May 14, 2025: Spring Semester Reflections: First-Year Writing II

[About halfwaythrough the Spring 2025 semester, . While that was of course the semester’s most defining moment,it also allowed me to reflect for the remaining weeks on my own teaching inrelationship to one of the most dedicated and talented teachers I’ve everknown. So for this semester reflections series, I want to highlight one momentfrom each class where I’d say I particularly felt my Dad’s presence.]

I’m suremy Dad taught First-Year Writing in his early years at the University ofVirginia, but because of the way that institution and English Department work,overall and in terms of seniority and so on, I believe it had been many manyyears since he had done so (he taught at Uva for 45 years, so I do mean manymany!). As a result, I certainly connect my Literature courses and teaching tohim more fully than I do my Writing sections (which I have at least one of, andoften as this semester two of, every semester). But when I returned to my FYWclassrooms on the Thursday of the week he passed, I had the chance to pay anovert tribute to my Dad and his work: as part of a unit on analyzing multimediatexts we read a MatthewZoller Seitz article on the “Magical Negro” stereotype, and so I got toshare with the students my Dad’s excellentanalysis of “Tomming” as both a precursor to that stereotype and a way toanalyze it in cultural works. And then we watched the Key & Peele sketch “Magical Negro Fight,”because it’s very relevant to that conversation but also because my Dad reallyloved all things Key & Peele. I can’t say exactly which of these momentsfelt most linked to my Dad, because in truth they all were, thoughtfully andhumorously and movingly.

Next reflectiontomorrow,

Ben

PS. Springsemester reflections you’d share?