Category Archives: Pedagogy

I’m returning to this site after a long absence mostly as a place to post the reading list for my Senior Seminar course on The Gothic. I’ve had a few people on the Twitter machine request it, and I thought … Continue reading

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The Experience of Reading Poetry Part 2: “vex one like dronings of the shuttles at task”

In my last post I discussed Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “Lady Lilith” and how the experience of reading the lines actually mirrors the poem’s content. Another excellent example of a poet using the form, in this case repetition and specific diction, … Continue reading

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Slang, rhetorical situations, and a ridiculous school policy

The inimitable Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing has linked to a BBC news story about a school in Croydon (South London) that has banned students from using slang. Here is the original article and here is Cory’s post. Students … Continue reading

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Argument and Deforming Metaphors

I currently teach a great deal about argument (my three sections of English composition are primarily focused on argument, my classrooms are exceptionally contentious). Many of my students think of argument in the expected terms. To them it is necessarily … Continue reading

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Religion in the Classroom

As I mentioned previously, I’ve been attending a discussion group focused on teaching literature for some time. Last month it was my turn to choose our reading and I’ve picked Peter Kerry Powers’s excellent article “A Clash of Civilizations: Religious … Continue reading

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Revisiting “The Banking Concept of Education”

One of the first pieces of pedagogical theory I ever read was Paolo Freire’s “The Banking Concept of Education” from his 1970 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I was a first-year Master’s student preparing to teach my first class, a … Continue reading

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Starting with poetry, or, why I teach “Dover Beach” on the first day

Elaine Showalter’s Teaching Literature begins with a focus on teaching and anxiety, moves through theories and methodologies, and then in chapter four gets down to the nitty-gritty of teaching by genre. She begins this section with a focus on poetry … Continue reading

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