“Can a Shaman Cure My Fear of Normalcy?” and Other Curveballs

By: Alexander Menrisky The decade of the 1960s—as a stylistic archetype or broad sensibility—has experienced something of a cultural comeback over the last few years, its influence felt in venues from popular music to clothing design. One of the challenges of teaching the decade’s literature and art at such a moment is the degree to … Continue reading “Can a Shaman Cure My Fear of Normalcy?” and Other Curveballs →

Reimagining Piri Thomas, or When the Archive Tells You to Throw out What You Think You Know

By Regina Marie Mills Texas A&M University What I love about the archive is that you almost always find something you weren’t looking for. In the fall of 2017, I spent 4 weeks at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York City, thanks to the generous support of the New … Continue reading Reimagining Piri Thomas, or When the Archive Tells You to Throw out What You Think You Know →

Circular Teaching: Using Models of Literature and Racial Healing Circles to Promote Meaningful Conversations in the Classroom

Kim Martin Long, The University of New Orleans Many years ago, I presented at the MELUS conference on my teaching strategic that I called “Circling Race, Bigotry, and Terror: Small Groups in the Multicultural Literature Classroom,” a strategy that involves beginning with commonalities among people of different backgrounds and working out to areas of difference. … Continue reading Circular Teaching: Using Models of Literature and Racial Healing Circles to Promote Meaningful Conversations in the Classroom →

Decolonizing Through Contracts

A few years ago, I made a switch from a standard grading system to a contract-based system in my writing classes, and based on my experiences, started bringing it into all my classes after that. I’ll admit, the impetus for my switch was borne out of frustration—I was experiencing some frustration with students not heeding … Continue reading Decolonizing Through Contracts →

Teaching Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” and Jones’s “Lost in the City”

As an undergraduate English major, one of my most indelible memories is sitting in a classroom brightly lit while some of my classmates, prompted by our professor, shared their knowledge and personal experiences about the South as an introduction for our discussion of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Prior to that moment, I … Continue reading Teaching Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” and Jones’s “Lost in the City” →

Teaching Junot Díaz, Now

“Of what import are brief, nameless lives…to Galactus??” Junot Díaz’s decision to launch his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao with this quote from the Marvel comic book The Fantastic Four resonates like a livid thread throughout the novel, as all epigraphs should. Galactus is literally an all-powerful being that consumes whole planets, indifferent … Continue reading Teaching Junot Díaz, Now →