[A new semester is upon us, so this week I’ll preview texts I’m excited to teach in my Spring 2022 classes. Leading up to a weekend update on my book project in progress!]
On the three
books I’m requiring my survey students to purchase (the first time I’ve done so
in a couple years), and why.
1)
Quicksand
(1928) and Passing (1929): The chance to read Nella
Larsen’s first two books in full—and to do so in that wonderful hyperlinked
edition, edited by my friend Deborah McDowell—is
the primary reason why I shifted my thinking about this course this time around,
after a few sections where we’ve only read things available
online (and only excerpted
versions of longer works). Larsen
is one of our great authors, these books are both to my mind must-reads
(even before the new film
adaptation of Passing put that
book back on our collective map), and this is the only way we can really read
her and them.
2)
Ceremony
(1977): Once I had made that shift in my mind, it allowed me the freedom to
add back onto the syllabus other longer readings that are not available in full
online (because they’re too recent) and not even really excerpted there (for
whatever reason). That hyperlinked post is one of many in which I’ve made the
case for Leslie Marmon Silko’s book, my second favorite American novel and one
that truly needs to be read in full to be understood and appreciated (the
favorite section about which I write in that post comes toward the end). I’ll
be very glad to share it with a new group of students!
3)
The
Namesake (2003): Ceremony is
great but hugely challenging, both for students to read and thus for me to
teach. So I’ve always loved that my American Lit II syllabus follows that long
reading with Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, one of the most readable and teachable
works I’ve ever encountered and one that opens up so many themes and threads of
identity for our discussions and for student response and writing. I’ve really
missed the chance to teach it over these last couple years, and ending the
semester with it is once again one of the things I’ll most look forward to this
Spring!
Last preview
post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Spring courses or other work you want to share?
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