In the Classroom

I have been a less-than-faithful blogger this past week, which I will blame on my job. It is a busy time as we are adjusting to a post-Ramadan schedule (later and longer classes) and I am grading essays and preparing midterms. There is nothing out of the ordinary, but since my classes are occupying much of my time, I might at least tell you something about them.

Literature and Human Rights (300-level)

We recently finished reading William Gardner Smith’s 1963 novel The Stone Face, which the students loved. Smith’s book--about an African American expatriate journalist’s confrontation with the Algerian Independence movement in France--explores issues of migration and diaspora and race and politics in ways that resonate with my students. I hardly needed to talk during our class sessions because they had so much to say about topics like the expatriate’s choice to emigrate, differing forms of activism and definitions of social responsibility, and the role of fiction in representing historical events, in this case the October 1961 Paris Massacre by French police of up to 200 peaceful Algerian protestors. (It is still not as well known as it should be. The supervising police chief and many officers involved have been exposed as nazi collaborators. For a brief overview of the Massacre and links to other resources, you can start with the Wikipedia entry.)

Experiencing Creativity: Texts and Images (100-level)

These students are first years and I am beginning to sense that the shift from high school to college is a bit dramatic here, more so than in the US. I have needed to use some pretty amateur techniques to get their attention so far. When a student’s mobile phone went off earlier, I gave the entire class a pop quiz. Guess what? No more mobiles ringing. (I owe credit to a colleague for this idea.) Last Thursday, we were supposed to discuss Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use.” When we began class discussion, I was initially encouraged because one of my students told me that she read it in high school. But when I realized only 4 people (of nearly 20) had printed it and read it, I sent them home. (I have done this in the US on occasion.) They were a bit unnerved by my dismissal of class and asked if they could stay and read it there. I said no. (Not that they had it to read anyway.) Between the disruptions of the holiday and the new campus, it has been particularly hard for the new students to get themselves together but I think the exam should spark something.

Introduction to American Studies (200-level)

Immediately following my early dismissal from “Experiencing Creativity” on Thursday, I headed to my largest class (28 students), where we had a great discussion about Bessie Smith’s 1928 song, “Poor Man’s Blues” (we have been reading Angela Davis’s book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism). The students launched into a great debate about the relationship between music and protest, and the relationship of Smith’s performance to the lyrics. They were fascinated by the ways that Smith constructs a class-based discourse within a racialized cultural form and the multiple levels on which race and class interact in this song. I am not doing their analyses any sort of justice here, so I will just post Smith’s lyrics here for you to read. This could also be a good chance for me to figure out how to post audio files to my blog, but this link should get you to the song:

Mister rich man, rich man, open up your heart and mind
Mister rich man, rich man, open up your heart and mind
Give the poor man a chance, help stop these hard, hard times


While you’re livin’ in your mansion you don’t know what hard times means
While you’re livin’ in your mansion you don’t know what hard times means
Poor working man’s wife is starvin’, your wife is livin’ like a queen

Please, listen to my pleading, ‘cause I can’t stand these hard times long
Oh, listen to my pleading, can’t stand these hard times long
They’ll make a honest man do things that you know is wrong

Poor man fought all the battles, poor man would fight again today
Poor man fought all the battles, poor man would fight again today
He would do anything you ask him in the name of the U.S.A.

Now the war is over, poor man must live the same as you
Now the war is over, poor man must live the same as you
If it wasn’t for the poor man, mister rich man what would you do?