Month: September 2012

Who Died and Made You Author?

Sometimes literary theory is pretty distant from the practical work of teaching. Think back to that time you brought your panopticon or your phallus (Lacan’s, I mean!) into the classroom, and to the moment in the middle of your excited explanation of the revolutionary ideas delivered to you across the Atlantic and through that one class in grad school when you realized it wasn’t helping  your students understand “A Rose for Emily.” The connections between the work with theory that we do in our training and our research often can seem part of another world than the one in which we teach.

I was reminded the other day—on the occasion of one of those curious confluences of events that happen when you’re doing a lot at once and all of the different things swim together in a river of caffeine—that this is not always the case. I’d just read D. T. Max’s new biography of the late David Foster Wallace, and in an interview I did with him (here) asked him about the revelation that Wallace had voted for Reagan. It seems to have been a surprise to many of his readers, who had come, through their reading of Wallace’s fiction and essays, to see him as squarely on the other end of the ideological spectrum. They thought they had a sense of the man from reading what he wrote, and this bit of news blurred the picture they’d constructed of him. Continue reading “Who Died and Made You Author?”

Creating a Syllabus for Introductory Multi-Genre

This week, I’m creating a syllabus for my multi-genre creative writing course.

I believe new writers should delay the genre decision for as long as possible. I believe in trying out genres as one does running shoes, asking how will this move me? My introductory mixed-genre course centers on interrogating genre, inventing genre. I believe a kind of wildness and abandon and deliberate rejection of constraint serve new writers well.

What’s most important at the beginning—of a writing life, a semester, a program of studying writing—is to play. And this play must be in the service of one thing: mastering one’s ability to get to one’s own truth.  Learning the in-depth intricacies of point of view in fiction, or seven ways to present character, isn’t as important, in my opinion, as learning how to come up with some subjects that engage the writer as much as the reader, and how to approach those subjects in ways that allow for discovery and surprise, depth and meaning. Continue reading “Creating a Syllabus for Introductory Multi-Genre”

Prior Knowledge: A Reminder to Myself

Recently, I taught Art Spiegelman’s short graphic essay “Mein Kampf” to my first year composition students.  I realized quickly that they were unaware of Spiegelman’s seminal work, Maus, which was something of a problem, because it’s part of what the piece is commenting on.  I did my best to explain to the students to basics of Maus and found a couple of images that I could project from the computer.

We did our best to have a discussion — and in terms of my goals for the day we achieved them.  I was able to have students look beyond the words to the way that the words and the images interacted and complemented one another.  But I felt like something was missing from the discussion — most especially the students’ ability to truly appreciate the work.

This is something I worry about a lot.  It’s also something I suspect most of us run into a lot. We know our pop culture references are lost on our students (and theirs are lost on us).  That’s expected — and I’m so far past that threshold that I roll my eyes at myself along with my students.

But when it comes to other types of prior knowledge — especially the type that’s necessary to understand literature — I think we’re facing a different sort of problem.  A certain amount of prior knowledge is necessary when reading any literature, and that’s even more true for those of us who teach a lot of literature from earlier eras (or “back in the day,” as my students always say, whether we’re talking the 1990s or the 1590s). Continue reading “Prior Knowledge: A Reminder to Myself”

Shifting Genres

When I was a child, and my dad was a theater grad student, he adapted a couple of short stories into plays (one was Walter Wangerin Jr.’s “Lily” and the other was Eudora Welty’s “Why I Live at the P.O.”).  I remember the plays only hazily, but I was always struck by how interesting it was to shift the genre.  It’s certainly something that filmmakers do all the time – how many film versions of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are there, after all?

Sometimes we complain about adaptations – some of us feel that they’re misrepresentations of the work on the page.  Ultimately, though, they’re interpretations.  It’s obvious that a Shakespearean adaptation is an interpretation – it’s drama, so it’s meant to be interpreted.  But shifting from one non-performance genre to another – a short story to a play, a poem to prose – might seem like something that we purists don’t really like (and I admit to often being one of those purists).

However, I think that we can use that genre shift in the classroom.  Some of the other bloggers here have suggested encouraging students to shift genres in their own creative writing.  I think we should consider doing it from time to time in the literature classroom as well.  Having students rewrite something – or even act out something – as a classroom exercise is an interpretive act that requires them to pay attention to details and pay attention to theme.  It can help students untangle that which they find confusing. Continue reading “Shifting Genres”

Course Outcomes and Reading Skills

I’ve been thinking a great deal about course objectives lately, partly because we just began a new semester, and partly because my current institution is working to implement some new standards for our syllabi – they’re now encouraging us to include the relevant general education and/or program outcomes on the syllabus, not just the outcomes for the individual course.  One of the things that I noticed in looking at the various outcomes (my own, my department’s, and my institutions) is that there’s quite a different approach in the general education outcomes and my own department’s outcomes for literature courses.  The institution’s outcomes focus on content (albeit in a rather broad way), but the department’s primary goals for graduates focus instead on skills, like being able to read critically and write clearly.

My own course outcomes – whether for an introduction to literature course or an upper division course – probably split the difference: I provide outcomes that link skills to the specific content of the course.

I’ve been trying to link this back to one of the major maxims of the Foundation for Critical Thinking, as I look over my notes from their recent conference: they suggest that, in fact, content is a way of thinking.  The two do not have to be separate.  Content is not simply something to memorize, but content in a course is a problem to be solved.

So what does that really mean?  Especially for a literature class? Continue reading “Course Outcomes and Reading Skills”

Things My Teachers Taught Me

Recently a former student of mine wrote me a nice thank you note in which she mentioned how she would never forget the moment I told the class that I averaged thirteen major drafts per story.  This—a casual remark I happened to drop in my lecture—was the most illuminating moment of the semester for her. I remember mentioning the number not because I find it revelatory, but because I find it amusing: Thirteen! So unlucky! And so weirdly consistent.  The remark certainly wasn’t written into my lesson plan, and it wasn’t one of the sound bites that I’m careful to repeat all semester. It was tossed off, the kind of thing I don’t usually say because it’s about me rather than them.  And yet, out of the whole semester, that was the lesson this student found most important.  Teaching is like that much of the time.  The off-the-cuff remarks, the of-the-moment lessons, the things you didn’t notice much are the things that strike chords with students.

I haven’t been a student since 1999, so this incident made me think: what things do I remember?

(I believe in giving credit where credit is due, so I’m mentioning names.  I know I have been absurdly lucky to study with these masters, and I give thanks for it.)

Joyce Carol Oates: “This is a good sentence. You don’t usually write sentences like that.”  I actually remember the sentence, which was in a writing exercise, not a story, and was long, full of clauses, which I now know to call appositives, that went much further with description than I usually did.  I’m sure I remember her remark because of the backhanded nature of the compliment, but it was one of the most helpful things a teacher ever told me. It showed me where to go as opposed to where not to go. Continue reading “Things My Teachers Taught Me”