[As the Spring
2017 semester comes to a conclusion, a series of classroom reflections,
this time focused on new things I tried in my courses. I’d love to hear your Spring
reflections in comments!]
On two ways I
worked to link my most historical class to our current moment.
As I wrote in my
January preview post on the class, there are lots of potential parallels
between the figures and texts we encounter in my American Literature I survey
course and our current president and moment. But while I’ve gradually made my
peace with bringing
my personal and political perspective into courses when and where it’s
appropriate, it’s important for me to be clear that such occasions are still
few and far between, and have to relate to the specific class reading or topic
in an organic and central way. Which is to say, I most definitely did not raise
any of those parallels between Christopher Columbus and Donald Trump in our
American Lit I discussion of Columbus and two of his letters; that discussion
focused, as did nearly all of our class conversations, on the texts in front of
us, and if and when any contemporary or other contexts were brought into the
mix, it was students who did so, not me. I believe that should be our
consistent practice as teachers of literature and culture, and doubly so when
the texts and figures in question are (as they are throughout American
Literature I) significantly distant from us in time.
There were,
however, a couple particular moments in American Lit I where it felt
appropriate to raise (briefly) such contemporary connections. One came as I was
introducing our second unit, on the Revolutionary era; for each of our four
focal units/time periods I provide just a few minutes of introductory contexts for
the upcoming three weeks before we get to our first authors/readings. For that Revolutionary
unit, the first week focuses on readings from prominent Framers and
Revolutionary leaders, while the second and third add in other, less
well-remembered examples from similarly Revolutionary communities (women in
week two, African Americans in week three). We don’t have any readings related
to South Carolina’s Revolutionary
era Moroccan Muslim (Moorish) community, as I don’t know if any such texts
exist; yet that community is well worth remembering, for its own sake but also
for its relevance
to our framing documents and laws. So I spoke about that Muslim American
community as part of this unit introduction; and in so doing, I couldn’t help
but address the way in which the elision of such communities from our history
makes it far more possible to argue for banning Muslim arrivals and
discriminating against existing Muslim American communities in 2017. I didn’t
dwell on that contemporary connection, but neither did I pretend that remembering
the past differently doesn’t have such present effects and stakes.
Then there’s the
last class meeting of the semester. In all of my courses I see that last
meeting as (among other things) an opportunity for me to say a bit more about
my own take on our topics, and thus potentially to provide my ideas about such
contemporary connections. For many sections of American Literature I, I’ve
brought in Pat
Buchanan’s deeply troubling 2007 article “The Dark Side of Diversity” on
the last day, using that text to highlight mythical narratives of a founding,
homogeneous national identity and then contrasting those narratives with the
realities of the America we’ve encountered in the course of our units and
readings. I did so again this semester, but this time I went a couple steps
further: talking at some length about the stakes of those differing definitions
of America, the more exclusionary and more inclusive images on which my
current book project focuses; and making the case for why I see 2017 as
such a pivotal moment in the long histories of those competing narratives of
national identity. To my mind, that’s not at all a partisan or even a political
point, but rather a fundamental question of how we remember our histories and envision
our nation; yet there’s no doubt that engaging with that question also means
challenging quite directly the narrative behind “Make America Great Again.” If
that’s a corollary effect of my American Literature I course and syllabus, well,
I’m okay with it.
Next Spring
reflection tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Spring semester reflections you’d share?
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