In my view all literary texts are essentially dramatic: the words on a page only come alive when they are interpreted by people using an artful combination of reason and imagination. My primary goal as a teacher of literature is to prepare and encourage students to use keen reasoning skills and a powerful imagination to make words come alive in new and original ways. For example, a play starts with a solitary act, a few words written or typed across the computer screen. Those words then get interpreted by a director, by actors, by designers, and finally by an audience. It is then that the play becomes something more complicated and layered; it becomes the voice of many artists.

I find it exciting to experience my students reading literature, not knowing from class to class exactly how a sonnet, short story, or novel may be born anew in our discussion of it. Certainly, I bring to class a level of intimacy with the literary texts I choose to teach, and I bring knowledge about the cultural context that my students may not already possess. However, I’m never sure from class to class how the texts will take on imaginative shape in the hands of powerful and innovative readers. I look forward to each and every class because it’s fascinating to see how passionate readers will respond to words that have meant so much to me personally. A student might lift her finger in a subtle way that suddenly and brilliantly elucidates one of Hamlet’s soliloquies, or, after watching a film clip of Othello strangling Desdemona, the entire class may fall silent and that silence will resonate in unexpected ways that opens a new door for me.

For me the collaborative act of reading a piece of literature is like skillfully introducing a topic at a dinner party. It’s amazing to see how people respond to an idea expressed in beautiful language, how they build on it, deconstruct it, twist and turn it until it becomes their own. I teach great drama, poetry, and prose because I find lively conversation more informative and engaging than an evening alone with my scholarship, a computer, and a glass of wine.

See also: Innovative Teaching Showcase