We are continuing in this issue of the Newsletter our series
on teaching the new American literatures. Raymund Paredes writes here about
approaching Chicano literature and David Bergman about gay and lesbian
texts. Randall Bass talks about something more purely pedagogical using
the computer in the classroom.
These essays in themselves illustrate the wide variety of strategies
available for teaching a reconstructed American literature and for teaching
in general. Paredes’ approach is largely historical, emphasizing key moments
like the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which have led to the flourishing
of Chicano writing today. He also underlines some of the recent developments
in Chicano literature, like the concern for borders and liminality. As
readers will see, these are also themes emphasized in the Contemporary
section of the Anthology’s Second Edition.
In his essay, Bass discusses the pedagogic imaginary and how canon and
syllabus are beginning to merge in this information age. He specifically
discusses the electronic resources developed to supplement The Heath
Anthology, new technologies for new courses. Bergman focuses more on
problems of classroom dynamics, of particular consequence in working with
such a conflicted area as lesbian and gay literature. I think readers will
find his concrete pedagogical strategies not only helpful in that domain
but more widely suggestive of strategies for coping with reluctant and
even angry students.
Whatever else The Heath Anthology has become a symbol, a challenge,
a success story, an expression of change it is, first and last, a teaching
text. Therefore, I particularly want to call your attention to two major
tools directed at the needs of teachers. The computerized Syllabus Builder
has been expanded and redesigned and is now available in both Macintosh
and IBM-PC compatible formats. I can say on the basis of my own experience
as an until recently computer-illiterate teacher that these disks are not
only friendly but wonderfully informative. The material has been drawn
by Randy Bass from over thirty real syllabi of courses people have actually
taught. So the material has the authenticity and concreteness we find so
helpful.
We are also completing a new edition of the Instructor’s Guide,
edited by John Alberti of Northern Kentucky University. The new edition
will not only be significantly revised and updated, but it will include
essays akin to those we have run in the Newsletter designed to provide
contexts for and ideas about teaching a reconstructed American literature.
I want to conclude, on the occasion of the publication of a Second Edition
of the anthology, with a personal note. When some of us began to talk twenty-five
years ago about reconstructing American literature, and even when we implemented
a project at The Feminist Press to take steps toward that goal about fifteen
years ago, it all seemed quite visionary, chillingly optimistic. Now I
perceive that real change has taken place not that the process is completed
far from it. But I do remember what students were expected to study in
1968, and I see where many of us are now. So my optimism and energy get
renewed. Primarily because I meet so many of you trying this, risking that
(often a great deal, in fact), working very hard to make education valuable
to our students. That is no easy task right now, when colleges and universities
are under unprecedented ideological and economic attack, when the very
value of education seems to be questioned.
These Newsletters, the interactions we have at meetings, the
seminars in which we participate (like the wonderful institute on multicultural
literature Carla Mulford organized this past June at Penn State) serve
practical goals like expanding our teaching repertoires. But for me, at
least, they have a much more fundamental purpose: overcoming the isolation
of the separate campus and the individual classroom, building as we used
to call it a sense of solidarity. I still find that a good term; it means
that we’re part of a cultural and social movement for meaningful, valid
change that we help build and that supports us in our work. So I want to
say a word of personal thanks for the sustenance I’ve received from so
many of you, for the opening of new opportunities, and the renewal of that
optimism which was not, I think, at all misplaced.
