Lessons

Taken beside KFC Katipunan. Beware chicken lovers.


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My first day of class was full. Against usual UP tradition where professors usually find themselves stuck in the airport, or bus station, from where they took their last chance at a summer vacation (huling hirit!), my profs for CL 122 and my PhD class were already in (though they were late) and before we knew it, were already spurting out words like "new criticism" and "atomization" after which, without any effort at all to clarify if the "new" is new at all or if literary critics have finally decided to become physicists, proceeded to talk about a really formal Russian guy named Viktor Schklovsky, now dead.

I am excited though. I hope everything goes smoothly this semester.
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What's the difference between literary criticism and scholarship? While I do know that both needs theory, in what ways do they exactly differ?
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Some food for thought: Cultural studies pala is a Marxist discipline. How was it then that a conservative, Jesuit-run institution with no Marxist history whatsoever is offering the only cultural studies program in this proletarian country? Add to that the fact that they kicked out Nick Tiongson and Bien Lumbera, who are in my opinion the two leading Marx-inspired-but-not-quite writers we have.

I wonder what their curriculum looks like and who teaches the thing. And I think I know now why their top writer is pursuing his grad studies at the State U.