What follows is an exploratory essay like that students are asked to produce for the Expl assignment in my section of ENGL & THRE 3333: Shakespeare: Comedies & Sonnets during the Fall 2016 instructional term at Schreiner University. As with the sample proposal from which it arises (and which it echoes), its topic is slightly aside from that allowed to the students; rather than treating a single work, it treats a more general Shakespearean reconstruction, looking for what prompts continuance of the Bard in popular culture. It does, however, adhere to the length requirements expressed to students; they are asked for 1,300 to 1,625 words, exclusive of heading, title,  page numbers, and any necessary Works Cited entries, and the essay below is 1,527 words long, assessed by those standards. Its formatting will necessarily differ from student submissions due to the differing medium. How the medium influences reading is something well worth considering as a classroom discussion, particularly for those students who are going into particularly writing- or design-intensive fields.

Set in a fantastical analogue of feudal Japan and China, the Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) is a tabletop gaming property that, across the first two decades of its existence, encompassed a collectible card game, a role-playing game, miniatures wargaming, and more “traditional” table games. (As of this writing, the property is undergoing a transition associated with new ownership. A card game is promised, and a role-playing game is suggested, as being forthcoming, but what connections to earlier incarnations of the property will be in place are unclear.) Each partook of an ongoing, player-driven storyline; that is, while there was an over-arching plotline for the whole gaming property, many of the points of that plot were determined by players, whether explicitly by fiat or through results achieved by victories at major gaming events. The direct and identifiable impact on storyline by players accounted for much of the game’s popularity and the loyalty of its player base. It also commanded a rich and detailed back history for the player-current narratives to emerge from, and that, in turn, included consideration of faux-historical cultural figures. One of them, Shosuro Furuyari, is a clear send-up of a particular view on William Shakespeare–one that is, unfortunately, not the most accurate view of the Bard to be found.

The focus of L5R is on the noble classes of the land of the Empire of Rokugan, the aforementioned analogue of feudal Japan and China. As noted in the core rulebook of the L5R role-playing game’s fourth edition (Carman et al., 13-71), the members of those noble classes are divided, for the most part, into various Clans and Families. The mightiest of the Clans, the Great Clans, originally descended from the divine children of the Sun and Moon, and their social roles and overall philosophies derive in large part from their founders. Each of the Clans adopts an animal totem to serve as its dominant heraldic emblem and as an overarching metaphor for the Clan as a whole. One such is the Scorpion Clan, descended from the underhanded Bayushi; its members are the spies and assassins of the Empire, those willing to take most any means to get done whatever jobs need to get done, regardless of the stains on their personal honor. They find secrets and keep them, doing much to disguise such truths as may not be palatable or helpful–and as part of their disguising, they maintain extensive groups of actors and workers associated with acting. This includes no few playwrights, among whom is the figure of Shosuro Furuyari, acknowledged as the greatest dramatist in the milieu–and a clear incarnation of Shakespeare.

To be fair, the nature of the tabletop role-playing game, even one with as involved a backstory as L5R, precludes full historical development. As it is, the in-game history of Rokugan is only cursorily sketched, more than a dozen centuries of material compressed into forms easily accessed by casual players (who still often find themselves daunted by the scope and extent of the material). That history occupies scores of pages across nearly two dozen books in the fourth edition of the role-playing game–as well as hundreds of other pages in the previous three editions of the game. Although the game texts are supplemented by no few works of fiction, written by the game’s writers and reflecting “official” developments of the storyline, there is still a paucity of evidence upon which to base any assertions about in-game historical figures.

Such evidence as exists, however, serves to associate Furuyari with Shakespeare. For one, the very name of the character connects the Scorpion dramatist to the Bard. The character’s personal name, Furuyari, can be read as furu + yari–and in a language deliberately patterned after (sometimes poorly translated) Japanese. At least one meaning of furu, depending on the transliteration, is “shake,” and at least one meaning of yari is “spear.” The name therefore reads as “shake spear,” a slightly punning reference to the name of the Swan of Avon of which the man himself was evidently aware, given his work in securing his family’s coat of arms (Wolfe). It is a fitting name for a premiere dramatist in another milieu, and its deployment makes clear that the game’s writers are using the figure as a representative of the most famous of all playwrights.

Other evidence functions similarly. For example, one of Furuyari’s best known plays is One Winter’s Snowfall (Wulf et al., 32), the title of which evokes Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale. Another of his major works, Death of the First Hantei, presents a scene in which many people lie to their lord to ease his mind–but one refuses to do so (Soesbee 28); the scene evokes Cordelia’s refusal to tell sweet untruths to her father in King Lear. Yet another of his plays is described as “a three-part epic” (“Honest”), calling to mind the Bard’s three plays about Henry VI. Admittedly, no more than snippets of the texts of the plays are available–although role-playing games are themselves necessarily associated with theater through their performative nature, it is not often that full scripts are presented within them. But even that can be read as evocative of Shakespeare, given such theorized lost plays as Love’s Labour’s Won. There are connections, therefore, to be made between the role-playing game’s character and the Swan of Avon.

Unfortunately, the Shakespeare stand-in in L5R is a fraud, a non-existent person used as a cover for others. In its origins, the façade serves to cover over dramatists uncertain of the reception of their plays and as a convenient vehicle for the Scorpion to maneuver into positions from which to gather intelligence (Wick 36). Agrarian feudal societies do not necessarily offer much in the way of entertainment, so traveling groups of performers were likely to be welcomed warmly–and in the hours after the plays and after-parties ended, as the grateful hosts slept, the actors could creep about and find out more than had already been revealed by careful observation and drink-loosened tongues. Later, the returned spirit of a villainous figure–again, L5R is a fantasy game–assumes the identity of Furuyari, using the reverence in which the setting holds the (imagined) writer to maneuver into positions of power and influence and thence to attempt a coup against the current rightful rulers; for a time, he stands among the closest advisers of the lord of the Scorpion Clan, only to be exposed–and to confess himself as–a traitor to that lord and to the Empire as a whole (Wulf, “Master”). Subsequently, he actively works to undermine the legitimate authorities of the Empire (Wulf, “Unfinished”). That is, by posing as the playwright, the pernicious antagonist accrues influence that is then put to vile–and objectively evil, in the context of the game–ends. Neither view of the Shakespeare-analogue–and therefore of the Bard, by proxy–is favorable.

It might be argued, and with some justice, that L5R is simply a game and that the assertions made in it are not to be taken as representative or directive–and the implications of it are far less so. L5R is a series of games, and there is a disjunction between the world of the game and the world that enfolds the game. Too, the contextual materials the game offers are scanty, as any simulation’s must be. But L5R is also a sprawling narrative, one that has pulled in thousands of audience members across decades, and it is no secret that the kinds of fans associated with tabletop gaming are often intense in their devotion to the objects of their fandom. As Flegel and Roth, Roth and Flegel, and Stein and Busse assert, fandoms take into themselves no small part of those properties of which they are fans, integrating with them in familial, communal ways; what the properties do exerts influence on who its fans are. For L5R to put forth a view of Shakespeare that holds him a fiction–and one easily exploited for nefarious purposes–is dangerous, even if the view is occluded and partial. That a thing works subtly and through suggestion does not mean it does not work, after all, as the victims of any number of half-heard rumors can attest.

Even with such problems, though, the fact that L5R does engage with Shakespeare–and not only in Furuyari; for example, the plot of a foregrounded scene from a work of prominent in-world fiction closely mimics the final scene of Taming of the Shrew, highlighting a wager of obedience (Wick 15-17)–is itself an important thing. Among others, it reaffirms the central place of the Bard to the narrative communities that have succeeded him. It shows that the Swan of Avon still swims through the currents of popular consciousness in the English-speaking world, even in those eddies which may be thought to be far removed from the main stream, and it offers promise that the utility of Shakespeare and studies thereof are far from exhausted. More is being done, so more is yet to do, and that offers no small hope for those who will continue to undertake academic study of the humanities.

Works Cited

• Carman, Shawn, et al. Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game, 4th ed., Alderac Entertainment Group, 2010.
• Flegel, Monica, and Jenny Roth. “Legitimacy, Validity, and Wriitng for Free: Fan Fiction, Gender, and the Limits of (Unpaid) Labor.” The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 47, no. 6, 2014, pp. 1092-1108.
• “An Honest Ant.” Kaze no Shiro, www.kazenoshiro.com/kazenoshiro/1/hhorant.php. Accessed 5 October 2016.
• Roth, Jenny, and Monica Flegel. “It’s Like Rape: Metaphorical Family Transgressions, Copyright Ownership, and Fandom.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, vol. 28, no. 6, 2014, pp. 901-13, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2014.964175. Accessed 29 September 2016.
• Shakespeare. The Taming of the Shrew. The Necessary Shakespeare, edited by David Bevington, 4th ed., Pearson, 2014. pp. 2-41.
• Soesbee, Ree. Winter Court: Kyuden Seppun, Five Rings Publishing Group, 1999.
• Stein, Louisa, and Kristina Busse. “Limit Play: Fan Authorship between Source Text, Intertext, and Context.” Popular Communication, vol. 7, 2009, pp. 192-207, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15405700903177545. Accessed 29 September 2016.
• Wick, John. Way of the Scorpion, Five Rings Publishing Group, 1998.
• Wolfe, Heather. “Shakespeare Coat of Arms Discovery.” Folger Shakespeare Library, www.folger.edu/shakespeare-coat-of-arms-discovery. Accessed 3 October 2016.
• Wulf, Rich. “Unfinished Business, Part II.” Kaze no Shiro, 2016, www.kazenoshiro.com/2008/10/06/unfinished-business-part-ii/. Accessed 4 October 2016.
• —. “Master of Secrets.” Kaze no Shiro, 2016, www.kazenoshiro.com/2008/08/15/master-of-secrets/. Accessed 4 October 2016.
• Wulf, Rich, et al. Secrets of the Scorpion, Alderac Entertainment Group, 2003.

What appears below is a sample of the kind of paper students in my Fall 2016 section of ENGL 1301: Rhetoric & Composition are asked to write here. Its topic is one that would likely need discussion, although it would likely receive approval if requested. It does, however, adhere to the length requirements expressed to students. They are asked for approximately 1,300 words, exclusive of heading, title,  page numbers, and any necessary Works Cited entries; the paper below is exactly that length as assessed by those standards. Its formatting will necessarily differ from student submissions due to the differing medium. How the medium influences reading is something well worth considering as a classroom discussion, particularly for those students who are going into particularly writing- or design-intensive fields.

I have not always taught at the college level; I began college with the idea of becoming a band director, and when I switched my major to English, I did so seeking certification to teach high school. As part of that pursuit, I spent a semester student-teaching at Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio, Texas. Standing near where Monticello Park shades into Maverick and Donaldson Terrace, located on Donaldson Avenue not far off of Babcock where it approaches Fredericksburg, the school focuses on a lovely building built by the old Civilian Conservation Corps. Decorated within and without by intricate carvings and inlaid tiles in variegated colors, it does show its age, to be sure, and the work of bored, delinquent students upon it—but I nonetheless reached it gladly each morning, knowing it to be a good place to do the last little bit of work before I began my teaching career.

Typically, when I went to work at the school, I would wear a button-up shirt without a tie (my throat swells when I speak as classrooms call me to do, and ties threaten then to cut off the flow of blood to my brain) and a pair of slacks—and I still felt underdressed for the building, even as the teacher who graciously allowed me to use his classes for my own learning typically appeared in jeans and others on campus dressed no less casually. I was anxious about my professional status, then, having not yet earned my certification or my baccalaureate, and I knew that presenting a polished appearance to my students would do much to help instill a sense of respect for me and for the work I tried to do with the classes I taught—six sections of regular-level senior English.

Then as now, though, I did not want my students to be so much in awe of me that they dared not speak. Too, then as now, I wanted them to feel the same joy in English language and literature that I do—and, since senior English at Thomas Jefferson High School then treated British literature, I was particularly motivated to make the joy and delight of the subject matter known. Even then, I knew I would be treating it at length in my career to come, although I did not yet know my doing so would take me to graduate school in Lafayette, Louisiana, and to a career beyond. And so I did what I could to embrace laughter and wordplay, cracking wise in the classroom as often as the material and circumstances would allow. With Chaucer, the Greatest of Geoffreys, I could often do so. With Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and with Malory, less so, but I still did what I could to find and push forward my delight in the work.

Advancing it, though, did not always go so well as I would hope. The early class, still waking up and filled to overflowing with more than thirty students crammed into a classroom meant to hold twenty-five, and having no few students whose command of English, by chance or by choice, did not permit jokes to go over well, did not laugh so much as I did. Second period, disrupted by demanded oaths and announcements, often had problems finding its rhythm again after the class resumed. Third period was given to planning and draining the last dregs of each morning’s thermos of coffee. Fourth period was usually pretty good about getting the jokes, or at least getting that there were jokes, and several of the students produced remarkably sensitive, astute work; that I reached them, I know, and I wish I had been able to remain in contact with some of them across the intervening decade. Fifth period, following lunch, was generally good, if perhaps a bit sleepy with bellies full. Sixth period, smaller by far, was almost always on top of matters—if punctuated unpleasantly by two students with mouths smarter than their heads. Seventh period, with seven students, might be quiet, but it was the kind of quiet that comes from deep consideration and understanding, and I appreciated having such an end to each teaching day.

So it happened one morning that I had gone to work wearing a white shirt and blue slacks, and I was teaching as I normally did, going over some of Shakespeare’s sonnets in much more sedate fashion than I do anymore. (I know more now, or I flatter myself that I do, and I can speak of things with college students that I cannot with high schoolers.) Even so, I launched any number of jokes, chiefly puns and what I thought were sly commentaries, presenting texts in unaccustomed accents, towards my students as I moved about the room, gesticulating wildly as is my wont—and they laughed! Oh, how they laughed! Shoulders heaving as head dropped to desks or into hands to shake while cradled, the students guffawed and bellowed and brayed; some even snorted, and their doing so gave me pause. I stopped to share their laughter and resumed my work, sending out comment after comment to what seemed acclaim. If I recall correctly, one student even slipped out of his chair and onto the floor, and one or two might have had to run to the restroom against the gales of mirth that blew about the class.

For forty-five minutes, I kept such things going, and in the last five, as students began to pack their things to flee from my room to those of other, more established, more staid instructors, one of them—a student whose good-natured smart-alecky commentaries often offered me pushing-off points for my own—came up to the lectern on which I leaned to catch my breath again and still my mind to present materials to the next class.

“Mr. Elliott,” he said, for I had not yet earned my higher titles then, “I need to tell you something.”

“What’ve y’ got?” I asked in reply, suddenly sobered—for the students at Thomas Jefferson High School face circumstances that are often not optimal, often not as any of us would have them be, and the words he spoke were given me in a tone hollower and lower in pitch and volume than his usual rolling jollity.

“Well, sir,” he said, and his neck and cheeks began to flush red, “well, your, well,” and, trailing off, he pointed downwards at me. My eyes followed his finger’s gesture, looking behind the lectern and towards the front of my pants.

My fly was open.

My shirt stuck through it.

I had taught the entire class with a bit of my white shirt emerging through the front of dark blue slacks.

I had not noticed.

I felt a flood of heat in my own chest and neck and cheeks, a sudden fever in my forehead, and I knew I did a fair imitation in that moment of the flag of the Netherlands. I spun quickly, facing away from the class—even though I was behind a solid lectern and so concealed, and even though I had had a banner of peace and surrender emerging from the front of my pants for all of my students to see—shoving my shirt back through the open fly and zipping it tightly closed.

I turned back to the student just in time to hear the bell ring and the din of students flooding the halls, rushing out of the classroom—he was already on his way out of the door, and as he cleared the threshold, I heard the twittering of laughter and the lower ululations of others’ mirth—not because of the things I had said, but because of what I had left undone that day and not again since.

What appears below is a sample of the kind of paper students in my Fall 2016 section of ENGL 2340: World Literature through the Renaissance are asked to write here. Its topic is one that would need approval, although it would likely receive it if requested. It does, however, adhere to the length requirements expressed to students. They are asked for 1,300 to 1,625 words, exclusive of heading, title,  page numbers, and any necessary Works Cited entries; the paper below is 1,328 words long as assessed by those standards. Its formatting will necessarily differ from student submissions due to the differing medium. How the medium influences reading is something well worth considering as a classroom discussion, particularly for those students who are going into particularly writing- or design-intensive fields.

One of the best-known works of medieval Welsh literature, The Mabinogion relates a number of stories that compose what Jeffrey Gantz describes as the only collection of medieval Welsh folktales available (10). No few translations of the tales allow them to be studied and appreciated by those who have no facility with one of the last living Celtic languages, but all such translations necessarily impose other standards and other perspectives on the text. They are distortions of both the original language and the target (Conley 20-21), and so they will necessarily have different valences for different audiences. Following Naoki Sakai, they are not neutral; they specifically privilege and address particular usage communities, whether intentionally or otherwise. Which communities are addressed can be inferred from any number of features, ranging from the diction in the target language to the editorial apparatus–or gaps therein. One example among many that can be found inheres in Jeffrey Gantz’s translation of “Pwyll Lord of Dyved,” the story with which his rendition of The Mabinogion begins. In it, editorial apparatus points towards–but not at–a bit of political commentary easily passed over by many readers; those readers who do see the commentary, likely to be erudite cynical punsters (or those who fancy themselves such, at least) may well be those Gantz seeks to address most directly.

The political commentary in question inheres in a bit of wordplay that relies on an emblematic reading of character names. Gantz begins to motion toward it in a footnote appended to the first word of the tale, noting that the eponymous Pwyll of “Pwyll Lord of Dyved” bears a name meaning “sense, judgment” (46n1). The name is a fitting one for a ruler, as it is often hoped that those in power have some idea what they are about; this is almost certainly the case for the late twentieth century initial readership of Gantz’s translation from the Welsh, particularly given the upheavals of the Baby Boomers beginning to come into full adulthood and those who led the Greatest Generation passing on or retiring from active work. Motion towards the word-play continues as the character of Arawn King of Annwvyn is introduced; Gantz glosses the word tentatively as meaning “not-world” (47n5), implying that it is like More’s Utopia, a no-place, something not to be found within the world. The motion is completed in a later comment, one that takes place after Pwyll and Arawn have concluded their bargain and grown into fast friends; narration remarks that the Lord of Dyved “was called Pwyll Head of Annwvyn ever after” (51). Following Gantz’s glosses, he became known as Sense, Head of Nowhere, a comment not explicitly heralded in the editorial apparatus, although it can be inferred from those things that are so announced.

The joke itself, of course, is in its thrust a commonplace. Complaints about the irrationality of those in power persist in the literary and historical records, ranging in intensity from polite mentions that other decisions would be preferable to vitriolic screeds that rage against the inanity of governance, in length from such quips as Lord Acton’s to tome-length deconstructions of authority. Many of them make for entertaining and humorous reading. That Gantz’s translation–and, presumably, the original work being translated–would make such a comment does not, therefore, serve to narrow the audience for Gantz’s translation further than those who, already cynical, look for ways to heap aspersion upon things; making a widely understood joke bespeaks a wide audience.

The way the comment is presented, however, helps to direct the joke towards a narrower group. For one, unless Gantz’s reader is also a reader of Welsh, identifying the valence of Pwyll is a task requiring a glossary. So is discerning the meaning of Annwvyn. (Since the text is published in 1976, it is not one that can readily assume the availability of machine translation–but even for readers that have such access, using it to untangle proper nouns is not necessarily a go-to task; names are often readily accepted as themselves, having no greater significance.) Gantz provides one, as noted above, but a Cymræg/English dictionary would also suffice–and in both cases, the possession and use of such a device denotes a particular kind of reading (and reader) commonly associated with greater education and formal training, thus, however arbitrarily, with greater intelligence. That is, setting up the joke in editorial, scholarly apparatus positions the joke to be taken up not by a casual reader, but by a “serious” one.

Many people can be counted on to look at the words presented on the page when they read a book or a story within one, however, so while embedding clues to a joke in footnotes begins to move that joke away from casual readers, it is not enough to take it fully away from them. (Admittedly, endnotes, requiring more effort to follow and removing explanation further from the explained, might do so.) Obliging that provided pieces be assembled, though, at least carries the joke further afield than the easy reading a causal reader might do would go, placing it more firmly among the paths trodden by the (perhaps self-styled) erudite. Gantz’s translation of “Pwyll Lord of Dyved” does not make a comment when the eponymous character is relabeled as Pwyll Head of Annwyvn; it does not point out the punning reference to the absence of good sense amid the governance of corporeal nations. Instead, it leaves readers to infer that such a comment is being made, demanding a higher level of reading comprehension than openly announcing the contents of the joke would. A cynical pun is thus aimed at those who look more deeply into things than might otherwise be the case–and such people are often held to be more intelligent.

It might well be argued that failing to call out the joke means the joke was deemed unimportant, or perhaps that it was not noticed or intended. Yet the fact that the components of the joke are identified and explained when they are first presented suggests that their result bears attention, as well; again, names of people and places are readily accepted as complete within themselves, needing no other meaning to be significant and needing no explanation to identify characters and geography. (Indeed, Arawn’s name is not defined; nor are many other names in the text.) Too, it is not to be expected that scholars–and the editorial apparatus and prefatory blurb for the volume, which identifies Gantz as having earned a doctorate in language and literature from Harvard (1), both indicate that Gantz is a scholar–would fail to notice a clever combination of textual elements in their areas of specialty, even if those outside it might not. And mention of the intentional fallacy allows for discard of whether the joke is meant or not; whether it was meant consciously has no bearing on whether it has a given function. Gantz could have been responding to subconscious or prevailing cultural ideas–the years leading up to 1976 were not a time of great trust in government–and it is a commonplace that people do things that others view as funny without any premeditation to that end.

That there is a bit of humor at work among the scholarly paraphernalia in Jeffrey Gantz’s translation of “Pwyll Lord of Dyved” is clear. That it is a comment bespeaking the age-old cynical conceit that government is senseless is evident. That it relies on word-play, making it a pun, is groaningly obvious. That it consists of parts embedded in places where only more educated–and therefore “more intelligent”–readers are likely to look can be sussed out. That the joke itself has to be sussed out means that it restricts the audience for the joke–and perhaps the audience Gantz’s translation has in mind, not simply one of scholars, but one of scholars who look for cynical commentaries and who revel in subtle puns wherever they might be.

Works Cited

• Conley, Verena. “Living in Translation.” Profession, 2010, pp.18-24.
• Gantz, Jeffrey, translator and editor. The Mabinogion. Penguin, 1976.
• Sakai, Naoki. “Translation and the Figure of Border: Toward the Apprehension of Translation as a Social Action.” Profession, 2010, pp. 25-34.

What follows is a paper proposal like that students are asked to produce for the PProp assignment in my section of ENGL & THRE 3333: Shakespeare: Comedies & Sonnets during the Fall 2016 instructional term at Schreiner University. Its topic is slightly aside from that allowed to the students; rather than treating a single work, it treats a more general Shakespearean reconstruction, looking for what prompts continuance of the Bard in popular culture. It does, however, adhere to the length requirements expressed to students; they are asked for 300 to 500 words, exclusive of heading, title,  page numbers, and any necessary Works Cited entries, and the proposal below is 342 words long, assessed by those standards. Its formatting will necessarily differ from student submissions due to the differing medium. How the medium influences reading is something well worth considering as a classroom discussion, particularly for those students who are going into particularly writing- or design-intensive fields.

Set in a fantastical analogue of feudal Japan and China, the Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) is a tabletop gaming property that, across the first two decades of its existence, encompassed a collectible card game, a role-playing game, miniatures wargaming, and more “traditional” table games. Each partook of an ongoing, player-driven storyline; that is, while there was an over-arching plotline for the whole gaming property, many of the points of that plot were determined by players, whether explicitly by fiat or through results achieved by victories at major gaming events. The direct and identifiable impact on storyline by players accounted for much of the game’s popularity and the loyalty of its player base. It also commanded a rich and detailed back history for the player-current narratives to emerge from, and that, in turn, included consideration of faux-historical cultural figures. One of them, Shosuro Furuyari, is a clear send-up of a particular view on William Shakespeare–one that is, unfortunately, not the most accurate view of the Bard to be found.

The view of Shakespeare is conveyed by L5R’s presentation of its foremost dramatic mind merits explication; the figure is repeatedly referenced and, though convolutions of plot only possible in a fantastic setting, appears–or seems to do so–so it is clearly one of importance to the overarching storyline. Consideration of what influences lead to the specific iteration of the Bard–major cultural threads near the time of the property’s beginning and at significant points in the overall narrative–also suggests itself as worth offering, and the influences likely to result from consumption of the idea of Shakespeare conveyed by L5R–that is, what are players whose views on the world are necessarily influenced by the works in which they partake–are also likely to need investigation. What implications such media influence has appear to be usefully interrogated, as well. In effect, looking at Shosuro Furuyari allows for examination of the continued utility of even bad views of the Swan of Avon, arguing in favor of continued study of already-well-studied works.

What follows is a descriptive essay such as my students are asked to write for the Desc assignment in the Fall 2016 term at Schreiner University. As is expected of student work, it treats a specific room that has emotional valence for the author. It also adheres to the length requirements expressed to students; they are asked for approximately 975 words exclusive of heading, title,  page numbers, and any necessary Works Cited entries, and the essay below is 979, assessed by those standards. (Although it makes some use of outside materials, such is neither required nor expected of students in the class in their own descriptive essays. Any deployed, however, must be cited fittingly, as noted here.) Its formatting will necessarily differ from student submissions due to the differing medium. How the medium influences reading is something well worth considering as a classroom discussion, particularly for those students who are going into particularly writing- or design-intensive fields.

I entertain an idea of myself as a professional, and part of that professional identity inheres in the space wherein I work. I have spoken to it before, to be sure; both an informal essay I wrote for past students–“Sample Profile: Morrill 411”–and a vignette published in College Composition and Communication–“Where Writes Me”–treat environments in which I have done the work of scholarship, both research and teaching. As I write now, I am working two separate teaching jobs. One of them is at a for-profit school in San Antonio; the other is at Schreiner University, where I am assigned an office: Weir 209. I am still working to complete it, and as I do, I am trying to build it up as an extension of the kind of instructor I want to be at the institution, one whom students can approach and whom they have reason to approach.

In itself, the room is not necessarily remarkable. Physically, it measures perhaps 12 feet deep and 15 across, with what looks to be a ten-foot ceiling. The walls are painted a flat brownish color, a few shades darker than the Cosmic Latte deemed to be the average color of the universe, and a single fluorescent tube bulb shows it off poorly. At present, a side-table flanks the one desk (carrying the standard-issue phone and computer) in the room, guarding it from the door; a file cabinet and bookcase inherited from other office-dwellers stand opposite, a gray chair for the occasional visitor beside them. The bookcase is not yet full, and the walls are barer yet; it is clear that the office is a work in progress. Yet that clarity reveals something that is true for all of us. We should all be works in progress; certainly those who are still studying have to view themselves as not yet done. And because they are not yet done, the fact that I am not yet done–and I cannot be, since my office, festooned with boxes and with bare walls, is not done–should make it easier for folks to come and talk to me. I am where they are in some senses, at least, and that kind of fellow-feeling ought to help.

The decor that slowly proceeds out into my office also builds up fellow-feeling by showing my visitors something of who and what I am other than an instructor in the classroom. To be sure, I invest heavily in my professional identity, and I try to be authentically myself at the front of the classroom (although there are many things I tone down when I am in front of students, particularly those with less experience). Even so, I have made a point to have out on my desk mementos from my time in my discipline’s honor society: a bookmark with the logo and colors, programs from events that stand out in mind. Too, some souvenirs from a trip abroad have found their way out onto my shelves, although the may not present themselves prominently. I suppose they come out as a kind of Easter egg, a little thing that rewards those who look carefully with additional insight. I know that I value such things; their prevalence in popular culture suggests that many others value such things, as well, and the display of coincident values joins my display of self in welcoming others.

As my office furnishings build, more and more of my scholarly apparatus emerges from cardboard boxes to line my walls and bookshelves. I admit that the symbols are somewhat fraught, certainly; much of “Where Writes Me” is directed to that end. But one of the things I know they convey, one of the things I know comes across to students and visitors when they come in and see more and more journals and binders filled with teaching tips and exercises and my own notes from classes long since taken, is that there are answers to be found. More, the fact that I have such things on my shelves, with more coming to rest on them over time, says to those students who come in to see me that I have ready access to those answers. When they open the pages of my scholarly journals and teaching textbooks and see the many annotations made upon them–since I write on most every book and journal that comes to me–they see, too, that I have searched through them to find my answers. Not only are there answers to be found, then, and not only do I have access to them, I have found many of them, and I have left signs so that I can find them again–or lead others to them. If it remains the case that higher education exists at least in part as a means for seekers to find paths to knowledge, then my office, to some extent now and more as I manage to move more fully into it, offers students a way to do the thing that they set out to do by being students. They have a reason to visit it and to visit me in it, as I would have matters be.

There is more for me to do in Weir 209, to be sure. I am not fully moved into it; so long as I remain at Schreiner and remain committed to the idea that I need to be better so that my students can be better yet–and I am–I will not be. There is always more to bring in, always more that would be good to have ready to hand. But for now, the facts that I am building and that I have built already what I have there to fill out the room do much to show students they are welcome and they will find help. I am happy that both are true.

Works Cited

• Elliott, Geoffrey B. “Sample Profile: Morrill 411.” Geoffrey B. Elliott’s Teaching Blog, 5 February 2014, http://gelliottteaching.blogspot.com/2014/02/sample-profile-morrill-411.html.
• —. “Where Writes Me.” CCC, vol. 66, no. 2, December 2014, pp. 247-49.

As noted here, the students in my Fall 2016 section of ENGL 1301: Rhetoric & Composition at Schreiner University were asked to complete a diagnostic writing exercise during class on 26 August 2016. My usual practice (although I am not always able to follow it) is to do the assignments I give my students, so, as the students wrote their diagnostic exercises, I wrote to the same prompt. That prompt and my response thereto are below.

The Prompt

One motto of Schreiner University, that long displayed at the main entrance, is “Enter with hope. Leave with achievement.” With what hope do you enter Schreiner? Why do you harbor it? How do you think to enact it?

The Response

Like most or all of the students in my section of Rhetoric & Composition, I am new to Schreiner University; I grew up in Kerrville, to be sure, but I went elsewhere for my college coursework. As I return to the Hill Country, though, and to working in Kerrville, I am struck anew by the idea of entering the Schreiner community with hope—and I do have several hopes as I begin my work at the campus. Perhaps chief among them is that I will do that work well, but that would be true of any job. More specific to my work at Schreiner University is that I hope to make a new beginning for myself, primarily as a professional, but also as a person.

I have been in need of a new professional beginning, to be sure. For one thing, more than one of my previous jobs employed me on term contracts, and those terms ended without promise or hope of renewal; at the level of simple employment, then, I needed to make a new beginning. At a deeper level, though, I realize that I had grown into a mixture of complacency and, I am sorry to say, disdain for the work I had been doing at one place. (The other was much better, although the certainty of my limited term made engaging more difficult than it might otherwise have been.) I make no excuse for it; I have no excuse for it. I acknowledge my failure to commit to my earlier work as much as I could have—and maybe ought to have—done, but that does not mean I cannot also recognize that a change was needed. And it does not mean that I do not recognize I was in a bad place, mentally and emotionally; I was disconnecting not only from much of the work I was doing, but also from family and friends—and many of my colleagues did become friends—and from most of the things in which I had taken delight. So I suppose my need for a new personal beginning emerged alongside the need for a new professional beginning.

Schreiner offers me hope that I can find such beginnings again. When I interviewed for my position, I was welcomed warmly and eagerly, and I have continued to be welcomed each time I have come to campus. Faces smile when they see me here, rather than falling into frowns or turning away, and I find myself smiling in return—which is not something I was prone to doing before coming here. A new instructional term has gotten underway, and I am pleasantly surprised to see my classes holding all of the students they are supposed to; it is not something that has often happened for me before. And the upbuoying that I feel as I come onto campus follows me as I leave it; I have gone home tired, but it is the kind of tired that follows work done well and diligently rather than the tiredness of being leached of vitality and plodding along despite it. It is a kind of tired that allows me still to smile at my wife and daughter when I arrive home, rather than collapsing in on myself and walling out all that I can. It is a kind of tired that bespeaks and ongoing hope for a new beginning fostered by the simple fact that it seems to be realized as I walk onto the grounds, from building to building, and from class to class.

I hope it will endure.