Revolutionizing Aging Literature Through Student Empowerment, Modern Sex, and Evolving Pictures

Common knowledge dictates that winners write the story of history, yet the contrary exposes a limited and insincere portrait of such. The “losers” of history often, if not always, reveal the unbecoming underbelly of the indifference towards the innovation. Even those winners who claim they favor challenging old ideas disappointedly treat this endeavor as a spectator’s sport. Reinvigorating the fabric of literary studies embraces the progressively evolving culture that constantly spouts newfound ideas, not as a checklist with a concrete ending. These English majors deserve a newly democratized academic experience from professors and staff that encourage students in this field of study the engagement of literary criticism from fresher angles. Expanding a survey course that teaches literary theory rewards students with a more nuanced understanding of engaging in literary discourse. Alongside this nuance comes the inclusion of queer literature, which must reject the toxic notion of history solely belonging to the straight overlords. As this nuance seeps into the concept of literature, engaging in the medium of graphic novels distinguishes it as a respected art this does away with any of preexisting stigmas. As the world grows more visual-oriented, modern academia must embrace the possibilities of this reality, not run away from change; applying literary discourse to the field of the visual medium further engages in both the practice of semiotic theory and embraces in cultural shifts, a concept that exists only as a fear within those who refuse that change. While this contemporary initiative does promise the introduction of new courses and the innovation of the more seasoned ones, this also sincerely promises students a much wider potential of the practice of literary criticism. Despite how professors lead the classrooms, the academic experience shows a more pressing integrity for the students.

When students lead the discussions within the classroom, under a professor’s facilitation, that encourages a stronger urgency for the involvement with discourse. A.T. Aaron’s article, “Leadership of the Socratic Method,” discusses both the pros and cons that apply this particular method in any college classroom. In response to the quiet that purveys over students:

A common complaint is, ‘I don’t know where to start.’ Often, that answer is gained only through experience, which is where the Socratic method becomes useful. Instead of telling the student where to begin and forcing him or her [them] to memorize the answer for future use, the instructor can simply ask what things are important to the class. (Aaron)

Under this method, professors emphasize the important matters of the discussion rather than instilling factoids for comprehension sake. Guiding students towards thoughtful discussion encourages them to engage in fresh critical thinking. This method, alongside the students, benefits the instructors. When teaching, the “use of the Socratic method serves to produce a strong professional in fields that are mainly self-governing. The largely successful efforts of law and medicine to maintain high professional standards (and remarkably little legislative oversight) have their foundation in the emphasis on critical thinking and professional dialogue.” There must exist a line between teaching and indoctrinating, as:

During a lecture, the instructor seeks to transfer knowledge directly to the students. Often, students are forced to follow the instructor’s train of thought or logic, making the task of learning doubly hard. While lecturing certainly has its first place in the first step of Bloom’s taxonomy (knowledge), allowing students to grasp the application and meaning of the intended lesson is best accomplished by guiding the through process of Socratic dialogue.

By definition, the Socratic method calls for a compromise between lecture and discussion. Making the classroom a student-empowered environment aptly benefits their academic maturity for the future. In applying the Socratic method, the instructor gives the classroom back to the students, rather than turn that space into a controlling relationship. In showing more sensitivity for a student’s academic nourishment, survey courses lend themselves to deeper and more engaging extensions of classes.

By expanding a literary theory survey course into multiple classes about their respective theories, the doors open wider to more discussion about their historical and literary contexts. In Douglas M. Fairbanks’ article, “Points of View: A Survey of Survey Courses: Are they Effective? A Case for Survey Courses in Biology,” these specific brand of courses fall under the microscope in evaluating academic excellence. From the section titled “Why Have Survey Courses?,” this initiative reveals that:

It was hoped that the introduction of survey courses in the curriculum would help to counter negative attitudes that contribute to a loss of enthusiasm for learning. Because the new courses touch upon subject matter relevant to life in general, they should provide abundant opportunities for the instructors to show students that they care about student’s quality of life and student’s ethical strength, open-mindedness, and courage to deal with reality. (Fairbanks)

These survey courses answers to a student’s needs for creating a uniquely mindset for the academic environment. When classes connect reality and academic, they renew the academic interest for which the students strive. In answering the question whether survey courses fulfill their goals, hence the section “Why Do We Think Our Survey Courses Are Fulfilling Their Promise?,” the courses encourage students from the homeyness of factual retainability to adventurous research. In doing so, “this attests both to the broader need for this course material becoming part of every student’s knowledge base and to the quality of the courses themselves.”

Survey courses empower students to such a degree that:

In addition to their function of helping students build broad foundations in the life sciences, the survey courses have provided a forum for addressing a variety of other needs, including development of study habits, development of collegial collaboration among students, and placing emphasis on connections between biology and society and between biology and personal life issues.

Survey courses have equally academic and personal assets in benefiting students. Despite the strengths of survey courses, its shining potential, despite these courses teaching biology students, moreso benefits from expanding upon its foundation into smaller and contained classes in the English Department. Dividing classrooms alone only reinforce what the instructors teach; introducing newer courses gives a fresher insight into the familiar.

As the structure of text takes on a more visually centric identity, so did the majority of society. Adapting to these changing times means studying the visual arts as an extension of literary criticism and semiotic theory, rather than condemning the medium as a distraction from the written language. In fact, the study of graphic novels writes itself as a marriage between these two concepts. In Alex Scott Romagnoli’s dissertation, “Comics in the Classroom: A Pedagogical Exploration of College English Teachers Using Graphic Novels,” the instructor validates this popular medium as a means of teaching a class. Romagnoli, as in his lessons, “treated it like a piece of canonical literature. That’s what I did. [I] used the comic books to teach the same kind of things you would encounter in any short story or model for an introduction to literature class’ (personal communication, October 29, 2012)” (Romagnoli 131). When critically thinking about graphic novels in this light, the line that divides the aforementioned medium as pop and classical literature as essential blurs. Disposing of the snobbery around literature opens the doors of analyzing literature in a different light. Applying literary theory to film studies also encourages a student’s critical and creative prowesses. In Reza Janghorbani-Poudeh’s article, “Application of Feature Film in Teaching Humanities and Social Sciences,” the instructor shares of the academic potential of using film as a means of literary discourse. Janghorbani-Poudeh asserts that:

Film can be used in at least three different ways in a writing course: (a) to sharpen the students’ analytical and critical abilities; (b) students can compare film and written literature to develop general and expressive skills; and (c) teachers can have students compose the medium itself in order to teach general composition skills. (49)

Teaching the class literary criticism through the lens of another medium enhances the literacy of cinema and literature. This embraces the core foundations of semiotic theory. Teaching a deeper understanding of creative mediums only serves as the primary step of multimedia literacy. In the article, “Reflections on Teaching The Wire: Developing a Radical Pedagogy,” Lawrence Johnson reflects on the socially inclusive highlights of his lesson. He states that “although the courses differed in level and rigor of content, the goals were the same: (1) Identify social institutions and how they relate to social problems; (2) understand different factors that structure and organize society; and (3) critically assess one’s social location, personal values, and beliefs” (Johnson 9). With the addition of graphic novels and cinema, television contributes to the similar potential that these other visual media promise. Ensuring that the students grow aware of academic concepts, as well as grow into astute social critics, they grow more sensitive of the surrounding world. In achieving social and academic excellence on campus, the course catalog must properly reflect that initiative.

Introducing a curriculum that openly engages in queer literature lays to rest any assumed notion of history as a story only told through the lens of straight individuals. Cammie K. Lin’s dissertation on the LGBTQ+-inclusive initiative, “Queering the Secondary English Classroom Or, ‘Why are we Reading Gay Stuff?,’” offers all the integral benefits of centralizing queer theory as the heart of literary discuss and the inclusion of writers who identify as sexual minorities. When utilizing queer pedagogy, including queer literature only serves as the first step; the extra mile comes from embracing this theory, as:

Queer pedagogy actively works against as mere contributions approach in which LGBTQ[+] content is added to an otherwise unchanged curriculum, instead of emphasizing a change in the way all content is used, one in which otherwise ‘commonsense’ notions of identity – particularly gender and sexual identity – are disrupted. (Lin 26)

Reducing this inclusive initiative as a means of introducing new literature changes nothing about the system. Centering literary discourse on this specific theory, however, means forwarding the discussion of the queer identity. Reducing this conversation as a means of only asking tepid questions about same-sex marriage, however, undermines and limits more profound conversations. Analyses of LGBTQ+ culture that actually indulges in questions of what it means to consider one’s self amongst that culture. This comes into play when the teacher, whether they know this or not, becomes an activist. In sharing her experience of becoming a teacher, she expresses that: “I feel like it was a conscious political move for me to become a teacher – a form of activism – and so I feel like that mentality becomes relevant to what I do or don’t decide [what] to do in the classroom…to use that space to encourage students in whatever ways to think and talk about important human issues, including sexuality” (147). This perspective instills the social importance of the educational system. Alongside teaching the curriculum’s concepts, a teacher holds the sacred obligation of turning their students into innovators that challenge society’s norms, rather than those who uphold and sustain them. The moment when the discourse of queer culture softens into a verbal Venn-diagram of gay and straight identities, the teachers and students collectively disappoint and marginalize the years upon years of disenfranchisement that all sexualities suffer, including those in between what come off as black-and-white perspectives. Instead of talking about gay rights and gay culture, the discussions of queer rights and queer culture must overwhelmingly occupy the conversations. The inclusion of this culture most importantly shed light on the voices that share the emotions of that experience. Furthering the importance of queer pedagogy, Lin reasserts that “my emphasis here is not on critical multiculturalism writ large; there exists excellent scholarship on that already. Rather, it is on the piece I see missing within: the inclusion of sexual identity and experience as a part of what it examines” (309-10). Opening up the discussions of sexual identity contributes on the larger scale of culture. Pretending the move constitutes as an act of “political correctness” not only woefully fails to grasp the meaning of this term that grows lost in translation, but also normalizes indifference, if not hostility, towards members of the LGBTQ+ community for their struggles. As activism gave brith in the streets, then finds new life on campus, it must scream through the hallways of these sterilized institutions. Embracing this new initiative demonstrates an acceptance of an ever-changing and evolving culture.

This collectively innovative initiative outshines the alternative: a frugal and pragmatic approach that treats the concept of academic inclusivity as a euthanized checklist rather than an everlasting endeavor. Cementing literary discourse as a strict textual study and as a heterosexual gospel of history contradicts the English Department’s foundation of introducing and teaching diversity of all spectrums in the classrooms. Empowering the students within class discussion enables greater academic achievement and a more rapt sense of coordination. This compliments the expansion of literary theory into smaller divisions of courses that teach each respective theory; this promises an exposure to more historical and literary insight. As insight nourishes these students, the inclusion of queer literature rewrites history that empowers the voices of sexual minorities. In subverting the conventions of teaching literary criticism, teaching students of the visual arts in the vein of literary studies speaks to both the relevancies of semiotic theory and a visual-oriented society, not blindly upholding the literally concrete written word. The innovation of long-lasting pedagogical concepts keeps the core of literary criticism alive, while also taking it to newfound areas. In shaping this changing history, everybody holds the potential as the next game-changer.

Works Cited

Aaron, A. T. “Leadership by the Socratic Method.” Air & Space Power Journal, vol. 21, no. 2, 2007, pp. 80-87,127.

Fambrough, Douglas M., et al. “Points of View: A Survey of Survey Courses: Are they Effective? A Case for Survey Courses in Biology.” Cell Biology Education, vol. 4, no. 2, 2005, pp. 131-133.

Janghorbani-Poudeh, Reza. Application of Feature Film in Teaching Humanities and Social Sciences, Boston University, Ann Arbor, 1989.

Johnson, Lawrence. “Reflections on Teaching The Wire: Developing a Radical Pedagogy.” Radical Teacher, no. 112, Fall 2018, pp. 6–15.

Lin, Cammie K. “Queering the Secondary English Classroom Or, ‘Why are we Reading Gay Stuff?’”, Teachers College, Columbia University, Ann Arbor, 2013.

Romagnoli, Alex S. Comics in the Classroom: A Pedagogical Exploration of College English Teachers using Graphic Novels, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Ann Arbor, 2013.

Tettey, Naa-Solo. “Teaching Health Disparities, the Social Determinants of Health, and the Social Ecological Model through HBO’s ‘The Wire.’” Journal of Health Education Teaching, vol. 9, no. 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 27–36.