There’s just about a week left before classes start. I’m teaching two classes this semester: a survey of medieval and early modern literature, and a class on children’s literature. I’ve taught both these classes before, but I’ve completely revamped both syllabi.
For the medieval and early modern survey, I’m trying to actively resist the canon (I disappointed myself by using enough texts that exist in the Norton that I could justify assigning Volume A). The three times I taught this class before, I used the most obvious texts, working from the Norton instead of thinking about what I wanted to accomplish in the class. This time, I worked the other way around. It was far more challenging to plan and prep this way, but I sincerely hope it will be worth it!
I’m also not following chronological order. I loosely organized the syllabus around genre, supported by themes or topics I want to discuss. I’m going to rely heavily on a timeline during my lectures so that students leave with a sense of the history. But one of my weaknesses as a teacher is emphasizing history at the expense of literary analysis, so I’m also hoping that this rearrangement helps.
For my children’s literature class, I reorganized by reading about a million Middle Grade books over the summer. It’s been fun! I’ve taught this class only once before, and while I was very happy with how it went, I had a few self-criticisms. Most of them stemmed from the fact that I was trying to teach the historical development of children’s literature as opposed to its current state. While that is a worthy goal, it doesn’t fit my students’ expectations or needs – many English majors at Lehman are also education majors. So maybe I’ll get my department to give me a topics elective where I can teach that… For now, I’m focusing on recent texts.
This one was also a challenge to plan. I mapped out the genres and issues I wanted to cover, helped by a few textbooks and teaching guides:
- Children’s Literature: An Issues Approach
- Reading Children’s Literature: A Critical Introduction
- The Bloomsbury Introduction to Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Then I requested a shitton of books from the library, and read or skimmed as many as I could. I tried to find books which can do double-duty in helping me teach genre and issues. I actually managed to find one book – The Witch Boy – which does triple-duty: we’ll be talking about fantasy, graphic novels, and gender that week.
Both syllabi are below. I’m hoping to blog now and then about the individual lessons and assignments throughout the semester.
Dainy Bernstein 