[The Montana Professor 14.1, Fall 2003 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Elaine Showalter
Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003
166 pp., $21.95 pb
Henry Gonshak
English
Montana Tech-UM
Opening Elaine Showalter's Teaching Literature, I was relieved to learn that I'm not the only professor who suffers from recurrent teacher-anxiety dreams.
On the contrary, according to Showalter such nightmares regularly torment profs everywhere. The author shares one of her own: "It's the middle of the semester, and I suddenly realize that for weeks I have been skipping classes I am assigned to teach.... [Driving] frantically to campus...I get hopelessly lost.... When I arrive...to my amazement the students are still in the room.... I try to explain...and to pretend that I know what we are supposed to discuss.... [I] cannot explain to myself why I have been so feckless and irresponsible" (1).
My own teacher-anxiety dreams contain details virtually identical to Showalter's, except that my nightmares often add a twist -- while prevaricating to my students about the reasons for my prolonged absence, I am buck-naked.
Why would an academic as experienced and distinguished as Elaine Showalter (a Princeton English prof, pioneering feminist literary critic, former president of MLA) be afflicted with such dreams? Showalter quotes Michael Berube's simple but convincing explanation: "Teaching is really hard to do... [Inevitably], students will find out not only what you think about x or y, but also what you are like, in some strange and intimate way... They'll see how you respond to the unexpected... [those] moments [for which] you simply can't prepare--except by accumulating years...of teaching experience and weathering night[s] of anxiety dreams" (3).
The reality of college teaching, Berube implies, bears little resemblance to the popular myth of the tenured prof leisurely contemplating "aery nothings" in academe's ivory tower, safe from the Sturm und Drang of the "real world." Moreover, teaching literature surely inspires its own particular anxieties, given literature's formal and linguistic complexities, hidden meanings, and portrayals of a range of human conflicts--many experienced in some way by teachers and students alike.
Described on its back cover as an "indispensable guidebook" for English instructors, Teaching Literature seeks to unearth the roots of the fears the profession arouses; the first chapter discusses, in turn, the seven types of anxiety Showalter believes English profs most commonly face. The book aims to provide instructors with practical and theoretical advice on how to overcome their worries and confusions in order to pursue satisfying and accomplished careers.
Unfortunately, Showalter's worthwhile endeavor is only partially successful. The book's main flaw is quite simple: it's way too short. Had Showalter narrowed her focus to a specific aspect of teaching literature, the book's brevity might not have been a problem. But the author has attempted, instead, a comprehensive survey. Among the many topics considered are: the history of post-war literary theory up to the present; curricula for teacher-training workshops, ways to teach controversial material, and various literary genres; different pedagogical methods (e.g., lecturing vs. discussion); using technology in the classroom; grading; course assignments; and how to respond in class to the national and international crises that are increasingly afflicting our turbulent times. In short, Showalter has opted for breath via a format which prohibits depth.
The book's consistently cursory discussions make for frustrating reading. To cite a representative example, in the chapter on "Teaching Fiction" Showalter mentions that, in his lectures on Moby Dick at the University of Tennessee, "William H. Shurr...focuses on Ahab as a tragic figure and Ishmael as a comic figure" (93). Not another word is said on the subject. Having studied the novel, I doubt that even the most learned Melvillian scholar could glean Shurr's precise meaning from this one sentence alone.
How, then, can this perfunctory reference help an instructor preparing to teach such a complex classic?
Another annoying consequence of Showalter's approach is that Teaching Literature is full of fascinating but unanswered questions. For example, the chapter on "Teaching Teachers" raises a slew of vital pedagogical questions (121-124) which a good teaching seminar must try to answer but Showalter never does: "How much should the teacher plan and guide the discussion?... How forthright should the teacher be about his or her own position?... How much should students be expected to read?... How do we mediate between historical breath and textual depth?... How should we handle students who talk too much...talk too little...fall asleep?... What grade to give a paper whose only flaw is that it is uninteresting?" The fact that none of these complex questions can be answered definitively is no excuse for not even giving it a try.
Elsewhere, Showalter's hyper-concision leads her to omit relevant topics arising naturally from her general discussion. For instance, in the section on "Teaching Dangerous Subjects," Showalter considers just two: suicide and explicit sexual language. Both good to address, but what does Showalter think about the perils and potential benefits found in teaching literature about homosexuality, rape, drugs, alcoholism, domestic abuse, war, divorce, poverty, incest, nationalism, slavery, cross-dressing, etc.? And by what criteria did Showalter choose these two "dangerous subjects," anyway?
One might counter that since Showalter is writing a "guidebook," as opposed to a scholarly tome, her concise overview provides more practical advantages to busy English profs than would a more extensive work. Perhaps, but I can't see how a book can help readers when the author leaves so many important issues dangling. True, Showalter regularly cites other texts where the topics she skims over are presumably treated in greater depth. But I doubt that many harried English profs will have either time or energy to track down all the books and articles Showalter mentions in an effort to discover just what the heck she's talking about. Indeed, Teaching Literature is crammed with citations, along with quotes, frequently linked with only a sentence or two by Showalter herself. As a result, the book often feels less written than assembled.
Still, along with its flaws, Teaching Literature has strengths. For one thing, the book is refreshingly non-ideological--a rarity in the hyper-politicized field of English Studies. When the author does express her feminist views, they are invariably moderate and reasonable. No political ax-grinder, Showalter is, instead, a pragmatist, focused on what works in the classroom. Most good instructors, she suggests, are comparably practical and eclectic, borrowing from a range of theories and methods suited to their individual talents and classroom personalities. So, for example, Showalter stresses the importance of teaching literature students "close reading," not because such an approach was decreed by the now ancient New Critics, but because "students have to understand something about the verbal, formal, and structural elements of the words themselves" (56). Teachers and students can closely analyze key literary passages, she stresses, without adhering to New Critical dogma banning historical and biographical study from the interpretative process.
Will Teaching Literature change my own classroom practices? To some extent. Showalter's section on "New Technology" convinced me that I must set aside those Luddite suspicions harbored by many humanities profs and embrace the computer revolution. Teacher websites provide students with easy access to syllabi, grades, paper topics, study questions and links to supplementary materials (not to mention saving paper). Additionally, professors can create on-line "chat rooms" for their classes and then assign different students the task of posting questions on particular readings. Students who participate in these cyberspace debates will almost surely arrive better prepared for in-class discussions.
Showalter also persuaded me that, when teaching drama, I must go further than I have previously in instructing students in not only the literary but also the performative aspects of the genre. Plays, after all, are written not to be read but to be staged. Along these lines, Showalter recommends that teachers have students perform "theatrical productions, [read] scenes in class workshops, [watch] films and videos, [attend] live productions, [and study] the stage history of the plays" (81). When I teach a new Shakespeare seminar this Fall, I plan to heed Showalter's advice by having my students collaborate with a local theater troupe on staging scenes from the plays we'll study.
Although, as noted, Showalter intends the book primarily for college English professors, Teaching Literature isn't useful only to specialists in literary studies--especially since, in another example of her disdain for PC profs, Showalter largely eschews the opaque jargon that clots so much of the field's fashionable "discourse." Overcoming teacher-anxieties, dealing with apathetic, defensive or obnoxious students, using computers to enhance learning--these and other general educational issues the book raises may interest instructors from other humanities disciplines, and perhaps also some profs from the non-humanities side of campus. High school English teachers, too, can benefit from the book--particularly the chapters on "Theories of Teaching Literature" and "Methods of Teaching Literature," as well as the three sections on teaching (respectively) poetry, fiction, and drama. While college English professors and high school English teachers operate in very different educational environments (let's face it, we profs have it a lot better), the process of helping students engage with literature is essentially the same at either level.
Along with college and high school English teachers, the group that will probably find Teaching Literature most worthwhile are general readers seeking an accessible work about the current state of literature instruction in higher education. In the 1990s, after all, English Studies actually began attracting national (if largely scathing) media attention. Showalter touches on many current conflicts in English Departments, specifically, and the university in general. But her success is mixed, not only because (as noted) her discussions remain sketchy, but also because some of her claims are dubious at best.
To her credit, Showalter calmly and concisely skewers Gerald Graff's much-discussed proposal, outlined in Beyond the Culture Wars, to revise the standard College English curriculum by "teaching the conflicts"--that is, teaching and involving students in the debates raging today between traditionalist and radical English profs over the canon, literary theory, feminist, queer, and postcolonial studies, et al. The problem with Graff's proposal, Showalter suggests, is that "it narcissistically put[s] English professors and our professional squabbles at the center of teaching" (31). After spending a class period trying to "teach the conflicts" to her own Yale undergrads, Showalter concluded that "these conflicts came across to the students as more adversarial, political and indeed hostile than intellectual" (32).
But Showalter is less convincing when she attempts to defend university professors against the widespread charge of "grade inflation." "Assessment," Showalter argues, "is about helping students learn--not sorting them out for employers, punishing them, or showing how tough you are" (18). Professors, she insists, must "find ways to challenge students without giving in to ill-informed administrative pressure to fight 'grade inflation'" (19).
Contrary to Showalter's claims, however, the problem regarding grades in academia today is not that sadistic profs are flunking dedicated students right and left. The real problem is that students are expecting (and receiving) high grades, even though they are doing less work, and consequently learning less, than did their peers in the past. The fact that, over the last few decades, student GPAs have steadily risen while SAT scores have steadily declined would seem to provide statistical proof that grade inflation does exist. Moreover, a more common problem than administrators pressuring faculty to lower grades is, I suspect, just the reverse--chancellors and provosts at cash-strapped colleges in our bleak economy urging profs not to flunk out tuition-paying students.
Ultimately, then, Showalter's attempt in Teaching Literature to provide a nuts-and-bolts (though theoretically-oriented) guide to teaching literature falls short. Indeed, to my knowledge, a first-rate handbook of this kind for literature professors doesn't yet exist. For the sake of us poor English profs tortured by teacher-anxiety dreams, someone better write one soon.
[The Montana Professor 14.1, Fall 2003 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]