{"id":338206,"date":"2025-12-10T21:22:36","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T21:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-december-10-2025-semester-reflections-american-lit-ii\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T21:22:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T21:22:36","slug":"americanstudies-december-10-2025-semester-reflections-american-lit-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=338206","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: December 10, 2025: Semester Reflections: American Lit II"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[This week
\nmarks the conclusion of another Fall semester, my 21st<\/sup> at Fitchburg
\nState. Since we\u2019re all going through it at the moment, I thought I\u2019d share one
\nsignificant challenge I faced in each class this semester, and a bit about how
\nI tried to respond. Leading up to a special weekend post on my younger son\u2019s
\nfirst semester!]<\/p>\n

For many
\nyears now, I\u2019ve featured in semester
\npreview<\/a> and reflection
\nseries<\/a> the question of whether I should substitute shorter texts for longer
\nones in my literature courses. There have been a number of factors pushing me
\ntoward that question, as those hyperlinked prior posts reflect; but certainly
\none has been my desire to minimize (and ideally eliminate entirely) the number
\nof texts that students have to find their own copies of (ie, purchase, although
\nthere are always potentially copies at libraries), rather than that are available
\nonline in full. Of course there are plenty of longer readings available in that
\nlatter way, but they have to be out of copyright, meaning that any text
\npublished after 1930 (as of right now) is not likely to be available online in
\nfull yet. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

For the first
\ntwo-thirds of my American Lit II syllabus, that\u2019s not an issue, as all of our
\nreadings (including the longer ones) are available online in full. But in the
\nfinal Unit, in which we read texts from the late 20th<\/sup> and early 21st<\/sup>
\ncenturies, it is one\u2014and the two longer readings in that Unit happen to be two
\nof my favorite American novels, both overall and specifically to teach: Leslie
\nMarmon Silko\u2019s Ceremony<\/i><\/a> (1977) and Jhumpa
\nLahiri\u2019s The Namesake<\/i><\/a> (2003). So when I was planning this semester\u2019s
\nsection of American Lit II, I really debated whether to keep those two texts on
\nthe syllabus or to replace them with shorter readings by the same authors that
\nare available online (such as Lahiri\u2019s wonderful short story \u201cThe
\nThird and Final Continent<\/a>\u201d [1999] in place of her novel, for example).<\/span><\/p>\n

I ended up
\nkeeping the two novels on the syllabus, and made sure to have copies of both on
\nreserve at the FSU library (e-reserve as well as hard copy for Silko, which was
\navailable in both ways; hard copy for Lahiri, which was not) so students had at
\nleast one guaranteed way to take a look at them without finding their own
\ncopies. But I also offered a compromise that I\u2019m still not sure about but that did
\nseem to help a bit\u2014highlighting opening sections in each text that, if students
\nwere able to look at, would allow us to have meaningful conversations even if
\nmost folks were not able to read beyond those sections (which, indeed, most
\nwere not). Since I\u2019m not requiring students to purchase any text, I don\u2019t feel
\nbadly from that standpoint about not asking them to necessarily read the whole
\nof a text; but since I especially love where those novels go in their latter
\nsections, I most definitely did miss the chance to fully teach these books.
\nThis challenge remains a work in progress, and since I\u2019ll have an American Lit
\nII section next Fall it\u2019s one I\u2019ll be returning to to be sure. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Next
\nreflections tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. What
\ndo you think?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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