Why Teach or Study Literature?

I was a little nervous to tell my father my plans to major in English with a creative writing emphasis.  Though my parents had always emphasized the importance of literature—my mom was a high school English teacher, and my dad would read us Mark Twain and John Steinbeck when we were kids—I felt like my choice would strike him as being completely impractical. Continue reading “Why Teach or Study Literature?”

Categorizing the Things in Tim Obrien’s “The Things They Carried”

When I teach introduction to literature, I almost always teach Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.”  And when I teach that I have traditionally begun the class period by writing a list of objects from the story as students call them out.  We then talk about what the objects mean and what they say about the characters, and we’ve generally attempted some work at categorizing them. Continue reading “Categorizing the Things in Tim Obrien’s “The Things They Carried””

Why I Teach Literature

For the epigraph to the preface of the latest edition of Literature: The Human Experience, I chose a few sentences from an interview given by David Foster Wallace: “We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character’s pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. Continue reading “Why I Teach Literature”

Teaching Writing and Analysis in the Literature Classroom

One of the great challenges in teaching a survey course full of non-majors is making sure everyone knows how to write about literature.  This past semester, I faced that challenge in my world literature course – I had a room full of students, ranging from high school students taking college-level courses to senior English majors working on their capstone papers. Continue reading “Teaching Writing and Analysis in the Literature Classroom”

Why Teach or Study Creative Writing?

A while ago, a Joss Whedon quote was being passed around the Internet. He’d been telling an audience about his frustration with repeatedly being asked, “Why do you write these strong woman characters?” His response (now immortalized in a million Facebook posts): “Because you’re still asking me that question.” Continue reading “Why Teach or Study Creative Writing?”

Why I Teach

The final assignment I give my MFA students is one they often hate, to write a “Why I Write” essay.  Lately it seems the “Why I Write” has become a genre onto itself, a rite of passage for amateur and professional alike. And even a cursory reading in the genre suggests many of us write for many of the same reasons:

  1. To learn
  2. To leave the world better than we found it Continue reading “Why I Teach”

Working with Context: Letting Students find the Connections

In my world literature course, I’m using The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, which has – among other features – some nice chapters on context.  For my class today, I had students read the section called “Society and its Discontents,” which includes selections from Zola, Nietzsche, Maupassant and Nitobe.  Continue reading “Working with Context: Letting Students find the Connections”

Connecting with Literature: How Personal Is Too Personal?

I want to encourage my students to find something in literature that resonates with them— and so I encourage them to make connections between their reading and their lived experiences. But I’ve been thinking a great deal about the limits of identifying with characters, particularly where that identification leads to a misunderstanding or a misinterpretation of the text at hand. Continue reading “Connecting with Literature: How Personal Is Too Personal?”

Relating vs. Resonating: Helping Students Respond with Depth

A few weeks ago, students in my creative nonfiction workshop were discussing a classmate’s essay about her rather eccentric grandmother.  It was a good piece of writing, a solid first draft, and I wanted to get my students talking about what made the piece so successful. Continue reading “Relating vs. Resonating: Helping Students Respond with Depth”