May 15, 2024: Spring 2024 Stand-Outs: Gold in Grad Historical Fiction

[Another semestercomes to a close this week, and this time for my usual end-of-semesterreflections series I wanted to highlight stand-out days from my classes.Leading up to a weekend off for a very stand-out reason!]

My AmericanHistorical Fiction Grad class was the first course I got to teach for ourMA program (back in Summer 2006, at the end of my first year at FSU), and isthe one I’ve returned to the most often by far. Certain aspects have stayed thesame across those nearly twenty years and half-dozen sections, but one thingthat keeps it fresh is that I always end with a 21st century text,and have chosen a different one each time. They’ve consistently been great andled to excellent class conversations, but I was especially happy with my choicethis time, C. Pam Zhang’s HowMuch of These Hills is Gold (2020). Zhang’s novel is one of myfavorites in recent years, but (as I discussed in that hyperlinked post) it’salso an incredibly complex vision not just of American history, but ofhistorical fiction as a genre. All those layers made it a particularlyphenomenal text with which to close out this class, and one to which thestudents (most of them fellow educators, and all of them awesome as our MAstudents always are) responded with thoughtful and impassioned takes that madethis conversation a truly stand-out one.

Nextstand-out tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Semester reflections or other work you’d share?