December 21-22, 2024: Spring Semester Previews

[I think we could all use some reminders these days of the best of our communities and conversations. So for this year’s Fall Semester reflections series, I wanted to share one moment from each of my classes that embodied those collective goals. Leading up to this special post on what I’m looking forward to in the Spring!]

Three Spring courses that make me (somewhat) excited to come back from the holiday break.

1)      Graduate English Research: I’ve been teaching courses in our MA program since the end of my first year at FSU (Summer 2006!), and have been the Chair of the program as well for the last 3+ years. But somehow, in all that time and across all these courses, I’ve never had the chance to teach our one required class, Graduate English Research. This Spring I’ll finally have that chance, and am so excited for two specific units: one where we’ll read a ton of Langston Hughes’s Collected Poems and think about different research and analytical lenses on them; and one where we’ll read a number of short stories from the Best American Short Stories 2018 anthology and do the same with more contemporary texts. One key to teaching at a place for 20 years is keeping things fresh, and this course promises to do that for me in Spring 2025 for sure.

2)      Honors First-Year Writing II: This is another class I’ve never had the chance to teach—it won’t be quite as new for me as the Graduate one, as I’ve taught First-Year Writing II every year and have also taught our Honors Literature Seminar many times; but this will still be a variation on those more familiar themes, and a chance to work with our phenomenal Honors students which is always a profound pleasure. And maybe I’ll have a chance to recruit one or two or all of them to add a Minor in English Studies (if they’re not already English Studies Majors, which most of them won’t be)…

3)      Major American Authors of the 20C: This upper-level literature course will include a lot of such Majors and Minors already, although I also always get a number of students from across the university in my lit courses which makes for a great balance. Some authors/texts have been present every time I’ve taught this class and will remain so this Spring, including opening with Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900) and working with multiple poems from both the aforementioned Langston Hughes and Sylvia Plath in two mid-semester units. But I’m especially excited to conclude this class with a favorite novel that I’ve taught many times but never on this syllabus: Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (2003). Every time I come back to this novel I see different things, and I’m sure this setting will open it up in new ways still. Not rushing the break, but also, I can’t wait!

Year in Review posts start Monday,

Ben

PS. What are you looking forward to?

December 20, 2024: Fall Semester Reflections: Women’s Circle Breakfast

[I think we could all use some reminders these days of the best of our communities and conversations. So for this year’s Fall Semester reflections series, I wanted to share one moment from each of my classes that embodied those collective goals. I’d love to hear about your Falls in comments!]

Since at least the Introduction to my 2013 book The Chinese Exclusion Act: What It Can Teach Us about America, I’ve been thinking about public scholarship as a form of teaching (in the best, most communal and conversation senses of that work). That’s one of many reasons (but high on the list) why I seek out every possible opportunity to present my work to audiences, and one of the settings to which I’ve returned most often are the Women’s Circle Breakfasts at Southgate. I had the chance to do so again this Fall, talking to them about the incredibly fraught and painful and important (now at least as much as then) topic of eugenics in early 20^th century American society, culture, and history. As with every talk I get to give, and certainly with every one I’ve been able to share with the Women’s Circle, I learned as much from the experience as any audience member could have; and in this case, as so often, I think we were all reminded of the worst of us and, I hope and believe, inspired to keep fighting for the best. I’ll take any and all of those moments!

Looking ahead to what’s next in the weekend post,

Ben

PS. Whattaya got?

December 19, 2024: Fall Semester Reflections: Online American Lit

[I think we could all use some reminders these days of the best of our communities and conversations. So for this year’s Fall Semester reflections series, I wanted to share one moment from each of my classes that embodied those collective goals. I’d love to hear about your Falls in comments!]

I have to imagine I’ve written about them since May 2011, but that’s the post I found in a quick search, so: for a good while now I’ve been using creative questions for the longer/mini-essay portions of my Final Exams. I always give students the option to write a more conventional exam essay, but of course really enjoy when they take the creative option and do things like imagine the voices of our class authors, of characters in our readings, and so on. I offered that chance to the students in my online section of American Literature II this semester, and those that chose the creative option rose to the occasion as wonderfully as ever. If I had to pick one particular stand-out, I’d go with the student who put Calixta (the main character of Kate Chopin’s “The Storm”) in conversation with Sylvia Plath’s speaker from “Lady Lazarus” to think about women’s experiences, struggles, and why death and violence are not the only possible paths. One of my favorite pieces of student writing ever, and a great reminder of the benefits of offering such creative options for student work of all kinds.

Last reflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whattaya got?

December 18, 2024: Fall Semester Reflections: Senior Capstone

[I think we could all use some reminders these days of the best of our communities and conversations. So for this year’s Fall Semester reflections series, I wanted to share one moment from each of my classes that embodied those collective goals. I’d love to hear about your Falls in comments!]

This one’s pretty straightforward, but man did we all need it. My English Studies Senior Capstone course met T/Th at 2pm this semester, so on Halloween it was the end of the school day for both me and most if not all of the students in there. I was in costume (duh), a few of the students were too, one of them brought some refreshments as part of their costume, and we sat around and had the refreshments and talked about writing opportunities, job and career paths, grad school options, the Eric Carle Museum, and more. It was one of my favorite hours on campus in a long time, and a great reminder of why online education (which I do every semester, as I’ll write about tomorrow) will never be able to fully or successfully substitute for that in-person, in-class experience and community.

Next reflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whattaya got?

December 17, 2024: Fall Semester Reflections: First-Year Writing

[I think we could all use some reminders these days of the best of our communities and conversations. So for this year’s Fall Semester reflections series, I wanted to share one moment from each of my classes that embodied those collective goals. I’d love to hear about your Falls in comments!]

I haven’t said much if anything in this space yet about AI, although I will be doing so next week as part of my Year in Review series. As I’m sure everyone reading this knows, it has become a central focus in the world of higher ed, and perhaps especially for those of us teach writing. I’ve actually seen the most use of programs like ChatGPT in my online-only literature courses, where of course all the work is already happening online and where it’s harder to build the kinds of communal respect that allows us to talk together about such fraught topics. I did see a few instances in my First-Year Writing sections this Fall, but what I wanted to highlight here is another product of that mutual respect: when I identified this AI-driven writing with the individual students, they were willing and able to recognize why this wasn’t a good call, to hear my perspective, and to work together with me to help develop their own ideas and writing for these assignments instead. If our job is to teach—and yeah, it sure is—then that’s how we should be approaching AI too, as another moment for teaching and learning and growth.

Next reflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whattaya got?

December 16, 2024: Fall Semester Reflections: 20C Af Am Lit

[I think we could all use some reminders these days of the best of our communities and conversations. So for this year’s Fall Semester reflections series, I wanted to share one moment from each of my classes that embodied those collective goals. I’d love to hear about your Falls in comments!]

I’m going to start this series by breaking my own stated rules slightly, but I think you’ll agree that this counts as an inspiring moment, if one that we had to pay off every day thereafter. At the first class meeting of my 20^th Century African American Literature course, I made a request for the first and so far only time in my career: I asked them to stay off of their phones as much as possible (recognizing that life happens and it’s sometimes necessary) in the course of our semester and discussions. We were gonna be talking about some consistently challenging and often fraught and painful texts and topics, and I wanted us to be in it together as much as we could. I was so proud of how much we honored that request, and how fully we did stay in our collective space and conversations, leading to some of my favorite discussions and days in any class in my 20 years at FSU. I won’t make this request too often, I don’t imagine, but I’ll know that I can if and when it feels right, and as with everything I know our FSU students will rise to the challenge.

Next reflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whattaya got?

December 14-15, 2024: Hawaii in American Culture

[150 years ago this week, Hawaii’s King Kalākaua arrived in Washington, DC for an extended series of events, a defining part of a more than two-month state visit to the US. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied that visit and other Hawaiian histories, leading up to this special post on cultural representations of the islands.]

1)      James Michener’s Hawaii (1959): I wrote a bit about Michener’s first truly epic historical novel in that post, and would stand by my two assertions there: that his works are more period fiction than true historical fiction (in my definitions of the true concepts); but that their multi-period focus allows for groundbreaking and important depictions of his chosen communities nonetheless. I haven’t read Hawaiii in decades, but that’s my sense of this book too, making it a cultural representation well worth returning to nearly 70 years later.

2)      Blue Hawaii (1961): I haven’t seen the first of what would be three Elvis Presley films shot in Hawaii in a five-year period (a list that also includes 1962’s Girls! Girls! Girls! and 1965’s Paradise, Hawaiian Style), and I very much doubt it is likewise worth returning to in late 2024. And I think that’s actually an analytical point—from what I can tell, these films were much more of an excuse for the singer and friends to visit the islands than compelling stories that needed the Hawaiian setting. If so, that helped establish a trend which has unquestionably continued ever since (50 First Dates, anyone?).

3)      Hawaii Five-O (1968-1980): On the other hand, I don’t want to suggest that every cultural work set in Hawaii chooses that setting for such non-specific (or at least non-artistic) reasons; some, like this groundbreaking and popular police procedural TV show, absolutely do connect to specific aspects of the islands and their communities, cultures, and contexts. For example, two of the original four officers on whom the show focused were non-white, a striking percentage in a late 1960s program: Chin Ho Kelly, portrayed by Chinese American actor Kam Fong Chun (an 18-year veteran of the Honolulu Police Department); and Kono Kalakaua, portrayed by native Hawaiian actor Zulu. That’s the Hawaii I know, and I love that this popular show portrayed it as such.

4)      “Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World” (1990): If you’ve been to a wedding in the last three decades, you’ve heard this ukelele-driven cover of two already-beautiful songs made even more beautiful by native Hawaiian singer Israel “IZ” Ka’ano’i Kamakawiwo’ole. That beauty, combined with the very unique song of IZ’s ukelele and voice alike, certainly explains the staying power of this combinatory cover song. But I really love its representation of a cross-cultural America, with two songs from Jewish American songwriting duos, the second made famous by an African American jazz trumpeter and singer, given new life and meaning by a native Hawaiian performer.

5)      Blue Crush (2002): I can’t talk about cultural representations of Hawaii without getting surfing in there somewhere, and of the surfing films I know, Blue Crush is one of the most overtly concerned with aspects of Hawaiian culture and community (including the presence of a romantic lead who is in town for the NFL Pro Bowl, which was hosted there for many years). On the other hand, its main character is a very, very blond young woman (played by Kate Bosworth), and its more ethnic characters are relegated to supporting roles; that says more about Hollywood in 2002 than it does about Hawaii, but it’s a reflection of the continued work we need to do in how we represent this hugely diverse place.

End of semester series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Hawaiian histories or stories you’d highlight?