Wednesday, January 30, 2013
José Martí saves the day
Today was another of those leave me alone, I'm teaching and taking off kind of days. Until my Latin American Civ class. We have been reading excerpts from Sarmiento's Facundo, and today's reading was Martí's Nuestra America (here is a copy in English, if you feel like reading it). They are not easy readings for undergraduates. It's impossible to teach Facundo entirely, but I always make them read the full version of Nuestra America. It takes a lot of close reading to get them through it, but they usually engage pretty well. Today, after the class, a heritage-speaking student stayed to chat with me. She is very hard-working, but although she speaks the language fluently, she is obviously struggling with a class that is way more abstract than any student is used to. She told me: "I loved Martí. He is so poetic in Nuestra América. And everything he says, you can still find examples in Latin America today. It was the first time since I started college that I felt that a Spanish class spoke to me and was not just a language class with a little culture on the side". I asked her if she had read any of Marti's poetry, and she hadn't. She didn't even know he was also a poet. But even the essay was poetic to her. I told her that I would be happy to talk about his poetry if she wanted to during my office hours, and she told me she would show up. I don't know whether she will or not, but I don't care. After a month of different headaches, this is the type of vindication I am looking for.
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My class is having a hard time. It's an actual college course. They swear most professors don't require reading, just put up PowerPoint slides for them to memorize.
ReplyDeleteI have a few heritage speakers, a Brit with the most amazing Spanish, and at least a few students who are taking it because of my reputation, so that helps in many ways. Also, even the ones who said the class was too "philosophical" would not dare to challenge the syllabus (student eval are another issue). And it helps to work for the religious order I work for. Still, it's always harder with Colonial, and Sarmiento and Martin are not easy. What seemed to have helped is when I read paragraphs out loud (and dramatically), and tell them to visualize. Specially with Sarmiento. There is a part in Facundo's first chapter where he is describing the gaucho who gets naked to cross the river, that pretty much sums up his idea of barbarism. They got it.
ReplyDeleteMy class is about representation and the analysis of cultural objects. So it's the first class they have had that is about representation as opposed to mastery, and therein lies the rub.
DeleteI should invite you to Skype in on how to analyze a piece of film. Means I would have to find space in syllabus though, and you would have to be free at 2 on a Tu or Th.
I mean, *interpretation as opposed to mastery
DeleteTh, impossible. I have a once a week committee scheduled exactly at that time for the whole semester. Tu, we can do it. We should talk before, though.
DeleteI will look at syllabus. I am thinking Tu very late in semester, short presentation. The video setup and so on in that classroom is sketchy and first, to see if technically it can even work. ;-)
DeleteThanks for your comment. Because I never consistently respond in my comment section (I just did), I'll post here what I wrote there: "Thanks, Spanish Prof., so you wrote about P.C.? :)
ReplyDeleteI'm sure I can find other outlets to publish. As for work, I think my teaching is valued in the current R1 I'm teaching at, even more than at the other university... Let's see what happens. I would probably have more chance at other schools if I had ever GONE on the market (I never did).
It's OK, it really is, I'm just having a "recaída" as we say in Portuguese. "
I shouldn't be whining, really, because I never even tried to get a TT job after I finished the Phd because I was waiting for my husband to get a job, which he did and now I'm constrained by the location.
Maybe I would have had interviews had I gone on the market, I really cannot know. Maybe we could talk off blogs about our work sometime, OK? I have a really good friend from your country who went to grad school with me and who now has finally a TT job in a school in my state. We live two hours from each other, but never have time to visit. :(
Oh, and yes, I read in the news about the fire in Buenos Aires years back. It's such a tragedy and so sad to know someone who lost a friend.
For the record, I didn't write on P.C, I wrote on LAGR.
DeleteIt would be great to talk off the Internet. Send me an email, so we start the conversation.