Literaturely

It's the time of year again: the course evaluation period. It doesn't matter if we receive 99 glowing course evaluations from our students--the 1 negative evaluation will haunt our dreams! How can we learn to not take course evaluations so personally? To dive into this tricky subject, Paige and Margaret invite on three College English instructors to share their tips and experiences. This round table discussion is the first half of Literaturely's two-part season finale. Do you have any experiences with course evaluations that you'd like to share? Send us an email at [email protected] or tweet us @Literaturely101. 

Like everyone else in the world, we have a lot to say about pandemics. In this episode, Paige and Margaret deep-dive into the potential high points and pitfalls of teaching a literature course about pandemics. We get into the many different genres that can fall under the umbrella of pandemic literature: sci-fi, modernism, zombie-fic, dystopias, contemporary fiction, digital texts, and more. There are just so many ways students could enter and benefit from this conversation! As we consider how a range of majors could benefit from a course on pandemics, we also ruminate over the techniques of pandemic literature, the relationship between literature and society, and some potential assignments. Join us as we talk about how pandemic literature helps us pinpoint societal critiques and can actually help us prepare for a more hopeful future! Are you planning to teach a course about pandemics in the future? Let us know on Twitter @Literaturely101 or email us at [email protected]. 

In this episode, Paige and Margaret ask themselves, "Is peer review not sexy?" We consider our goals for peer review in the literature classroom and discover that peer review is useful for building critical thinking, engaged reading, and higher-level writing skills. Yes, peer reviews serve some technical purposes in the class and we cover that ground, but peer reviews can do so much more! We discuss how peer reviews help our students build an academic community by sharing their own work and experience with their fellow students. Paige and Margaret also dive into how developing these editorial skills equip our students to better respond to scholars and theorists as they become literary critics themselves. Peer reviews might not be the most glamorous topic, but we share why we think they are essential for any literature class.

We are wrapping up our series on Traditionally-Taught Texts with this discussion on Faulkner and Morrison. In this episode, Paige and Margaret talk about the digital humanities, eco-criticism, and more. We brainstorm ways that we can defamiliarize familiar texts for our students to allow them new ways of reading, interpreting, and analyzing. Now that we've shared our stories, we want to hear from you! If you'd like to share your experiences, questions, and concerns teaching Traditionally-Taught Texts, send us an email at [email protected] or tweet us @Literaturely101.

In this episode, we continue our series exploring ways to Teach Traditionally-Taught Texts. These texts often tire instructors at a certain point--so how do we keep it exciting for ourselves and for our students?

Paige and Margaret discuss cultural capital, pushing boundaries, and critiquing the field we love. We dive into the nitty-gritty of our past lesson plans and brainstorm options for future classes (a lesson plan pairing Hemingway and Shonda Rhimes? Maybe one day soon!). We also ask, "How do we teach problematic texts and artists?" Balancing established perspectives and new voices to navigate representations of modern life requires a fully-awake instructor!

How do you teach traditionally-taught texts? Share your experiences, questions and resources with us at [email protected] or tweet us @Literaturely101