{"id":239412,"date":"2025-05-13T07:07:53","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T07:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-may-13-2025-spring-semester-reflections-american-literature-ii\/"},"modified":"2025-05-13T07:07:53","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T07:07:53","slug":"americanstudies-may-13-2025-spring-semester-reflections-american-literature-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=239412","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: May 13, 2025: Spring Semester Reflections: American Literature II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"post-body-8747038492833034573\" itemprop=\"description articleBody\">\n<p>[About halfway<br \/>\nthrough the Spring 2025 semester, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.legacy.com\/us\/obituaries\/dailyprogress\/name\/stephen-railton-obituary?id=57716139\">I<br \/>\nlost my Dad<\/a>. While that was of course the semester\u2019s most defining moment,<br \/>\nit also allowed me to reflect for the remaining weeks on my own teaching in<br \/>\nrelationship to one of the most dedicated and talented teachers I\u2019ve ever<br \/>\nknown. So for this semester reflections series, I want to highlight one moment<br \/>\nfrom each class where I\u2019d say I particularly felt my Dad\u2019s presence.]<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-top: 12.0pt; tab-stops: 142.5pt;\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">Continuing<br \/>\nthe thread from yesterday\u2019s post, the other class I taught on that Monday<br \/>\nmorning was American Literature II, the second-half American Lit survey. That<br \/>\nday we were located close in time to Langston Hughes, amidst our Unit on Modernism<br \/>\nand the Early 20<sup>th<\/sup> Century, and specifically were on day three (of four)<br \/>\nwith F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s <i>The Great Gatsby<\/i> (we also briefly added in a<br \/>\nsupplemental text, <a href=\"https:\/\/loa-shared.s3.amazonaws.com\/static\/pdf\/Anderson_Hands.pdf\">Sherwood<br \/>\nAnderson\u2019s \u201cHands<\/a>,\u201d as we often do in a survey course). That discussion<br \/>\ncovered a number of turning points in the novel, including the extended flashback<br \/>\nin Chapter VI where Nick Carraway narrates the moment when young James Gatz<br \/>\nabandons his prior self and heritage to create the new identity of Jay Gatsby. And<br \/>\nas we talked about it, I couldn\u2019t help remembering one of the (many) arguments<br \/>\nmy Dad and I have had about literature over the decades, in this case about<br \/>\nwhether Gatz\u2019s parents\/heritage are implied to be ethnic (read: non-white) in any<br \/>\nway. My Dad thought no, I thought yes; as usual I don\u2019t know that I shifted his<br \/>\nperspective at all, but as always I know that the debate sharpened my own<br \/>\nreading and analysis. Not sure there\u2019s much in my ideas that he didn\u2019t contribute<br \/>\nto one way or another! <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-top: 12.0pt; tab-stops: 142.5pt;\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">Next reflection<br \/>\ntomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-top: 12.0pt; tab-stops: 142.5pt;\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">Ben<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin-top: 12.0pt; tab-stops: 142.5pt;\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">PS. Spring<br \/>\nsemester reflections you\u2019d share?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[About halfway through the Spring 2025 semester, I lost my Dad. While that was of course the semester\u2019s most defining moment, it also allowed me to reflect for the remaining weeks on my own teaching in relationship to one of the most dedicated and talented teachers I\u2019ve ever known. So for this semester reflections series, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[204,13299,5289,14721,15931,1448],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-239412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-american","tag-americanstudies","tag-literature","tag-reflections","tag-semester","tag-spring"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>AmericanStudies: May 13, 2025: Spring Semester Reflections: American Literature II - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=239412\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AmericanStudies: May 13, 2025: Spring Semester Reflections: American Literature II - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[About halfway through the Spring 2025 semester, I lost my Dad. 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