Andrea Kaston Tange
@aktange.bsky.social
2.9K followers 1.3K following 2.5K posts
Victorianist & lit professor, gardener, lover of quirky details. Writing sporadically at https://andreakastontange.com
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aktange.bsky.social
Here you go! I'll write some new ones for this semester too. They loved them. The "read without your phone or screens in the room" was a revelation, and many of them decided to keep doing it. They had NO IDEA (& were horrified) how often they interrupt themselves to look at a phone for no reason.
Reading Scenario Experiments. This series of prompts is designed to get you thinking about how the setting for reading affects concentration, comprehension, and even the existential experience of reading. Every week, one of the following prompts will appear on the syllabus. I encourage you to try all of them that you are able. How does a different reading setting affect your mood? Your receptiveness to the prose? Your pleasure or difficulty reading? What are the particular impacts of changing your lighting or surroundings? What do you notice about yourself and about the work you are reading during this experiment? 
1.	read by candlelight (use a small lamp in dorms where no candles are allowed!)
2.	read for one hour without checking any devices, answering texts, etc.
3.	walk out into nature (climb a tree, sit on a rock, grab a spot in a hammock) and read
4.	host a reading night with friends & food (sit in companionable silence, reading without chatting)
5.	read aloud a chapter to someone else
6.	climb into bed at night and read by flashlight under the covers for at least 30 minutes, as if you’ve already been told “lights out” as a kid
7.	reread a chapter and see what new things you notice the second time through
8.	change your ambient-noise level: add music if you normally read in the quiet; or read without music if you are normally a music-listener
9.	read with a sketchpad at hand and sketch scenes, characters, or other elements from the story
10.	practice focused listening: have someone read to you
11.	make yourself a special, fancy snack on a real plate to nibble while eating: pay attention to the cooking or arranging or choosing of ingredients to make it especially appetizing first
12.	make tea (even if you’re not usually a tea drinker), and read and sip
13.	invent a new reading scenario for yourself, or repeat the one you liked the best from this term 

[writing assignment using these prompts follows; text character limit prevents inclusion of it in full]
aktange.bsky.social
Well you got fantastic replies! Its been a delight to read all day
aktange.bsky.social
What's hilarious is that an hour after she posted the initial query, NO ONE had responded, so she started tagging people, and now it's out of control. I love this place.
aktange.bsky.social
My other unhinged take is that David Copperfield is by far the best Dickens novel. You have to read it knowing it's meant to be funny, and then it's a delight.
Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange
karl-jacoby.bsky.social
Student government leaders of MIT, UVA, U of AZ, Dartmouth, UPenn, Brown, and Vanderbilt united in their opposition to the "compact" proposed by the Trump administration.
aktange.bsky.social
This discussion of all the ways that the humanities matter (including complex thinking and problem-solving, doing jobs the world needs even though they often pay less, etc) is currently getting less traction than my post re: "yay Muppet Christmas Carol." Would love it if you'd weigh in on this too.
aktange.bsky.social
My latest: "Numerous studies show that majors in the humanities—typically, in departments of English, history, philosophy, religious studies, classics and languages—lead students to employment and life satisfaction outcomes as positive as those for majors traditionally championed as 'practical.'”
Counterpoint | Minnesota humanities graduates thrive in meaningful careers
"The stereotype of the underemployed history major is simply not true," professor Andrea Kaston Tange writes.
www.startribune.com
aktange.bsky.social
I got so little sleep last night that I'm completely punchy
aktange.bsky.social
I find it DEEPLY disconcerting that I do not have memorized all my family members' cell phones. And yet I find it so much harder to memorize than they used to be. I can still call my high school best friend's parents, though, having dialed that number thousands of times in my life.
aktange.bsky.social
Same. I can still rattle off not only my phone number from 45 years ago, drilled into me in elementary school, but also my best friend's phone number from high school.
aktange.bsky.social
I made delicious beef koresh for a dinner party on Saturday night, and spent hours laughing with friends, and the leftovers were even better for lunch today—and everything about that has been sustaining in a dozen ways.
aktange.bsky.social
I do not. But now I'll seek it out.
aktange.bsky.social
Great. And also what if all the angst of The Waste Land's narrator were just bits of comic drollery, a satire on taking oneself too seriously, delivered half over his shoulder to a breathless nephew or a bunch women at a party who lounge on a sofa laughing into their champagne with (not at) him?
Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange
thelong1930s.bsky.social
Lord Peter Wimsey is the narrative voice of The Waste Land.
rachelfeder.bsky.social
Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat
aktange.bsky.social
This is absolutely positively the funniest response to this query that I've seen, and it's also making me think, which makes it simultaneously brilliant. HE SURELY LOVES HIS TROUSERS ROLLED. 😂
Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange
aktange.bsky.social
"A liberal arts education encompasses the arts, the humanities, the social sciences and STEM. It rejects the notion that some branches of knowledge are more important than others. Instead, it emphasizes that tackling the big questions of our current moment requires cross-disciplinary approaches."
aktange.bsky.social
My latest: "Numerous studies show that majors in the humanities—typically, in departments of English, history, philosophy, religious studies, classics and languages—lead students to employment and life satisfaction outcomes as positive as those for majors traditionally championed as 'practical.'”
Counterpoint | Minnesota humanities graduates thrive in meaningful careers
"The stereotype of the underemployed history major is simply not true," professor Andrea Kaston Tange writes.
www.startribune.com
Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange
dem8z.bsky.social
tuition-paying students what they can and cannot study.

Call to action:

Amplify your discontent on social media and tag @UTAustin and @UTAustinCOLA

Write to: College of Liberal Arts Interim Dean, David Sosa, [email protected] 4/
Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange
dem8z.bsky.social
subjects and silencing departments that tell a more complete story about the history of Western civilization and contemporary US society. As a world-class public institution, UT must preserve intellectual diversity and educational liberty. The government should not tell adult, 3/
Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange
dem8z.bsky.social
This decision by UT’s administration is not driven by any educational reasons; after all, the departments facing elimination are full of field-defining, award-winning faculty. UT administrators are falling in lockstep with a nationwide political attack on the freedom to learn by censoring 2/
Reposted by Andrea Kaston Tange
dem8z.bsky.social
PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!!

The University of Texas-Austin is beginning a process to eliminate the Black Studies, Latino Studies, and Gender Studies departments in the College of Liberal Arts. This is a grave threat to the educational liberty of students, faculty, staff, and the people of Texas. 1/
aktange.bsky.social
💙 I love a giant long novel, a tight novella, a gripping short story. Use the genre you choose, is all I care about.
aktange.bsky.social
This made me laugh. But also: short stories are gold.
aktange.bsky.social
"A liberal arts education encompasses the arts, the humanities, the social sciences and STEM. It rejects the notion that some branches of knowledge are more important than others. Instead, it emphasizes that tackling the big questions of our current moment requires cross-disciplinary approaches."
aktange.bsky.social
My latest: "Numerous studies show that majors in the humanities—typically, in departments of English, history, philosophy, religious studies, classics and languages—lead students to employment and life satisfaction outcomes as positive as those for majors traditionally championed as 'practical.'”
Counterpoint | Minnesota humanities graduates thrive in meaningful careers
"The stereotype of the underemployed history major is simply not true," professor Andrea Kaston Tange writes.
www.startribune.com
aktange.bsky.social
Whatever you're about to say about Holden Caulfield is correct. As long as it's in the vein of overrated and overwrought.
aktange.bsky.social
And the best adaptation of any Dickens that has ever been put onto the screen, or ever will be, is the Muppets Christmas Carol. But I think that is quite possibly the least unhinged opinion it is possible to have about Dickens. It's simply fact.
aktange.bsky.social
I love this question so much. I am also in a morning-after-insomnia and can't think of any opinions at all, unhinged or otherwise. Does this count?

Great Expectations is meh. Bleak House and OMF are too long. And "The Signalman" teaches better than anything else Dickens ever wrote.