Literaturely

THE END IS NEAR! Wait, no, it's just the thirteenth episode of Literaturely! We are joined in this episode by Emilie Mears, an expert in eco-lit, to discuss the apocalypse. Or rather, to discuss literary works and natural disasters! This is a fun conversation jam-packed with considerations of what constitutes a disaster, examinations of apocalypse, creative assignments, and more. We chat about why we'd want to teach narratives about natural disasters, what we hope our students learn, and the ethics in environmental studies. What's the line between the natural, the unnatural, and the supernatural when investigating eco-lit? We'd love to hear your thoughts, comments, and questions! Share your experiences, questions, and comments with us on Twitter with @Literaturely101, on Instagram at LiteraturelyPodcast, or via email at [email protected]!

In our final installment of the Building Skills series, Paige and Margaret talk about the ways we teach our students how to research. Afraid that teaching research skills will bore your students (and you) to death? Fear not! We dive into the approaches and methods that have made us passionate about developing our students' research skills within a literature course. Let's chat about how to make citations engaging, how to enjoy finding sources, and how to skillfully respond to scholarly works, and more!  From workshops to mini assignments to resources, we share what has worked for us in the past and what we hope to try in the future. We'd love to hear your thoughts, comments, and questions! Share your experiences, questions, and comments with us on Twitter with @Literaturely101, on Instagram at LiteraturelyPodcast, or via email at [email protected]!

Welcome to Part 2 of our series Building Skills for the Literature Class! In this episode, Paige and Margaret discuss our approaches, strategies, and assignments for developing our students analytical skills. There is no one right answer, but there are certainly a lot of wrong ones! We chat about how we help our students identify textual evidence and argue for its significance. In other words, this episode is all about moving our students from simply summarizing a text to crafting an argument about what the text means and why it matters. What are the different ways literary critics analyze literature? How do the skills for literary analysis translate outside of academia? What are the typical pitfalls for students starting to analyze a work of literature? We'd love to hear your thoughts, comments, and questions! Share your experiences, questions, and comments with us on Twitter with @Literaturely101, on Instagram at LiteraturelyPodcast, or via email at [email protected]!

Literaturely kicks off its newest series--Building Skills--with an in-depth discussion on developing students' close reading skills. Paige and Margaret discuss how they help their students learn to read for a literature course and prepare a strong foundation for subsequent skill sets. What language do we use to introduce close reading and critical reading? What do we read for when we read for class? What mini assignments can we use to better prepare our students? We'd love to hear your thoughts, comments, and questions! Share your experiences, questions, and comments with us on Twitter with @Literaturely101, on Instagram at LiteraturelyPodcast, or via email at [email protected]!

Is Shakespeare still relevant? Is there any point to teaching Shakespeare outside of a Shakespeare course? In this episode, Paige and Margaret discuss the potential of including Shakespeare in your introductory, survey, and special topics course to find the threads that connect Shakespeare to today's world. We discuss ways we could use Shakespeare to teach research skills, examine political rhetoric, consider evolving identities, talk about literary collaboration, and more! As always, we try to share interesting resources we've discovered along the way. We'd love to hear how you've taught a Shakespeare course or incorporated Shakespeare into your film courses, Women in Lit courses, survey courses, etc. Share your experiences, questions, and comments with us on Twitter with @Literaturely101, on Instagram at LiteraturelyPodcast, or via email at [email protected]!

Today Margaret and Paige are investigating truth! What does it mean to write an autobiography, memoir, or auto-fiction? What does it mean to write truthfully? To put your memory on the page? We've realized that much of the discussion about this focuses on teaching students to write their own memoirs--but not how to critically read and evaluate one. We discuss constructions of identity performances on the page, the ethics of sharing your life, and the different genres for writing memories. Do you include any memoirs or works of autofiction in your own courses? How do you teach them? We'd love to hear from you on Twitter (@Literaturely101), Instagram (LiteraturelyPodcast), or email ([email protected]).

Paige and Margaret tackle the flipped class! Due to the pandemic, we have all been forced to adapt our teaching styles for a changing world. In this episode, we consider how a flipped classroom can help engage our students when learning online and when learning in a traditional classroom! We explain what a flipped classroom is and how it can work for a literature course, our goals for flipping a class, and potential assignments for this style of learning. A flipped classroom can help our students better process, challenge, and reflect upon material. We decide that the ultimate benefit of a flipped classroom is encouraging our students to take agency over their education. Have you ever taught a flipped class or considered teaching a flipped class? We'd love to hear about your experiences and questions! Join the conversation on Twitter (@Literaturely101), Instagram (LiteraturelyPodcast), or email ([email protected]).

The single-novel course might be the paragon of the English course. People imagine students lounging on college lawns, browsing Joyce's Ulysses or Tolstoy's War and Peace. But is this the reality of the single-novel course? Paige and Margaret investigate the purposes and possibilities of dedicating an entire course to reading a single novel. We chat about developing close reading skills and fully immersing one's self in an idea, but we also delve into the ways a single-novel course can allow us to be more creative with our pedagogy and our education. Join us as we chat about objectives, skills, and assignments and the other potential values in teaching a single novel! Have you ever taught a single-novel course? Or have you ever dreamt about teaching one? We'd love to hear about your experiences and questions! Join the conversation on Twitter (@Literaturely101), Instagram (LiteraturelyPodcast), or email ([email protected]).

How do we handle the depictions of mothers in literature? What is the function of motherhood within larger institutions? What are some goals for exploring the maternal identity within the classroom? Why do so many professors, students, and readers dismiss motherhood as irrelevant to modern life? The literary mother reflects our cultural intersections of gender, race, class, sexuality, disability politics, religion, education, geography, and so much more. In today's episode, Paige and Margaret consider the position of mothers in academia and in literature. From handling odd off-hand comments from colleagues to helping students examine the pressures of identity restrictions and intersections. Join us as we blame Freud for all of our problems and chat about new approaches for understanding literary mothers!

Do you feel like your students dread group projects? Are you unsure how to refresh your approach? In this episode, Paige and Margaret break down their approaches to incorporating group projects into their literature courses! From scaffolding assignments throughout the semester to fulfilling course objectives to more creative strategies, Paige and Margaret dive deep into the untapped potential of the group project. We've got to be honest with you: recording this episode got us very excited for our next group assignment. We'd love to hear about your experiences with group projects! Join the conversation on Twitter (@Literaturely101), Instagram (LiteraturelyPodcast), or email ([email protected]).