My friend with the initial complaint admitted that she tends not to teach much Chaucer in the survey, because she’s at an institution with a great course on Chaucer — and as an early modernist rather than a medievalist, she feels she can’t do The Canterbury Tales the justice it deserves. Instead she teaches other Middle English texts like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and sometimes excerpts of Piers Plowman.  Other people in the conversation admitted to leaving out The Faerie Queene altogether, giving them more time to focus on 17th century works. And others admitted — like most of us — that one of the eras covered by our surveys always gets short shrift. For many of us, it winds up being late 18th century work.

What I found most interesting was the conversation about how people chose the texts that they did, with many opting for relatively thematic courses (focusing, for example, on gender or the construction of the English national identity or on a particular literary pattern). Others — myself included — tend towards a more traditional style of survey course, which means trying to teach students a sense of literary history through the survey.

I’m in an odd position in that I teach both parts of the British Literature survey.  While different schools divide the course differently, I’ve generally taught in places that use 1798 as the dividing line — so I run into the problem of trying to teach everything pre-1798 in 15 weeks, then everything post-1798 in the next 15.  Oddly (or not) it’s really difficult to pick literature for both of them. Because of my department’s size, I’m also the only person currently in the department to teach all of the British Literature courses (we simply run a course called “Studies in British Literature,” which I will develop each time to cover a different era or topic; I’m also making my “Studies in the Novel” course a British novels course). So basically: I’m responsible for making sure my students have some sense of British Literature from Old English up to contemporary works.

This feels like a lot of pressure some days and my instinct is to look at lesser known writers, to focus on interesting issues of labor and gender through the time periods. But I also feel a responsibility to introduce my students to the traditionally canonical authors. I’m grateful that most anthologies include a wide variety of materials to work with — and I particularly like anthologies that include sections giving context, whether it’s the context of poetic traditions in the 16th century or the context of the laboring classes in the 19th century. Still it’s a tough balancing act, particularly given the span of time and the number of authors I always feel like we ought to be covering.

For me, I think that it boils down to the idea that these are called “surveys” rather than “studies in.” The purpose behind this really is to give the overview of how the literary landscape is shaped.  And the choices that I make are certainly informed by that.

But those choices — and my choice to include a lot of cultural context as well as less canonical authors — is also related to this idea of surveying everything. Alexander Pope (who I teach, most certainly) may have had major influence over the formation of the canon, but I cannot teach him without acknowledging — and having my students read — Mary Wortley Montagu’s work as well. They’re both part of the same landscape.

As I prepared my list of readings for my post-1798 class for the fall, I was reminded of how much I rely on poetry to get me through these courses. We can read multiple authors on these occasions, if the goal is primarily one of exposure to the names and the major movements.  It does lead to some weird mash-up days (we’re reading Derek Wolcott and Seamus Heaney on the same day), but it also allows for students to get a sense of the entire field. For additional coverage, I have students give presentations on texts we’re not reading in class, but which are represented in the textbook — and the explicit goal there is simply to have the exposure to the names.

Perhaps, most importantly, my course outcomes — beyond the sort of standard language about exposure to major figures of major movements — focus on the idea of students being able to articulate the relationship between the author, the text, and the world. I especially want them to do this through working on close reading and analysis.  And perhaps that is why, when it comes down to the moment of guilt about not including this author or that text, I am able to assuage some of my concern.  The real goal, then, is to teach students about the way we can read the work. Once they’re capable of that, they can go out and explore beyond our courses on their own.

It’s not a good habit, but it’s an understandable one, I think.  And I suspect that most of us give in to the temptation from time to time.

But last week, I was reminded once again why it is that I need to re-read for class – and not just because I need to be sure that I’m completely prepared.

I was preparing to teach “A Rose for Emily” (and Faulkner happens to be one of my favorite authors) – and it’s something that I’ve taught at least once a year since 2006.  So I’m pretty familiar with the story.  But I re-read it anyway.

Because we’re focusing on setting in my course right now, I tried to pay particular attention to the details of setting, as described by the narrators.  Many are the details  I’ve always paid attention to in class (Miss Emily’s house as “an eyesore among eyesores” and the dust and stagnant air throughout the story); but this time, one small detail jumped out at me at the very beginning of the story.

As the narrators describe Miss Emily, they say that she “had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery.”

The cedar-bemused cemetery.

What an extraordinary description – and one that I’ve probably read (and perhaps even noted) in the past.  But this time, I was reading a clean copy (we just switched editions, so my book has no annotations yet) – and so this simply struck me.

And that’s the point.  While it is important to re-read in order to prepare for class, it’s also important to re-read to simply recharge.  I know that I get caught up in the frustrations of the semester and the general exhaustions of life, but I also know that when it comes down to it, I actually love the stuff that we do in literary studies.  Cheesy? Sure.  But honest? Absolutely.

And that energy and enjoyment is infectious – and students will notice it.

Today’s guest blogger is Eric Selinger, Associate Professor of English at DePaul University, where he teaches courses on poetry, pedagogy, and popular culture.  He received his B.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from UCLA, and is the author of

“A change of style,” says Wallace Stevens, “is a change of subject.”

I quote that line to students all the time because it sums up one of the keys to saying interesting things about almost any poem.  Teach this concept—really teach it, so that it becomes “truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole, / reflex action,” as Robert Hayden says—and you’ve given your students a powerful way to attend to any piece of writing.

As Stevens reminds us, whenever a poem’s mood or idea changes, so will its style, with some kind of shift, no matter how slight, in its rhythm, diction, phrasing, sound, or ratio of sentence to line.  By extension, anywhere you spot a change of style, you’ve spotted a shift in substance, even if the ideas seem, at first glance, the same.

To introduce this reading strategy, I like to use Langston Hughes’s “Theme for English B.”  The poem’s scenario is familiar, and spelled out clearly enough to be accessible even to wary readers:

The instructor said,

Go home and write

a page tonight.

And let that page come out of you—

Then, it will be true.

There’s something ham-fisted, even condescending, about the assignment, and Hughes lets you hear that in the instructor’s short-lined, simplistically rhyming, clumsily metrical style.

“I wonder if it’s that simple?” the poem’s speaker responds, and each of the three responses he then gives has its own distinctive style.  First comes a pre-writing thought experiment marked by unmistakably “simple” grammar and ideas.  (That’s the “I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem” stanza.)  Then there’s the first piece of actual writing, which is jazzier and more complex in idea and sentence structure.  (“It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me / at twenty-two, my age,” that stanza begins.)  Another question (“Me—who?”) prompts an answer that returns to simple sentence structure, but with a new key verb:

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.

I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.

I like a pipe for a Christmas present,

or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.

In other words, what’s “true” isn’t what I am by race or age or geography, but what I like, and like to do—a different subject, captured in a slightly different style.

To answer the poem’s final question, “So will my page be colored that I write?” Hughes’s speaker picks up and echoes the instructor’s rhyme-words (“write” and “you” and “true”), even as his conclusion refuses the pat, complacent quality of the initial assignment.  It’s as though he needs to pitch things simply, using the instructor’s words, to reach his none-too-savvy audience.  That’s a handy lesson in rhetorical analysis and performance—and it gives you a way to connect your own lesson in style and substance to things that your students have already heard in composition classes, their own sections (in effect) of English B.

Meaning—you don’t only teach this stuff, but you actually do it?

I’m not talking about my upper-level or graduate students, who enter class with a sense of their professors’ professional interests and activities. But my introductory students are often surprised to learn that when I’m not in the classroom or at office hours, I’m at home doing exactly what I’m asking them to do: writing.

We sometimes take it for granted that our undergraduates know what it is to teach at the college level—that creative writing instructors are also creative writers. That we, too, struggle for the right form for a poem or the best way to end a story or the most honest and vivid way to present an essay. We, too, drink coffee; we, too, stop ourselves from wasting time on the internet. We doubt ourselves, and then we think we’re brilliant, and then we realize that, no, we aren’t. We fret over deadlines. We fret over fretting. We worry that no one will “get” what we’re writing; we worry that everyone will. The biggest difference between us and our students is that we’ve read more books and written more words. We’re further along in an apprenticeship that only ends when we’re in the ground.

But why should our students know any of this? It might seem obvious to us, but why should they suspect that the person who reads their work and directs the discussion and ultimately grades them is a writer as well as a teacher—especially if I haven’t talked to them about that part of my life?

In the past, I’ve tended to shy away from such talk, believing that the focus of the class, after all, is on them, not me. In my own experience as a student, I never much liked when a teacher went on and on about his or her own work. It felt like showing off. However, I’ve come to believe that in a workshop, students appreciate a modest amount of disclosure and candor, and I’ve become more comfortable talking—in moderation—about what I’m working on or struggling with, without feeling as if what I say needs to have a foreordained pedagogical objective.

My question to you: How, and to what degree, do you bring your own writing life into the classroom?

The first story in Bill Roorbach’s Flannery O’Connor Award-winning story collection Big Bend is titled “Thanksgiving.” The story begins with a phone call. Ted’s sister-in-law, Mary, is calling to convince him to come to Thanksgiving dinner this year. And because he has vowed to “become part of the family again,” he agrees to come—but he isn’t happy about it. By the end of the story, events have caused him, in a fury, to upend the Thanksgiving Day dinner table.

Roorbach’s story gives rise to a very straightforward writing assignment:

A character, in a fury, has upended the Thanksgiving Day table. Write the scene that causes him/her to do it.

What better tinderbox is there, emotionally speaking, than an entire family all gathered together for one night? I like this exercise because it isn’t quiet or subtle. There is no way to avoid conflict in a scene that ends with a flipped-over dinner table, especially on a holiday, especially the holiday during which we are supposed to give thanks.

Moreover, this exercise requires students to complete certain mini-exercises along the way, such as:

• Writing a scene with multiple characters in it;
• Creating a conflict that causes the climax provided in the prompt;
• Providing sufficient detail so that we know exactly what is on that table prior to it being overturned.

I am thankful for this exercise, which students seem to have great fun doing. I am thankful for Thanksgiving for generating the sort of familial tensions that generate good fiction, and I am thankful that this is not the case in my family. And I am thankful for the leftovers in my refrigerator, which, I understand, really ought to bring about that other kind of exercise—the kind that doesn’t involve typing.

This year, AWP (the Association of Writers & Writing Programs) is doing away with its pedagogy forums, a staple at its national conference for a number of years. An unfortunate effect of this decision is that there will be no more “pedagogy papers,” those one-page creative writing exercises written by instructors at all levels, from first-year grad students to full professors. Each year, AWP made available on its website a PDF file of thirty or so “Best of” papers, selected from all that got submitted.

No more.

If you’ve never perused these files, they’re worth a look. The papers cover all genres and are sure to spark ideas in the classroom. The good news is that the PDF files from past years are still available on AWP’s website. The bad news—actually, it’s just a bit inconvenient—is that you’ll have to hunt a little for them. On AWP’s main page, awpwriter.org, just type “pedagogy papers” (in quotes) into the search box. Each result takes you to a page where, with a little scrolling, you’ll find the PDF file labeled either “Exemplary Pedagogy Papers” or “Best of the Pedagogy Papers.” Download those files and you’ll be staring at several hundred useful, tested exercises for the creative writing classroom at all levels.

What do you think of the AWP’s cancellation of pedagogy forums?

Second, it is years later and I am now sitting in my first graduate literature seminar. We’re reading Leslie Marmon Silko’s The Almanac of the Dead and again I feel lost. By the end of my undergraduate career I was fairly adroit in literary conversation, but that was for the undergrad classroom. What’s going on around me now is completely different, including the sound of the conversation. The words and sentences being used to describe the text sound almost foreign to me. Again, I loved the book; and again, I was completely captivated by the narrative; but again, I am essentially at a loss for how to contribute to this scholarly roundtable discussion.

I know that these memories of classroom difficulties are probably not universal. On the other hand, I know that many students, undergraduate and graduate alike, struggle with how to read a text for class. And not because they can’t read in the conventional sense of the word, but because reading for the sake of scholarly conversation is difficult and requires an understating of how to approach a text with practical and critical strategies.

As we find ourselves in the middle of the semester—and our students likely entrenched in reading and discussing texts—it is a good time to stop and have a conversation about how to read. I encourage you to take a day, or even just fifteen minutes, to discuss with students ways to engage in texts, so they can be better prepared to talk (and write) about what they read.

A simple way to get the conversation started in your class is to ask: What are you going to highlight/underline/mark-up? And why are you going highlight/underline/mark-up those sections?

Most students do some combination of highlighting, underlining, and marking up of their texts, but ask them what kind of system they use. Ask why they highlight and underline and how their markups translate into actionable pieces of information for discussion, and you’ll probably get a slew of varying answers and a few blank stares.

Talk to your students about establishing a mark-up system. A system where they highlight for one purpose, underline for another, use little stars for another reason altogether. The system does not have to be complicated to work. Simply being consistent in marking for the same purposes throughout the text will help students as they thumb through their texts in class to quickly identify questions they had, areas of interest they pulled out, and points of connections they might have made.

The same thing goes for marginalia: it helps to have a system. Maybe the system means putting dots in the margins as they read so as to stay on track, check marks next to areas that our found to be important, and question marks next to areas where questions arise. Marginal notes need to be useful. If they’re not part of a larger strategy, they will probably sit on their pages, never to be brought up in class discussion.

One final but important point:  before we assign a text, we should explain why we’re assigning it. I don’t mean to suggest a kind of blasé justification, but instead an explanation of how the text fits into the course, why we are reading it in this order, why it is important in the context of the course, and what themes it may touch on. When a student gets this information before they read, they can better know what to look for in the text and what they may be able to pull out for conversation. In the first memory above, I had lots to say about In Pharaoh’s Army but suspected that my observations might not have been relevant to the goals of the course; that was because I never understood how the book pertained to the course. It was listed in the syllabus, but not explained or contextualized. Let your students know why you’ve chosen each text and how it relates to the course themes and goals. It can really help them develop a reading strategy, one that helps to create conversation content.

Sometimes we complain about our students’ (in)abilities to discuss a text in full force. Sure, sometimes they don’t do the reading and therefore don’t have anything to say in class. However, often times, they have done the reading but are unsure of or don’t know how to discuss the text in the academic setting. Take some time to teach reading strategies. It’s worth it: you’ll not only enhance participation—you’ll help your students enjoy the benefits of fruitful and challenging intellectual discussion. After all, that’s what they’re here for.

Poetry: The “Weird News” poem. There are many sources of “weird news.” Simply Google “weird news,” and marvel at the results. The assignment is to find a recent news article that A) is weird, and B) the writer feels some connection to, and then to write a poem that builds on the article in some way. The poem should tap into the article’s deeper implications, or spin off in some entirely new direction—anything, really, as long as the poem goes beyond the facts presented in the article. The “weird news” poem can also be combined with a formal assignment, so that the student would be writing a “weird news” sonnet, sestina, etc.

One student of mine wrote a terrific poem based on the story of a Japanese clothing designer who, in response to increased street violence against women in Tokyo, created a woman’s dress that allowed the woman to disguise herself as a vending machine. If she were ever in a situation where she was being followed, she could simply pull up the dress and camouflage herself amid the urban landscape. The student’s poem explored the strangeness of protecting oneself by becoming a commodity, and in one stanza addressed the clothing designer directly. It was the sort of wonderfully idiosyncratic poem that the student wouldn’t have written in the absence of an assignment that had her looking beyond her own life and community.

Fiction: The “Advice Column” story. You’ll find them in many newspapers and, of course, online. What do all advice columns have in common? The letters people write are rooted in conflict, and not just any conflict: sticky, icky, urgent conflict, the kind that makes you glad it isn’t you in that person’s situation…which happens to be the exact sort of conflict we like in fiction. So the exercise (which works for students at all levels) is this: Find a letter written to an advice columnist, either in a newspaper or online, that you feel would make a good piece of fiction, and then write a story with that conflict at the center of the story. The advice columnist’s answer isn’t important. The question—the predicament—is the important part. Start with that core predicament, then fictionalize a story around it, coming up with original characters, setting, etc. Do that, and you’ll know that your story is rooted in conflict.

One of the things that humanizes the classroom is storytelling. In their reviews of my teaching, my students have often mentioned that our drama classes were enlivened by some of the stories I told of my own experiences in the theater seeing plays. That surprised me, but on reflection I realize they were right.

For example, when I taught John Millington Synge’s Riders to the Sea I told my students about the first time I saw the play. It was 1957 in tiny Theater East when the Abbey Theatre brought its company to the United States for the first time since the war. Siobhan McKenna played Maurya.

I was brought there with a group from my undergraduate class, taught by the late David Krause, who was an Irish Studies expert and my drama teacher. I had no idea what to expect. We had not read the play in advance. It followed the performance of Synge’s one-act In the Shadow of the Glen and seemed to us a riveting drama.

But another drama intensified the experience for me. In the last moments of the play one of the actresses came onstage with her apron filled with glass milk bottles – Bartley’s body had been brought in and laid out and the women came in to mourn. The actress dropped her apron and the bottles broke on the floor. Everyone was barefoot, yet as the actresses came into the scene none looked down. Most of the glass was broomed into a pan. They walked across the remaining glass and seemed unhurt and unaware. At that moment they kneeled and began keening in what can only be described to someone who has not heard it as an unearthly wail of loss, pain, and sadness.

Amazingly, no one was hurt. The keening stopped when the play ended. There was total silence in the theater. The lights went down, the actors left the stage, the lights went up again and finally when the actors returned the audience—141 souls—broke into incredible applause.  Everyone knew this was a completely unforgettable experience in the theatre.

Have you had a similar experience? Have your students? How do you discuss performance and use storytelling in your classroom?

Because “theatricality” is inconceivable apart from action—apart from the act of doing that constitutes performance—the teaching of playwriting requires performance as part of classroom activities. The concept of performance as pre-eminent should undergird all course structures. For example, when possible, written assignments should be shared aloud in class: hearing texts with an audience is preferable to at-home silent reading because the former better approximates how scripts are meant to be experienced.

Dramatic writers must learn to see themselves as performers. They do not need to be good performers, but they need to be willing. They need to be able to play roles well enough that they can hear in their minds the characters’ voices as they commit words to paper. It is not the same skill as that of the actor, who hears primarily one voice at a time, but is more like that of the stage director who understands the interplay of multiple voices. Most playwrights, I believe, mutter to themselves. And, while a little murmuring is probably common to all creative writers, I would guess that playwrights spend an inordinate amount of time muttering speeches and singing songs to themselves. This skill—necessary as a “trying out” of characters—can be nurtured in students by having them perform.

To teach theatricality at its most basic, I suggest “The Play without Words” exercise, which I do with beginning playwrights at the start of each semester. For this exercise, students write a one-page play with a plot, in which no one speaks. Students must convey that plot through performance, using only materials readily available—the classroom, items from home, and three random classmates. This challenging exercise goes a long way toward illuminating both the limitations and benefits of the stage.  Students typically try to do too much:  for example, one young woman once tried to show a couple saying their last loving good-byes before they jumped from a collapsing World Trade Center. While interesting, the premise is inscrutable without additional trappings—words or set—as explanation.  On the other hand, students have learned how marvelously engaging it is to have a swordfight or an actor pretending to be an animal:  these actions seem hokey on the page, but are magic in performance. By having students perform early on, they internalize the “theatricality” that separates playwriting from the other genres, thereby laying the groundwork to become better dramatists.

How do you get student writers to incorporate theatricality in their dramatic works? How much does performance figure into your teaching? What are your favorite classroom exercises?