Comments on: Help!! Emergency Romance Syllabus Dilemma!!

By: lk

lk — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:49:21 +0000

Dang, too late to suggest SHADOWHEART.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:32:21 +0000

Thank you Janet W. I am grateful to have such a good list for future reference!

By: Janet W

Janet W — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 22:31:28 +0000

Late to this party and glad you solved your problem! This is one of my 10 top faves of all time — lucky students! Another book with a forced seduction, but not, imo, on par with THATH, is Christina Dodd’s “A Well-Pleasured Lady”.

By: Nicola O.

Nicola O. — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:09:36 +0000

Yes, I’ve got to add this one to my list. I remember the controversy. With all due respect to Campbell, though, I want to offer not just a controversial or a good book, but some of the best the genre has to offer.

There are lots of books with rape and forced seduction scenes. I really love Campbell’s writing as well, although she doesn’t get perhaps as universal a thumbs-up from the romance community, part of that (IMO) is her newbie status. 10 years from now I think we’ll still be talking about her work.

By: KristieJ

KristieJ — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 06:38:07 +0000

I’d love to hear the class reaction too. And although you’ve solved the problem, if you ever decide to do another one, my first though was also Uncommon Vows by Mary Jo Putney.

By: azteclady

azteclady — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:13:01 +0000

@ Jessica:
But I’ve been wanting to find THATH for ages…

By: Jessica

Jessica — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:39:32 +0000

Kate wrote:

Ok, so I won’t order THATH anytime soon

Don’t you dare!!

By: Jessica

Jessica — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:32:07 +0000

Nicola O. wrote:

I see you have your answer, Jessica, but I did want to second Sunita’s suggestion of Claiming the Courtesan.

@ Robin:

It’s great for ethical issues within the text, but it also raises ethical issues in writing and reading. For example, are rape fantasies morally bad for women in the context of a rape culture? Or do they count as what we call “counter stories” that serve to resist oppression?

Also, it’s the only genre fiction (I think) we’ll read all semester. Everything we’ll read about ethics in literature uses literary fiction as examples (interestingly, folks will use films like Goodfellas, but no genre fiction). So we’ll use THATH to ask the question: If literature is morally good for us (a position we’ll study early in the term, along with its contrary), does that translate to genre fiction?

Kaetrin wrote:

I’d love to read more about the class you will be teaching re THATH – I read that book after reading your various posts on it here (I got a copy from the library) – maybe we can be pseudo students for that one …. please?

Janine wrote:

Will you be able to report back on your students’ reactions to the book? I would so love to be a fly on your classroom wall.

Yes! I will share my notes and the impressions students have of the book. Like most of my philosophy courses, it’s mostly men. Thanks for being interested.

By: Kate

Kate — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 07:05:51 +0000

Ok, so I won’t order THATH anytime soon

Seriously, I had a professor in college require a class of 20-odd 300 level Latin students to have a text that was well out of print, then tell us to check abebooks.com and powells.com. We all found it. I don’t see a problem with asking students to buy used online and – gasp – share if need be.

Hopefully you’ll let us know how this pans out.

By: Robin

Robin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 05:02:19 +0000

One more thing: To Love and To Cherish also offers some wonderful ethical and moral issues, but many of them are more spiritual (ontological) in nature. Still, it might be worth at least talking about and perhaps even suggesting to students who find THATH interesting (or even for general discussion of Gaffney’s use of moral ambiguity within different contexts).