Reading poetry is a life insurance policy for when things go bad, Housman tells us.
To teach your discipline, turn to compelling narratives.
No two students respond to Jane Austen the same.
Playing the card game in “Mansfield Park” gives students insight into the meaning of games.
American students of color respond in powerful ways to “When the Emperor Was Divine,” Julie Otsuka’s novel about Japanese Americans’ experience in World War II internment camps.
The Faustus story can aid one in an existential search for meaning.
Economics teacher Steve Ziliak uses Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” to teach the human side of microeconomics.
In “The Fascination of What’s Difficult,” William Butler Yeats gives us a poem that will help get us through end-of-the-year workplace fatigue.
Describing a high school English class that he teaches, Carl Rosin draws on the American Transcendentalists as he insists that his students live lives of integrity. His final assignment requires them to put what they have thought and read into action.
I had a very interesting day Monday. Taking inspiration from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, I thought I’d describe it to give you a window into the life of a college teacher.
I’ve just come across an illuminating contrast between literature and war. Theater director Mary Zimmerman is currently staging a version of the Arabian Nights at Washington’s Arena Stage, and in the program notes she responds to the question, “Are you saying that you believe certain feelings are universal, or perhaps that we share an essential [...]
Having taught British Fantasy Literature for the first time last semester, I need to think back on it before it becomes a distant memory. By reflecting publicly, I can share some of the insights I gained from the course. Two major things I learned are that (1) fantasy is an oppositional genre—by which I [...]
Posted in Andersen (Hans Christian), Barrie (J. M.), Carroll (Lewis), Chaucer (Geoffrey), Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), Dickens (Charles), Grahame (Kenneth), Grimm Brothers, Haggard (Rider), Keats (John), Kipling (Rudyard), Rossetti (Christina), Shakespeare (William), Sir Gawain Poet, Tennyson (Alfred Lord), Tolkien (J.R.R.) | Also tagged "Kubla Khan", "La Belle Dame sans Merci", "Lady of Shallot", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Alice in Wonderland Alice through the Looking Glass, Carl Jung, Charles Dickens, Christina Rossetti, fantasy, Geoffrey Chaucer, Goblin Market, Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, Hard Times, Hero with a Thousand Faces, Idylls of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Barrie, John Keats, Joseph Campbell, Jungle Books, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carol, Man and His Symbols, Midsummer Night's Dream, Rider Haggard, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Rudyard Kipling, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, She, The Lord of the Rings, The Wind in the Willows, William Shakespeare |
When I wasn’t teaching class yesterday, I was continuing my marathon essay-grading session. I took a break to write today’s post, however, and used a well-known poem by Langston Hughes to reflect on what I was asking my students to do. In “Theme for English B,” the only black student in a college composition course [...]
At this time of year, I sometimes wonder why I signed up for this gig. Stacks of ungraded essays are strewn “far and wee” across my study, and only the knowledge that I have completed my student essays in the past assures me that I will make it through this batch. In my hour of [...]
Seldom have I enjoyed a course more than my current first year seminar on Jane Austen—specifically “Jane Austen and the Challenges of Being a Regency Teenager.” The title of the course isn’t historically accurate since young men and women in the early 19th century didn’t think of themselves as teenagers. Adolescence wasn’t as prolonged as [...]
Image from Poltergeist I am pleased that Jason Blake, who teaches English at the University of Ljubljana, is becoming a regular contributor to this website. As an English speaker living in Slovenia, Jason is particularly sensitive to questions of language. In the following essay he triggers memories for me when he talks about how television, [...]
Posted in Mikes (George), Nabokov (Vladimir), Shakespeare (William) | Also tagged Bald Soprano, English Language, Eugene Ionesco, George Mikes, How to Be an Alien, Language Acquisition, Romeo and Juliet, Television, William Shakespeare |
Robert Frost’s poems (as indicated by “Mending Wall,” which I wrote on yesterday) have the wonderful ability to move from the very specific to the universal. One begins with a small incident (two neighbors fixing a stone wall) and, before one knows it, one is thinking deeply about the world–barriers between people, roads not taken, [...]
This post will have to be quick because it’s been a busy week. I’ve been involved in marathon grading sessions, attended a full day of senior project presentations (including one that I mentored on Hans Christian Andersen), met with multiple students who are revising essays, and have just returned from a session where students read [...]
Giulio Romano, Two Lovers Well, the semester is underway. Yesterday I began teaching one of my favorite classes, the early British Literature survey (Literature in History I). Along with Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Wife of Bath, Doctor Faustus, Twelfth Night, King Lear, and Paradise Lost, I will be teaching the poetry [...]
I begin my two literature classes today and, as always, am filled with trepidation. Will I be the teacher my students need me to be? Margaret Edson’s play W;t reminds me that, if I stay true to the literature, all will be well. W;t, functions in part as a criticism of those college literature professors [...]
Robert Donat as Mr. Chips The new semester begins today. Margaret Edson’s play W;t is a useful reminder of where I should put my priorities as I begin teaching. When my career started out, I had a number of things in common with Vivian Bearing, the English professor and Donne scholar in W;t. I too reveled [...]
Having compared Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight yesterday with Frances Burney’s Evelina, I feel I owe my readers an apology and an explanation. The apology is that I violated one of my principles for the website and judged the book by the movie. All I’ve read of Twilight is the excerpt on amazon.com. If I sell the [...]
Sophia Western, by John Hopper I met with my British Restoration and 18th Century Couples Comedy class for one last time today. I baked them a whiskey cake (I do this for all of my classes), and we reflected on the experience of the course. We had undertaken quite a journey, starting out with the [...]
Since I have been devoting recent posts to lamenting how badly literature is often taught, I owe it to readers to talk explicitly how literature should be taught instead. In his book The Crafty Reader, which I wrote about on Friday, Robert Scholes lays out a way of teaching that counters the emphasis that teachers [...]
Yesterday I wrote about how Dead Poets Society, despite its support for poetry, still doesn’t give poetry enough credit and that Keating is the coin side of J. Evans Pritchard. Whereas Pritchard wants to graph literary excellence on a Cartesian plane, Keating (at least in the scenes we see, which are all we have to [...]
I seem to be returning to my childhood in recent posts, what with all my references to Sewanee, Tennessee. In my last entry I showed literary scholar Robert Scholes blaming Allen Tate, a poet and critic with close ties to Sewanee, for the abysmal state of American literature instruction. To balance Tate out, my launching [...]
