Conceptual Impasses: Strategies for Supporting Students in Life Narrative Courses (original) (raw)
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Teaching a "New Canon"? Students, Teachers and Texts in the College Literature Classroom
College Composition and Communication, 1997
While graduate students at the University of Iowa, we were lucky enoughtruly, privileged enoughto have the opportunity to reflect upon what it might mean to be a "teacher" of literature in the post-secondary classroom. And while appreciative of that opportunity and of mentors, students, and colleagues, each subject to the consequences of our early mistakes, we also recognized that our training and reflection were largely improvisatory. We "made up" syllabi, grading policies, seating arrangements, presentation styles, responses to student writing, and so on. As we matured as teacherscholars in the midst of debates about the canon and cultural diversity, this pedagogical "creativity" was tested as a reliable means of action in response to the dizzying array of demands placed on us by students, texts, and the institution. We recognized early on that an attention to difference in the classroom must mean a disorientation and resisted the temptation to oversimplify, to retreat into the safety of text-based, teachercentered approaches. Bruce recalls sensing such a pedagogical epiphany when he realized that students' needs, knowledges, and expectations were perhaps the most important text of any class: My interest in the social dynamics of the literature classroom arose primarily out of my experience with a radical juxtaposition of two different teaching contexts. 1 began my college teaching career at California State University, Fresno. where classes were filled with students of amazingly diverse heritage. In a single class, I might have students of Basque, Armenian, African, Mexican, Hmong, Chinese, Japanese and European heritage. The degrees to which these students continued to share in the cultural values and beliefs a these origins depended, Of cool se, xi xii Bruce A. Goebel and James C. Hall For Jim, the need to explore a comprehensive pedagogical strategy was precipitated by the realities of identity politics: As a white scholar and teacher being trained as an African-Americanist, I was aware each and every day of the complexities Of my position in the classroom. Wht.t might "teaching" mean if' it was necessary for me to resist culturally imperialist 1' NS. xiv Bruce A. Goebel and James C. Hall any way." Despite the inclusion of canon-opening texts, the values and biases of the traditional canon remained unchallenged in the social dynamics of the classroom. We felt most imposed upon by these values, for example, when trying to think through questions of evaluation. How were we to reconcile what seemed to be a fairly straightforward decentering of authority with institutional responsibilities to "grade?" Our conversations together were marked by an anxiety about "consistency" and "integrity." How could we be telling students about cultural pluralism and the joys of interpretation while engaging in what seemed at times to be a fairly crude process of determining when people were "right" and "wrong?" While we were never radical relativists, it did seem incumbent upon us to discover what "evaluation" might mean if one was serious about democratic principles and canonical reform. A "new canon" was going to require an intense self scrutiny. These ruptures between literature, theory, and pedagogy brought us to the realization that there was a real need for systematic exploration about the relationship between classroom practice and the institutionalization of cultural democratic ideals. We set out to put together a collection of essays that would explore the needs of teachers who wish to serve their students effectively and also serve the idea of a "new canon." Within this collection, the "new canon" refer3 to more than a set of multicultural texts, fixed or changing. Instead, it indicates and describes comprehensive curricular change and an expanding repertoire of self-reflective teacher knowledge and strategies. In this sense the "new canon" emerges from and embodies an ethical, democratic process removed from utopian theory by its very application to the lives of real, diverse, complex students, teachers, and texts. As James Marshall pointed out during a recent NCTE conference session, theorists of culture and democracy have succeeded in identifying and articulating much of the problematics regarding race, gender, and social class, but they have failed to create a corresponding pedagogical technologylargely because they have failed to account for the social dynamics of real classrooms. Recent pedagogical specialists, from writing process advocates to reader-response theorists, have concretely outlined practical classroom methods but have failed to adequately connect them to contemporary debates regarding the relationship among a literary education, cultural diversity, and democracy.
Studying Fiction, 2021
The right of Jessica Mason and Marcello Giovanelli to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. five years. We are grateful to everyone we have taught and worked with; all of you have helped to shape the ideas in this book. As always, we are grateful as ever to our colleagues, families and friends and would also like to acknowledge the support of the team at Routledge at the various stages of writing. Finally, Jessica Mason would like to extend special thanks to Ben Hannam and Kate Longson, without whom her involvement in the final preparations of the manuscript of this book would simply not have been possible. We are grateful for permission to reproduce parts of the following research papers in Chapter 2 of this book: "Well I don't feel that": Schemas, worlds and authentic reading in the classroom, by Marcello Giovanelli and Jessica Mason, English in Education, 2015, reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Group, http://www.tandfonline.com) "What do you think?" Let me tell you: Discourse about texts and the literature classroom, by Jessica Mason and Marcello Giovanelli, Changing English, 2017, reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Group, http://www.tandfonline.com)
Comparatismi, 2018
• What is literature for us today? And what will become of it in the next few years? Our era only seems willing to recognize the complexity of the field of science; whereas as far as literature is concerned, it is still thought that a rigorous training is not necessary and many deceive themselves into thinking that it is possible to do without the analytical tools created in the twentieth century and more recently thanks to theory. The refusal of theory is justified by the most tenacious prejudices, or simply by bad faith. It is believed (or some pretend to believe) that literary theory coincides with the years of structuralism, with the primacy of linguistics, and with the thesis of the intransitivity of language. Reality is quite different. Literary theory is a hybrid space where linguistics, rhetoric, philosophy and the theories of desire merge and interweave. In this space, which undergoes constant renewal, literature is understood to be an intellectual and emotive experience, and an irreplaceable source of knowledge. Literary texts are studied as dynamic objects that are able to cross the borders of the era in which they were produced and enter the "great time" (as Bakhtin called it). However, a text can only expand, like the Japanese flowers that Proust spoke about at the beginning of the Recherche, if it is immersed in the water of good interpretations. And good interpretations are not infinite as Derrida and the followers of reception theory believed. Only doxa is infinite. Literature is a way of thinking. It offers the opportunity for a complex mental experience that no algorithm could ever describe or envisage. By creating characters with flexible identities, literature describes the human condition from the viewpoint of non-coincidence with oneself. It addresses all individuals inviting them to understand their higher possibilities. Yet these possibilities, the investigation of which is where the very vocation of literature lies, have always encountered enormous obstacles. The difficulty in understanding and analyzing those virtually expanding multilateral objects that are literary texts has caused most scholars to limit themselves to reductive and peripheral investigations. This type of research should be called contextualism. It has presented
FINAL TASK SCIENTIFIC, 2024
The passage delves into the far-reaching effects of globalization and marketization on higher education, honing in on the heightened international competition fueled by global university rankings. This competition has spawned policies like the 'publish or no degree' directive, intensifying the pressure on graduate students, particularly in master's programs, to produce research outcomes for their degrees. In response, higher education institutions in Indonesia are implementing strategies such as writing groups, grounded in the concepts of "communities of practice" and "legitimate peripheral participation," to support master's students, especially those in English education who grapple with publishing in English as a second language. Through a qualitative descriptive case study employing Yin's approach, the research explores the experiences of fifteen Indonesian master's students engaging in scholarly writing within a community of practice. The findings reveal a holistic research model encompassing group sessions, individual writing components, and seminars, resulting in a perceived transformation in participants' development as scholarly writers within Wenger's Community of Practice theory. The study highlights the effectiveness of the writing group model in reshaping participants' identities and perceptions of scholarly writing, demystifying the publication process, and providing tangible benefits such as heightened awareness and efficiency. The discussion underscores the broader significance of writing for publication, impacting not only students but also faculty members and researchers, contributing valuable insights to the literature on writing groups and offering a nuanced understanding of their impact on master's students' scholarly writing experiences within a specific educational context.