“There was the teasing and impossible desire to imitate the petty pride of sparrows wallowing and flouncing in the red dust of country roads.”

Posted on January 31, 2023 by Kate Stover

Richard Wright, who was born in 1908, describes the “brace of mountainlike, spotted, black-and-white horses clopping down a dusty road through clouds of powdered clay” in his memoir Black Boy. He finds beauty in the “green leaves rustling with a rainlike sound” and in identifying with “the sight of a solitary ant carrying a burden upon a mysterious journey.” These descriptions help us understand how he was able to survive near-fatal beatings, hunger, loneliness, and poverty as a child in the South. The way brutality and beauty share the page in this book is remarkable. For me, it’s unforgettable.

Wright, Richard. Black Boy. Perennial Classic, 1966, p. 14.

Posted in memoir | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

“This is the story of a crisis in our lives . . . during a journey alone.”

Posted on January 19, 2023 by Kate Stover

With sequels, come skepticism, and when the first in the series won the Pulitzer Prize, it’s tempting to expect just a replay of what worked well before. One critic called for a better evaluation of American Life; others said it’s a mixed blessing of a book. I’m in the other camp – with those who love this book’s ability to balance funny bits with powerful observations, including references to Shakespeare, Don Quixote, Elizabeth Bishop, the Odyssey, in scenes that can only be called slapstick. This wonderful book is about two interdependent journeys of self-discovery, and it’s unexpectedly complicated and moving.

Greer, Andew Sean. Less Is Lost. Little, Brown and Company, 2022, p. 7.

Posted in fiction | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

10 Best Books for College Teachers Update

Posted on December 31, 2022 by Kate Stover

Now that the year is coming to a close, it’s time to pick up where my previous recommendations for books for college teachers left off. In alphabetical order, we have:

  1. The Spark of Learning by Sarah Rose Cavanagh: I’ve written about this book five times because I keep returning to it while updating many of my long-held assumptions about the role of emotion in teaching and learning.

Cavanagh, Sarah Rose. The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion. West Virginia University Press, 2016.

2. How Human Learn: The Science and Stories Behind Effective College Teaching. by Joshua R. Eyler: I love multi-disciplinary research that results in startling ideas, such as this one: there are five conditions that foster or impede learning: curiosity, sociality, emotion, authenticity, and failure.

Eyler, Joshua R. How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories Behind Effective College Teaching. West Virginia University Press, 2018.

3. The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You about College Teaching by  David Gooblar. If a new faculty member asked me to recommend only one book, this would be it because it covers so many important ideas in an accessible, useful way.

Gooblar, David. The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You about College Teaching. Harvard University Press, 2019.

4. How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. This book had a profound influence on me and many of my colleagues, who read the book in preparation for his visit, which was suddenly shifted to a virtual format when the pandemic interrupted our lives; it was really unforgetable.

Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist. One World, 2019.

5.  Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom by Cyndi Kernahan: This book picks up where Kendi leaves off by helping us understand how to respond compassionately and effectively to racist ideas or statements in the classroom.

Kernahan, Cyndi. Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom. West Virginia University Press, 2019.

6. Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It by James M. Lang: I love this book, which argues that, “We will not succeed in teaching today’s students unless we make a fundamental shift in our thinking: away from preventing distraction and toward cultivating attention.”

Lang, James M. Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It. Basic Books, 2020, p. 15.

7. Geeky Pedagogy by Jessamyn Neuhaus: Described as “a guide for intellectuals, introverts, and nerds who want to be effective teachers,” — especially, in my opinion, for those who loved the book Quiet by Susan Cain.

Neuhaus, Jessamyn. Geeky Pedagogy. West Virginia University Press, 2019.

8. Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time by Linda Nilson. This book shows how to apply Carol Dweck’s research on “mindset” in our assessment practices, backed by empirical research.

Nilson, Linda B. Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time. Stylus, 2015, p. 10.

9. Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education by Katie Rose Guest Pryal. As an advocate for students with mental health concerns, I learned a lot from this book on what it is like to be a person in academia who believed it was not to her advantage to tell anyone about her condition.

Pryal, Katie Rose Guest. Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education. Snowraven Books, 2017, p. 54.

10.  Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education by  Thomas J. Tobin and Kirsten T. Behling: This book makes the challenge of increasing the accessibility of our classes much more achievable by providing examples and a perspective that changed my approach.

Tobin, Thomas J. and Kirsten T. Behling. Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education. West Virginia University Press, 2018

 

Posted in Pedagogy | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

“Mom, I don’t know who to trust!”

Posted on December 28, 2022 by Kate Stover

Elizabeth Strout’s new novel — a Christmas gift of the first order – is her most enigmatic. Reviewers have drawn wildly different conclusions about the book’s message. For me, the book explores what happens when you don’t know who you can trust. Lucy, the protagonist, finds that she can’t even trust herself during the first year of the pandemic because there are so many unknowns. She tries to trust William, her ex-husband, who says he wants to save her from living in New York City, where refrigerated trucks of corpses lined the streets. Should she? For how long? And at what cost?

Strout, Elizabeth. Lucy by the Sea. Random House, 2022, p. 287.

Posted in fiction | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

“Lately I’ve found myself reaching for the books of certain familiar writers, whose own zest and energy offer some kindly remedy to my condition.”

Posted on December 22, 2022 by Kate Stover

Perhaps you can relate to this: while I enjoy the holidays, I also am running low on the “zest and energy” that Mary Oliver describes in this essay. Her solution to this problem is to reconnect with familiar writers. Her book, which has been in my hands for thirty years, is one of my favorites because she reminds me of the importance of remaining “curious and in motion,” of marveling at what we see, of watching the stars at night “until daybreak, that none of the sky wonders of the glorious night within reach of my eyes might be lost.”

Oliver, Mary. “Four Companions with a Zest for Life” in Blue Pastures. Harcourt, Inc., 1991, p. 31.

Posted in non-fiction, poetry | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

“Observe, observe perpetually.”

Posted on November 30, 2022 by Kate Stover

More than 400 years ago, Michel de Montaigne of France invented a new literary tradition of close inward observation. “It is a thorny undertaking,” he writes, “to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind.” Scholars, such as Sarah Bakewell, credit him with being the first to experiment with a type of essay that is restless and free flowing. She says that the two characteristics that distinguish Montaigne’s work from his contemporaries in the 1500s are “astonishment” and “fluidity.” Instead of recording his achievements, he wrote “to penetrate the opaque depths” of his mind as it flowed.

Bakewell, Sarah. How to Live -or- A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. Other Press, 2010, p. 37.

Posted in memoir, non-fiction | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

“For what could be more peculiar than a crowd of grown-up people . . . discussing scholarly niceties that meant nothing to most of the world?”

Posted on November 22, 2022 by Kate Stover

One of the things that I love about Barbara Pym’s novels is that her characters never set out to impress anyone. They acknowledge that their choices – for example, attending an academic conference as treatment for a broken heart – are eccentric. They’re vulnerable, interesting, and sometimes fooled by imposters. I wonder if Pym ever read William Zinsser’s famous book On Writing Well, which describes the “intangible” qualities of good writing – such as the writer’s confidence, enjoyment, integrity, and humanity. The quality of good writing, Zinsser says, is determined by the nature of the relationship between the reader and the writer.

Pym, Barbara. No Fond Return of Love. Open Road, 1961. p. 1.

Posted in fiction | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

“I felt there was a lot more I could say about the subject of danger.”

Posted on November 11, 2022 by Kate Stover

In Half Broke Horses, Lily Smith faces many dangers, from flash floods in rural Texas, to bankruptcy during the Great Depression, to medical emergencies that didn’t always end well. This convincing, unprettified narration doesn’t glorify “grit” – rather, it shows the unintended consequences that can come with survival. For example: her dad earns money by breaking and selling wild horses, even though he had his head bashed in by a horse when he was only three years old, which resulted in a speech impediment, a limp, and possibly brain damage. This “true-life novel” is based on the author’s grandmother’s life.

Walls, Jeannette. Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel. Scriber: 2009, p. 257.

Posted in fiction, memoir | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

“Judging by her publicity photos, the natural assumption would be that American novelist Edith Wharton wrote in a traditional manner, at the gold-tooled leather-topped desk in her extremely well-stocked library.”

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Kate Stover

But this was “in fact a deliberate illusion.” She wrote in bed. Why? Johnson suspects that it had something to do with the desire to delay getting dressed, which for women in the 1800s, meant getting tied into a corset. And there’s more: Proust lined the walls and ceiling of his room with cork to muffle the sounds made by the dentist who worked above him. George Bernard Shaw wrote in a shed that was on casters so that it could be rotated to face the sun. Who can resist this sort of trivia about the working habits of writers?

Johnson, Alex. Rooms of Their Own: Where Great Writers Write. Frances Lincoln, 2022, p. 169.

Posted in non-fiction | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

“And you O my soul, where you stand, surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space . . .until the bridge you will need be form’d…”

Posted on October 24, 2022 by Kate Stover

And you, O my reader, where you sit, reading from a screen that holds more words than the mind can store, what do you do after reading Whitman’s poetry?  Some respond by “Whitmanizing” in bold statements or expressive art. The poet Czeslaw Milosz says that after reading Whitman, he experiences “a rapturous movement toward happiness” which for some is “expressed in poetry, prose, painting, theater.” In this video, artists respond to a Whitman poem by creating three series of images that express their interpretations. I suspect that the spirit of this poet is busy celebrating the continuation of his art.

Walt Whitman, “A Noiseless Patient Spider.” Leaves of Grass, edited by Emory Holloway, Doubleday & Company, 1926, p. 375.

Posted in poetry | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

“The truth is provisional.”

Posted on October 11, 2022 by Kate Stover

Joan Didion questioned the idea of objective journalism, writes Hilton Als in his Foreword for Didion’s last collection of essays, Let Me Tell You What I Mean. Admit that you have filters, and that “who you are at the time you wrote this” determines what you see.  It might be hard to appreciate how radical this idea was in the 1960s when Didion was at the vanguard of a revolution in story-telling that challenged so many assumptions. A new way to understand her work opened this week: an art gallery in Los Angeles (curated by Hilton Als) tells her story.

Als, Hilton. Foreword. Let Me Tell You What I Mean, by Joan Didion, Vintage International, 2021, p. x.

Posted in non-fiction | Leave a comment

“I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world. . .”

Posted on September 27, 2022 by Kate Stover

Henry David Thoreau continues, “for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.” This beautiful image of Thoreau watching the stars from the deck of a boat comes right after he says that he decided to leave his cabin at Waldon’s Pond because he has “several more lives to live.” He did not want to settle down and risk getting too comfortable and complacent. His restlessness appeals to me, especially as autumn begins, when I am most drawn to his ideas of “going confidently in the direction of your dreams.”

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer, Yale University Press, 2004, p. 313.

Posted in memoir | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

“Any radical change in poetic form is likely to be the symptom of some very much deeper change in society and in the individual.”

Posted on September 20, 2022 by Kate Stover

What a crank T. S. Eliot must have been! He is the champion of contradiction. Consider this: his difficult and complex poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” revolutionized poetry, and many consider it to be a prime example of social criticism. And yet, he wrote “To me it was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.” However, in the lectures he delivered at Harvard, he argues the opposite: he says that “poetry is not written to provide material for conversation” (8) but to articulate change.

Eliot, T. S. The Use of Poetry & The Use of Criticism. Harvard University Press, 1933, pp. 66-67.

Posted in non-fiction, poetry | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

“When we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.”

Posted on August 31, 2022 by Kate Stover

When I was deciding whether to come back to teach one more year, I realized that the part that I like best is not giving information, it’s getting questions – especially questions that I have never explored before with students. This week, my last first week of the school year, has started out with some beautiful questions. The poet Wendell Berry writes “The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.” May this year be a year of great songs that nurture and reward curiosity, creativity, and courage in students and teachers alike.

Berry, Wendell. “The Real Work.” Teaching with Heart: Poetry that Speaks to the Courage to Teach, edited by Sam. Intrator and Megan Scribner. Jossey-Bass, 2014, p. 199.

Posted in Pedagogy | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

“Americans, it turns out, smile more than any other society on earth.”

Posted on August 22, 2022 by Kate Stover

Susan Cain, whose book Quiet launched her career as the Patron Saint of Introverts ten years ago, has written a new book that validates English teachers, artists, and everyone who is drawn to sad stories. Her argument – that “sorrow and longing make us whole” – is not new, but her observation that happiness is overrated – and can be toxic — is compelling. If there is one thing that I’ve learned during the pandemic, it’s that many people have good reasons to not be happy. Cain recommends that we see that human sorrow is inevitable, and so we should respond with compassion.

Cain, Susan. Bitter-Sweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. Crown, 2022, p. 120.

Posted in non-fiction | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment