“Critical Consciousness” and Pedagogy in Ernest Gaines’ “The Sky is Gray”

Category: Literature

During my educational career, I sat in countless classroom regurgitating information back to the one at the head of the classroom who held my grades and my future in their hands. I felt, for the most part, disconnected from any of my experiences or reality. That does not mean that the information I learned did not relate to my life; it just means that … Read More “Critical Consciousness” and Pedagogy in Ernest Gaines’ “The Sky is Gray”

October 29, 2024 + hungary, katalin street, Literature, magda Szabó, world war ii

What Keeps Bringing Me Back to Magda Szabó’s “Katalin Street”?

by Matthew Teutsch

As I’m teaching Magda Szabó’s Katalin Street, I keep asking myself, “Why am I drawn to this book?” I’ve only read it twice, once last summer and again this semester in preparation for teaching it. Yet, I keep feeling like Katalin Street is one of those novels, like those of Ernest Gaines, Toni Morrison, or others, that I will come back to again and again over the … Read More What Keeps Bringing Me Back to Magda Szabó’s “Katalin Street”?

July 23, 2024 + ethnogothic, gothic literature, lillian e smith, Literature, new york, portrait of lysbeth, Rama Santa Mansa

The Importance of Literature

by Matthew Teutsch

Why do we read literature? What goes into our literary choices, those books we choose to pick up off of the shelf and dive into? Do we bring them down from the shelf to escape, for pure entertainment? Do we open them up to learn something new about the world around us? Do we turn the pages to learn something new about ourselves? Or, … Read More The Importance of Literature

June 20, 2024 + history, Literature, Pedagogy, syllabus, world war ii

The Reverberations of World War II Syllabus

by Matthew Teutsch

Since childhood, I’d been fed the constant patriotic narrative of World War II, imbibing the events in which the United States had direct involvement from Pearl Harbor to D-Day to the Battle of the Bulge and more. I never really veered from those stories until I started looking deeper into World War II a few years ago, specifically the connections between Jim Crow and the … Read More The Reverberations of World War II Syllabus

February 15, 2024 + american literature, georgia literature, lillian e smith, Literature, race, religion, strange fruit

Lillian Smith and the “Sex-Race-Religion-Economics” Tangle

by Matthew Teutsch

Over the past week, I’ve been reading Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream for my Women in the Civil Rights Memoir course and her debut novel Strange Fruit for a book club at the end of January. If memory serves, this is the third, maybe fourth, time I have read each of these books. However, I have never read them at the same time, moving back and forth between the … Read More Lillian Smith and the “Sex-Race-Religion-Economics” Tangle

Interminable Rambling

“Critical Consciousness” and Pedagogy in Ernest Gaines’ “The Sky is Gray”

Category: Literature