{"id":48,"date":"2023-02-02T06:39:08","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T11:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/eng574-s23\/?page_id=48"},"modified":"2023-04-16T12:01:53","modified_gmt":"2023-04-16T16:01:53","slug":"discussion-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/eng574-s23\/discussion-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Weeks 1-8: APPROACHES & PROBLEMS"},"content":{"rendered":"

A NOTE ON THIS PAGE<\/h4>\n

The entries on this page reflect an effort to document the unfolding of the NEW SCHOOLS seminar taught at Princeton in the Spring Term of 2023 (taught by D. Graham Burnett<\/a> and Jeff Dolven;<\/a> launch syllabus here<\/a>). Entries below follow a basic format: first, several pre-class-meeting “reflections” on the week’s reading (by students in the seminar, initialed at the end, to indicate authorship); then post-seminar reflections by Burnett & Dolven. Throughout the thread everyone involved in the course has added comments and links, images, etc.\u00a0 We use the following convention for comments: \u00a0green text<\/span> and single brackets for first-order interventions; blue text<\/span> (and double brackets) for comments on comments; and violet text<\/span> (and triple<\/em> brackets) for comments on comments on comments (later we added orange<\/span> for fourth-degree comments). Initialing comments is standard. For an earlier example of all of this at work, consider skimming the chat thread from this course<\/a>, taught several years ago.<\/h6>\n
We used the thread below for Weeks 1-8, after which the seminar format switched to student presentations on specific “cases.” For more on that, go here.<\/a><\/h6>\n
DGB & JD<\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

CLASS 1<\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/h1>\n

Readings<\/h2>\n

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, \u201cLand as Pedagogy: Nishnaabeg Intelligence and Rebellious Transformation<\/a>,\u201d Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, & Society 3, no. 3 (2014): 1-25.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Lear,<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>A Case for Irony<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 1-41.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A few thoughts about our first session.\u00a0 First, just a thank you. It felt good to launch.\u00a0 And (perhaps you could sense this?), there is something very special for me to return to the classroom with my friend Jeff \u2013 we last co-taught in the pre-pandemic era.\u00a0 And that feels a little like a different world\u2026<\/p>\n

But we are in this world now, and in it we are committed, again, to what can happen in a classroom \u2013 and beyond it!<\/p>\n

So here we go\u2026<\/p>\n

We got underway by circling the room, and letting everyone say a few words about a \u201cteaching situation\u201d that informed the desire to become, oneself, a teacher (assuming, of course, that this is a way we thing about ourselves \u2013 we tried to leave that a bit open\u2026)<\/p>\n

The results were rich.\u00a0 So interesting to hear from everyone about \u201cscenes of instruction\u201d that left important memories.\u00a0 I began, myself, by talking about \u201cthe seminar NOT TAKEN\u201d \u2013 Wittgenstein with the charismatic Victor Preller.\u00a0 His Aquinas seminar marked me, but I was too afraid to continue with him into the twentieth century.\u00a0 Had he done something wrong?\u00a0 No, not at all.\u00a0 But his power as a thinker\/teacher, his passion, left me worried I would be wobbled by the walk with him into material that did not as easily align with my (youthful) soul.<\/p>\n

We went full circle, too, because by the time we got around the room, Jeff finished the loop by talking about the Wittgenstein seminar he DID take \u2013 with none other than Jonathan Lear, the author of one of our readings for the session.\u00a0 And Jeff affectingly invoked the way that Lear split the difference between philosophy and psychoanalysis \u2013 carefully declining (as Jeff experienced it) to offer the positive confirmations of insight that are at least one key way to conceive the teaching role.\u00a0 Thrown back onto himself, frustratingly, Jeff was left to wonder about what in what he was working to know was his own affair.<\/p>\n

Or anyway, that was how I heard the story.\u00a0 And it put me in mind of the lovely introduction to Jeff\u2019s first book\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

[emoji smile]<\/p>\n

Right.\u00a0 So.\u00a0 I am not going to try to summarize all of your powerful and beautiful \u201cprimal scenes\u201d of teaching and learning.\u00a0 Maybe Jeff will!\u00a0 But I can list a few things that ended up in my notes \u2013 stuff to which, perhaps, we will return:<\/p>\n