A Breather

I hope the Ray film tonight will have the desired effects: that it will have given you a chance to catch your breath, to gather up and perhaps even synthesize some of the trailing strands of conversation from our previous class meetings, and to catch/derive some new permutations and colors of those strands via what the film itself offers. And then there's the imposing reading load for next week: it's probably the most demanding week of the semester in that regard, as I have warned, and if you've been able to get a start on the Bhabha essay and/or the novel during this "off" week, so much the better!

If you have any spare time, or if you want some interesting background audio emerging from your computer as you work on other things, you might check out these two videos. The first is this 8-minute video clip discussing Rushdie and the fatwa ("and how they shaped multicultural Britain"), almost exactly twenty years later. The second is Rushdie's 2006 speech to the American Jewish Congress regarding reforming Islam. He talks amusedly about those people who come up to him and tell him they have "read that book of yours" -- "and you always know which one they mean," he notes. He also relates, about fifteen minutes into the talk, the story of the Satanic Verses and its connection to the Koran, and then proceeds to explain why this episode interested him relative to his project in writing the novel you're currently reading.

See you tonight!