[About halfway through the Spring 2025 semester, I lost my Dad. While that was of course the semester’s most defining moment, it also allowed me to reflect for the remaining weeks on my own teaching in relationship to one of the most dedicated and talented teachers I’ve ever known. So for this semester reflections series, I want to highlight one moment from each class where I’d say I particularly felt my Dad’s presence.]
I’m sure
my Dad taught First-Year Writing in his early years at the University of
Virginia, but because of the way that institution and English Department work,
overall and in terms of seniority and so on, I believe it had been many many
years since he had done so (he taught at Uva for 45 years, so I do mean many
many!). As a result, I certainly connect my Literature courses and teaching to
him more fully than I do my Writing sections (which I have at least one of, and
often as this semester two of, every semester). But when I returned to my FYW
classrooms on the Thursday of the week he passed, I had the chance to pay an
overt tribute to my Dad and his work: as part of a unit on analyzing multimedia
texts we read a Matthew
Zoller Seitz article on the “Magical Negro” stereotype, and so I got to
share with the students my Dad’s excellent
analysis of “Tomming” as both a precursor to that stereotype and a way to
analyze it in cultural works. And then we watched the Key & Peele sketch “Magical Negro Fight,”
because it’s very relevant to that conversation but also because my Dad really
loved all things Key & Peele. I can’t say exactly which of these moments
felt most linked to my Dad, because in truth they all were, thoughtfully and
humorously and movingly.
Next reflection
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Spring
semester reflections you’d share?
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