Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 290

May 20, 2016: AmericanStudying 60s Rock: Woodstock

[May 16thmarks the 50thanniversary of the releases of Pet Soundsand Blonde on Blonde, two iconic 1960s rock albums. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy those artists and other 60s rock icons and songs. Please share your own rocking responses (or hazy memories) for a righteous crowd-sourced post!]Three telling moments (in addition to Jimi’s anthem) from across the four-day music festival that culminated the 60s rock revolution.1)      Swami’s invocation: Woodstock began with an impassioned performance by rhythm and blues guitarist Richie Havens, but the second act was also the official invocation that opened the festival. Performing that invocation was Swami Satchidananda, an Indian philosopher and religious guru who had recently moved to the United States and would later found one of the first American Yoga institutes and shrines. It’s easy to make fun of the role that Eastern spirituality played in 60s music and culture—although, as Mike Myers has demonstrated, not necessarily as easy to be funny while doing so—but far harder, and more important, to think seriously about how these spiritual voices and perspectives connected to the era’s musical and cultural trends. Swami S’s invocation represents a pitch-perfect moment through which to consider that prominent philosophical and spiritual force.2)      Hoffman’s interruption: During The Who’s set in the early morning hours of the festival’s third day, radical activist Abbie Hoffman interruptedthe performance with an expletive-laced rant expressing his overarching view of the festival as a superficial or useless form of protest. As the video at the first of those hyperlinks illustrates, Hoffman was shouted down and then forcibly removed from the stage by Who guitarist Pete Townshend, to the cheers of the crowd (understandably, since they were there to hear the music, not Hoffman’s rant). The moment can’t be analyzed without an understanding of either Hoffman’s individual, extremist personality or of the complex relationship of British invasion bands like The Who to American society and politics. But at the same time, it does reflect the broader question of whether and how festivals like Woodstock could or should engage with the decade’s divisive political debates.3)      A film interpretation: Less than a year after the festival, the documentary film Woodstock (1970), directed by Michael Wadleigh and edited by a team that included Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorcese, was released to both popular success and critical acclaim. Concert films had become a staple element of 60s rock, music, and culture, and the Woodstock film, like the festival, thus represented on one level a famous culmination of a widespread trend. Yet at the same time, I would argue that Woodstockwas unique in at least two ways: the need to edit nearly four days of highlight performances into a single three-hour film; and the recognition that this film would present perhaps the most famous counter-culture moment to mainstream American culture. In both ways, Woodstock can be seen as an act of artistic and historical interpretation, as the start of the reflections on and reimaginings of 60s rock and culture that have continued to this day (and this week’s series of posts).Crowd-sourced post this weekend, so please add your own reflections and reimaginings!BenPS. So one more time: what do you think? Responses to this post or other RockStudyings you’d share?

May 19, 2016: AmericanStudying 60s Rock: Joan and Janis

[May 16thmarks the 50thanniversary of the releases of Pet Soundsand Blonde on Blonde, two iconic 1960s rock albums. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy those artists and other 60s rock icons and songs. Please share your own rocking responses (or hazy memories) for a righteous crowd-sourced post!]On two alternate visions of the counter-culture, and what links them.Few (if any) musicians or artists better define the 1960s hippie counter-culture than folk singer/songwriter and activist Joan Baez (1941- ). Her first three albums, Joan Baez (1960), Joan Baez, Vol. 2 (1961), and Joan Baez in Concert (1962), all of which were certified gold, helped usher in the 1960s and the vital role that traditional and folk music would play in the decade’s social and cultural revolutions. Her social and political activism had begun even earlier, with a high school act of civil disobedience in 1958 and a burgeoning friendship with Martin Luther King, Jr.; by 1963 Baez was sufficiently linked to the Civil Rights Movement that her performance of “We Shall Overcome” was a central part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Music would remain a central part of the decade’s social movements as they deepened and evolved, of course, and artists like Baez (and Monday’s subject Bob Dylan) would thus not only become cultural complements to the activism, but would play integral roles in articulating and fighting for those progressive perspectives.The hippie movement and counter-culture were at least as closely linked to drugs as social and political activism, however, and perhaps no single musician better exemplifies that link than mercurial, tremendously talented blues singer/songwriter Janis Joplin(1943-1970). Joplin’s band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, were associated with the musical style known as psychedelic rock; their breakout performance of “Ball and Chain” was at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, an event defined at least as much by the presence of those illicit substances (among the audience, anyway) as by the unquestionably amazing artists and performances it featured. I don’t want to take anything away from Joplin’s prodigious talents as a singer, performer, and songwriter, all of which were on display in that 1967 performance and can be found in abundance on the four studio albums that she released during (or just after the end of) her far too short life and career. But at the same time, the role that heroin played in that tragic end was only the final example of the consistent presence of drugs in both Joplin’s public persona and (apparently) her private life—a presence that mirrored the central role of drugs throughout the 60s counter-culture.So Baez and Joplin reflect two radically distinct elements of the counter-culture, sides to the decade’s social movements that could even be seen as opposed (at least inasmuch as the politically activist side was working actively toward the future, while the drug side represented an overt way of checking out of the present). Yet there were other sides to those movements, and I would argue that in another way Baez and Joplin illustrate a fundamental similarity: the opportunity presented in these movements for previously silenced communities to not only add their voices to national conversations, but to become key participants in and leaders of those dialogues. There had of course been vocal women in American society, politics, and culture throughout our history—I’ve written about some of my favorite such voices hereand elsewhere—but the 60s and its social movements offered significant new spaces and forums for women such as Baez and Joplin to have their say, make their mark, and leave the nation a far different place as a result. The most tragic part of Joplin’s story, then, is that we haven’t had the chance (as we have with Baez) to continue to hear from her in all the decades since.Last RockStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post or other RockStudyings you’d share?

May 18, 2016: AmericanStudying 60s Rock: Jimi Hendrix’s Covers

[May 16thmarks the 50thanniversary of the releases of Pet Soundsand Blonde on Blonde, two iconic 1960s rock albums. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy those artists and other 60s rock icons and songs. Please share your own rocking responses (or hazy memories) for a righteous crowd-sourced post!]On what the legendary 60s guitarist brought to three famous covers.1)      “Hey Joe” (1966): Recorded as a single and later released on Are You Experienced (1967), the The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s debut album, Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” was a cover of a song by Southern songwriter Billy Roberts. It’s perhaps too easy to say that Hendrix brings more fire and passion to the song, but certainly that’s part of what makes his version stand out; he taps into the anger and pain that are part of Roberts’ lyrics but not quite his performance (at least not in that hyperlinked version). But it’s impossible not to think at least a bit about race as well, not so much as a social or cultural issue but rather as an integral part of the Delta Blues tradition in which Roberts’ song rests but which Hendrix’s version brings out far more potently. Those blues were created by African American voices, and Hendrix’s voice is a perfect fit for a quintessential blues song like “Hey Joe.”2)      “All Along the Watchtower” (1968): Hendrix and the Experience began playing Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” almost as soon as it was released (on Dylan’s 1967 album John Wesley Harding), and recorded their version in early 1968; it was included on their third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland (1968). Hendrix’s version is to my mind closer to the original than was the case with his “Hey Joe,” but in this case I would say the key distinction also provides a pitch-perfect illustration of the vital role Hendrix’s electric guitar played in all his songs. In “Watchtower” that guitar becomes a character in its own right, one that to my mind is far more tangible and grounded, captures more of a sense of real events unfolding in a possible version of our world, than do the opaquely allegorical joker, thief, and other figures in the song’s lyrics. Which is to say, I’d call Hendrix’s version dystopian realism, compared to Dylan’s speculative allegory—and that howling guitar comprises the central difference.3)      “The Star-Spangled Banner” (1969): And then there’s Hendrix’s anthem. It’s the starting point for one of the great recent short stories (and a sort of cover in its own right), Sherman Alexie’s “Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock.” It’s also one of those artistic performances that are deeply dependent on place and time and context, on the coming together of so many factors through which the stars align for a musical, cultural, and national moment that can’t be replicated. (See also: The version of Springsteen’s “American Skin (41 Shots)” performed in Tampa less than a month after the Trayvon Martin killing just up the road in Sanford.) To name only one such context, there’s Hendrix’s early 1960s year of service as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne, one of the many facts of his life that refuse to be reduced to any one image or stereotype (such as “the counter-culture”). I’m on record as no fan of our current national anthem—but if we’re gonna keep it, we most definitely should use Hendrix’s verison whenever possible.Next RockStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post or other RockStudyings you’d share?

May 17, 2016: AmericanStudying 60s Rock: “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”

[May 16thmarks the 50thanniversary of the releases of Pet Soundsand Blonde on Blonde, two iconic 1960s rock albums. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy those artists and other 60s rock icons and songs. Please share your own rocking responses (or hazy memories) for a righteous crowd-sourced post!]On a troubling 60s song, and why those problems do and don’t matter.“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is a song on The Band’s 1969 self-titled second album (sometimes known as The Brown Album), but it feels very much as if it could have been released a century earlier. That’s certainly part of the point, as many of the album’s songs (such as the Depression-era farm song “King Harvest (Has Surely Come)”) seek to capture Americana and its histories and stories in both subject and sound. But at the same time, “Night” doesn’t just portray the Civil War and its aftermath in an Americana sort of way—it does so very fully through the Lost Cause narrative, a sense of nostalgia and loss associated with the Confederacy’s defeat. That’s particularly clear when the song reflects the post-war deification of Robert E. Lee, in these lines: “Back with my wife in Tennessee, when one day she called to me/‘Virgil, quick, come see, there goes Robert E Lee’/Now I don't mind choppin' wood, and I don't care if the money's no good/Ya take what ya need and ya leave the rest/But they should never have taken the very best.”That Lost Cause narrative of Robert E. Lee’s destruction exemplifies why it’s still a problem for a rock song from 1969 to create and give voice to this 19th century character’s perspective. After all, while both the Civil War and Lee are parts of the distant past, the narratives and images of them remain ongoing and vital elements of the American present. We’ve seen far too many tangible and horrible illustrations of that fact over the last decade of American life, but in many ways the resurgence of such Neo-Confederate sentiment began in direct response to the Civil Rights Movement and other 1960s shifts. So for a 1969 song by a popular rock band to express such a Lost Cause take on Lee and the War (one that, to be sure, never mentions race or slavery at all—but if anything that’s even more frustrating, as it allows for the pretense that Old Dixie was centrally defined by anything else) was, to say the least, a deeply problematic choice, and can’t simply be dismissed as offering a slice of Americana or the folk tradition or the like.And yet. Without minimizing any of those issues, I think it’s important to note that one of the central forms of rock (and all popular) music has long been the adoption of a certain speaker and perspective, one not at all the same as that of the artist or band and given it’s own room to exist and breathe. Steve Earle most definitely isn’t John Walker Lindh (the “American Taliban”), and yet “John Walker’s Blues” is sung in the first-person. More saliently for this post, Bruce Springsteen is (I hope and believe) very different from notorious serial killer Charles Starkweather, and yet “Nebraska” is sung in the first-person. Neither of those songs, nor most other first-person ones, would work nearly as well or be nearly so compelling and evocative if they weren’t in that first-person voice, which allows for an intimacy (even, perhaps especially, an uncomfortable intimacy) that’s otherwise impossible to capture. I don’t think “The Night” comes anywhere close to the intimacy, nor the power, of the Earle and Springsteen songs—but contextualizing it in relationship to them can help us understand why they did what they did, even if we can and should still critique it as well.Next RockStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post or other RockStudyings you’d share?

May 16, 2016: AmericanStudying 60s Rock: The Beach Boys and Dylan

[May 16thmarks the 50thanniversary of the releases of Pet Soundsand Blonde on Blonde, two iconic 1960s rock albums. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy those artists and other 60s rock icons and songs. Please share your own rocking responses (or hazy memories) for a righteous crowd-sourced post!]On two distinct but equally inspiring models of artistic innovation and growth.By the time he released Blonde on Blonde (1966), his seventh studio album, Bob Dylan was well-established as America’s preeminent rock ‘n roll poet. He had been building elements of that reputation since his 1962 self-titled debut, but that album, like Dylan’s next few, sounded more like traditional folk music; it was in the two albums prior to Blonde, Bringing It All Back Home (1965) and Highway 61 Revisited (1966), that Dylan had added electric guitars and a more thoroughly rock ‘n roll sound to the mix. While Dylan’s initial moment of plugging in produced a great deal of controversy and division among his fans, in hindsight it feels like a perfectly natural artistic progression, and Blonde like a culmination not only of that trilogy of rock albums but of all Dylan’s works to that point: a wedding of his lyrical intricacies and his poetic and philosophical voice to an evolving and compelling mastery of rock ‘n roll musicianship and power.By the time they released Pet Sounds (1966), their eleventh studio album, The Beach Boys were well-established as America’s undisputed kings of summer fun rock ‘n roll. Their trio of surfing debut albums (1962’s Surfin’ Safari and 1963’s Surfin’ U.S.A. and Surfer Girl ) had immediately defined the band in that way, and the trend had very much continued through their tenth album, Beach Boys’ Party! (1965). To say that Pet Sounds represented a serious shift from that long-term trend, both in tone and in sound, would be a understatement. Brian Wilson had stopped touring with the band in late 1964 in order to focus on his own songwriting (among other complex personal reasons), and although Pet Soundswas technically still a Beach Boys album (with one single, “Caroline, No,” credited solely to Wilson), it was dominated by Wilson’s writing and voice far more than any of the prior ten records had been (a fact reflected in Wilson’s current solo headlining of a 50th anniversary tour for the album). From its use of Wall of Sound production to its many unusual instruments (including, to name one striking and telling example, barking dogs), as well as in its more intimate and often downbeat subjects and perspectives, the album marked a significant deviation from the Boys’ works and career to that point.So in many ways, these two critically acclaimed albums (both are consistently ranked among the top rock albums in history) reflect two widely divergent models of artistic growth: one in which new elements are added to prior ones, creating a combination of past and future; and one in which the new elements represent a departure from, if not indeed a contrast with, what had come before. (It’s not coincidental that Wilson became increasingly separate from the band, in both work and life, in the years after Pet Sounds.) Yet at the same time, I would argue that both albums embody great artists working to carry forward elements of their core identities and perspectives in the face of and engaged with new reailties. Rock and roll was evolving in the mid-1960s, and Bob Dylan allowed those evolutions to impact and shape his music, while maintaining his lyrical and philosophical goals. And American society was of course evolving even more fully, and Brian Wilson worked to link his band’s good times vibe to some of those more complex and dark shifts and issues. It’s precisely because they model such grounded evolutions, in distinct ways to be sure, that Blonde on Blondeand Pet Sounds remain two of the most significant 60s rock records.Next RockStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post or other RockStudyings you’d share?

May 14-15, 2016: Fall 2016 Questions

[This week marked the final classes of the Spring 2016 semester, so this week on the blog I’ve offered some semester reflections, focusing on new texts or ideas I tried in my courses. Leading up to this special post previewing my Fall semester—please share your own previews, or more Spring reflections, here as well!]Three requests for help with my Fall 2016 courses-in-development!1)      Senior Seminar on Analyzing 21stCentury America: For my second ever English Studies Senior Seminar, I’ll be turning last summer’s hybrid grad class into a semester-long undergraduate syllabus. I know I’ll have a through-line of texts and discussions focused on race, using Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah , Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow , Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me , and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen as our focal texts. And students will be presenting on a contemporary movie or TV show of their choice. But there’s plenty more room for texts (from all media), issues and themes, and other aspects of the course—so I’d love your suggestions!2)      Honors Seminar on the Gilded Age: I got to teach our Honors program’s literature seminar for the first time last fall, and will be doing so again this fall. While I’m keeping the same main texts and units, however, I’m hoping to make two significant changes: shifting from individual student discussion leadings in every class meeting to panels of student voices once every few weeks; and adding in multimedia texts here and there, such as screening an episode of Deadwood to round off our unit on the West. Neither of those are things I’ve done in any prior literature course, though, so I could really use some advice and perspectives on either or both!3)      ALFA Class on Salem: In conjunction with a program field trip to the city, my Fall Adult Learning in the Fitchburg Area class will focus on some of Salem’s many compelling sites, histories, and texts. As those and many other Salem posts in this space illustrate, I certainly have my own starting points for what I should include in this course’s five weeks of topics and materials. But I remain very open to suggestions, as always!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Previews or reflections you’d share?

May 13, 2016: Semester Reflections: Poetry in ALFA

[This week marks the final classes of the Spring 2016 semester, so this week on the blog I’ll offer some semester reflections, focusing on new texts or ideas I tried in my courses. I’d love to hear your spring reflections and any other pedagogical or personal perspectives you’d share!]On three poems which complemented the historical subjects of my latest Adult Learning in the Fitchurg Area course.1)      Annis Stockton’s “Response”: For my first class, I worked to expand our Revolutionary period histories, focusing on loyalists, African Americans, and womenduring that foundational American era. In my prior historically focused ALFA courses (compared to the more explicitly literature-focused ones), I would have presented and had us discuss historical documents or sources for such topics. But for this course I decided to share and discuss poetry instead, and Annis Stockton’s witty, pointed, and boldly progressive “A Sarcasm Against the Ladies; An Impromptu Response” (the full text of which I included in this article) offered a perfect first illustration of how poetic texts can both engage with such historical themes and provide an additional, alternative voice and perspective through which to expand those histories.2)      Emily Dickinson’s Civil War poetry: The Civil War exemplified my overall topic for the course: histories with which we’re all familiar in some key ways, but about which there’s still so much more to learn. A perfect example of the latter is the fact that Emily Dickinson, long believed both to be thoroughly isolated from the outside world and to have declined to publish any of her poems in her lifetime, published a few poems anonymously in Drum Beat , a Brooklyn newspaper focused on supporting the war efforts. And starting with those poems can help us consider how many other Dickinson poems written during the war years can also connect to and be enriched by those historical contexts, including “It feels a shame to be alive,” the nuanced and powerful poem I shared with the ALFA class.3)      Sonia Sanchez’s “Homecoming”: The Civil Rights movement is another one of those histories on which so many of our collective memories focus, but within our memories of which there are still many elisions or blind spots. The role of women within and in relationship to the movement is certainly one of them, and in the ALFA course I used not only exemplary histories (such as the female activists who began the Montgomery bus boycott) but also poems like Sanchez’s (unfortunately not available online, but well worth the effort to seek out) to engage with that vital Civil Rights community. I also played Nina Simone’s “Backlash Blues” (a musical rendition of a Langston Hughes poem), because, well, the more amazing art to complement and amplify our histories, the better, right?Fall preview this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this idea or others you’d share?

May 12, 2016: Semester Reflections: Multimedia Texts in Ethnic American Lit

[This week marks the final classes of the Spring 2016 semester, so this week on the blog I’ll offer some semester reflections, focusing on new texts or ideas I tried in my courses. I’d love to hear your spring reflections and any other pedagogical or personal perspectives you’d share!]On the value of adding two kinds of multimedia texts to a familiar and favorite course.I’ve almost certainly written more, both in this space and in other published writing, about my redesigned Ethnic American Literature course than about all the other classes I teach put together. It’s a class that reflects some of my own most central ideas of cross-cultural American identity, that allows me to teach perhaps the widest range of texts in any one course of mine (from Frederick Douglass to Michael Patrick MacDonald, Black Boy to The House on Mango Street, and Amy Tan to Martín Espada, among others), and that features, in the student family history projects, an assignment that has been consistently both meaningful to each individual student and incredibly compelling and moving for me to read. All those aspects of the course have been present and exciting in every section I’ve taught since the first (2007) redesign, including this semester’s. Yet I believe it’s important not to let even our favorite courses stagnate (maybe especially not them), and I’ve found that adding supplemental multimedia texts has helped me keep Ethnic American Lit fresh.I first did so during the final class of my prior (Spring 2013) section of the course, using two Macklemoresongs (“Irish Celebration” and “White Privilege”) to help us talk one last time about both heritage and identity and cross-cultural conversations in American society. This time I used “Irish Celebration” as a supplemental text in our Irish American unit (during which we read MacDonald’s All Souls and Mary Doyle Curran’s The Parish and the Hill ), bringing such contemporary musical works into more direct conversation with our ongoing readings and discussions. I still used two final class musical texts as well, but tried to integrate them more fully into the semester’s work, featuring one song that extended our first unit’s readings of Douglass’ narrative and Black Boy (J. Cole’s “A Tale of 2 Cities”) and one that added contemporary issues of and debates over refugee and migrant communities into our discussions (M.I.A.’s “Borders”). There’s no doubt in my mind that songs (and, in M.I.A.’s case, groundbreaking music videos as well) offer complementary but distinct analytical opportunities from those provided by written literary texts, and I will continue to figure out ways to make songs part of classes like Ethnic in the semesters ahead.This semester, for the first time in any literature class, I also decided to use the occasional online humor video as a way to present our themes in a different light: Key & Peele’s “Negrotown”sketch and SNL’s “The Day Beyoncé Turned Black” video for the African American unit, Seth Meyers’ “Boston Accent”faux-trailer for the Irish American one, and BuzzFeed’s “If Latinos Said the Stuff White People Say” video for the Hispanic American one. I’m not quite as sure of how to use these kinds of videos in class discussions, and indeed wasn’t expecting to do so much at all; I was planning for them to be brief, fun interludes before getting back to our reading discussions. Yet in each case, students had a great deal to say, with many folks who were more generally hesitant to jump into those reading discussions adding their voices and perspectives in these conversations. Which only reinforces my goal of using these kinds of multimedia texts in future classes, but also reminds me that I should treat them and our use of them just as critically and analytically as we do any of our other texts.Last reflection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this idea or others you’d share?

May 11, 2016: Semester Reflections: A Writing Associate in Major American Authors

[This week marks the final classes of the Spring 2016 semester, so this week on the blog I’ll offer some semester reflections, focusing on new texts or ideas I tried in my courses. I’d love to hear your spring reflections and any other pedagogical or personal perspectives you’d share!]On one expected and one surprising lesson provided by my student Writing Associate.As I noted in both my initial Spring 2016 preview post and my subsequent specific preview of Major American Authors of the 20th Century, this semester I had the chance to work with a Writing Associate: Seferine Baez, a Secondary Education/Licensure track major in our English Studies department (and the recent recipient of our very prestigious Nancy Kelly Memorial Award). Our department’s wonderful Writing Associates program (created by Patrice Gray and currently overseen by Steve Edwards) offers students who have taken a course previously the chance to return to that class as a partner with the professor, working closely with both individual students and the class overall on writing and assignments, as well as whatever else makes sense for the particular course, student, and professor. I’ve had the chance to work with around ten Writing Associates over the years, and have (I’m quite sure) consistently learned at least as much from the experience as have either the WAs or the other students in the class.That trend held true this semester for sure, in both a more expected and a more surprising way. The more expected lesson (in that I’ve seen it with each WA over the years) had to do with the unique and vital role that collaboration and conversation can play in developing individual voices, ideas, and writing. I work hard to provide students with numerous opportunities to talk to me about those things, but at the end of the day, no student-professor conversation is even quite collaborative: there are just power dynamics and hierarchies in play that can’t be ignored. That doesn’t mean that such conversations aren’t valuable, but they can’t take the place of more genuinely collaborative conversations, the kinds that a great WA like Seferine can have with the students in a class. I don’t require students to meet with the Writing Associate, but I strongly encourage (and reward) them to do so, and the results are always striking: student work, ideas, and papers that are consistently and thoroughly stronger because of those conversations. And stronger in one particularly telling way: they’re more genuinely the students’ own, built on their perspectives and passions in ways that aren’t always easy to find in required assignments and analytical writing.Seferine’s work in Major American Authors also offered a more new and surprising lesson for this (somewhat grizzled) AmericanStudier, however. Since she’s a teacher-in-training, I wanted to make sure to offer her a chance to do some teaching of her own on the communal level as well as in such individual conversations, and she took me up on it, leading a discussion of a complex story/chapter (“Lulu’s Boys”) from Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine. She did a great job, both in the moment and then in reflecting on and learning from it, but that wasn’t the slightest bit surprising. No, what surprised me was how differently I was able to observe this pedagogical moment than has been the case in other, seemingly parallel instances such as student presentations or peer evaluations of colleagues. I always learn a good bit from both of those kinds of experiences, to be sure; but watching Seferine both extend and redirect our two prior discussions of Erdrich’s text, seeing her bring her own perspective and interests into the mix and then draw out student voices through those lenses, shifted my take on the class and its dynamics in truly unique and significant ways. I’ll most definitely be making room for such WA discussion leading in my future classes, and they’ll have a impressive example to live up to.Next reflection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this idea or others you’d share?

May 10, 2016: Semester Reflections: Annie Baker in Capstone

[This week marks the final classes of the Spring 2016 semester, so this week on the blog I’ll offer some semester reflections, focusing on new texts or ideas I tried in my courses. I’d love to hear your spring reflections and any other pedagogical or personal perspectives you’d share!]On two distinct but complementary reasons to teach more drama in lit courses.The first literature course I ever got to teach was an Introduction to Literature, in my fourth semester of teaching as a grad student at Temple University, and I naturally included a unit on drama, featuring both Hamlet and Death of a Salesman . My second literature course was Six American Authors, an American lit survey I was fortunate enough to teach while adjuncting at UMass Boston, and I once again featured a dramatic work, this time Langston Hughes’s Mulatto. Yet in my eleven years at Fitchburg State, I’ve consistently struggled to include dramatic works in my literature courses, outside of one section of our American Drama course; it’s only been in Approaches to English Studies (our sophomore-level Gateway course) and English Studies Capstone (our culminating senior-level course) that I’ve found room on the syllabus for drama.For this semester’s Capstone section I replaced Death of a Salesman (which I had taught in every prior Capstone of mine) with a much more contemporary play, Annie Baker’s The Flick (2013), a recommendation from my colleague and friend Joe Moser. It’s a wonderful play, funny and relevant and ultimately deeply moving, and we had a lot of fun discussing and performing it in our final unit of the semester. And as we did so, I realized two reasons why I want to find room for drama in my American lit courses as well. For one thing, you can’t read or teach drama without including those aforementioned performances, in order to help analyze acting, staging, audience, and all the related issues so central to dramatic works. And while I feature student voices and presentations in a variety of ways in every literature course, there’s quite simply nothing like having a group of students standing and moving and interacting in performance, and having all of us in the class both help direct and respond to those performative moments.Baker’s wonderful play also reminds us—even when we’re just reading and discussing it more calmly at our desks—of the distinctive qualities of human voice and identity that dramatic works can capture far differently from other literary genres. Dialogue is of course an important part of fiction (and sometimes poetry) as well; but as Baker’s use of pauses and fragments, interruptions and arguments, monologues and silences, and many other elements illustrates, drama can use dialogue (complemented by stage directions, and some of Baker’s are among my favorite such directions ever) with a depth and compelling potency all its own. If one of the main reasons we read and teach literature is to help engage with the human condition in all its complexity and universal significance—and I’d put that close to the top of the list why we do so—then dramatic texts add to that work in ways that, quite simply, would otherwise be minimized if not entirely absent from our classrooms. Teaching The Flick has reminded me of that fact, and I look forward to the tough but important work of making room for more dramatic works in my other literature courses.Next reflection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this idea or others you’d share?