Over the past few years, I have tried various new assignments in an attempt to move away, somewhat, from the traditional research essay. In my course “The City in American Literature: New Orleans, Chicago, and New York,” I had students create a collaborative Wiki that consisted of the following: a title page, notes, allusions or references, interactive map, questions about the text, a review … Read More The Unessay Project
The other day, Beth Loveland emailed me with her thoughts after she read Ashley McCall’s “What If We Radically Reimagined The New School Year?” As I read McCall’s article, I kept thinking about Lillian Smith and her comments to Mr. Hartley about education. McCall asks us, among a myriad of important questions, “What if we recognized that life—our day-to-day circumstances and our response to … Read More “What if . . .?”: Questions About Education
Every semester, I post my syllabi here. This fall semester the class may look a little different, but the main goals remain. I’m teaching an ethnic American literature class this fall, and the texts that I have chosen to teach this semester come, as usual, from partly my own desire to expand my own knowledge and understanding of different ethnicities, nationalities, and cultures. As … Read More Ethnic American Literature Syllabus
+ african american literature, alice walker, american literature, dorie miller, ernest j gaines, Literature, southern literature, the autobiography of miss jane pittman, the third life of grange copeland
Today, I’m going to finish the discussion I began last week on history and the ways that we construct meaning. In the last post, I looked at Ernest J. Gaines’ The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971). For this post, I will focus on one more scene from Gaines’ novel then move on to look at a section from Alice Walker’s The Third Life … Read More History and Education in Alice Walker’s “The Third Life of Grange Copeland”
+ african american literature, alice walker, american literature, ernest j gaines, julius lester, Literature, look out whitey!, louisiana literature, peter burke, southern literature, the autobiography of miss jane pittman, twentieth century literature, varieties of cultural history
Over the past couple of posts, I have written about the role of history and literature in countering prevailing myths about the past and the present. Today, I want to continue that discussion by looking at a couple of scene from Ernest J. Gaines’ The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971). On Thursday, I will finish this series by looking at a section from … Read More “Miss Jane is not in them”: Voices in Historical Narratives
Interminable Rambling 