Whether I am teaching British literature, children’s literature, sexuality studies, or a thematic writing course, my goal is to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. When something as seemingly simple as food or childhood becomes foreign, students can no longer resort to obvious assertions. And, conversely, when strange concepts enter familiar territory, students must reckon with their unexamined guiding assumptions. By integrating archival research and critical theory into the task of textual analysis, my courses encourage students to examine ideas they had formerly understood to be natural facts.
My courses prioritize research and investigation. I find that guided research is important for students who are first venturing into literary history, for it allows them a more intimate discovery of cultural difference than lecture alone can provide. In my children’s literature course, my students used the database Eighteenth Century Collections Online to search for rhymes and stories intended for young readers. Their findings included long, descriptive frontispieces that describe “Boys who were Devoured By Wild Beasts,” and a “Bloody Tragedy” involving childhood drunkenness, theft, murder, and finally execution. My students were astonished by the violent punishments inflicted upon juvenile literary characters, and more so by the eighteenth-century attitude that tales of murder and drunkenness were suitable for young minds. The questions formed from their process of discovery helped them to interrogate the shifting definitions of childhood they encountered throughout the semester.
Along with digital research, I arrange visits to local heritage centers, libraries, and museums. In our preliminary study of the cultural life of technology, my “Science Fact, Science Fiction” students and I visited the WSU library’s microform readers. We discovered the complex benefits and disadvantages of technological progression— microphotography preserved a record for numerous books destroyed over the course of WWII; and yet a broken, irreplaceable microcard reader may have rendered seemingly endless drawers of texts unreadable. Students in my “Cities and Spaces” course are documenting the semiological terrain of Pullman, Washington, from its scents and soundscapes to its monuments.
Throughout my work, I stress that each of my students brings important knowledge and unique perspectives to our discussions. While we often imagine education be the act of exposing students to new ideas, I find that oftentimes my role is to help students articulate and work through the complex experiences they have had and the observations they have made. I encourage my students to pursue questions that complement their future goals or provoke their curiosity. To this end, I teach writing and reading techniques that foster confidence and build strong connections between each student’s scholarship, personal enterprise, and greater community.
Leah Benedict 