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Seminar Projects
To foster discussion and explore the practical application
of the ideas we discuss, I will meet with each participant
at least twice—once in the first week of the seminar,
and once mid-way through our project—for a formal conference.
I will also have lunch with you after the seminar meeting
to discuss seminar projects, issues of pedagogy, and simply
how the summer is progressing. You, in turn, will engage in
a variety of reflective, bibliographical, class planning,
and performance exercises, all designed to foster discussion
and to be as useful and practical as possible.
Some of these exercises will result in short, informal pieces
of writing, to be shared with me and with one another:
- The first, a page or two long, will consider your existing
classroom practice, with an eye to such questions as “What,
institutionally speaking, am I expected to teach when I teach
poetry? What do I promise my students that poetry will provide?
How do I currently frame the discussion of poetry’s
‘difficulty’--if, indeed, I do present this art
as difficult?” At the end of the first week, you will
revise this to integrate what you have studied so far, producing
a reflective account of how you might, now, wish to Introduce
Poetry.
- A second short essay will reflect on poems you currently teach,
using terms and ideas raised in the seminar to articulate
the pleasures they provide—and, if the terms we have
discussed do not suffice, to generate new terms for the pleasures
you find in them.
- The third piece of writing will consist of a set of “director’s
notes” on the performance of a particular poem, which
will be shared by the end of the seminar.
Our seminar work will contribute to the building of a “Teaching
Poetry” resource webpage, with links to poetry resources
and on-line syllabi, to be maintained after the seminar here
at DePaul.
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