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abstract: For an introductory college course in literary studies based entirely on the works of Arthur Miller, the professor obtained a personal copy of the same volume of The Arthur Miller Journal for every student in the class. Hoping to demystify literary scholarship for first-year English majors, the professor used the journal as a regular course textbook, integrating journal-based readings and exercises into otherwise conventional first-year pedagogy in the study of Miller's works. By the end of the course, the professor found that by using their personal copies of the journal throughout the semester, these novice students became surprisingly comfortable and conversant with the world of literary scholarship. Students reported that working with the journal on a daily basis gave the course a sense of professionalism neither they nor the professor had anticipated. Moreover, ongoing interaction with the journal allowed students to develop a significant degree of familiarity with its contents as they revisited the journal's articles throughout the term.
keywords: pedagogy, undergraduate curriculum, undergraduate research, freshman (first-year) English, college writing
Three years ago my colleagues on the English faculty at SUNY Geneseo revised the major's introductory course, retiring an age-old common syllabus and mandating instead that all sections of the course require common learning outcomes. Design and content for the introductory course were left entirely to individual faculty. For my first section of the new course, I chose the title and theme of "Arthur Miller: His Influence and Influences." Over the years I had observed, as have others, that while most incoming college students are familiar with Salesman and The Crucible, few know scarcely anything of Miller's other plays, his importance as a theatrical and cultural critic, or his place (or perhaps places) in the continuum of American drama. I wanted my Miller course to upend some prior assumptions about Miller and, in so doing, introduce students to the phenomenon of ever-shifting perspectives on writers and texts, even those we think we have read thoroughly and "nailed."
In addition to introducing my class to Miller's less well-known writings, I wanted the course to engage students in three important subtopics that I knew would be unfamiliar to practically all of them:
a. Nineteenth-century European realism, especially plays of Henrik Ibsen, and how it informs...