Counterpoint: at the high school where I taught until recently, our sophomore course included Their Eyes Were Watching God, one junior course included Passing, one senior course included Kafka and another Woolf. Admittedly this is one of those cradle-to-Ivy League pipeline schools, so it’s not broadly representative of American adolescent literacy levels — but our students did well with these texts (and challenging contemporary works as well) and many of the seniors actually loved the hard works we assigned, from Hamlet to Mrs. Dalloway. I think that Atlantic article was…an Atlantic article: long on scary anecdotes, but not necessarily reliable. And I think your course sounds fantastic, a gift to your students. I look forward to hearing how they respond.
This is heartening. And you're right to ding the Atlantic for being one the more high-visibility legacy publications that seems to have succumbed completely to the logic of clickbait.
I go to the gym, I see that people aren't scared of lifting heavy objects and that's it's actually highly desirable to do difficult things. Maybe the same logic applies here.
If this is a standard intro class that meets gen. ed. requirements, it sounds like your students are more capable readers than mine. If I taught a list that ambitious, it would wind up being me and 2 or 3 of the best students discussing them, while the rest of the class either looks on or tries to tune out with a screen. I could get away with it for an advanced course, where most of the class would be English majors but not regular intro. I typically only do 3-4 novels in a class like that with the rest being a mix of lyric poems, short fiction, and maybe a play. Plays do seem to work better than novels these days, which probably reflects what you described as the of role of "slop" in degrading interiority. Lincoln Michel posted an worthwhile essay on "slop" recently, which you may have already seen: https://countercraft.substack.com/p/art-in-the-age-of-slop?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=284412&post_id=154332279&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=yrr5e&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
It’s a 300-level course; I’d never try this on the intro level. I made my contemporary lit students read a dozen works of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction last spring for an intermediate-level course and they mostly did fine—that included several novels. I rarely teach plays! Maybe that should change.
Yes, I saw Lincoln’s piece; I read him religiously.
Counterpoint: at the high school where I taught until recently, our sophomore course included Their Eyes Were Watching God, one junior course included Passing, one senior course included Kafka and another Woolf. Admittedly this is one of those cradle-to-Ivy League pipeline schools, so it’s not broadly representative of American adolescent literacy levels — but our students did well with these texts (and challenging contemporary works as well) and many of the seniors actually loved the hard works we assigned, from Hamlet to Mrs. Dalloway. I think that Atlantic article was…an Atlantic article: long on scary anecdotes, but not necessarily reliable. And I think your course sounds fantastic, a gift to your students. I look forward to hearing how they respond.
This is heartening. And you're right to ding the Atlantic for being one the more high-visibility legacy publications that seems to have succumbed completely to the logic of clickbait.
I go to the gym, I see that people aren't scared of lifting heavy objects and that's it's actually highly desirable to do difficult things. Maybe the same logic applies here.
If this is a standard intro class that meets gen. ed. requirements, it sounds like your students are more capable readers than mine. If I taught a list that ambitious, it would wind up being me and 2 or 3 of the best students discussing them, while the rest of the class either looks on or tries to tune out with a screen. I could get away with it for an advanced course, where most of the class would be English majors but not regular intro. I typically only do 3-4 novels in a class like that with the rest being a mix of lyric poems, short fiction, and maybe a play. Plays do seem to work better than novels these days, which probably reflects what you described as the of role of "slop" in degrading interiority. Lincoln Michel posted an worthwhile essay on "slop" recently, which you may have already seen: https://countercraft.substack.com/p/art-in-the-age-of-slop?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=284412&post_id=154332279&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=yrr5e&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
It’s a 300-level course; I’d never try this on the intro level. I made my contemporary lit students read a dozen works of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction last spring for an intermediate-level course and they mostly did fine—that included several novels. I rarely teach plays! Maybe that should change.
Yes, I saw Lincoln’s piece; I read him religiously.
Yeah, I just saw that you actually reposted the Michel essay.