[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!]
Unlike
yesterday’s focal course, to which I’m returning after a number of years away,
our English
Studies Capstone class is one I’ve been able to teach almost every year.
I’ve tried to continue revising it as I’ve done so, so this section will
feature some returning favorites (like Kevin Gannon’s Radical
Hope as our Education Unit shared text) and some new ones (like Eric
Nguyen’s Things
We Lost to the Water as our Literature Unit shared text). All of that
falls entirely under the umbrella of things I’m excited about—but I can’t lie,
with each passing year it becomes more of a challenge to teach this particular
course with my usual, congenital optimism. That’s due not only to all the
uncertainties of the future (a subject on which this class focused a great
deal), but also to the
striking threats to higher education generally and the humanities
specifically in the present (another pair of such focal subjects). I’m not
going to pretend I have any answers to those challenges—not here, and certainly
not with the students—but one thing I’ll say is that I very much look forward
to talking about them with one of my favorite groups of people in the world,
Fitchburg State English Majors!
Next
preview post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Fall previews you’d share?
No comments:
Post a Comment