Social Justice; New Senior Elective

I teach two senior electives.

Identity & Graphic Novels is a course I created and proposed. The course is all graphic novels (aka comic books). I was inspired by my love of The Walking Dead TV series and graphic novels. But they are too violent to teach so I had to find alternatives. I taught the course for the first time last year. The syllabus includes Understanding Comics,  A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Batman Unmasked: The Psychology of the Dark Knight, Incognegro, Richard Wright's "Between the World and Me," Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," and Maus.

The graphic novels for my elective. 

 Incognegro

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge

Judging by the student feedback on the end of the trimester course evaluations, they enjoyed the class. The one piece of constructive feedback I really liked were that there were no female protagonists. So I've submitted the following changes for the next time I teach the course: replace Incognegro with Persepolis (the author and protagonist is a woman), and I'm hoping to replace Batman with Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me (this author and protagonist is also a woman) and the Up/Down Bipolar Documentary. I really liked Incognegro, but it went out of print and copies now cost upwards of $50 whereas last year it cost $14! (The students purchase their own books like they're in college, so I want to keep the prices reasonable). My Department Chair is going to buy me a class set of Incognegro so I'll still be able to use it in the future. I hated Batman and do not want to teach it again; it was weird and very dark.

I also teach a senior elective on creative writing it is called Advanced Fiction Writing. The only books the students read are: Love that Dog and Nothing But the Truth, two children's books that we draw inspiration from for their own writing. And we also use Gotham Writer's Workshop Writing Fiction: A Practical Guide, a how-to manual for fiction writing. This course is for writers only because by the end they have to craft a 20 to 35 page book, whether it's one continuous story, a collection of short stories, poems, collection of poems and short stories, or a play. At the end of the class we take a field trip to the Primary School (private school talk for elementary school) so the students can laminate their book covers and bind the books on the binding machine. It's a nice keepsake of all their hard work.

I actually took a memoir writing workshop through Gotham last summer in Manhattan. They offer classes online and on site. It was very worthwhile. I did a 1-day workshop; this summer I'll be taking the intensive 10-week memoir writing workshop. It meets once per week from 10am to 1pm. I'll also be taking a class on how to get published.

I share with them a book I wrote in 3rd grade (yes, I still have it!). We spent a few months on this assignment. We'd go down to the computer room to work on our books. The 8th graders were our editors. Once we finished our books we had a book sale and signing and invited all of our parents. This is my favorite elementary school memory!

Here's my book from 3rd grade. Complete with a title page and a meet the author page and photo. I still look the same now as I did at 8 years old.

Last summer I did a National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) summer institute at Duke University (my alma mater!) on African American Literature and Social History. We read Black Artemis' Picture Me Rollin'. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Although I have to admit at first I was very resistant to reading it. It reminded me of the hood books I read as a teen; a genre which I have not read in over a decade. However, I had to check my elitist attitude and examine why I thought this book had no literary merit. I also read the book with a question in mind: why would the Duke professors assign this book? What educational value is there? And my conclusion is that there is tons. I couldn't include this book in the curriculum for my 11th grade American Literature class, because it needs a context. I also don't know how the student population at my job would receive the book (I teach at a PWI - predominantly white institution; I'm one of two black faculty in the upper school (private school speak for high school)). 

At the Duke NEH summer institute. That's the Duke Chapel in the background.

Inspired by the NEH workshop, I've proposed a new senior elective on incarceration and autodidacts. The syllabus would include the following biographies/autobiographies: Assata Shakur (if I ever have a daughter, her name will be Assata Niara. Both are Swahili. It means "she who struggles for a purpose"), Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Piri Thomas (Down These Mean Streets), Claude McKay (Manchild in the Promised Land). In addition to Picture Me Rollin', I'd also use excerpts from bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Tupac, Tim Wise and Peggy McIntosh (all alluded to in Picture Me Rollin'), in addition to Jackson Katz. I would also like to view episodes of the Netflix series Orange is the New Black.

What do you think of my courses?