Imaginative literature

One of the themes of Maxine Greene's teaching involves the primacy of questions. She states often that she prefers questions over answers and this is why she uses imaginative literature in her teaching. Literature gives us the questions; for the answers we can go to psychology.

A dissertation committee member chafed at the term "imaginative" literature. He rightly asserted that the imaginative quality of literature is in the encounter. It is the reader who is the trigger for the imaginative. Nevetheless, I continue to use the term because Greene and others do. It seems to be accepted in the field of "Greene studies."

Perhaps the term "imaginative literature" is a description of that encounter between reader and text whereas "literature" is merely the text?

Nevertheless, one of the perks of using imaginative literature in teaching is in the glory of that encounter with fiction, with poetic narrative. I am using Toni Morrison's Sula for a philosophy and ethics course I'm teaching. As compelling as Dewey and Greene may be in their writing, the experience of opening the first page of Sula and engage in the description of a place known as the Bottom is exhilirating:

The beeches are gone now, and so are the pear trees whter children sat and yelled down through the blossoms to passersby. Generous funds have been allotted to level the stripped and faded buildings that clutter the road from Medallion up to the golf course. They are going to raze the Time and Half Pool Hall, where feet in long tan shoes once pointed down from chair rungs. A steel ball will knock to dust Irene's Palace of Cosemetology, where women used to lean their heads back on sink trays and doze while Irene lathered Nu Nile into their hair. Men in khaki work clothers will pry loose the slats of Reba's Grill, where the owner cooked in her hat because she couldn't remember the ingredients without it.

This rich description is such a blessed break from the typical academic reading that students and their professors must engage in. This writing compels the reader to enter the world of the Bottom, to turn the page, to learn more. This is what my dissertation writing needs to achieve.

One of the proposed rationales for my dissertation concerns my own teaching practice. The hope is that through my inquiry into Greene's writings that my approach to teaching will transform. The aesthetics of both the inquiry and of teaching will move into a new realm that might create an aesthetic of learning--for both student and teacher.

Narrative

This morning I came across an article in InsideHigherEd that discussed the creation and use of a graphic novel in an intro to business course. The novel, Atlas Black: Managing to Succeed, follows a slacker type who goes into business for himself. The reported advantage to this character-driven approach to business basics is that students can identify real-world applications with the concepts they're studying. And given our 21st-century, visual-based culture, the graphic nature of the novel appeals to millennials.

One of the challenges reported in the article to using a novel as a textbook is the narrative arc. The arc evidently makes it difficult for instructors to "skip around"; it "confines the professor to framing a course entirely around the book." Using a novel essentially forces an instructor to create a narrative arc in structuring their course. But I will bet that students retain and more readily apply concepts as a result of using narrative, or story, in the teaching process.

I was talking with a committee member last week. We were looking at the terms that I would need to define in my dissertation, like existentialism, phenomenology, pragmatism, In my prospectus I suggested going to Sartre for existentialism, Merleau-Ponty for phenomenology, etc. He suggested to me that when Maxine Greene defines these terms in her writing, she's more likely to use Camus than Sartre. While I don't know if that indeed is the case (Sartre figures predominantly in her writing as does The Plague), it raised a question/opportunity for this dissertation. What if I were to follow Greene's model and use literature to define my terms in this dissertation?

Yowza!

I love this idea. Really using Greene as a model, really using an aesthetic approach to writing/thinking about the dissertation process, really employing an arts-based educational research practice to this work. But ohhh...the reading...yikes.

I am nowhere close to being as well-read as Maxine Greene. Her love/experience/attachment to literature is glorious and phenomenal. Studying with Maxine afforded the opportunity to widen and deepen my own literature experience. How joyful it was in graduate school to engage in Morrison and Allende and Melville while also having to tackle the Harvard Business Review and fair use court decisions. I have often chided myself for not also using literature in the courses I teach--both the critical and creative thinking courses are prime opportunities for this, as is the critical perspectives course in arts advocacy.

Maybe using literature in the dissertation will help bridge me to using literature in my teaching--which is part of my rationale. I should, I really should.

This will be a literature review to end all literature reviews...