My interim this year was "The Game's Afoot: Victorian Life Through The Lens of Sherlock Holmes." We read many of the stories and two of the novels, plus watched a half dozen film interpretations of Holmes and had reports on everything from courtship to colleges to funeral customs of the Victorian age. But the best day of class came when we read "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," which is perhaps the most famous of all the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. I won't give anything away, but let's just say that 'wildlife' is involved. To test some theories about how accurate events depicted in the story might have been, I asked my colleague Dr. John Moeller, from the Biology Department, to bring in one of his pets.
As you can see "Big Killer" was quite a hit! Talk about some interdisciplinary activity; students went from reading to cringing, but once the 'Dr. Moeller's not going to let that snake loose in here, is he?' nervousness was over, everyone had lots of questions. Some of the kids even made friends with the special guest.
And some of us think that Big Killer would make a really lovely pocketbook. Hmmm, maybe next year I'll teach the fashion interim instead!
