by Ali Ahsan, Comparative Literature

It is a new academic year. And I have a new academic challenge: to teach an introductory course on “Literature and Medicine.” I have prepared a syllabus for the course, and this time it is experimental in terms of reading as well as writing requirements. There are multiple reasons behind this trial and error method. The first reason is because I have been assigned this course for the first time. Second, this course is a coming together of both literature and science. None of the previous courses I have taught were this cross-disciplinary. Third, I wanted to make it a memorable course where the committed student would be able to walk away with something new at the level of ideas based on reading and writing. Now that we look back at a roller-coaster semester, here are some of the major takeaways based on my twin experience of teaching an introductory course and learning “pedagogy of writing in the disciplines” in Dr. Harding’s class.

In my previous courses which were fully literary studies, I used a complete variety of genres starting with a journalistic article, an academic essay, short stories, poetry, graphic novels, and novels. There were barely any secondary material or interpretations of these texts. This time, I used secondary material in the form of essays and book reviews for all of the contemporary texts. After my experience this semester, I would suggest using secondary material in a literary studies class. It helps anchor the class in good discussions and gives the students direction. If the instructor emphasizes originality to go with these discussions, the students would start thinking about their own reading of the texts in synthesis with other secondary material. If secondary material is not discussed in class, it leaves the students with a lot to do with respect to thinking and research, which students in introductory classes (especially non-humanities and social science students) are not used to yet. The only primary text(s) for which I could not use secondary material was the module on “ancient literature on medicine.” This was also because most of the texts in this module were in the form of excerpts. It is difficult to retrieve studies on chosen excerpts. Overall, this experiment worked, and I would suggest careful implementation of secondary material among the readings in the semester, even if it means a little more homework for the instructor.

The coursework began with a simple self-reflection essay to get things started, followed by an open-book test (for the ancient literature), and then, four “synthesis posts” that bring together primary and secondary material. In the past, I have used weekly response posts (turned in before class time) to make sure students participate consistently with the class texts. For this low-stake writing assignment, the class is divided into three groups and each of these groups responds to the three different classes every week. I decided not to focus on response posts this time, and instead, spend time working on the synthesis posts itself. For next semester, however, I would like to assign a limited number of response posts (five out of 12 weeks for example) so that the students engage with texts they would like to write on. While there are positives in focused high-stakes writing assignments, it is time consuming to evaluate 70 students four times in a semester. Dr. Harding’s suggestion of peer-review is something we could incorporate in the future if we are to choose varied writing assignments. However, if I am to offer this course again, I would want to go back to three short essays with a common rubric. This format would allow the students to work on their essay writing throughout the semester. This would also allow them to learn from their mistakes and write short essays on an idea they develop themselves after reading the primary texts together in class. 

The evaluation stage is complicated for a course filled with long books and multiple writing assignments. If there are more uniform low-stakes and high-stakes assignments with one rubric each for the two categories, it makes the task of the evaluator easier. Multiple writing assignments would otherwise require a lot of the instructor’s time. With uniform rubrics, the instructor can evaluate faster with shorter feedback and comments.

It is time now to think about the next semester and a new course. I take with me a wealth of experience from teaching and learning the pedagogy of writing.