English 301: British Literature, Origins to 1660
Last semester, I tried something new with my early Brit Lit survey class. I assigned texts completely out of chronological order. Some of my friends were very skeptical, warning me that my students would be confused and wouldn’t walk away with an understanding of the history. I found that not to be the case. Partly that’s because I assigned a timeline infographic towards the end of the semester, which forced students to remember that they’ve been reading the texts out of order and to actively move them from the syllabus’s arrangement to a chronological arrangement.
But actually, I’m not too bothered if my students don’t know exactly which texts fall into the early medieval period, the later medieval period, or the early modern period. My thinking on this has changed quite a bit. I used to think it was essential that students understand the sweep of history. I used to think it was essential for them to understand the historical context within which the texts were written and read. And don’t get me wrong, I still think that’s important, and I spend a good deal of lecture on contextualizing this for my students. But the majority of my students are preparing to teach at the middle-school or elementary-school levels. It doesn’t really matter if they know these details. They need to learn how to analyze texts, they need to be aware of the multiple conversations and controversies that surround texts in general (not necessarily the texts I’m teaching them).
I was very satisfied with the results of the timeline exercise and I’m going to repeat it in the spring semester.
I wasn’t entirely sure of the success of my organization of texts by genre, starting with poetry. But my students in fall 2019 told me it worked well. So despite my slight misgivings about starting with poetry, which I thought caused my students to struggle unnecessarily at the very beginning of the semester, I’m sticking with it. I am, however, devoting more time to that section and beginning with a clear look at how to do close readings and analysis.
I also added a secondary reading: the first chapter of Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’s book The Dark Fantastic. Sure, the book is about contemporary fantasy. But it contains a lot of theory that will be very useful grounding for our discussions of many texts.
One more change I made to the syllabus this semester was to add poetry by Meir of Norwich. I had attempted too much last semester and had to cut King of Tars. I taught Silence for the first time last semester, and I had to take weeks away from King of Tars because my students were really struggling with Silence. I’m keeping them both on the syllabus this time, and will be more prepared for Silence than I was last semester! (Yes, I blame my students’ struggles with that text on this being the first time I taught it. I can prepare them better now that I now what to expect.)
Here’s the syllabus:
English 336: Critical Approaches to Adolescent Literature
For this syllabus, which I’ve taught once before (as opposed to 301, whose spring 2020 section will be the 5th or 6th time I teach it), I completely changed everything. Last year when I taught this course, I was very concerned with covering as many genres and issues as I could. This worked fine, but not great – not least because I was still focused on providing a historical overview of the YA category, how it developed, etc. This time around, I decided – screw that. Again, most of my students are going to be teaching. They would be better served if I gave them the cutting-edge YA books, the books published within the past few years, instead of books which are no longer representative of the market. As with the 301 class, I will make up for this through a non-essay assignment: Each student will create a reading list of their own, centered around three themes or topics. One of the requirements will be that they need to include one book from at least 3 different decades. (They will not be required to read these books, just to gather a bibiliography.)
I was still struggling with how to choose from the wealth of books published in the last few years, though. After chatting with some authors and professors of YA literature on Twitter and Facebook, I discovered one thing that made my whole syllabus fall into place. Dr. Nabilah Khachab asked me if I have a theme for the course, and I said no – the course just tries to give as broad a view of YA lit as possible. As I continued considering books, I realized that of course – I need a theme! And not only that, I already have a semi-theme embedded in my course description! So I leaned into that (the voices of YA, the possibilities that YA offers to marginalized voices) and that helped me choose my books, arrange their order, and get it all done.
Because this is a combined section, with both English majors taking this as an elective and non-English majors taking it as a required General Education course, I am not assigning secondary readings. I had originally planned to assign chapters from Disturbing the Universe, Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction, and The Dark Fantastic. Instead, I’m just going to create PowerPoints and lectures from each text, and provide that to my students.
Here’s the 336 syllabus:
Dainy Bernstein 