by Vasudha Paramasivan, South and Southeast Asian Studies To my class, it seemed almost irreverent to read into such marvelous tales, prosaic explanations of power struggles and gender discrimination. While their skepticism was welcome, I had to find some way of addressing their resistance to the idea that there could be meaning and purpose behind folkloric narratives.
by Mayumi Takada, English I noted a startling discrepancy between the intelligent insights students provided in class and in office hours and the poor critical papers they wrote...In the language of high school math, they simply wrote out answers without showing their work. They were incapable of doing a close reading, the building block of literary writing and analysis.
by Mai-Lin Cheng, English By juxtaposing classic literature with contemporary literature, film, and television, I hoped to help students connect with the literature in specific, personal ways that would help them become rigorous readers. Rigorous readers, in turn, develop into strong writers.
by Kimberly Johnson, English My students approached the readings for my course with a combination of resentment and trepidation...They were reluctant to believe that these alien, stiff, wrought verses could be understood by a 21st-century readership, much less that they could provoke any passion other than boredom.
by Selby Schwartz, Comparative Literature The students were clearly struggling with the complexity of character motivations, and I could see them teetering on the verge of dismissing the whole play: mocking its archaisms, flattening its protagonists, ironizing its structure, and dispelling its magic for themselves. Their skepticism exhibited a passive kind of resistance.
by Andrea Zemgulys, English The skill of analytic writing is not only difficult for students to learn, but difficult for the teacher to communicate without suggesting that students douse their work with high-faluting or apparently argumentative words (such as "hence"). My aim is to show students how the thoughtful use of simple language can transform descriptive sentences to analytic ones.
by Kate Elkins, Comparative Literature In presenting a very "postmodern" novel, I wondered what approach to take to ensure that students did not become frustrated. One of the challenges in teaching composition classes is that students bring to the classroom a wide variety of interests and backgrounds. Few will go on to study literature, and many embark on the study of literature with a fair amount of skepticism. I therefore hesitated to approach the work using a standard "literary approach."