Teaching
"To come with a mind well-informed is to come with the inability of administering to the vanity of others..."
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
I teach introductions to college writing, surveys on English and World Literature, and courses on the fundamentals of fiction. My upper-level classes include overviews of the English-language novel and seminars on Jane Austen. I reject the now-common idea that students have lost the ability to study history or retain information. If social media have robbed human beings of curiosity and dulled our rational capacities, we will live as Austen's deferential ignoramuses. Proceeding on the opposite assumption, I provide historical information that contextualizes assignments, balancing this material with close reading of literary texts. I hope that by introducing newcomers to stylistic literary analysis I help them become more rigorous thinkers.
I think the desire to browbeat others into intellectual submission comes from the process of fooling oneself -- the easiest person to fool. Intellectual self-deception generally happens piecemeal, from falling under the sway of flaccid ideas, repeating them as slogans, and becoming attached to them. Wide-ranging reading, literary discussion, and reflective writing are the best antidotes I know of.
Professor Blanford Parker divides college courses into three types: those that increase students' knowledge, those that leave students' minds untouched, and those that knock pre-existing information and skills out of students' heads. I aim for the first category.