[This week marks the start of the Fall 2023 semester and my 19th year at Fitchburg State. So as ever, I’ll kick off the semester with preview posts, this time focused on ongoing challenges and leading up to an update on my current book project!]
The class
I’m most excited to teach this Fall is my
Ethnic American Literature course, which I created more than 15
years ago but which I haven’t had the chance to teach in a number of years
(other colleagues have done a great job with their own versions of it in the
interim). That means I really haven’t taught the course in our current climate,
and certainly not in the specific context of all the
current efforts to limit and ban the teaching of subjects like Black history
and so many other identify-focused topics. I plan to foreground those issues on
the first day, not solely or even centrally (there’s a lot else to discuss and
do in this class, much of it to my mind more overarching and important than
2023 contexts), but as a key part of why we do what we do in classes like this.
I imagine most of the students will agree that it’s even more important to do
so in this moment, but as always I’ll be open to the perspectives of each and
every student, as long as they’re respectful of each other and willing to be
part of that evolving conversation.
Next
preview post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Fall previews you’d share?
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