John Mullen, Université de Rouen - Teaching blog
Links and comments for university students of English, and of British civilization. Study links connected with my classes, and general links on current affairs etc. There are sometimes indications as to what group might be particularly interested (L2 for Licence 2nd year, for example)
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Saturday, December 14, 2019
Captain Cook agrégation anglais 2020 option civilisation post 35: the musket
It is often forgotten that Cook was a military man. This was his favourite weapon.
http://www.militaryheritage.com/musket26.htm
http://www.militaryheritage.com/musket26.htm
Friday, December 13, 2019
Evaluation UE L3 Culture populaire au Royaume-Uni depuis 1945
Chers étudiant e s de mon cours de L3 à Rouen. Pour m'aider dans la préparation de cette UE pour l'année suivante, voulez vous bien remplir ce sondage, entièrement anonyme.
https://fr.surveymonkey.com/r/DGFCN2N
https://fr.surveymonkey.com/r/DGFCN2N
L3 Popular Culture Popular music
You will find here the last class I gave on popular music, in Mp3 form.
This article will also help with some key ideas:
https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/1695
This article will also help with some key ideas:
https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/1695
M1 seminar First World War Commemoration
You will find here recordings of the seminars on commemoration!
Part one is here
Part two is here
The PowerPoint is here
This article covers the same ground.
Part one is here
Part two is here
The PowerPoint is here
This article covers the same ground.
Captain Cook agrégation anglais 2020 option civilisation post 34: Maori commemorations
This short article gives a Maori perspective on the first encounter with Cook, and on the commemoration 250 years later.
https://teaomaori.news/ngati-oneone-re-tell-accurate-history-gisborne
https://teaomaori.news/ngati-oneone-re-tell-accurate-history-gisborne
Thursday, December 12, 2019
Commenting on the UK election
On m'invite ce soir autour de 23h sur France 24 (français) pour commenter les élections britanniques.
Captain Cook agrégation anglais 2020 option civilisation post 33: réservez ces dates
Si vous préparez l'option B (civilisation) pour l'agrégation externe, il faut réserver ces dates, et tout faire pour être sur Paris
There will be 14 short talks on different aspects of Cook, from fireworks to museums, from translation to imperialism.
More details later.
"Captain Cook after 250 years: Re-exploring The
Voyages of James Cook" An International Conference on Captain James Cook’s
voyages (1768-1779)
7-8 February 2020
Sorbonne Université
There will be 14 short talks on different aspects of Cook, from fireworks to museums, from translation to imperialism.
More details later.
UK election
How has the Uk election been seen on social media?
https://www.euronews.com/2019/12/11/uk-election-2019-how-has-it-played-out-on-social-media
https://www.euronews.com/2019/12/11/uk-election-2019-how-has-it-played-out-on-social-media
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Thème agrégation
- We were to have worked on the passage from Slimani in class today. A few people have sent me their translation, but I am myself behind schedule and have not yet corrected them. You may, if you have time, send me your translation of Slimani over the next few days. I will correct and return the translations and post my suggested translation on the blog.
- Next Thursday, I believe, you have your mock exam in translation. I know not everyone will be able to make it, given this busy time of year. If you wish to do the translation into English at home (without a dictionary and within the same time limit applied in the real exam) simply send me an email on the Thursday evening and I will send you the passage to translate. It will not be quite like in the exam because you will be typing your translation.
- Our next class is on the 8th January and we will be working on Montherlant.
- Happy Christmas.
Tuesday, December 10, 2019
Dernières nouvelles
La situation concernant les transports se clarifie. Je ne pourrai pas être présent pour mon cours à 9h. Je mettrai des informations supplémentaires ici pour le groupe en question.
Par contre, il semble certain que j’y arrive pour les cours de l’après-midi.
À 15h séminaire ww1
A 17h MEEF M1.
Par contre, il semble certain que j’y arrive pour les cours de l’après-midi.
À 15h séminaire ww1
A 17h MEEF M1.
History of migration
A fascinating story from the very beginning of the 20th century.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/04/ukip-nigel-farage-immigrants-british-brothers-league?CMP=share_btn_fb
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/04/ukip-nigel-farage-immigrants-british-brothers-league?CMP=share_btn_fb
Monday, December 09, 2019
Classes on Wednesday
I have been able to get a train ticket from Paris to Rouen, but it is unclear if I can get from here to Saint Lazare tomorrow Morning.
L3 Important - changement de salles pour DST 17 décembre
Le mardi 17/12, pour la Civilisation GB groupe C, nous serons en
salle A411 de 11h à 12h30.
Puis en salle A107 avec le groupe A de Civilisation GB de 15h30 à 17h.
Puis en salle A107 avec le groupe A de Civilisation GB de 15h30 à 17h.
L3 Popular music: slides on music
1) Make sure you read yesterday's post!
2) You will find here the Powerpoint concerning "Studying popular music".
3) The Mp3 recording of the second class on music will be posted soon
4) Thanks to the person who reminded me.
2) You will find here the Powerpoint concerning "Studying popular music".
3) The Mp3 recording of the second class on music will be posted soon
4) Thanks to the person who reminded me.
Sunday, December 08, 2019
Captain Cook agrégation 2020 option civilisation britannique post 32: plants
The implications and effects of British colonization are more wide-ranging than we suspect, frequently.
Read this article about plants in Australia
https://www.sgaonline.org.au/indigenous-plants/
Read this article about plants in Australia
https://www.sgaonline.org.au/indigenous-plants/
Les cours de cette semaine
Mardi, je resterai en région parisienne afin de rejoindre la grève pour défendre les retraites.
Les DST de mes deux groupes de L3 sont reportés d'une semaine.
En ce qui concerne les cours de mercredi, tout dépendra des trains.
Il y aura en tout cas, sur ce blog, des informations et travaux éventuels.
Faites circuler ces informations s'il vous plaît.
JM
Les DST de mes deux groupes de L3 sont reportés d'une semaine.
En ce qui concerne les cours de mercredi, tout dépendra des trains.
Il y aura en tout cas, sur ce blog, des informations et travaux éventuels.
Faites circuler ces informations s'il vous plaît.
JM
Thursday, December 05, 2019
Thème agrégation
The report from 2011 including a long commentary on the passage we worked on is Here. http://cache.media.education.gouv.fr/file/agreg_ext/70/4/r_agreg_ext_anglais_2011_194704.pdf
Wednesday, December 04, 2019
Women in British popular music
I was speaking yesterday about male domination in Uk popular music. There are of course a number of exceptions: see here
https://johncmullen.blogspot.com/2018/04/women-in-british-popular-music.html
https://johncmullen.blogspot.com/2018/04/women-in-british-popular-music.html
Monday, December 02, 2019
Thème agrégation Amette
On Wednesday, we will be going through the passage from Amette. I think I have sent back everyone's work, but my organization has been breaking up of late, so if I have not returned your translation of Amette, please send me a mail with your translation again.
JM
JM
Actualité à Londres
L'attentat de vendredi dernier s'est vite politisé
https://www.liberation.fr/planete/2019/12/01/attaque-de-londres-des-heros-et-des-demagos_1766720
https://www.liberation.fr/planete/2019/12/01/attaque-de-londres-des-heros-et-des-demagos_1766720
La campagne électorale au Royaume-Uni
Campagne électorale? antisémitisme? islamophobie? On m'a interviewé pendant dix minutes à la radio suisse hier sur ces sujets. Le résultat se trouve en ligne ici:
https://www.rts.ch/play/radio/hautes-frequences/audio/lantisemitisme-sinvite-dans-la-campagne-electorale-au-royaume-uni
https://www.rts.ch/play/radio/hautes-frequences/audio/lantisemitisme-sinvite-dans-la-campagne-electorale-au-royaume-uni
Reggae!
This article will interest both L3 students thinking about popular music and legitimacy, and MEEF students thinking about "the past in the present".
https://mobile.francetvinfo.fr/economie/emploi/metiers/art-culture-edition/le-reggae-jamaicain-desormais-inscrit-sur-la-liste-du-patrimoine-culturel-de-l-humanite_3077217.html?
https://mobile.francetvinfo.fr/economie/emploi/metiers/art-culture-edition/le-reggae-jamaicain-desormais-inscrit-sur-la-liste-du-patrimoine-culturel-de-l-humanite_3077217.html?
Third seminar on historiography
(Note the link to the important article, which I have given you in a separate post, below).
You will find here the Mp3 recording of the third seminar, where the subject was social history, cultural history, and recent trends in history writing, all concerning the First World War.
The recording is here
And the entire powerpoint for the three seminars is here.
You will find here the Mp3 recording of the third seminar, where the subject was social history, cultural history, and recent trends in history writing, all concerning the First World War.
The recording is here
And the entire powerpoint for the three seminars is here.
Seminar M1 Introduction to historiography and to memory studies: article
In our Wednesday seminar this week, we will begin by looking at this article in some detail. Please read it first.
A view of world war one historiography
A view of world war one historiography
L3 Evaluation - How it works
Someone asked me for more information about the final exam in January. Since you do not know, until you arrive in the exam room, whether the question is on the British programme or on the US programme, this can be a little stressful. Naturally, different lecturers emphasize different priorities, though you should remember that we are not out to trap you and all examiners are looking for a good level of English, a grasp of essential facts and the capacity to structure those facts into an argument which replies fairly precisely to the question.
If the question turns out to be on the British programme, it will be in the form of an essay - that is to say a fairly open question. Of course, you need to be able to mobilize appropriate examples to illustrate your answer, but you are free to choose what examples you use. So, naturally, the problem is not to be sure you have memorized every artist we have studied, or every musician. To help, here is an example from last year . The question was as follows:
"Write an essay in English.
If the question turns out to be on the British programme, it will be in the form of an essay - that is to say a fairly open question. Of course, you need to be able to mobilize appropriate examples to illustrate your answer, but you are free to choose what examples you use. So, naturally, the problem is not to be sure you have memorized every artist we have studied, or every musician. To help, here is an example from last year . The question was as follows:
"Write an essay in English.
“The power of products of popular culture
is that they give the people what they want.”
Discuss this quotation, examining what
different thinkers have said concerning the demand for popular culture, and
looking in particular at how visual artists have found a wide audience for
their work.
There are many different ways of answering this question well. It was essential to be able to explain that "what people want" is complicated, because (as Bourdieu said) people's social origins define what they will probably want and even it has been said that (as Adorno alleged) the industry can make people want things). But otherwise, it is a very open question which allows you to show the three qualities mentioned in the first question above. Here is the feedback I put on the blog after this test.
“The power of products of popular culture is that they
give the people what they want.”
Discuss this quotation, examining what different
thinkers have said concerning the demand for popular culture, and looking in particular
at how visual artists have found a wide audience for their work.
« Discuss this quotation ». This
means you must say how far it appears to be true or false, but also what other
similar questions are relevant concerning popular culture.
There are many ways to answer the
question, while showing the knowledge you have acquired about British culture
specifically. Here are some initial notes, which I will add to as I mark your
work.
1)
You
should note that this is a controversial quotation and you should be able to
show that some might tend to agree and some to disagree.
2)
Some
of the terms need dismantling. a) who are « the people » (note the
importance of the definite article: « le peuple » not « les
gens »). Is there a homogeneous « people » in modern society, or
are we divided into « generations » or social classes or
« affective alliances »? b) Is it possible to know « what the
people want »? This is not a simple idea. Why do people want what they
want? Etc.
3)
Which
thinkers can you write about in connection with the quotation? Adorno is
obviously one. Several students summarized quite accurately the introduction to
Adorno’s ideas which I presented in class, but the exercise is not to write a
summary. His ideas must be compared with the quotation. Adorno was generally
opposed to products of popular culture. Far from believing that people (or the
people) were being given what they wanted, he maintained that people were being
told what they should want, were being almost obliged to want what the market wanted
to sell to them. What is more, he believed that people were being given
experiences which were bad for them, which made them into children again and
stopped them from becoming fully human.
4)
Several
other thinkers could be mentioned, but one obvious one is Hebdige and his work
on the meaning of style. He looked at what was provided for young people by
rock and roll, punk or reggae subcultures. He does not exactly say that they
give people what they want, but that they are useful in people’s lives, because
they help to structure (sometimes imaginary) resistance to official capitalist,
elitist views of the world. Jyst to tale one example, the lover of reggae,
living in a world where white bourgeois or nationalistic thought is taught and
valued can with others create a small community where black language and music,
peace loving ideas and back to Africa dreams can be put at the centre of life.
You might also want to mention Grossberg,
and his idea that people use popular culture to build affective alliances, imagined
communities which allow them to deal with the world. This approach again
emphasizes mass participation in popular culture, and does not present popular
culture as simply something produced for passive consumers by a market hoping
to make a profit.
For the second
part on visual art we are still looking at the same question: are people
receiving « what they want », but there is an added complication :
visual art is not necessarily popular culture. Artists are often trained at
elite institutions, for example. This is not always the case: one might term
street art as popular culture: anyone can do it, and people can become well
known without the intervention of established museums and galleries (often with
a little help from the internet), in the way that
pop stars might.
Banksy is the obvious example, producing accessible, thought provoking work
available to everyone, even those who do not feel art galleries are for them.
Other artists such as L. S. Lowry have become tremendously popular ( he even
has a pop song about him). Photographers such as Martin Parr also seem to be
trying to make their work accessible,
and land artists such as Goldsworthy take their work out of the galleries and
out of the towns. [each time you mention, an artist, it is good to give one
example of their work, which I am not doing here]. Public sculpture projects
such as the fourth plinth are also placed in contexts which make them open to
everyone.
On the
other hand, a lot of visual art remains reserved to the initiated. Recent winners
of the prestigious Turner prize cannot be said to be producing art for
everyone.
The question of publicly funded art
galleries is linked to the idea of giving people what they want. The fact that
galleries are free in the UK, are no longer concentrated only in London, and
receive millions of visitors, are vectors of popularity, yet the dynamic is
mostly top-down, and the galleries do not correspond to most criteria of
popular culture.
HEDGING
Because
popular culture is ever changing and extremely heterogeneous, it is very
difficult to make strong affirmative statements about it. This means you need
to know how to hedge, and this more difficult in a foreign language.
For
example, it is better not to say “popular culture is just to entertain people
and have fun”. You should say one of the following:
"Many
commentators feel that popular culture is only concerned with
entertainment and fun."
"Popular culture may be seen as mainly a
question of entertainment and fun."
And then you can give some counter example
which adds nuance. For example, if pop music is very much concerned with fun,
it seems clear that it can sometimes be aiming at making people think,
expressing political demands or denouncing injustice.
This was in fact the classroom test - the principle for the final exam is exactly the same, but it is longer. For the classroom test above, two thirds of students got a mark of ten or over.
I hope this helps!
Thursday, November 28, 2019
L3 popular culture - resources on popular music
Here is an article on British popular music in the 1970s. It is entitled
"What Has Popular Music Ever Done for Us? Pleasure, Identity and Role Play in UK Pop Music in the 1970s" and tries to examine some questions which are not easy. If we look at the history, we know that punk arrived in the 1970s, rap arrived in Britain 15 years or so later. But is it possible to say why?
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01966875/document
And this very important documentary traces the history of the genre "progressive rock" in Britain. This is an important genre because it tended to challenge the distinction between popular culture and high culture. (About 15% of the documentary is not visible on Youtube, but you can see enough to follow the main points).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eHXus7ZszI&list=PLA911C12EC45DCF4A
Finally, a note about the links I put on this blog. Over the semester I have put about fifteen links to articles and videos. these will be useful for you to find examples to illustrate your answers in the exam. To repeat what I said about tests and exams - both the classroom test in December, and the January exam (if it turns out to be about British civilisation) will ask very general questions, so that you have quite a bit of freedom as to how to illustrate and justify your answer. Of course, if you have more and better examples than everyone else, you will get a good mark.
"What Has Popular Music Ever Done for Us? Pleasure, Identity and Role Play in UK Pop Music in the 1970s" and tries to examine some questions which are not easy. If we look at the history, we know that punk arrived in the 1970s, rap arrived in Britain 15 years or so later. But is it possible to say why?
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01966875/document
And this very important documentary traces the history of the genre "progressive rock" in Britain. This is an important genre because it tended to challenge the distinction between popular culture and high culture. (About 15% of the documentary is not visible on Youtube, but you can see enough to follow the main points).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eHXus7ZszI&list=PLA911C12EC45DCF4A
Finally, a note about the links I put on this blog. Over the semester I have put about fifteen links to articles and videos. these will be useful for you to find examples to illustrate your answers in the exam. To repeat what I said about tests and exams - both the classroom test in December, and the January exam (if it turns out to be about British civilisation) will ask very general questions, so that you have quite a bit of freedom as to how to illustrate and justify your answer. Of course, if you have more and better examples than everyone else, you will get a good mark.
L3 Popular culture - first class on 20th century British popular music
You will find here the MP3 recording of the first class on 20th century popular music genres.
The slides will be available on this blog later, when I have got through more of them in class.
There will be more popular music reading and links later today on this blog.
The slides will be available on this blog later, when I have got through more of them in class.
There will be more popular music reading and links later today on this blog.
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
The past in the present
Every single day there seems to be an example in the https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/nov/27/bronze-cockerel-to-be-returned-to-nigeria-by-cambridge-college
réunion d'information
Pour les étudiants de L3, Master, agrégation:
Partir à l'étranger pour travailler en tant que lecteur:
Réunion d'information
Mercredi 4 décembre 2019 à 12h30 en salle A316
Contact: cecile.fouache@univ-rouen.fr
Monday, November 25, 2019
Important
1) Attention. A l’approche de l’hiver il y a de très méchantes gastros qui se promènent.
2) A cause de 1) je serai absent demain et mercredi.
3) Pour qu’on continue à avancer, Je mettrai sur ce blog de la lecture etc concernant chacun des cours.
4) Faites passer l’information.
2) A cause de 1) je serai absent demain et mercredi.
3) Pour qu’on continue à avancer, Je mettrai sur ce blog de la lecture etc concernant chacun des cours.
4) Faites passer l’information.
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