In Person Only: The session will be held fully in person at the hotel. No remote presentations will be included.
Patricia Comitini (Quinnipiac University)
If
you’ve taught older literature recently, you’ve probably heard students ask
the question "Why a I reading this?" They’ve got a point. Why should we read Shakespeare’s plays,
or Paradise Lost, or (god-forbid) “The Rape of the Lock”? We might be able
to coax students into reading a Jane Austen novel or even Huckleberry Finn
because they are still part of our cultural imagination, but it’s less easy to coax
students into reading Beowulf or Tom Jones—texts that are less
familiar in form and content. As we jettison the canon and the timeless truths
of literature, what do we expect reading older texts will give our students
that they wouldn’t otherwise understand? How do we explain our reasoning to
students about why they should read texts from earlier literary periods? How do
we present these earlier periods (or periodization) and their culture and ideas
as relevant to our undergraduate students in our English, writing, or
humanities programs? Or is relevance the problem? How might we redefine older
literature in our classes, or what we (can) do with these texts? I’m
particularly interested in position papers that take into consideration practical
pedagogical concerns, perhaps arguments about curricula, course development or
assignments that do different things with this literature. Papers are welcome
on any kind of literature/texts or periods prior to 1800.
Rather than taking it as a given, this panel explores how we can make theoretical, pedagogical and curricular arguments for the continuing relevance of reading earlier literature in English, Writing, and/or Humanities programs.