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"Fear and Learning in the Historical Survey Course" 

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"Fear and Learning in the Historical Survey Course" 

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Dujardin opens by noting that her History of Literature in English course can seem daunting for many students, and for many of us currently, it probably still is. She notes that our old way of thinking of "history" is from a white, male perspective and that a history in literature survey course can and should be expanded upon. A new course should encompass colonial, postcolonial and Indigenous literature (171). Dujardin believes that many students, when they come into a history literature course believe that they are supposed to know what they're being told prior to taking the course. She refers to Kevin Bain, teaching and learning specialist writes, "when we encounter new material, we try to comprehend it in terms of something we think we already know,” (172). Which shouldn't be the case, even with "history".
Throughout the article, Dujardin offers that students subvert their expectations of a history in literature and try new approaches to understanding it.

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Personally I haven't had the opportunity to teach any Old English literature like Beowulf or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. However in my undergraduate and graduate so far, I have taken two British history in literature courses. In my undergraduate, my professor had us, very similarly to Dujardin's take when she teaches this course. She writes, "Vocalizing the poem reinforces the orality of Anglo-Saxon verse through example while providing occasion to discuss the half lines and alliteration, which I accentuate in my delivery. Enabling students to perceive critical features of the poetry, our collective recitation builds intellectual confidence as well as classroom community, as they certainly never expected to belong to an Anglo-Saxon chorus. I can measure the students’ increasing trust in themselves and the course with every successive and rousing rendition" (174).
I remember having done this myself in my undergraduate program, and saying out loud Old English literature certainly can help student enhancement and understanding two-fold.

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Beowulf: The Epic in Performance - Benjamin Bagby, voice and medieval harp

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"Re-Visioning the American Literature Survey for Teachers & Other Wide-Awake Humans" 

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"Re-Visioning the American Literature Survey for Teachers & Other Wide-Awake Humans" 

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Staunton opens his article by noting he gave his students more writings and readings to do, that students weren't prepared for (insert eye roll from students). However, Staunton notes that he uses the practice of transmediations to read their text Moby Dick. He writes, "The use of transmediations has been a long-standing practice of mine that derives from and adapts research in new literacies studies, multimodal aesthetic education to reimagine the work of literature pedagogy at secondary, postsecondary, and graduate levels" (215).
He draws upon Jerome Hauste's argument by noting that signs can enhance meaning and make learning. In his course, students will take a selection of the reading and pair it with an image, music and text. The image and music needs to supplement and simply needs to have rationale behind it. It does not even need to be from the same time century, which in their case is American Romanticism.

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What I do appreciate about Staunton's article is that I think it can definitely allow students to think more openly and critically about what they are reading. I think it can certainly be helpful to understanding an older text. This type of activity could be done as a character analysis.
However, I did have some issue, and Staunton mentions this as well, is the use of Moby Dick as his centerpiece. While yes, it is a literary classic, it is also a slog of a novel. Sorry not sorry about it. Additionally, it is a novel written by a white male, about a white male and there is so much more to American Romanticism literature.

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"Words that once meant nothing to the students they learn not only to speak but, more important, to make speak..."

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"Words that once meant nothing to the students they learn not only to speak but, more important, to make speak..."

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...they become creators as well as receivers of the theoretical word" (59). I think this is such a powerful quote from Lanser's text because it describes so briefly just how much more we gain when we not only grasp the knowledge of the text, but actually are able to put it into reality.

She also then addresses how juniors and seniors who are used to feeling successful in their classes often feel the struggle with unfamiliar material such as theory. I often feel quite similar, but while reading this chapter I couldn't help but also feel a bit safer through the struggle of misunderstanding theory. In her classroom she allows for the struggle, but doesn't let her students drown. She lets them explore theories and their importance and use collaborative methods to ask questions.

This classroom, along with Freire's methods of teaching as well, seem so... welcoming. So... warm. It makes theory feel similarly. We must redistribute the knowledge and power of words, of theory, amongst students as it impacts not only their learnings across their college career, but it breaks patriarchal systems within education and bends the mold that educators are knowledge-holders instead of life-long learners.

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I won't lie to you all, this chapter really took me as a surprise. Just as Lanser's chapter made me feel warm inside about theory, this chapter by Tim Rosendale made me feel welcomed into a (for me, hypothetical) survey classroom where I am not only teaching students an abundance of early to modern literature but I am actively making decisions alongside my fellow TA's and my superior professor (who would claim he isn't superior).

This kind of pedagogy that Rosendale is upholding seems to take away the hierarchy within a survey classroom of who gets to create the syllabus, or what texts are read, or what lens is being viewed upon them. Together, the TA's and Rosendale have discussions prior to the semester as to how they all want the survey class to operate. They not only are lecturing with assistance, but leading discussions with assistance-- always gaining feedback and notes about what went well and why, and what needs improvement and why.

I feel like this kind of training for professional careers in education would not only benefit PhD students who want to go into professorship. I'm a current TA and I want to become a high school teacher. I would benefit from this kind of learning. Or, what about people who didn't get the opportunity to become a TA but still want to teach? Shouldn't they have the ability to learn these skills as well?

Leading a discussion and a lecture are two difficult things that take time and also are treated differently by students. If I taught one hour of 10th graders about mob mentality in The Twilight Zone's episode titled "The Monster's on Maple Street" they could react in an understanding manner. If I taught another hour of 10th graders in a similar way, they could react entirely different. It's about adapting our teaching to our students, not the other way around.

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In this article, Aegerter writes about teaching post-colonial literature. She explains how when students begin reading, they get defensive because the texts are often harsh regarding slavery, apartheid, and colonization. She calls it “reverse racism.” Students get irritated and impatient. They think people should “just get over it” (142). Many students want to avoid racial topics because they don’t want to get involved in conflict. They get frustrated when they read works by colonized (or disenfranchised) people that are expressing their resentment and anger at racial oppression (143).

Aegerter finds that students’ understanding improves if she is able to get them to see connections between their own lives and those in the texts. She believes “it is crucial to help students locate themselves in the space of ‘otherness’ or marginality from which multicultural texts often emerge” (143-144). She has them consider different aspects of their identities, like race, gender, sexuality, religion, or social class, and then she has them identify the one that has the greatest impact on who they are. She finds that “it is usually that which marks one as ‘different’ from the mainstream - race, gender, sexuality - that students list first.” (145). I actually did something similar with my students a few years ago. It was so interesting. Aegerter explains, “A Chinese student and a Welsh student both said that living in the United States had made them realize that their national identities were unquestionably first on their list, although such national consciousness wasn’t evident to them in their respective homes” (146). The exact same thing happened to me when I moved to England. I was so aware of being American and how being American made me different. Aegerter found that students who have traveled abroad can also relate to what I am saying (148). One of my favorite things that Aegerter said was that students “see the ways in which they are privileged and oppressed depending on the context and the situation” (147). That is so true.

In addition, Aegerter has students free-write. She has them write about the first time they became aware of an aspect of their identity. She said “white students are able to really think about the first time they thought about being white…Previously, their whiteness, because of its normative status in the country, has been so much a given that it has not needed to be named.” Students are able to “understand how it is possible to oppress and be oppressed, to be simultaneously inside and outside of dominant ideology, to occupy both the margin and the center of mainstream life.” Aegerter knows the value in her work when students can finally see how people don’t “just get over it” (148).

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Lucas and Winters begin by explaining a variety of reasons that the introductory survey course stopped working for them, and, as a result, they decided to stop the coverage model and transition to thematic units instead (153-155). Our 11th grade PLC actually did the same thing. We realized that with the George Floyd protests and covid moving us to hybrid and distance learning models, we just couldn’t keep doing the chronological survey course. As a result, we created some really cool units, and we had so much fun doing so. We found that students are much more engaged with the texts and the course in general since we overhauled the curriculum. Lucas and Winters noted that the course titles actually function as advertising, which draws more students to their courses than the initial introductory survey course did.

Furthermore, organizing units thematically “facilitates the development of skills” (155). We found the same to be true for us. We moved to thematic units at the same time as implementing competency-based learning. I love the focus on skills because I feel like I am actually teaching my juniors instead of just handing them text after text after text. Lucas and Winters note that familiar concepts or questions “provides a means to approach each text and a means to think about the relationships between texts” (157).

First, Lucas discusses a course titled Love and Loss. She explains how fun the text selection is and how they can change it year after year. I, personally, love how the course texts span from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first century but don’t go chronologically. As John Milstead explained, “difficulty of comprehension increases pretty much in direct proportion to distance in time” (158). This is so true! I always thought about how we started the year with the hardest texts, and then they got easier. Something didn’t seem right about that. In the Love and Loss course, students study poetry, short fiction, drama, the graphic memoir, and film (160). Some of the texts include Romeo and Juliet, “The Story of an Hour,” and “The Yellow Wallpaper.” I have taught all of those, and they are all great. So many teachers love the creativity that comes with unit design, and the co-created courses our school offers allow students to be creative when co-designing their units. Thematic units make these things possible.

Next, Winters discusses a course titled Friendship. The course was inspired by C.S. Lewis’s chapter “Friendship” in The Four Loves. She teaches about the friendship between Lewis and Tolkien. When I read that, it made me think about sitting in this pub in Oxford where the two of the writers (or should I say friends) regularly met. Winters has students read Tolkien’s short story “Leaf by Niggle” and watch the film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. This course allows Winters to cover a nine-hundred-year period (160). She talks about how she breaks chronology when it is appropriate to do so. For example, she wanted students’ first essay to be on Tolkien’s short story, so she adjusted where that fell.

Overall, Lucas and Walters found that focusing “on skills means that students are no longer as lost in their first year as they were previously in the chronological course.” An added bonus of this is that it helps students to see how what they learn in one course applies to others. Therefore, they understand that their success is not about the material or a particular instructor (162).

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To begin with, Showalter talks about how in the 1970s more diverse students started entering universities. As a result of this, Terry Eagleton explains, “it was no longer possible to take for granted what literature was, how to read it, or what social functions it might serve” (103). By the 1980s and 1990s, “theory was no longer something they did, but rather something they studied” (104).

Many people, including professors, are afraid of theory. Honestly, I would add myself to this group. I found it interesting how Showalter notes that “some of the best ‘theory’ courses are based on literary problems: realism, value, texts and contexts, cultures and subcultures” (107). When you put it that way, it really doesn’t sound as daunting. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it sounds interesting. Showalter goes on to explain that teachers of literary theory organize their courses around things like issues or questions. Actually, that is exactly what we do - at least in a few of our units. For example, our trimester 2 is essentially one unit. Students chose an issue to focus on for the trimester: race, gender, social class, family, or education. They read the play Fences, a non-fiction book of their choice (Into the Wild, The Other Wes Moore, Outcasts United, or On Writing), and a handful of choice essays. In all of these they track what each text seems to be saying about their chosen issue. Then they synthesize what all the texts seem to say in the form of a message for a PSA video they create. These are then shared with the class. It seems like I probably don’t have to be scared of theory at all. We probably are “doing it” without even realizing it. As Mark Hanson stresses, “theory offers students ‘tools to think more deeply about their own lives and situations, beyond literary arcane problems’” (108). I would definitely say that is true of the 11th grade course we teach.

Showalter ends with this: “Making theory relevant to students’ lives is a worthy cause, but theory developed in order to answer literary questions, and the excitement of that inquiry can be recaptured in the classroom by demanding and imaginative teaching” (110).

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The hooks chapter is really quite beautiful, but I’ll admit its taking me a some leaps and twists to try to conceptualize it and find a direct application to teaching (college-level) high school students.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

In most contemporary PD sessions, the presenter or facilitator promises 1-3 things “you’ll be able to take and do in your classroom right away” or be able to use the very next day. The immediacy problem speaks to an urgency in teaching that underscores the intense timeline/schedule we operate under as well as the incredible need to make the biggest difference for students as quickly as possible. But, there’s also another thread at work: teachers dislike theory.

Think about it--how many of our colleagues (or us) have said about a presentation or PD session or required reading that “it’s too theoretical” or “too abstract.” What we’re saying is that it feels like it will take too much time, energy, creativity, and investment to turn the theory into meaningful practice.

Now, bell hooks didn’t say any of that. But it’s the reality we operate with as public school educators, and we don’t have the same relationship with theory that hooks does, but we have to know that it’s theory of years ago that informs the practice of today. And bad theory will cause bad teaching. OR, as the chapter more explicitly says, unless we embrace how and why we use theory, and work to manifest it, there will always be a disconnect between ideas and practice. She uses feminist theory as her primary example, but I’m thinking the most applicable theory for me is actually race, diversity, and inclusion theories. Here’s why:

Hooks says that “Theory is not inherently healing, liberatory, or revolutionary. lt fulfills this function only when we ask that it do so and direct our theorizing towards this end” (61). So, reading diversity and inclusion theory isn’t enough. But also, having a presenter “tell us what to do” also isn't’ enough. It’s very possible, in fact, even likely that many books and text chosen out of a goal of diversity, inclusion, or culturally relevant teaching actually reinforce harmful racial or cultural stereotypes or diminish the lived experiences of others because (mostly) white teachers don’t work within a system (theory) of liberation. Reading Of Mice and Men and saying it meets diversity goals because “Crooks is black and treated poorly” doesn’t work.

So, as an exercise, I’d invite folks to read p. 65 of the chapter, but every time hooks says “feminism” or “feminist,” replace with “race” or “culturally relevant” or “diverse” and I think you’ll see what she meant from p. 61--that theory isn’t inherently liberating and can be used to marginalize or disempower people. hooks goes on to say that “Within white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, we have already witnessed the commodification of feminist thinking (just as we experience the commodification of blackness) in ways that make it seem as though one can partake of the "good" that these movements produce without any commitment to transformative polítics and practice” (71). I really feel this as many entities try to essentialize and oversimplify the incredibly complex task of being a transformation-focused educator. We hear a lot of promises about “answer” and “mastery,” but unless we, each of us, study and live our most core theories ourselves, then hooks implies not only will there be a disconnect (theory without action) but the potential for someone else to enter and act in our space for their own purposes.

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Finding ourselves through understanding of place--Jaci

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Finding ourselves through understanding of place--Jaci

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To begin, I am printing off this essay for my colleague with whom I share several classes. We are teaching The Kite Runner starting next week, and we NEED to talk about how to incorporate what Lucksinger explores about a “sense of place,” and she talks about for close to a page as well!

Backing up, Lucksinger says that, while we all discuss or notice setting, even how it plays a role in the plot, “But to identify place--centered writing, one must question the extent to which an author relies on place to tell the story” (359). So, yes, she says that every story does take place somewhere--writing that employs a deep and intense “sense of place” changes everything about the text.

She explains how she constructs her courses this way, with “the underlying principle guiding a course on sense of place in literature is that place can do much more than establish setting, create mood, foreshadow, or add to the story’s believability. Through place-based texts, we gain insight into self-identity, our community identities, and those of other regions and cultures. We consider the ways that the physical nature of the land affects cultural values and mind-sets, which in turn inform perceptions pedagogy and use of the land. We examine the complexity of the human relation to the

physical world, the universal connections between people and landscapes, and our moral obligation to act rightly toward the places we inhabit. Becoming aware of the wide-ranging importance of place, we inevitably consider our responsibility to specific locations” (359-360)

That is a long passage, but I couldn’t see where to stop; it’s a beautiful explanation and rationale for place-based writing and ecocriticism. I love how one of the main outcomes of her course is that students establish and deepen their own understanding of place; their place, through journaling and a service-based project. It feels like reader response, but on steroids.

As  read the article, I began to brainstorm texts that are strong place-based texts and I’m wondering if other folks could perhaps confirm or reject some of these ideas, or perhaps comment with other ideas? I’d love to hear more examples of poems that y’all think fit with Lucksinger’s “sense of place”--

Gary Soto “The elements of San Joaquin”

Masha Hamilton Staircase of a Thousand Steps

Toni Morrison Beloved

Colson Whitehead The Nickel Boys

Lisa Parker “Snapping Beans”

Stacy Nigliazzo “Aubade” (I’m really wondering about this one with “place” being the 1980s AIDS crisis rather than a geographical location….would this fit/count?)

Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer and The Poisonwood Bible; which both also lend nicely to ecocriticism and environmental literature. I’ve heard some of her newer books also focus on the environment as well, but I haven’t read them.

War poetry--anything set/in the trenches or vietnam….like “Camouflaging the Chimera” by Yousef Komunyakaa?

I am also really wondering, based on this article, if the reason why some students (or we) don’t connect or “find our way in” to a text, may be because we aren’t understanding the importance or presence of place. I do enjoy Neruda, and I can tell, from his work and his life (I did a research project on him in my undergrad) how much he loved Chile, but reading Lucksinger makes me realize that I’ve likely been missing the fact that it’s not just that he loves Chile, but that Chile is IN his poetry and there’s a presence I didn’t understand. I’ve read a lot of and about Mary Oliver, for example, and I can picture the forest she escaped to as a child, the house near the ocean where she lived and lost the love of her life….but someone who can’t picture the Northeastern US and what the trees, the ocean, look like maybe would miss the presence of place? Certainly anyone would see that she loves nature and uses nature in her poetry more beautifully and deftly than even Robert Frost, but, like Lucksinger writes, how much are “Students’ developing awareness of their personal senses of place” and how can that help give them “further insight into literature that reflects this notion” and ultimately see that “this dual reading of their lives and others’ stories deepens their understanding of each” (365). My experience with Mary Oliver is profound--because I understand the “place.” And now I want the same from my (re) reading of Pablo Neruda.