[As this new semester gets underway, it does so amidst a particularly fraught moment for teaching & learning the Humanities. So for this week’s Semester Previews series I’ll highlight one thing from each of my courses that embodies the value of the Humanities for us all—leading up to a special weekend post on MLK Day and the Humanities!]
The first
Graduate course I taught at Fitchburg State, in the summer after my first year
there (Summer 2006), was my newly created American
Historical Fiction: Theory and Practice course, and 19 students took it. It’s
been quite a few years now since any of our Graduate English Studies courses
have reached 10 students, the official number of a course to be considered sufficiently
enrolled; I’m teaching my American Historical Fiction course again this Spring,
and there’s literally no way it will get to 10 (5 is the likely maximum, and as
of this writing it’s not there yet). When I took over as our Graduate Program
Chair two and a half years ago, I wrote
in this space about the serious enrollment crisis facing our program (and
just about every MA program), and suffice to say those challenges have not in
any way abated. We continue to pursue a variety of strategies for growing the
program; for example, if you know anyone interested in the possibility of an MA
in Literature or a Creative Writing Certificate, I would ask you to send
them my way, and/or to encourage them to check out our upcoming webinar
featuring past and present Graduate English Studies students that will be held
on January 31st from 5-6pm and also recorded for folks to watch any
time (for more, you or they can email
me!). A significant percentage of our Graduate students (past and present)
are secondary educators, and I don’t think I need to say anything else about
what that community illustrates about the value of the Humanities. But the
broader truth is, a society in which folks can’t afford to think deeply about
the kinds of questions that literary and cultural works ask us to engage is a
society that will fall prey far more easily to the kinds of authoritarian
impulses we’ve seen over the last decade. No higher stakes than that!
Special
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
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