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It is with a good deal of trepidation that I write this essay. Pedagogy essays tend to be weighted too much towards either abstract theory, which can be difficult to translate into actual classroom situations and assignments, or untheorized descriptions of what has worked for the author. While the individual author may be a great teacher, what works for even the greatest teacher does not necessarily translate to other teachers in other situations. And, finally, I fear that the approach to teaching that I want to describe and endorse is too idiosyncratic, too much a product of my own training and background, to be widely applicable. I have been trained by New Critics, post-structuralists, and feminist/gender theorists, and they have all left their mark on my approach to teaching. The mentor of my master's work did his graduate work with Cleanth Brooks, and the director of my dissertation did her dissertation with Stephen Greenblatt. Also, like so many of us, I was trained to teach composition while a graduate student in a program that privileged argumentative writing, and that, too, is part of how I think about teaching students to work with literature. In some ways, this essay is my attempt to think through how — and if — these various influences can become a consistent pedagogy rather than a hodge-podge of styles and assumptions.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137010490_11

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