Writer as Reader

Why do we teach the novels of Toni Morrison? In this workshop, we will explore and reflect on Morrison as presence and absence in school curriculums, considering the sociopolitical, historical, racialized, and gendered reasons why we choose to teach her work—or not. Contextualizing Beloved and Morrison’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech with essays by Angela Davis and Christina Sharpe, as well as Kara Walker’s sculptures and silhouettes, we will write to read Morrison’s work, delving deep into recurrent themes of labor, loss, and love. 

Texts: Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987) and selected essays and lectures; Angela Davis, excerpts from Women, Race, and Class (1981); Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016); Kara Walker, selection of works

In this workshop we will place Shakespeare’s Othello in conversation with excerpts from Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon” letters. What counts as evidence in Shakespeare’s tragedy and in the twenty-first-century U.S.? Who are our Iagos, and what motivates them? Hatred, racism, and gender bias influence judgment in the play in ways that warrant comparison to our own time. Using an array of writing-to-learn activities and recent film adaptations of key scenes, we will consider how to bring these difficult issues into the classroom. 

Texts: William Shakespeare, Othello; selections from Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow; Jeremy Bentham, “Panopticon” letters

In her deeply affecting memoir Unbowed, Wangari Maathai recounts her extraordinary life as a political activist, feminist, and environmentalist in Kenya. Chinua Achebe, in Things Fall Apart, explores the life of the citizens of Umuofia before, during, and after the coming of the Europeans. Although set in West and East Africa, respectively, both texts successfully depict tragedy as the collective narrative of a community. This workshop will use writing-to-read strategies to put these books in conversation, connecting the voices and experiences of each author as we critically explore cultural change and its impact on the community.

Texts: Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Wangari Maathai, Unbowed: A Memoir

“Liberty is to faction what air is to fire,” writes James Madison in “Federalist 10.” With a keen sense for what was fragile and combustible in the new American republic, the Federalist writers improvised a theory of republican government that tends toward a dark view of citizens’ capacities for civic virtue and their leaders’ capacities for enlightened statesmanship. The Federalist Papers weave together history, philosophy, economics, and legal theory with an uncanny anticipation of the surprising turns political life can take. Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, a “memoir-in-comic-strips” set during the founding years of the Islamic Republic of Iran, also offers a dark yet subtly textured view of post-revolutionary political life. Both texts pose hard questions about tyranny and freedom, war and historical memory, religion, and the perils of faction. In this workshop, we will put these two post-revolutionary polemics into dialogue, using writing-to-read and other collaborative-learning practices. Participants will explore writing-based teaching strategies that help students ask deeper questions about citizenship and the differences that language makes in democratic life. 
 
Texts: John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, selections from The Federalist Papers; Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis

"Crumbling cities, flooded cities, quarantined cities—the corporeal coherence of the polis seem to be constantly under attack at the very same moment attempts are made to re-fortify its boundaries...In the midst of these fissures and fragmentations, bare life is constantly rendered in its precariousness, a life that is always vulnerable, tenuous, happenstance, and therefore always an exceptional life." So writes Eugene Thacker in Horror of Philosophy, a series of books that take seriously the idea that the horror genre has much to say in times of vulnerability in politics, ecology, and human thought. We will write-to-read horror tales by Poe, Lovecraft and Jackson that confront some of the unspeakable fears that are definitive of our and our students’ lives. 
 
Texts: Selected short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and excerpts from Shirley Jackson and Eugene Thacker, Horror of Philosophy will be provided.

C Pam Zhang grew up reading Laura Ingalls Wilder and dreaming of adventures they might share, even though she knew “Laura’s mother...would probably have never even let her get close to me.” Zhang’s novel How Much of These Hills Is Gold explores such epic moments as the building of the Transcontinental Railroad through the perspective of an invisible and objectified people—the Chinese immigrants who built it. Similarly, the story Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain rewrites the epic experience of playing a video game based on the Afghan war. Creator Jalil Kochai’s narrator is both the white male protagonist and the black and brown bodies he shoots—“I shoot you,” becomes “I shoot me.” In this workshop we will use writing-to-learn practices to reveal important connections between insider and outsider status and develop collaborative teaching strategies that explore the question: who defines the hero of an epic?
 
Texts: C Pam Zhang, How Much of These Hills Is Gold; Jalil Kochai, Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

In her book-length poem “Zong!,” M. NourbeSe Philip gave voice to the 150 slaves who were thrown into the Atlantic from a slave ship in 1781. In the very different poem “Four Quartets,” T.S. Eliot expressed the mystical dimensions of his spiritual life. Whether they are responding to murderous political policies or expressing inscrutable visions or dreams, modern poets express phenomena beyond the agency of words. Contrary to philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s claim that “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence,” some poetic texts traffic in the unsayable. In this workshop, we will write to learn “Zong!” and “Four Quartets,” grappling with the grammars and meanings of each. We will also compose our own unsayable texts and design lesson plans transferable to the classroom.

Texts: M. NourbeSe Philip, “Zong!”; T.S. Eliot, “Four Quartets”; Ludwig Wittgenstein, excerpt from “Philosophical Investigations”

Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir The Woman Warrior renders an individual life in all its historical, cultural, and mythic dimensions, teaching us that writing can help you engage bravely with the larger forces that surround you, and lead you into a fuller possession of your own life. Elizabeth Acevedo’s young adult novel-in-verse The Poet X tells the story of Xiomara, the Afro-Caribbean girl whose poems narrate each chapter. Xiomara writes to find both her voice and her place in family, school, and society. In this workshop, we will read these texts to explore the power of writing for students. Participants will gain practical strategies for teaching these books and explore some of our culture’s pressing questions about how to connect writing with the larger community.

Texts: Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior; Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X; Walt Disney’s Mulan