What would you teach?

For the short summer semester, each teacher has to present two lectures on some aspect of American or English culture.  We lecture to the sophomores—so their English is good, but not perfect.  It is their chance to see how much they have learned in the first two years.

Some of the foreign faculty taught classes on the Beatles and Cricket (a British faculty member).  Another spoke on Science Fiction and American Advertisements.  Dave talked about America’s core values, and how we live up to them (or don’t).   You have two and a half hours to talk about anything from our culture…

  So:  what would you teach?

I taught one class on Hamilton, and another class on COVID poetry.

1.   Hamilton:  The Musical.

For Hamilton, we looked at four aspects of Hamilton’s life—Immigrant, Lover, Soldier and Politician.  We listened to songs representative of each category from the musical.  We talked about how they reflect different American idioms—Motown, Rap, Hip-hop,  Gospel, Soul, R&B…. and of course, for “You’ll Be Back” (King George), the British Invasion.   We also talked about States Rights vs Federalism –and how that is playing out in the US now, with the different states having their own COVID laws. They were surprised that American Presidents don’t have complete power over the States.  We were also able to talk a bit about the role women played in the Revolution.  Here we are making the Schuyler Sisters’ peace sign:

The downside of this lecture is –I can’t get the music out of my head!  The upside—the students really enjoyed the musical, and all were mouthing the lyrics by the end.

2.  COVID poetry

For my lecture on COVID poetry, we started out talking about what “spoken word” poetry is.  We determined that it is poetry that is performed.  

We also acknowledged that it is poetry that witnesses injustices or sheds light on current events.  For an example, we looked at “To This Day,” a poem about bullying.   (This is a hot topic:  In November, a Chinese Film called “Better Days” was distributed that addressed the problem of campus bullying.  It was very popular.   Several of my students wrote about it in there class assignments. The film tells the story of a girl (Chen Nian) whose best friend commits suicide due to school bullying.   She then, herself, becomes a target of bullying.) 

We didn't talk about the film.   Instead, we looked at the American poem, which you can see  on Bilibili here . (Bilibili is Youtube for China).  The students found the poem quite moving and were surprised that the issues of bullying could be captured in such a short poem.  They said that Chinese poetry more often celebrates wars and landscape, not current events.

To continue thinking about how poetry can "witness" current events-- like war, disease, bullying, injustices-- we then looked at three poems that were written during the US and British lock down:

Lynn Unger’s “Pandemic” (3/16/20)   (text here)  

Jane Hirshfield  “Today When I could do nothing” (3/24/20) (text here) 

Simon Armitage “Lockdown”(3/21/20) (text here)

At the end of the class, we wrote a “group” COVID poem.  (I used the strategy that the poet,  Kwame Alexander on NPR, uses.)   I solicited responses to a number of questions, and then we put it together into a final piece.

 I first asked for a description of how you felt when you were stuck in your apartment:

I next asked for rules that you had to follow:

We ended with a call for an image of freedom:

From these scraps of paper, we—as a group – produced the following poem:

Fragile Flower

    Witnessing the COVID epidemic, 2020

Like

An island alone,

Falling leaves on a lonely lake,

                                           planless,

                                                          deserted

A mighty tree

destroyed by lightening,

                                            broken branches,

A baby without sight

A lion, caged with a steady supply of food,

                                           but no freedom.

A horror story locked in the basement

Masked, we wash our hands

Removing pieces of the world from our fingers.

Masked, we no longer touch.

Each day, we count the hours until the next day when we can leave.

Two            long                 days      of                waiting

                                                                                               before seeing the blue sky again

Plant a seed on a new piece of land:

I close my eyes

See vast grass lands,

greenery waving in the light wind,

    the smell of fresh cut grass,

I see a frail cloud drifting silently

   Its white body embraces the blue sky

   It changes shape as I watch it

   From my window.

I see a poisonous snake slithering

    on the damp jungle floor.

   It moves freely, fears nothing.

I watch a balloon drift through the air

    No boundaries.  No chains.  No rules.

The wind blows softly.

I dream of hotpot, and shopping,

But know that I must stay

Locked in a greenhouse:

A fragile flower waiting to bloom.

The students were at first doubtful that they could write something meaningful, but I think they rose to the challenge.  I think that we all had fun writing it!