[This week I
start my 14th year at Fitchburg State. For that momentous occasion,
I decided to focus in this fall preview on one thing that has evolved for each
class I’m teaching, and one that’s a bit more longstanding. Leading up to a
special weekend update on my next book project!]
On a couple
voices I know I’ll be including in my fall adult learning class, and a request
for suggestions!
After not
teaching any adult learning classes in the spring for the first time in many
many semesters (just a scheduling issue, as every semester is better with at least
one
such class on my schedule), this fall I’ll return to teaching in Fitchburg
State’s Adult
Learning in the Fitchburg Area (ALFA) program with a new course on voices
of resistance in American history. I’ve generally tried throughout my fifteen
or so ALFA classes to alternate between more specifically literary and more broadly
AmericanStudies topics, and it was time for a more AmericanStudies one; within
that latter category, I started with my Spring 2017 ALFA course on 21st
century issues and events to move more overtly into topics
that feel salient to our contemporary moment, and decided to continue that
trend with this fall’s class. I probably don’t need to write too much about why
a class highlighting voices and texts from across American history that have
resisted and challenged the darkest sides of our national story fits that
contemporary bill, do I?
My plan for focal
points for the course’s five meetings is to include both figures for which we
can work with particular texts and those for which we can’t. An example of a
textual focus would be William
Apess, whose resistance went well beyond his essays and speeches
(including his vital work with the Mashpee
Revolt), but for whom we can still read those wonderful documents to
examine his voice and perspective. An example of a less textual focus would be Elizabeth
Freeman and Quock Walker, whose resistance does connect to documents like
the 1783
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision but for whom it’d be
important to highlight and discuss multiple histories and moments that can help
us think about their own
identities and actions. Each of those figures resisted some of our darkest
national histories (Indian Removal and slavery, respectively), and modeled both
strategies for challenging those narratives and victories in arguing for an
alternative vision of American law, society, and community. I think they still
have a lot to tell and teach us in 2018!
Obviously I have
ideas for all five weeks, but I’d really love to extend my own knowledge with
suggestions from y’all! So who or what would you recommend as voices, figures,
texts, moments of resistance in American history? This AmericanStudying mind
wants to know!
Book update this
weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
all have going on this Fall?
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