By Steven Krolak
(NEW ALBANY, Ind.)–Not many courses conclude with the students voting to exile the instructor.
Notmany instructors would be happy about it.
But JeremyWells, associate professor of English, isn’t just any instructor.
Wearing a zombie mask and communicating only in grunts, Wells humbly accepted banishment at the end of his literature class called Zombies, Cyborgs and Posthumanity.
Hehad, after all, just returned from a zombie-infected region, and his continuedpresence might have threatened the health of the collective.
Inthis inspired mashup of literature, neuroscience, bioethics and television canbe detected the mind and method of an instructor who sees teaching as acreative space that empowers students to both venture and gain in the searchfor intellectual courage and self-awareness.
What else can we do?
Sincejoining the faculty at IU Southeast in 2012, Wells has taught courses inWestern World Masterpieces and William Faulkner, besides the aforementionedZombie class and Critical Practices.
Eachinvolves a measure of innovation, though for Wells, innovation is not aone-size-fits-all paradigm imposed on the lesson plan. It is an organic processof teaching and learning that is intentionally open-ended.
“Thestudy of literature is fundamentally a contemplation of questions,” Wells said.
And the question most often heard in his class is, “What else can we do with this text?”
Hebegins by holding off on the syllabus until the second class—a symbolic butcrucial disruption that gives a taste of what is to follow.
“Iwant students to feel off balance,” Wells said. “I want them to trust me thatI’ve got a place we’re going to, but that getting sidetracked is even better.”
Gettingsidetracked means “entertaining interpretive possibilities,” coming at a textfrom as many different angles as possible. When interpretations becomepersonal, students have found their opening into the world of literarycriticism, the act of continuing to extract meaning from a written text.
Allof this takes place within a traditional framework that involves deliberatelysequenced texts and assignments, quizzes, and papers of varying lengths. Wellsmakes a point of explaining to students early in the term how the semester willunfold, which enables him to keep them focused on ultimate goals and explain tothem how a given assignment fits into the overall course objectives.
Thisblend of structure and serendipity allows students to develop the habit ofbeing conscious of their own critical process, and important step in becomingcritical thinkers.
“Iwant the student to be able to reflect on what she just did,” Wells said. “Thisis meta-pedagogy, always asking: what am I doing here?”
ForWells, the ultimate goal is to nourish a love of learning, through apresentation of material that is as stimulating as it is entertaining. And thatis best achieved when critical thinking becomes less about a book that someonewrote, and more about how the act of analyzing the book can lead to moreinsight about both the book and the critic. To study a text is also to studyoneself, and the world, in relation to the text.
“WhenI read, I’m both comprehending and watching,” Wells said.
Finding your perspective
Wellsis conscious of place—both physical and mental—and brings that to bear in teaching.
He grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, in a family of tradespeople and small business operators, and he was a first-generation college student, giving him a connection to many of those he teaches—and a certain perspective on life and literature.
Wanting to see more of the world, and move beyond what he considered the cramped mental confines of his mid-sized city, he left to attend Vanderbilt University in Nashville and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, then continued his professional peregrinations on other campuses, gaining new geographical perspectives as well as coming into contact with varied analytical points of view: post-structuralism, new criticism, queer theory, post-colonial analysis.
Allthose encounters have positioned him perfectly to teach critical thinking.
“A lot of what I do as a teacher is to ask students to see things from anew position, which is essential to critical thinking,” Wells said. “Otherwiseyour tendency is to repeat what you already know–or what you think youknow, having never really considered it from a different vantage point.”
For Wells, thequintessentially American fusion of place and perspective is not a superficialpastiche of regional clichés, but a lived reality that enables him to remainfree of the bias of a singular school of thought.
“Having lived all over the South as well as in places asdemonstrably northern as Michigan and Pennsylvania, I’ve literallyhad to see things from different positions,” Wells said. “I haven’t beenable to settle in to one way of thinking, and I think this has helped me toillustrate critical thinking.”
Notsurprisingly, those divergent vantage points are in constant conversation,which is why classroom discussions are the heart and soul of Wells’ courses.
“Theyare the foremost reason why we study literature,” Wells said.
Hestructures the discussion to make room for both organization and free-flow. Atthe core is a pivotal word.
“It’sa hazardous pedagogy,” Wells said of his method. “Not in the sense ofdangerous, but in the old meaning, of hazarding an idea and seeing where itgoes.”
LikeWells setting out from Huntsville, students are challenged to leave thecomforts of their intellectual homes and venture into uncharted realms.
“Studentsare expected not only to demonstrate comprehension of texts and concepts butalso to hazard ideas, propose connections, engage in dialectical learning withtheir peers, and achieve insights,” Wells said. “My paper and project assignmentsare designed similarly: I offer guidelines that make clear the purpose andparameters of the assignment but also allow students room to explore.”
Thatallowance has resulted in evaluations that he has used to shape the boundariesof future courses.
Proto-colleagues
Wells’book, Romances of the White Man’s Burden: Race, Empire, and thePlantation in American Literature, 1880-1936, and his numerous articles andpresentations,deal with the creation of meanings ex post facto, reinterpretation,reconstruction not only of a place but of a history in a new time. It’s aboutthe creation of a narrative that became a sustaining delusion for generationsof Southerners. But in the end, that narrative is a fiction, and deconstructingit enables readers to understand not only something about narrative strategyand literature, but also culture and politics.
Wellsblends his flair for textual analysis with an interdisciplinary interest in therelationships between literature and other fields, such as neuroscience, all toanswer the question: What happens in the brain when we read fiction?
Itturns out that a lot happens, chemically, and that fact renders literaryendeavor less rarified, and more relevant, a thing of and in the world, a thingof existential importance.
“Whatthe new field is revealing is something English professors have long knownintuitively: studying literature matters,” Wells said. “My field allowsstudents to work both individually and collaboratively toward a variety ofgoals, some of which possess immediate practical value—such as research andwriting skills—and others of which make possible discoveries that cannotimmediately be anticipated.”
Wells is a confessed word nerd, who at age three was reciting letters from billboards he saw from the family car. But far from worshipping them unquestioningly, he finds them most interesting for their plasticity.
“Wordshave no inherent meaning,” Wells said. “Words acquire meaning via usage.”
Inspiringstudents to look behind the constructs of prevailing cultural narratives byanalyzing the shifting uses of words themselves is part of a process that endswith Wells turning over the final book assignment to the students themselves,who by this time have become, in his words, proto-colleagues.
“When I ask students in my survey courses toimagine a new unit by recombining texts from different parts of the syllabus, Iam treating them like emerging experts, like teachers in their own right,”Wells said. “When I leave the final day of the zombie/cyborg syllabus blank,and tell them to figure out what we’re doing, I communicate respect, knowingthey will come up with something as good as any exercise I might devise.”
The vanishing act
Wellssees pedagogical success as the ultimate vanishing act, and quotes theGeorgetown University writing professor Sherry Lee Linkon to the effect that, “Thegoal of the expert is in some ways to recede.”
Gradually,over the course of the semester, as his class evolves into a discussion, heremoves himself from the podium. Students stop looking to him, and start lookingto one another, and to the text, and inward, for the impetus and self-reliance toexplore and critique.
Hisis the ultimate act of trust, as students take charge of their own intellectualdestiny.
Tobe banished isn’t so bad.
Insome ways, it’s the ultimate sign of success.