AmericanStudies: May 15, 2025: Spring Semester Reflections: Graduate Research Methods

[About halfway
through the Spring 2025 semester, I
lost my Dad. While that was of course the semester’s most defining moment,
it also allowed me to reflect for the remaining weeks on my own teaching in
relationship to one of the most dedicated and talented teachers I’ve ever
known. So for this semester reflections series, I want to highlight one moment
from each class where I’d say I particularly felt my Dad’s presence.]

This
semester featured my
first-ever section of our Graduate Research Methods course, but I did model
that new syllabus on two courses I’ve taught a number of times: Intro
to Literary Theory (another Grad class) and Approaches
to English Studies (an undergrad one). Which meant we talked here and there
about the approach/theory known as psychoanalytical, an approach that defined
my Dad’s early career (his dissertation/first
book was a psychoanalytical reading of James Fenimore Cooper) and that
continued to inform his later interests in topics
like authorship. I’ll admit to being far less of a devotee of this approach
than my Dad, but I’ll also admit that when we returned fully to this class’s
conversations after his passing, I made sure to think through when and how
psychoanalytical analysis could help, beyond what I would have been likely to
do in another semester. For example, I think Dad’s ideas about the anxieties of
authorship and audience have a lot to tell us about Langston Hughes, the poet
on whom our middle unit in this course focused. I promise to keep an open mind
about this theoretical approach going forward, Dad.

Last reflection
tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Spring
semester reflections you’d share?