Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Classfellow E-mail

I wanted to share this e-mail from a classfellow:
Given the number of times Jane Austen comes up in lectures I'm surprised none of her books were on the reading list....I found an interesting little bit about how her publisher find her appearance too plain and are sexing-up her likeness with Photoshop. I guess the idea is that you can't write romantic things if you're plain looking. Thought you might be interested [in this.]
....Also, I'm not sure if [a certain classfellow] mentioned this to you yet, but near the beginning of the semester, she was telling me about a nasty man-bashing calendar she spotted for sale in the Burnaby campus bookstore. It features images of men as wind up dolls and contained sweet sentiments like "men are only good for sex." We wondered why it's OK to portray men that way in a school that's so outspoken about gender issues. It seems even some women are offended by this. Not sure if that calendar is still for sale.
I'd love to teach Jane Austen -- I had rather thought that P&P would be too obvious & well known for you all. Perhaps we should have a marathon nightime showing of the A&E version....

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