[A new semester
is upon us, and with it comes a new Spring Preview series. Leading up to a special
weekend post on book updates, plans, and hopes!]
On what’s always
been and remains both complicated and crucial with my long-running class.
I’ve been writing
about my Ethnic American Literature class almost since I first taught it,
in my first (Fall 2005) semester at Fitchburg State (when it was known by the well-intentioned
but seriously problematic name “Other Voices”). Or, at least, since I
recognized the significant problems with that first section (most of them due
to my own lack of experience and failings, to be sure, but also connected to
the complexities of teaching ethnic American lit I documented in that first hyperlinked
article) and thoroughly reinvented
the class for the second (Fall 2007) time I got to teach it. While some of
the specific readings and assignments (and peripheral
materials) have of course evolved in the eleven years since that second
section, the basic syllabus and structure of the class have stayed the same,
including the paired
readings, the multi-generational family
timeline and analysis project, and other core elements and details.
Each of those
elements brings its own challenges, many of them practical like how to navigate
two long readings simultaneously (or at least concurrently) over the same
three-week periods (this class has by far the most reading of any I teach,
although I try from the start of the semester to make clear that students can
and should focus on what most speaks to them and that we’re assembling our overall
conversations about these paired texts collectively). But perhaps the greatest challenge
in the class remains one I talked about in the first two hyperlinked articles
above: the danger of generalizing about culture and identities, and the
difficulty of contextualizing and/or challenging those generalizations given
our limited time and multiple focal points. To name one example from my last
section of the class: during our unit on Irish American texts, a student raised
the historical
myth of “Irish slaves” to directly critique the African American works and
perspectives from the prior unit. Given that many FSU students have Irish
heritage, and that many newer students are African American (including sizeable
contingents of both cultural heritages in that particular section), this was an
especially fraught moment, and one I couldn’t possibly do full justice to in
this limited class time and conversation.
I tried, though.
I tried a bit on the spot, responding with some first thoughts on both that
historical myth and the divisive and racist purposes it has served in our
collective memories and narratives (without using those words, of course, so as
not to critique or antagonize this student directly). And I tried even more at
the start of the next class, presenting a five-minute mini-lesson on some of
the real struggles of Irish Americans, some of the myths that have nonetheless
been associated with that community, and how and why we can use texts and
specifics to push beyond those broad and often inaccurate starting points and
get into more nuanced and analytical conversations. And then we got back to
those text-based conversations and the student voices and ideas. That class was
in the
Spring 2016 semester, and given all that has happened over the three years
since I think it’s fair to say that discussions of ethnic American literature,
history, identity, and community will be that much more fraught and charged in
Spring 2019. Which is to say, I’m even more excited to teach this long-running
and favorite class of mine this time around!
Next preview
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Spring
previews of your own to share? I’d love to hear them!
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