I have a new piece out on JSTOR Daily about one of Samuel R. Delany’s early novels, The Ballad of Beta-2. Check it out!
On THE BALLAD OF BETA-2 by Samuel R. Delany
THE BLACKADEMIC LIFE: THE BLOG
I have a new piece out on JSTOR Daily about one of Samuel R. Delany’s early novels, The Ballad of Beta-2. Check it out!
THE BLACKADEMIC LIFE: THE BLOG 
I always love to read your thoughts on Delany! How did the teaching of this go? I’ve taught Babel-17 before and it’s always a fun one to do, but definitely a challenge – I was thinking of picking it up for the classroom again.
Mostly, it went OK. I was glad I taught it because it helped me to learn more about the novel. Some of them actually got into it. I had one student who was actually an SF reader, and had an interesting idea for a paper about it. Of course, that student never turned in a paper.
The Ballad of Beta-2 is short, so that is an advantage. I taught Nova before and I think more students struggled to get through it, even though I assigned it in digestible segments and we read it over several weeks.