It might go without saying that courses in the English department include a good deal of reading and writing. But English professors also take their students beyond the page, into theaters, natural environments, archives, and more. They invite guests into the classroom, too, including some of our most important contemporary literary figures. Below are five recent examples of creative and innovative pedagogy in the the English Department at Notre Dame.
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In Spring 2023, Assistant Professor of English Dr. Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal brought students in his "Computation, Culture, and Critique" course to the Hesburgh Library to experiment with computers from the 1980s. English area librarian Dan Johnson led the class through the university's holdings of older computer technologies.
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In the Fall of 2022, Associate Professor of English Dr. Ian Newman used a Teaching Beyond the Classroom Grant to take students to see plays while teaching at the London Global Gateway. In Professor Newman's History of the London Theatre course, students watched plays at a variety of theatre buildings throughout London, including a production of Frozen performed at Drury Lane Theatre.
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PhD candidate Jennifer Thorup Birkett received a Teaching Beyond the Classroom Grant in Spring 2022 to take all of her students to the Actors From The London Stage performance of Much Ado About Nothing. Following that performance, she also had one of the actors come lead class discussion. In the course of that one class, says Professor Birkett, she watched her students transform. They vulnerably ventured outside their comfort zones, explored how bodies participate in meaning making, cultivated empathy by stepping into the shoes of a character, and united with their fellow classmates as an ensemble cast. One of her students who had come to her in tears the week before, terrified of performance, found courage to take up the role of Hero and did an incredible job. This student ended up emailing Professor Birkett at the end of the semester thanking her for providing that experience.
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Notre Dame Magazine highlighted Associate Professor of English Dr. Roy Scranton's humanities-based course, Witnessing Climate Change, developed while Professor Scranton was a fellow in the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies. Jason Kelly writes: "Students spend a September class dispersed around the campus lakes in silent contemplation. For seven minutes, they take in their setting as a whole, noting how different aspects of nature interrelate and how nature interrelates with the human world. Another seven minutes focuses on one aspect of the natural world — a leaf, a duck, a ripple in the lake. They close their eyes as they tune into the sounds and scents around them, the feel and flavor of the air. Then they go back to a full sensory experience of their surroundings, followed by a written reflection and discussion of their observations."
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William T. and Helen Kuhn Carey Professor of Modern Communication Dr. John Duffy invited Natasha Trethewey, two time Poet Laureate of the United States and artist-in-residence with the Notre Dame Initiative on Race and Resilience, to speak with students in his University Seminar, "Reading the 1619 Project." Trethewey read her work and talked about the relationships of poetry, history, and memory.
cover image credit to John L. Hendricks
subsequent photos supplied by Ian Newman and John Duffy