[As another
semester comes to a close, I spent the week reflecting on some complex moments
and questions related to Teaching under Trump (trademark AmericanStudier!).
Leading up to these first thoughts on Spring 2018 classes and work!]
On plans for
three Spring courses and one big project.
1)
19th Century African American
Literature: I’m very excited to have the chance to teach the first half of our
two-part Af Am Lit survey for the first time. To some degree I see my job in
such a course as just sharing as many wonderful and important writers and texts
with the students as possible, from foundational figures like Wheatley
(it’s a long 19th century, okay?!) and Douglass
to under-read folks like David
Walker and Harriet Jacobs, and
right up through turn of the 20th century greats like Chesnutt
and Pauline Hopkins.
But I also want to use a culturally focused course like this to ask the students
to consider such vital subjects as identity and heritage, place and language,
and more, and to that end am especially excited to be connecting the course to
my colleague Kisha Tracy’s ongoing Cultural Heritage
Project. Should be a really wonderful and inspiring addition to my Spring
all the way around!
2)
My Second Online Course: As I
wrote as it was wrapping up, my first time teaching an all-online course
went better than I had expected, although it was not without its distinct
challenges to be sure. I expect both of those trends to continue when I teach
my second such class this Spring, but with a couple important differences
related to the specific course in question, American Literature II. For one
thing, this is a class I’ve taught
many many times before (I had never taught the Short Story course before
the online version), and so it will be a matter of how to transfer it to the
all-online setting most smoothly and successfully. For another thing, a survey
class requires more historical information and context, and thus (as I’ve
written about elsewhere) the need for more professorial lectures than I
generally prefer; I have to admit being unsure about the best way to deliver
such information to students in an online class. Any thoughts on that, as on
all my topics here of course, would be very much appreciated!
3)
English Studies Senior Capstone: I’ve taught our
departmental
capstone course many times as well, and this version should be relatively
similar to the
last iteration (at least in terms of the syllabus and readings/materials;
this is a very individualized course and so changes greatly with each community
of students). But at the same time, and as this entire week’s series of posts
has indicated, the nation and world feel drastically different than they did
during that Spring 2016 prior Capstone class of mine. Some of our particular
readings, especially Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah
(2013), might naturally lead us toward contemporary social and political topics
and discussions. But on a broader level, what does it mean to prepare
graduating students for their next steps and futures in the age of Trump?
Another one of those teaching questions for which I don’t have any definite
answers, but with which a class like this will most certainly have to grapple.
4)
The Book!: One place where I’ll unquestionably be
doing such grappling this Spring is my continued work on my fifth book, Exclusion
& Inclusion: The Battle to Define America. It’s possible that my agent
Cecelia Cancellaro and I will have news about the book by then, and of
course if we do you know I’ll find a way to pass it along in this space. But
regardless of where the project stands, I’ll be continuing to plug away, to
write about histories and stories of exclusion and inclusion and in so doing to
try to do what I can to challenge the worst and contribute to the best of
America in Spring 2018.
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. Spring plans
or possibilities you’d share?
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