January 19, 2024: Spring Semester Previews: Grad Historical Fiction

[As thisnew semester gets underway, it does so amidst a particularly fraught moment forteaching & learning the Humanities. So for this week’s Semester Previewsseries I’ll highlight one thing from each of my courses that embodies the valueof the Humanities for us all—leading up to a special weekend post on MLK Dayand the Humanities!]

The firstGraduate course I taught at Fitchburg State, in the summer after my first yearthere (Summer 2006), was my newly created AmericanHistorical Fiction: Theory and Practice course, and 19 students took it. It’sbeen quite a few years now since any of our Graduate English Studies courseshave reached 10 students, the official number of a course to be considered sufficientlyenrolled; I’m teaching my American Historical Fiction course again this Spring,and there’s literally no way it will get to 10 (5 is the likely maximum, and asof this writing it’s not there yet). When I took over as our Graduate ProgramChair two and a half years ago, I wrotein this space about the serious enrollment crisis facing our program (andjust about every MA program), and suffice to say those challenges have not inany way abated. We continue to pursue a variety of strategies for growing theprogram; for example, if you know anyone interested in the possibility of an MAin Literature or a Creative Writing Certificate, I would ask you to sendthem my way, and/or to encourage them to check out our upcoming webinarfeaturing past and present Graduate English Studies students that will be heldon January 31st from 5-6pm and also recorded for folks to watch anytime (for more, you or they can emailme!). A significant percentage of our Graduate students (past and present)are secondary educators, and I don’t think I need to say anything else aboutwhat that community illustrates about the value of the Humanities. But thebroader truth is, a society in which folks can’t afford to think deeply aboutthe kinds of questions that literary and cultural works ask us to engage is asociety that will fall prey far more easily to the kinds of authoritarianimpulses we’ve seen over the last decade. No higher stakes than that!

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?