Where did this last week go? That's a rhetorical question, since I know where it went. I've been hanging out (and am doing so now!) in a campus-area coffeeshop, just enjoying myself and watching the world (read: attractive people) go by. There are so many stories out there.
My younger brother has a saying: "it's all about the stories." That sentence seems to justify the most unjustifiable behavior (mostly revolving around drinking, followed by uncouth acts performed in public).
But I've been considering what makes successful teaching, and I think I can summarize it with what my brother says: It's All About The Stories. I use stories--stories about Dickens and his dick, or Eliot and Other Georges, for example, to structure lectures in which I try to convey information about my period and its literature. And I use personal anecdote. Sad to say, when I was a grad student instructor, not only did the students enjoy it when I would delve into my personal history, but would seem to remember more of that than the so-called "subject matter" of the class. I really, really believe that what's crucial in what I teach (which includes factual information as well as ways of reading and writing) comes across most successfully in narratives that capture attention.
Now, as a good poststructuralist, I'm wary of narrative, which inherently leaves gaps, fissures, aporias. Narratives are grounded in what old-fashioned critics call "point of view," and although I think I'm omnipotent, I wouldn't claim to be, say, the omniscient narrator of Adam Bede. So my stories, themselves, are only partial, and I have to remind myself (and my sometimes adoring students) that this is the case.
But for all of you--(I'm trying to spark some debate and therefore some traffic on this site)--what kind of stories work and don't work in your classes? How can narratives--about your subject matter or from your subject positions--be used to site knowledge? And can we do this without making unfair impositions upon our students' insecurities (let alone attention span)?
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2 comments:
I would have responded earlier, but I was traumatized by the idea of being stuck as the omniscient narrator of Adam Bede. I prefer to think of myself as Hamlet. Not omniscient, no, but more omniscient that most others in my immediate environment. (On a related note, I believe in relative uniqueness.) I also like to leave open the possibility of an untimely tragic death for which I cannot be entirely blamed. I've pondered the pedagogical advantages and disadvantages of having that take place in the classroom; for the moment, my populist sympathies won't allow me to inconvenience the cleaning staff.
Seriously though, I applaud you for your willingness to mix the canonical and the apocryphal, to tread the territory of liminality and pastiche, and to chafe at the boundary between academic and other. I don't doubt your students adore you, in various ways. What is your sub-discipline?
Victorian lit... hence the Adam Bede reference. I'd be Hamlet, but I'm just too damned happy most of the time! I try to get morose about things, even conditioning myself to think about Iraq, or New Orleans, once in a while. But it doesn't work! Yay me!!
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