In Defense of Reading Badly: The Politics of Identification in “Benito Cereno,” Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Our Classroom

Faye Halpern

Traditionally, we English faculty have warned our students against simply identifying with a literary work’s characters. For us, such attachments constitute “reading badly.” But we engage in identifications, too, including ones with the work’s author. A consideration of critical responses to “Benito Cereno” and Uncle Tom’s Cabin enables us to see how our own identifications often operate. In our teaching of reading, we should openly acknowledge our own commitments and help our students negotiate them.

Thinking Globally, Teaching Locally: The “Nervous Conditions” of Cross-Cultural Literacy
Lisa Eck

Teaching postcolonial literature to American college students involves taking them through a dialectical process of thinking about identification.  In the first stage, students are encouraged to note similarities between their own lives and those of the work’s characters.  With the second step, students examine how the work’s cultural and historical context makes the characters different in key ways from them.  Finally, students use the differences they have found to reflect on aspects of their own situations from a new angle.  The author demonstrates this process through a discussion of her experiences teaching Tsitsi Dangarembga’s 1988 novel Nervous Conditions.

Texts of Our Institutional Lives: Studying the “Reading Transition” from High School to College: What Are Our Students Reading and Why?

Allison Harl and David A. Jolliffe

The authors discuss a survey of reading practices that they administered to students at their home institution, the University of Arkansas, as well as logs that students at the school kept of their daily reading acts. An important finding was that, contrary to possible belief, students at this university are reading quite a bit, though they are not spending much time on materials assigned in their courses. The authors propose some methods for boosting students’ interest in academic texts, and they call for other institutions to conduct similar studies.

Opinion: Measuring “Success” at Open Admissions Institutions: Thinking Carefully About This Complex Question

Patrick Sullivan

The author examines surveys indicating that in general, community college students are significantly less inclined and able than students at four-year colleges are to earn a bachelor’s degree.  He argues that it is important for teachers of English to understand the numerous conditions that limit the first group’s chances for such “success.”

Review: A Massive Failure of Imagination

Kurt Spellmeyer

Reviewed is Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life by Anthony T. Kronman.