A Gallery of Students' Pictures

The Shaw Foreign Language and Literature Classrooms

How would you introduce American Literature to smart and talented Chinese students?  

They all have read certain standard works— The Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin’s 13 Virtues (This is very “Confucius,” so always a big hit).  They read excerpts of Hemingway's Farewell to Arms  because the language is easy, and always Great Gatsby, to illustrate the excesses of Capitalism.

None of these really seem to me to illustrate contemporary America, as my US students would recognize it.   For the fall term of my American Literature course, I focused on five historical time periods in the US: The Puritans, The Revolution, Transcendentalism, Naturalism, Modernism and Contemporary Literature. 

This term, I decided to change course, and make the class more creative.  I divided the class into four categories—Literature about the Self, Landscape,  Family, and Society.   Along the way, I asked students to write short vignettes -- poetry or short literary works --  to compare their experiences with self, landscape, family and society to what we were reading.

Happily, it has become much more interactive:  more of a Comparative Literature class—something that I (and I think my students) have enjoyed.  Despite the fact that we’re “zooming,” it has felt less lecture-based and has encouraged them much more to interact with the material than they did the first term.  (This is hard, because Chinese classes really are much more lecture/fact based than US classes are.)

Halfway through the term, I asked the students to engage in a creative process that I call “Story-boarding.”  The students take one of the works that we have read and illustrate it. This allows them to review what we’ve read.  It also lets me check to make sure that they’re understanding the plot points, and the class is making it through the language barrier.  It also allows my more visual learners—and artistic students – to shine.

The rules were:  They didn't have to be artists.  They could photo-shop, scavenge from the internet, paint, draw, or do any permutation of the above. The results are quite remarkable-- 

Enjoy!

Robert Frost

Let's start out easy with Robert Frost, a nice landscape poet.  For those of you who need a refresher class, here is a link to his poems.

Here are two works dedicated to "A Road Not Taken."  Vittorio immediately personalized his:  When he chose his major, he had to decide whether to be a famous scientist or a diplomat.   Since he chose to be an English major, we can guess which career path he hopes to pursue. 

Tizo took a more universal approach.   Tintin frequently makes choices in his adventures:  Why not pop him in a Frost poem?

Quency made "Stopping in the Woods"into a storyboard that looks like it would work well in a costume Chinese drama:

Estella added more of a cartoon-like texture to her "Stopping in the Woods" story-board:  

Zoe drew the entire work, on her own:

Scarlett kept it simple.  After all, there really is just one scene in the poem:  The narrator stopped, thought and moved on... That can be easily covered in a single frame!

                     



I had two story-boards that looked at Frost's "Mending Walls."  Both highlighted the lines:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Sarah  chose to put the enlightened narrator on the side of the wall that grows apples, where as the boorish Neanderthal neighbor, who insists on walls, stands by his Pine tree

Beryl's story board also emphasizes the apple, pine tree divide, but both seem to be cheerful construction workers, ready to build up that wall to keep the bunnies in...

Rain   chose to personify the poem "Fire and Ice"

Vincenza chose a poem that focused intently on the natural landscape.  She provided and image for each line:

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Joyce Carol Oates

When we moved to short stories, there was more to illustrate.

Joyce Carol Oates' "Where are you going, Where have you been" was a favorite.  (Here is the text). The story is about a rebellious teen -- a seductive topic for my hardworking students who envy the freedom of Connie, in the story.  She however comes to a bad end.  She ends up being seduced by a creepy character .  Some relished the moral tone of the tale.  Others focused more on the rebellion.

Ilse presented a generic, "friendly" twist to the Gothic tale, with gentle, cute balloon-like characters

Chloe turned it into a story that had a computer game like feel:

Irene, captured the spirit of the story -- the superficial consumerism followed by the danger. I think that the final frame references a famous Chinese movie with well-know stars, because the students voiced approval of that final image.

My favorite, of all of the storyboards, was Yuan's version of this story.  It really captures the bubblegum pop-culture feel of the story

 Freya's version is also quite wonderful. She tells the whole story using various images of Taylor Swift-- an American star who is very popular with my women students

Sarah Orne Jewett

Sarah Orne Jewett's "White Heron" offers a nice contrast to "Where are you going...."  It too is a coming of age story.  In this work, the young girl has to decide whether to protect the environment or sell out to the cute hunter who wants to kill and stuff a rare and beautiful white heron for his collection.  He asks the nature-girl to help him find out where it lives.  She discovers its nest, but chooses to not tell the hunter.   The tale was a big hit when we discussed it.  (There is another post, here, where they discussed the story in depth.)   Here is the complete text.

I really admire the students who chose to illustrate their work without any external pictures.  Jo, in particular, is a person who is clearly prides herself on illustration, and has spoken about the importance of art in her life.  Before this assignment, she was a lackluster student, but she suddenly blossomed after this assignment-- participating in class discussions and handing in her work super early.

Spencer too embraced the free-style art form, and captured many of the psychological complexities of the dilemma facing the main character, Sylvie.

Jon took the creative route, illustrating the entire story using emojis:

Amy relied on manga images, making the story feel very Asian to me:

Echo too used manga characters to illustrate the natural beauty of the tale, giving it a real "fairy-tale" like feel.

Willa Cather's "Enchanted Bluff"

Another coming-of-age story that we read was about how dreams of childhood are never realized.  Willa Cather paints a beautiful portrait of Nebraska, and tells the story of young boys, camping on a Nebraska river, who dream of visiting an "Enchanted Bluff" in New Mexico. (Here is the text.)

Betty nicely chose the key scenes.   I particularly like the first frame of the boys camping out and admiring the stars -- a central moment in the story.

Cratle lovingly illustrated the whole story, putting the text below so that we can clearly identify each scene.  She handed it in early, and wanted to talk to me about it after all of the other students left the Zoom room.   However, alarmingly, she skipped her in-class Zoom report.  When I asked where she was, she said that she likes drawing better than talking.

Mirror Poems

Our class also looked at a number of poems about mirrors, to introduce the topic of writing about yourself. According to my students, this is not a common topic in Chinese poetry.  Writing about war and philosophy are fine.  Writing about yourself looking in the mirror seemed, to their mind, a bit self-serving, and perhaps more of an American topic.

HD's poem "The Pool" is short and cryptic poem about a little nymph who sees her reflection in the water.  Since it is short, I'll give you the whole poem, here:

Are you alive?

I touch you.

You quiver like a sea-fish.

I cover you with my net.

What are you—banded one?

Cyan created a nice abstract work that captures the spirit of the nymph's wonder at seeing her reflection in the pool,and her confusion between the fish and her image.

Another well-liked -- or at least frequently illustrated -- poem is Sylvia Plath's poem "Mirrior" (here).   It is a meditation on women's body image.  This is a favorite for my US students, too.    Pakex's images are fun and accurate.

Wendy's version nicely focuses on the gender issues:

We also looked at men looking in the mirror,  specifically a work by Niel Carpathios called "Weighing:

 Another favorite poem in this unit dedicated to "Self" was "Oranges" by Gary Soto, a California poet who writes about first love.   (Here is the text)

Linghui capture the story using  mannequin type figures, making the poem appear very universal

However, Susie viewed it very much as a Chinese story

Scarlett focused on the images -- the cold day, the chocolate that the girl craved and the glowing orange in the boy's pocket.

A few of my students illustrated the works that looked at the issues in society.  Leo, a student who has not been 100% focused on the class, chose one of the harder works to illustrate.  He illustrated N. Scott Momaday's  "Way to Rainy Mountain,"  a complicated novel that weaves memoir, history and Native American myth into a lovely tapestry.    (Here is the text for the Prologue of the book)

Cindy, on the other hand, looked at a contemporary poem by Charlie Smith called "The Palms,"  which is about the death of the American Dream. (Text here.)

The assignment was a last minute decision -- my attempt to check and make sure that the students were understanding the class.   Teaching on-line is hard because you have none of the nonverbal cues that you're used to when you teach in class. If students aren't following you in class, you can slow down or speed-up, as necessary. On-line, with just a bunch of Zoom-squares, it's a lot harder to tell!

   As you can probably guess, the results completely charmed me.  The care with which the students turned the poetry into images, spinning chaff into gold, left me awed by their insight and wisdom.  

I hope you feel the same!

(Note:  The names here are student's in-class English names. They are unique to the class to protect the students' privacy)