[Another semester comes to a close this week, and this time for my usual end-of-semester reflections series I wanted to highlight stand-out days from my classes. Leading up to a weekend off for a very stand-out reason!]
As I
highlighted and contextualized in this December
2020 semester reflections post, and as has continued to be the case a good
bit of the time, in the semesters and years since Covid I’ve frequently moved
away from longer readings in favor of multiple shorter ones. A lot of the time
I think that can achieve my and the course’s goals equally well, but I’m also
committed to not abandoning longer works altogether, and more exactly to making
the choice in each specific instance rather than having a blanket policy or
perspective. And this semester offered a perfect illustration of something that
can only happen with a longer work we’ve read and discussed across multiple
class meetings: our final day with Nella
Larsen’s stunning novella Passing
(1929), where we had one of our liveliest discussions of the semester about
what we make of that book’s shocking and ambiguous ending (no SPOILERS here).
We couldn’t have had that stand-out conversation if we hadn’t built to it across
multiple days of work with Larsen, and that was a great reminder of the
importance of continuing to find ways to make longer texts part of my classes.
Next
stand-out tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Semester reflections or other work you’d share?
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