This is the second entry in a series on teaching the literature of 9/11. Dr. Erin Templeton, Assistant Professor of English and the Anne Morrison Chapman Distinguished Chair of International Study at Converse College, answered a few questions about her experiences teaching 9/11 fiction.
Hetland: What 9/11 texts do you teach?
Templeton: I teach both Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (ELIC) by Jonathan Safran Foer and selections from an American literature anthology.
Hetland: What classes do you use the texts in?
Templeton: ELIC is part of an upper-level contemporary American novels course; the anthology pieces are for the second half of our American Literature survey (1865-Present; 9/11 is as close as we get to the Present).
Hetland: Why have you chosen to teach Safran Foer’s novel?
Templeton: Because 1) it is a terrific novel and teaches well, and 2) because it also presents us with other issues that jive well with other books on the syllabus, specifically with issues of textual materiality and form, narrative perspective, and relationships between past and present and between older and younger generations.
Hetland: What kind of class discussions has the novel inspired?
Templeton: I begin the first class with two YouTube videos: one that is NBC’s live coverage of the attack and the other is a documentary called “Falling Man,” which is about media representations of the event focusing on the photographs of the bodies falling from the top of the towers before their collapse.
After that, we talk briefly about what we remember about that day. ELIC is particularly interesting in this respect because the majority of my students would have been the same age as one of the narrators.
In addition, we discuss what the relationship might be between art and current events. What kind of responsibility do writers and other artists have to engage the major events of their time? How soon is too soon? We also continue discussions of other themes that have been a constant throughout the semester: textual form, gender, consumption, and technology.
Hetland: Have you developed ways to help your students approach the text?
Templeton: The videos make a big difference.
Hetland: Generally, how do students respond to the text?
Templeton: They generally love it and are very emotional about the novel’s conclusion.
If you teach or have taught a 9/11 text and would like to share your experience, contact Tim Hetland via email (timhetland@gmail.com) or through Twitter (@timhetland)