The Power of Demystification: A Teaching Philosophy

 How does your argument change the world?

When faced with this seemingly impossible question, my students freeze. For weeks they have been brainstorming essay topics, developing close readings, and revising, but they have not paused to consider why all of this actually matters. I present this writing prompt as students begin drafting their concluding paragraphs to encourage them to grapple with the implications of their writing and reading practices. To qualify the scope of this question, I explain that their writing could change the world in big or small ways: it might change the way we read a text, the way a text should be taught, future research on a topic, how we understand culture or society, or the student’s perspective of the world. Liberated by the thought that their writing has the capacity to make an impact, students imagine how the ambiguous ending of Chimamanda Adichie’s “A Private Experience” reframes their conception of truth. They draw parallels between Gilded Age consumerism in Henry James’s The Spoils of Poynton and twenty-first-century conspicuous consumption. They resolve to combat contemporary racism and intolerance after reading about Jim Crow-era bigotry in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand. By demystifying the elusive processes behind close reading and academic writing, my teaching trains students to be better critics of the world around them.

Informed by the feminist and postcolonial methods I apply in my research, my pedagogy unveils systems of power through the content and structure of my classroom. In literature and culture classes, students read texts that illuminate inequalities in race, gender, and class; in writing classes, they analyze how their own literacy is shaped by these social constructs. I incorporate small group writing and discussion activities with open-ended outcomes to model processes of close reading. In the case of an upsettingly violent novel by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, for example, I was uncertain how my students would respond, so I asked them to list every emotion they felt when reading the novel. As each student shared his or her response out loud, a wider range of emotions than I had expected emerged: disgust, anger, inspiration, nostalgia, anxiety, disappointment, hope. From there I invited students to point to specific rhetorical strategies the author employed to evoke that feeling in his readers, thereby redirecting students’ affective responses into practices of literary analysis.

My courses emphasize that there are many ways to analyze a text, and present interdisciplinary approaches as possible pathways for interpretation. In discussions, I provide examples from history, material culture, and visual art to prompt speculation about how these contexts enrich our reading of a text. Such strategies have been effective for discussing Anita Desai’s “The Artist of Disappearance,” a story about a recluse named Ravi who creates ephemeral art from the natural objects he finds in the Himalayan foothills. Desai’s narrator describes the uncanny effect of these creations: “Nature could not have created those circles within circles of perfectly identical stones in rings of pigeon shades of grey and blue and mauve…. It looked like a bower—but of bird, beast or man? Any one of these was barely credible.”

To help my students visualize this mysterious work, I invite comparison to famous earthworks art by Robert Smithson, and play a video of Andy Goldsworthy in the process of creating natural art similar to Ravi’s assemblages (like the image above). With a visual reference in front of them, students are better able to identify metafictional themes, describing how the form of Ravi’s art mimics the structure of Desai’s story. One student wrote an essay informed by this discussion, arguing that the transitory nature of Ravi’s art serves as a metaphor for the inevitable disconnect between a writer’s purpose and readers’ responses. I find that practicing interdisciplinary approaches in class inspires students to develop insightful readings by drawing on their own expertise from other disciplines.

Whether teaching introductory, survey, or upper-level courses, I believe it is important to break down writing assignments into smaller steps leading up to the final draft so that students draw on skills practiced in class and are made aware of my expectations. To prepare students to formulate an argument about a text, I create two columns on the board: one for the text’s stylistic devices, and one for the themes it engages. Students populate these columns with examples they notice from the assigned text. When reading Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, a novel that details the sense of alienation experienced by its biracial protagonist Helga Crane in the prejudiced 1920s U.S., students noted Larsen’s use of quicksand as a structuring metaphor, her vivid imagery, and her incorporation of brief snippets of dialogue. Likewise, they observed Larsen’s thematic interest in Helga’s physical displacement, the objectification of Helga’s body, and Helga’s confusion about her identity. With lists of formal and thematic elements visible on the board, students then work in groups of 3­–5 to pair one literary device with one theme in order to construct an argument about the novel as whole, often with inventive results, such as, “Larsen uses dramatic gaps in time to express Helga’s confusion and isolation about her own identity.” Students often expand upon ideas from this activity to formulate essay topics, crafting focused work with confidence and motivation. I expect students to make original contributions through their research and writing, which in turn affirms the power of their voices.

Frequent reflection encourages students to monitor their own learning and apply it to other contexts of their lives; in my courses, students engage in such metacognition from the first day to the last. When reviewing the objectives listed on the syllabus early in the semester, I invite students to draft their own individual goals for the course—goals that I hold them accountable to in my comments on their written work and in one-on-one conferences. At the end of each unit, students work in small groups to inventory the general concepts, ideas, and reading and writing strategies they learned, which I compile and circulate at the end of the course to generate further reflection. Seeing a 5-page list provides students with tangible evidence of the abstract learning they achieve in English classes. On the last day of class, students scan this list and write about the most important idea or skill they will take away from the course. Some explain how they will use their close reading skills to critique the media they consume. Others note that they will refer to strategies for developing an argument when writing cover letters to present a convincing case for hiring them. Still others describe how their ability to understand a multiplicity of perspectives will allow them to navigate their personal and professional relationships. Some even comment that they will take a newfound pleasure in reading. At a time when the humanities are constantly denigrated, my teaching consciously underscores and celebrates the personal and practical value of literary study.