TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
“Public Access” and Interpretative Practice in the English Classroom
I strive in the classroom to empower students to analyze literature and the complex messages that surround—and often circumscribe—our daily lives; I therefore work toward facilitating “public access,” a concept that I derive from Michael Bérubé, to the interpretive strategies of academia. My goal as a teacher, then, is to enable students to better contend with the frequently restrictive teleological narratives that they encounter in historical, literary, and social discourses as well as in the contemporary media. To this end, I teach students to attend closely to the assumptions and implications embedded in texts, to use writing to think through and fully articulate multiple types of responses to the content that they read, and to engage with the tensions that emerge out of the language and themes that they encounter in my courses.
My courses emphasize close reading and contextualization, which means that students learn to analyze texts as well as to situate them in relation to other texts, to their own beliefs, and to social issues outside of the classroom. In my women’s studies and first-year composition courses, for example, I ask students to identify and analyze the messages sent via cultural artifacts, such as music videos, television shows, Facebook applications, clothing lines, and so on. Students begin by making preliminary assertions regarding the ways that these artifacts might fit within any number of frameworks—theoretical, cultural, historical—and then employ close reading to mine their texts for support of their claims. Students thus come to understand that they already use a set of strategies to construct meaning from the messages that they encounter on a daily basis. They also learn more sophisticated reading techniques as they work through a scaffolded sequence of analytical and research-based activities designed to both complicate and sharpen their initial interpretations. Students articulate preliminary readings in journal entries, work in groups with a set of analytical questions to add dimension to their initial positions and develop working theses, conduct research and present research reports to the class, work through whole-class activities to develop counterarguments, and, finally, compose research-supported position papers on their topics.
In the midst of this process, a student who had chosen Playboy as her artifact mentioned in class discussion that she felt torn between her natural repulsion for the images of women displayed in men’s soft-porn magazines and the evidence that she had read which argued that Playboy had played a crucial role in securing valuable sexual freedoms for women. I suggested that we turn to some specific examples of images that have appeared in the magazine over the years. As we discussed whether or not the clearly exploitative messages sent by these images could serve as the genesis for women’s liberation, this student decided to stick with her initial—mostly intuitive—response to Playboy and to refute the interpretation of the magazine as a positive social force for women. The student went on to produce a careful and sophisticated analysis of the ways that Playboy has influenced the dehumanization of women in popular culture, supported by her interpretation of several specific images and research on the treatment of women in the media in general. In this way, this student refined her close reading skills and used them to articulate her perception of a “text” that she felt carried with it social and political consequences in her everyday life.
In this case, a formal academic paper—as well as classroom discussion and various group activities—provided this student with the structure that facilitated the articulation of more precise and grounded insights. At other times, I ask students to use informal or creative writing as methods of engaging with the texts that they read in my classes. In “American Literature 2: 1860 to the Present,” for instance, students articulated quite advanced interpretations of by rewriting chapters of a novel from alternative characters’ points of view. They also responded in sophisticated ways to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited” by penning letters to a make-believe judge in charge of Charlie Wales’s would-be custody hearing. One student, for example, used his letter to the judge as a method through which to examine the characterization of Marion Peters, Wales’s sister-in-law and current guardian of his daughter. In a complex consideration of Marion’s role in the story, this student noted that Marion seemed to perceive Charlie as less an individual working to redeem himself from the mistakes of his past than a hated symbol of the extravagance of the Jazz Age in Paris. This student came to understand Fitzgerald as working through Marion’s consciousness to explore the tensions between group identification and individual subjectivity.
In addition to writing to learn, students in all of my classes construct multi-modal projects, which in the past have taken the form of short films, photo essays, presentations, websites, blogs, and self-guided tutorials. Creating these types of responses to texts enables students to utilize web-based and other technologies to share their scholarly and creative interpretations with audiences outside of the classroom and, in this way, extend access to the interpretative strategies of academia even beyond the college campus. Reflecting on the multi-modal project assignment, one student observed in his or her final evaluation of my course, “It was a good way to practice sending a message in a different way than just writing a paper.”
An integral part of both reading and response in my classroom is learning to accept and appreciate difference. A text that I have found to work well to move students toward this goal is William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, a novel that narrates one story through several widely divergent voices. Not only does the novel lend itself to close reading of recurring imagery and discussion of the construction of narrative itself, but it also allows me to foster students’ consideration of various points of view. Students are resistant, for instance, to empathize with Anse Bundren, the seemingly foolish and selfish father who narrates three chapters in the novel, until I ask them to read a 2001 article from Mississippi Quarterly that convincingly defends his point of view. At this point, we talk about empathy in the context of the novel, the classroom, and the world outside of the university. At the same time that my courses actively deconstruct oppressive teleological narratives, then, they also encourage student acceptance of difference and ambiguity. As a feminist, it is important to me that my students learn to “lean in” to hear the various voices that they encounter in my courses—voices like that of Anse and that of the critic who defends him, as well as those that chime in during class discussion of his character—and in the world more generally. I model “leaning in,” or engagement with different perspectives, in my interactions with students in the classroom and in the extensive written feedback that I provide on drafts of their writing and projects. Although my students may never identify with characters like Anse, my hope is that they learn to value the dissonance that they hear in the chorus of voices that they encounter in my courses.
In the end, the development of analytic skill and appreciation of difference that I begin to foster in my students is dependent on widespread access to the kinds of analytic techniques that are utilized all too infrequently outside of the academy. What better way to work toward remedying this lack of public access, then, than by teaching in English, a field of study that hinges on the honing and employment of sophisticated interpretative strategies? I extend access to my students—and, by extension, to the audiences that they will reach throughout their lifetimes—by teaching them methods of close reading and of applying theoretical and cultural frameworks to different kinds of texts and by facilitating their production of skilled responses. I also work to cultivate students’ growth into individuals compassionate toward and accepting of the sometimes discordant voices that they encounter in texts, the classroom, and the world at large. In this way, my courses actively contend with that which Bérubé characterizes as our current “crisis of reading” and, as I would add, our parallel crisis of response, crises which underwrite the calculated manipulation of both public feeling and individual subjectivity. A primary goal of my teaching is thus to teach students to closely read and articulate sophisticated and empathetic responses to the messages that assail us daily, helping them to ultimately inscribe their own identities and stories instead of buying into the “grand” narratives that so often misrepresent or limit human beings.
“Public Access” and Interpretative Practice in the English Classroom
I strive in the classroom to empower students to analyze literature and the complex messages that surround—and often circumscribe—our daily lives; I therefore work toward facilitating “public access,” a concept that I derive from Michael Bérubé, to the interpretive strategies of academia. My goal as a teacher, then, is to enable students to better contend with the frequently restrictive teleological narratives that they encounter in historical, literary, and social discourses as well as in the contemporary media. To this end, I teach students to attend closely to the assumptions and implications embedded in texts, to use writing to think through and fully articulate multiple types of responses to the content that they read, and to engage with the tensions that emerge out of the language and themes that they encounter in my courses.
My courses emphasize close reading and contextualization, which means that students learn to analyze texts as well as to situate them in relation to other texts, to their own beliefs, and to social issues outside of the classroom. In my women’s studies and first-year composition courses, for example, I ask students to identify and analyze the messages sent via cultural artifacts, such as music videos, television shows, Facebook applications, clothing lines, and so on. Students begin by making preliminary assertions regarding the ways that these artifacts might fit within any number of frameworks—theoretical, cultural, historical—and then employ close reading to mine their texts for support of their claims. Students thus come to understand that they already use a set of strategies to construct meaning from the messages that they encounter on a daily basis. They also learn more sophisticated reading techniques as they work through a scaffolded sequence of analytical and research-based activities designed to both complicate and sharpen their initial interpretations. Students articulate preliminary readings in journal entries, work in groups with a set of analytical questions to add dimension to their initial positions and develop working theses, conduct research and present research reports to the class, work through whole-class activities to develop counterarguments, and, finally, compose research-supported position papers on their topics.
In the midst of this process, a student who had chosen Playboy as her artifact mentioned in class discussion that she felt torn between her natural repulsion for the images of women displayed in men’s soft-porn magazines and the evidence that she had read which argued that Playboy had played a crucial role in securing valuable sexual freedoms for women. I suggested that we turn to some specific examples of images that have appeared in the magazine over the years. As we discussed whether or not the clearly exploitative messages sent by these images could serve as the genesis for women’s liberation, this student decided to stick with her initial—mostly intuitive—response to Playboy and to refute the interpretation of the magazine as a positive social force for women. The student went on to produce a careful and sophisticated analysis of the ways that Playboy has influenced the dehumanization of women in popular culture, supported by her interpretation of several specific images and research on the treatment of women in the media in general. In this way, this student refined her close reading skills and used them to articulate her perception of a “text” that she felt carried with it social and political consequences in her everyday life.
In this case, a formal academic paper—as well as classroom discussion and various group activities—provided this student with the structure that facilitated the articulation of more precise and grounded insights. At other times, I ask students to use informal or creative writing as methods of engaging with the texts that they read in my classes. In “American Literature 2: 1860 to the Present,” for instance, students articulated quite advanced interpretations of by rewriting chapters of a novel from alternative characters’ points of view. They also responded in sophisticated ways to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited” by penning letters to a make-believe judge in charge of Charlie Wales’s would-be custody hearing. One student, for example, used his letter to the judge as a method through which to examine the characterization of Marion Peters, Wales’s sister-in-law and current guardian of his daughter. In a complex consideration of Marion’s role in the story, this student noted that Marion seemed to perceive Charlie as less an individual working to redeem himself from the mistakes of his past than a hated symbol of the extravagance of the Jazz Age in Paris. This student came to understand Fitzgerald as working through Marion’s consciousness to explore the tensions between group identification and individual subjectivity.
In addition to writing to learn, students in all of my classes construct multi-modal projects, which in the past have taken the form of short films, photo essays, presentations, websites, blogs, and self-guided tutorials. Creating these types of responses to texts enables students to utilize web-based and other technologies to share their scholarly and creative interpretations with audiences outside of the classroom and, in this way, extend access to the interpretative strategies of academia even beyond the college campus. Reflecting on the multi-modal project assignment, one student observed in his or her final evaluation of my course, “It was a good way to practice sending a message in a different way than just writing a paper.”
An integral part of both reading and response in my classroom is learning to accept and appreciate difference. A text that I have found to work well to move students toward this goal is William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, a novel that narrates one story through several widely divergent voices. Not only does the novel lend itself to close reading of recurring imagery and discussion of the construction of narrative itself, but it also allows me to foster students’ consideration of various points of view. Students are resistant, for instance, to empathize with Anse Bundren, the seemingly foolish and selfish father who narrates three chapters in the novel, until I ask them to read a 2001 article from Mississippi Quarterly that convincingly defends his point of view. At this point, we talk about empathy in the context of the novel, the classroom, and the world outside of the university. At the same time that my courses actively deconstruct oppressive teleological narratives, then, they also encourage student acceptance of difference and ambiguity. As a feminist, it is important to me that my students learn to “lean in” to hear the various voices that they encounter in my courses—voices like that of Anse and that of the critic who defends him, as well as those that chime in during class discussion of his character—and in the world more generally. I model “leaning in,” or engagement with different perspectives, in my interactions with students in the classroom and in the extensive written feedback that I provide on drafts of their writing and projects. Although my students may never identify with characters like Anse, my hope is that they learn to value the dissonance that they hear in the chorus of voices that they encounter in my courses.
In the end, the development of analytic skill and appreciation of difference that I begin to foster in my students is dependent on widespread access to the kinds of analytic techniques that are utilized all too infrequently outside of the academy. What better way to work toward remedying this lack of public access, then, than by teaching in English, a field of study that hinges on the honing and employment of sophisticated interpretative strategies? I extend access to my students—and, by extension, to the audiences that they will reach throughout their lifetimes—by teaching them methods of close reading and of applying theoretical and cultural frameworks to different kinds of texts and by facilitating their production of skilled responses. I also work to cultivate students’ growth into individuals compassionate toward and accepting of the sometimes discordant voices that they encounter in texts, the classroom, and the world at large. In this way, my courses actively contend with that which Bérubé characterizes as our current “crisis of reading” and, as I would add, our parallel crisis of response, crises which underwrite the calculated manipulation of both public feeling and individual subjectivity. A primary goal of my teaching is thus to teach students to closely read and articulate sophisticated and empathetic responses to the messages that assail us daily, helping them to ultimately inscribe their own identities and stories instead of buying into the “grand” narratives that so often misrepresent or limit human beings.