Transitions and Transactions Conference

http://communitycollegelitandcreativewritingconference.com/index.html

Our proposal

“Making the Implicit Explicit: Understanding Culture, Cannon, and Concrete in the Literature Classroom”

by Chey Davis and Joseph L. Lewis[1]

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I. A. Richards’ seminal study, Practical Criticism interrogates the process of literary interpretation by analyzing possible misreadings of a literary text. What came from his experiment was one of the first attempts to create a process of objectively reading a text to ascertain meaning. Considering the process in which a reader objectively ascertains meaning, this paper seeks to understand the limits of the close reading process. While Richards among other New Critical theorists have given educators a framework to teach the interpretive process, we pose the following question, how does a reader’s cultural background influence the process of interpretive meaning? Is there a possibility to apply a close reading to a text, yet receive varying results of interpretation due to variations in culture? Further, how do “correct” interpretations influence the canonization of a particular genre? Finally, is the process of canonization based on so-called objective interpretive meanings?

Our study questions the relevancy of literature with hopes of engaging a more eclectic choice of literature in the college classroom. With this, we will consider ways in which literature instructors can teach literature in a way that allows students to be both critical consumers of a text and knowledgeable critics of language before they ever touch a book. Finally, we seek to create a tool that educates students on some of the perceivable effects of “great literature” before they encounter that literature, in order that they might experience more agency in the creation of canonical concretization. 

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[1] Chey Davis is an Assistant Professor of English at Delta College in University Center, Michigan. She received a B.A. in Theater from Michigan State University and M.A. in English with an emphasis in Critical Theory from Central Michigan University. Her research and teaching interests include composition, gender studies, permaculture, and human rights.

Joseph L. Lewis is an Assistant Professor of English at Delta College in University Center, Michigan. He received a B.A. in English from Hampton University and an M.A. in Africana and Literary Studies from New York University. His research and teaching interests include literature, rhetoric, composition and critical theory. Specifically, Lewis is interested in how representations of race, death, anxiety, and fear create cultural sensibilities in the United States. 

What about Writing and Literature?

How do educators use literature to develop the intellectual growth of a student? For example, which method to teaching literature is proven to be the most effective? How do variables such as region, class, race and gender influence the effectiveness of the implementation of these individual methods? Finally, does writing serve as a place in the literature classroom? If so, then how do educators utilize the act of writing as a way to teach literature?

Scholars such as Elaine Showalter and Michael Berube explore these questions. Chapters one and two of Showalter’s Teaching Literature (2003) provides a brief overview of issues associated to educator anxiety, along with a brief overview of the theoretical approaches to teaching literature. From here, Michael Berube offers a personal account and critique of his method to teaching literature in his article, “Teaching to the Six” (2002). Here, Berube attempts to address the dilemma he encounters when focusing his pedagogical energies on his subject to the point in which he unfortunately finds himself only engaging with a small percentage of the class. While Showalter and Berube broadly address the aforementioned questions, scholars such as John Schilb, Kim Hensely Owens, Marc Bousquet and Joanna Wolfe focus on issues related to the role of writing in the literature classroom.

For instance, Owens’s article “Teaching to The Six-and Beyond” (2009) suggests that Berube neglects to discuss the role of writing as a way to overcoming the challenge of speaking to the few. Here, Owens proposes a method to “scaffold student writing” in literature thus, “providing legs for students to stand on as they reach new intellectual heights” (Owens 391).

While Owens focuses on the implications of writing on the student, John Schilb’s “Preparing Graduate Students to Teach Literature” (2001), is concerned with the training of future literature professors. Here, Schilb sheds light on the lack of pedagogical training in the field of literary studies. While he recognizes the distinguishing characteristics between composition studies and literary studies, he also suggests that the literature discipline could benefit from writing instruction as way to actively engage students with the literary text. Finally, Marc Bousquet’s “The Figure of Writing and the Future of English Studies” (2010) focuses on the implications of writing in the field of college English. Here, he suggests that employing the figure of writing would provide “a tremendous opportunity for the expansion of the mission, disciplinary healing and employment justice in English” (122).

My brief summary of these aforementioned works do not do them justice, thus I would like to unpack issues brought up in these articles in later posts. From here, I would like to engage a further discussion with Joanna Wolfe’s “A Method for Teaching Invention in the Gateway Literature Class.” Here, Wolfe uses the classic rhetorical notion of topoi as a system of invention in the literature classroom. Interpreting the taxonomies of special topoi, Wolfe provides a framework to teaching the literary argument.

The taxonomies of special topoi include appearance versus reality: what appears, is not always what is real; paradox: two things that are seemingly different but serve as the same function; paradigm: conceptual template used to describe the details of another text; ubiquity: defining a pattern or device within a corpus of works; context and intention: understanding the historical/cultural context and understanding the writer’s implied audience; social justice: how literature reveals the human condition and literature as form of social change; mistaken critic: treatment of past interpretive theories” (Wolfe 406-11).

To my mind, this framework provides teachers with a way to provide what Owens calls a “scaffold” to help students develop a literary argument. Hence, I am inclined to try this out in the literature courses I am teaching this semester. The courses, Literature 219W: Literary Analysis and Literature 278W: Modern African American Literature are both “W” course which signifies that these are writing intensive courses.

I have taught both of these courses in the past. In both classes, students are introduced to critical approaches to literature. By the end of the semester, students submit a final paper in which they have developed an interpretive argument about literature.

In the early years of teaching these courses, I found that more of my students were having trouble distinguishing between what constitutes as “literary argument” versus a mere book report.  At the same time, students were finding it difficult to develop a complex literary argument that challenged them to engage with the text. I have addressed this challenge over the years by modeling my research and writing process in the classroom. Additionally we have analyzed the work of literary scholars, not just paying attention to what they are arguing, but how they are arguing. I also continue to conduct both guided peer-review sessions and one-on-one conferencing, which decreases the possibility for students to begin the paper the night before the due date. While these techniques have proven to be beneficial, I still find that some students are still having trouble with trying to come up with complex arguments about literature. I think presenting these taxonomies as various approaches to developing the interpretive argument would make explicit the conventions of the literary argument while demystifying the process of developing interpretive argument about fiction.

I plan to employ much of Wolfe’s methods, with minor differences. I plan on not referring to this framework as “special topoi.” I am thinking of using, “Approaches to Developing the Interpretive Argument.” I am going to use this method when teaching the final paper, so I am going to be thinking of ways to introduce students to this taxonomy before it is formally presented. I also need to develop an assessment technique so students can respond to this this method.

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265239102/are-e-books-killing-reading-for-fun

"Slacker"

“Turn to chapter nine and read silently for the next 40 minutes,” the soft voice commands. Mrs. Douglas makes her way to the far right corner of the classroom and takes her seat at her desk as students reluctantly begin to crack open their thick, green textbooks. Once I locate chapter 9, my eyes begin to identify the text on the page:

“If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of other young people to anything like the extent to which it used to be hidden in mine –which I consider probable, as I have no particular reason to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity…” Dickens, Great Expectations

My mind begins to race. Ignoring the text in front of me, I begin to wonder, “Why are we reading this? Why should I care? Am I the only one not enjoying this? Am I less intelligent for not enjoying this?” These questions continue to reel in my mind to a point in which I become overwhelmed. I am growing tired. I place my head on my desk and fall asleep. Shortly, I feel a delicate little something nudge my shoulder. A soft whisper from Mrs. Douglas informs me, “Joe, we don’t sleep in honors English 9.”

Embarrassed, I look around to notice all of the other students reading. They seem to be enjoying it. I can’t understand the point I am missing. I know what the words on the page mean. I know what is happening on the page, but I don’t care. Why don’t I care? Is it because no one in here looks like me? Is it because at this point of the year I have not read anything from anyone who looks like me? Should I care?

Ninth grade was the first year I learned that my culture was void of history-at least a history worth studying. Prior to ninth grade, English classes consisted of diagraming sentences, learning parts of speech, figurative language and the writing and research process. Prior to ninth grade, cultural identities in English were absent because English class was just that, English.

By the time I reached high school I began to feel like an outsider in the one place that used to bring me intellectual joy. By the ninth grade, English was now English Literature. Even though I barely passed honors English 9, I was still recommended for honors English 10. Now I had to look forward to World Literature, which I quickly learned was a default term for "more European literature."

I became lethargic and cynical.

I continued to “push through” Dickens and every other text that I had to read in high school. I continued to answer the response questions at the end of each chapter and focused narrowly on minutia facts that would appear on the test.

At some point between the 9^th and 10^th grades, I was given the option to go outside of the canon. This is when I first read Frederick Douglas’ Narrative Life and Richard Wright’s Native Son. I felt like I was given the option to read these texts because I was at a handicap due to my association with Black culture. Feelings of frustration became more pervasive and I became more detached from the entire learning process.

Two weeks after entering Hampton University, I changed my major from Broadcast Journalism to English. I don't know why I did this considering I was indifferent to the discipline. English was closest thing to declaring an “undecided” major without actually being undecided. I would tell my parents that I wanted to go to law school or go into education administration to make them feel comfortable with my un-decision.

Then I took Dr. Barnes’ course on early African American Literature and everything changed.

That semester, a whole new world of cultural literary history was opened up to me. I was exposed to writers such as Charles Chesnutt, Anna Julia Cooper, Phyllis Wheatley, and Jean Toomer. I had heard of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois, but had no idea that their ideas about Black culture and American society were so "heavy." There was something self-affirming about engaging with these texts. Even more, after taking this class, I learned how to read literature, thus triggering a passion to go back and read all of those texts I neglected in high school. I realized that I did not lack the intellectual aptitude to learn, but lacked the institutional support to bolster my learning.

My process of learning is one of constant negotiation between otherness amidst a ubiquitous dominant presence. This blog explores how I reconcile my otherness as I embark down the path of learning about my students and myself. As an educator, I want to empower students and especially underrepresented students who seem to fall through the cracks of the education system not because of a lack of intellectual aptitude but because of a lack of institutional support.