Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Band names inspired by grading my students' papers

  • Sketchy Secondary Sources
  • The Successionists* (a Civil War-era band)
  • Captain Obvious and the Weak Theses
Play along in the comments!

* Yes, multiple students managed to write research papers about the South's succession from the Union.

7 comments:

Arbitrista said...

Those are great!

Bryan Alexander said...

Heh!

The Backyard Quagmires - one student had a bad time with spellcheck.

(Well, in a sense, the South *did* "succeed." Labor unions demolished? check. Manufacturing in decline? check. Car culture mainlined? check. Country and western central to culture? check. NASCAR a national thing? check. The US looks more like Arkansas than it does Connecticut.)

Bardiac said...

Is there a way to find a band name that encapsulates all that is in a thesis that says "women* before were treated horribly and everything was horrible but now everything is wonderful"?

*You can freely substitute "people of color" or African Americans, even when writing about early modern drama.

Leslie M-B said...

@Bryan Ha! And you're right about the South succeeding. I forget that because culturally I tend to look North and West instead of South.

@Bardiac Ah, yes, I have seen many such essays this semester, though I must say they are tempered a bit because I hammered them pretty hard. "The Post-Feminists" or "The New Revisionists" comes to mind as possible names, though I imagine students would use different terms. "The Schlaflys"?

The History Enthusiast said...

I get the succession mistake every stinkin' semester. I had a grad student this semester who refused to be corrected, even after in the middle of class I pointed it out to him gently. He just wanted to piss me off.

Leslie M-B said...

Ooh--I have a new one! "Transcendental Railroad" I think that's my favorite so far.

JLF said...

1) If Transcendental Railroad and the Underground Railroad are misunderstood too often, you can always play a record of the famous band "Grand Flunk Railroad"

2) That fluffy, soured and unpleasant thesis "___ was horrible but now everything is better" could be summed up in one pun/word: Candidiasis -- infections caused by different types of yeast, or the condition of believing, as mocked in Candide, that we must currently inhabit the best of all possible worlds, and proof of that is that God and us haven't been able to improve it.