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.