May 2006, the ranks of the UW’s medievalists have grown thin, and now the task of teaching beginning Old English falls to Reames every year. She spends eight weeks on grammar and the remainder of the course having the students translate various works — biblical and historical prose and poetry that ranges from liturgical to warlike — into modern English. By the end of the course, Reames says, students should be able to take English 359, now usually taught by John Niles, in which they read the epic poem Beowulf in the original.
Studying Old English might seem like an exercise in academic pointlessness — learning a dead language to understand poetry that few read and many have never heard of. One of the course’s textbooks, The Elements of Old English, is even out of print, and many students have to read a photocopied version of it. But Reames points out that the class offers students a new perspective on their own language, along with a glimpse of relics of the past.
“A lot of students don’t really study grammar in grade school and high school anymore,” she says. “It just isn’t taught the way it used to be. Some students come in not knowing the parts of speech. For them, the course is a challenge, but it’s also a chance to come to develop a richer and more complete understanding of modern English.”
The class is also helping Reames see ways in which language is changing. Even in the last few decades, she says, some of the quirky holdovers from Old English have disappeared as the language becomes more simplified. “For instance,” she says, “there are fewer and fewer strong verbs every year. Ones that were common when I was younger have just about disappeared.” Strong, or irregular, verbs are ones that conjugate in unusual ways. For instance, sit becomes sat in past tense; dive becomes dove — or it used to. “You almost never see dove anymore. It’s almost always dived. Words are becoming more regular and losing touch with their historical roots.”
The course may be a scholastic throwback, but it seems to inspire devotion. Many students show up early for the 8:50 a.m. class, and some will even join the UW’s Beowulf Club, a group of about a dozen students and faculty who meet each Friday to read passages of Anglo-Saxon literature.
Further, Reames points out, there are advantages to learning a dead language. “It’s actually very easy to feel confident about pronunciation,” she says. “After all, you’re not going to meet a native speaker of medieval English to tell you you’re saying things wrong.”
— John Allen
The class is also helping Reames see ways in which language is changing. Even in the last few decades, she says, some of the quirky holdovers from Old English have disappeared as the language becomes more simplified. “For instance,” she says, “there are fewer and fewer strong verbs every year. Ones that were common when I was younger have just about disappeared.” Strong, or irregular, verbs are ones that conjugate in unusual ways. For instance, sit becomes sat in past tense; dive becomes dove — or it used to. “You almost never see dove anymore. It’s almost always dived. Words are becoming more regular and losing touch with their historical roots.”
The course may be a scholastic throwback, but it seems to inspire devotion. Many students show up early for the 8:50 a.m. class, and some will even join the UW’s Beowulf Club, a group of about a dozen students and faculty who meet each Friday to read passages of Anglo-Saxon literature.
Further, Reames points out, there are advantages to learning a dead language. “It’s actually very easy to feel confident about pronunciation,” she says. “After all, you’re not going to meet a native speaker of medieval English to tell you you’re saying things wrong.”
— John Allen
Coming to Grips with Grendel
For those who want to experience the English language’s oldest epic, but who don’t want to take the time to learn Old English, there’s a new translation of Beowulf available in audio book format. Translated and narrated by Dick Ringler, a professor emeritus of English and Scandinavian studies, and read by Wisconsin Public Radio staff and actors from Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre, the new Beowulf was published as a CD/booklet set in August. The UW Libraries has also made the text available online.
For those who want to experience the English language’s oldest epic, but who don’t want to take the time to learn Old English, there’s a new translation of Beowulf available in audio book format. Translated and narrated by Dick Ringler, a professor emeritus of English and Scandinavian studies, and read by Wisconsin Public Radio staff and actors from Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre, the new Beowulf was published as a CD/booklet set in August. The UW Libraries has also made the text available online.
CLASS NOTE: Toon-ing Japanese
Interdisciplinary Studies 102: First-Year Seminar in Humanities — Anime and Post-Modern Japan
Ancient tongues aren’t for everyone, and for those students who are more inclined to the international and modern — or even post-modern — there’s a new freshman seminar on the cultural influence of anime, Japanese animation that has been winning fans on both sides of the Pacific. This new course focuses on the cultural import of works ranging from the campy Speed Racer to the Oscar-winning Spirited Away.
Steve Ridgely, the assistant professor of Japanese who teaches the course, has had a strong interest in Japanese film and pop culture since he was a graduate student, and he feels that anime has a special place in today’s culture. “There’s a theory that says there’s a special relationship between film and modernism,” he says. “I think there may be a similar relationship between anime and post-modernism.”
Still, it’s a challenge to teach a course when the students are highly familiar with the subject matter, but have seen it as entertainment rather than literature. “Many of them have watched more hours of anime than I have,” Clark says. “What I hope to do is give them some context with Japanese history and culture so that they have new ways of looking at these films.”
The class follows the historical development of anime, from its beginnings before World War II, to its surge in popularity in the 1960s, to its artistic maturation in recent years.
Ancient tongues aren’t for everyone, and for those students who are more inclined to the international and modern — or even post-modern — there’s a new freshman seminar on the cultural influence of anime, Japanese animation that has been winning fans on both sides of the Pacific. This new course focuses on the cultural import of works ranging from the campy Speed Racer to the Oscar-winning Spirited Away.
Steve Ridgely, the assistant professor of Japanese who teaches the course, has had a strong interest in Japanese film and pop culture since he was a graduate student, and he feels that anime has a special place in today’s culture. “There’s a theory that says there’s a special relationship between film and modernism,” he says. “I think there may be a similar relationship between anime and post-modernism.”
Still, it’s a challenge to teach a course when the students are highly familiar with the subject matter, but have seen it as entertainment rather than literature. “Many of them have watched more hours of anime than I have,” Clark says. “What I hope to do is give them some context with Japanese history and culture so that they have new ways of looking at these films.”
The class follows the historical development of anime, from its beginnings before World War II, to its surge in popularity in the 1960s, to its artistic maturation in recent years.
Taught for the first time in fall 2006, the course was created as part of a FIG (or First-Year Interest Group), a series of courses designed around a single theme — in this case Japanese culture. Other classes look at language and history. Clark’s class has been both very popular and very challenging, as it’s all new territory. “The first assignment I gave my students was to write a one-page essay defining just what anime is,” he says. “I wanted them to see more than just Japanese cartoons, and many of them did, noting the stylistic complexities of the form.”
— J.A.
— J.A.
EXTRA CREDIT
Famed geology Professor Lowell Laudon is the subject of a new biography, Bushels of Fossils distributed by the Department of Geology and Geophysics. Laudon was on the UW faculty from 1948 until 1975 and was known for his field trips to the mountains of the Yukon and western North America. He taught some 20,000 students during his career — including Bushels’ author, James Parks MS’49, PhD’51.
For the shy tunesmith, there’s now a way to study music without the pressure of playing in front of classmates. Music 151: Basic Concepts of Music Theory is available online for distance learners. The course teaches concepts in rhythm, melody, harmony, texture, and form and helps students develop basic skills through singing and playing a variety of instruments. As a distance-learning course, it’s open to special and guest students — that is, folks who aren’t enrolled in a degree program.
The newest students on campus are getting an introduction to one of America’s most stubborn problems in Race and Ethnicity in the Americas, a new First-Year Interest Group (FIG) — three classes centered on a common theme. Students can take the classes together and find a broader view than they might in just a single course. The new Race and Ethnicity FIG includes Race and Ethnicity in the Americas (Interdisciplinary Studies 103), Problems of American Racial and Ethnic Minorities (Sociology 134), and Modern Latin America (History 242).
For the shy tunesmith, there’s now a way to study music without the pressure of playing in front of classmates. Music 151: Basic Concepts of Music Theory is available online for distance learners. The course teaches concepts in rhythm, melody, harmony, texture, and form and helps students develop basic skills through singing and playing a variety of instruments. As a distance-learning course, it’s open to special and guest students — that is, folks who aren’t enrolled in a degree program.
The newest students on campus are getting an introduction to one of America’s most stubborn problems in Race and Ethnicity in the Americas, a new First-Year Interest Group (FIG) — three classes centered on a common theme. Students can take the classes together and find a broader view than they might in just a single course. The new Race and Ethnicity FIG includes Race and Ethnicity in the Americas (Interdisciplinary Studies 103), Problems of American Racial and Ethnic Minorities (Sociology 134), and Modern Latin America (History 242).
