Monday, June 21, 2010

Grad’s Cool!

I went to speak with my grad supervisor today about what I’m going to be doing for grad school in the fall. He started by asking me my areas of interest, and I told him American literature and Diasporic lit were of particular interest to me. Then he asked what I’d like to do with my teacher’s assistantship, and repeated again, probably American literature, but then I realized that of course, half of us probably wind up teaching the 1000-level class, which is mainly a survey course of all kinds of periods and places in literature. That’s probably by first choice, but he also asked if I’d be interested in being a TA for the writer’s workshops. He says he only puts TAs in those for whom it’s their first choice, so I told him I’d think about it. Now that I’ve thought about it, I should probably follow-up by asking him what this might entail. Still, I think I might greatly prefer teaching literature and theory than grammar and essay structure.

Then he asked me about what classes I want to take, and I told him the one I was most excited about was a class on King Arthur. He remarked that this deviated somewhat from my areas of interest, but then I told him it was a book that I’ve been working on, using the Arthur legend. I’ve been reading a number of books around the legend, but what I’d really wanted up until now was a chance to study it with an actual professor, and this opportunity just sort of sprung up. I told him I wanted to renew the legend with a code that today’s generations could get into – I didn’t really explain this properly at the time, but I really wanted to layer it with gender and racial tolerance, with the main character (alongside Arthur and Gawain) as a female, “ethnic” knight. It sounds weird, I know, and it’s not even the selling point of the book, but it’s part of my whole vision. The selling point is the zombies part. I told him I wanted to put zombies in Camelot, given the appropriate background I’d have in both the Arthur legend and zombie movies. He asked my favourite zombie movie, and I told him, easily, Shaun of the Dead. Because Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright – everything they make is a brilliant all-encompassing send-up of a different genre. And then we got to talking about how that’s what people like – modern revisions of the old ideas, like the Arthur legend, which is constantly coming up in literature, movies, and other forms of art. He said that after 12 Harlequin Romance novels, people get a bit tired of it, and I laughed and admitted that I’m essentially writing the movie equivalent, a MOW, with an actress friend. It’s generic, I know, but dammit, networks buy them, people watch them, and they generate revenue. And I need my foot in the door. We’re hoping to sell this script in the fall.

Anyway, so far I’m having a great day. Unfortunately, right when I got home, Ema Nymton delivered some rather interesting news involving a certain movie theatre that shall for now remain nameless. Apparently the Hamburglar wants to permanently get rid of us both. However, like an unwilling prostitute, I’m not going down without a fight!

But I can deal with him later. In the meantime – GRAD SCHOOL! Yay! I’m excited!

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