This week I launched “Open Book,” my podcast for general audiences — or, at least, for anyone who wants to “Read like an English Professor,” as my tagline promises.
One of the ways my teaching has shifted over the past decade is my growing emphasis on skills over knowledge, reading methods over the particularities of a given text. I increasingly see the texts that I teach as case studies, as platforms for us to practice critical skills on. To quote my first episode:
Simply put, I teach students how to read. Not basic literacy; that skill is a pretty firm prerequisite of university programs. But expert-level literacy: the way professional literary critics read, namely for ideas in their multivariate complexity, expressed in beautiful words. More or less. It takes years of practice, but it can be taught.
So that’s what I’m addressing in this series. How do literary critics read differently from other readers? How do we interpret literature?
“Open Book” is a new project to adapt my undergraduate and graduate teaching for digestible audio delivery. It’s something I’ve meant to try for a while — until the global pandemic nudged me into action. My recent forays into YouTube were fun, but required me to spend FAR too much time on visuals of dubious utility for readers. Hence my shift to an all-audio delivery.
The first three episodes, and a trailer, are now available on Anchor. The first episode sets out my plan for the podcast’s coverage and format. (And honestly, it taught me how to script, record, edit, and post each episode; it set the template and made me select the music and effects for this season.)
The next two episodes of this season cover texts that my students are reading. Now perhaps you see my method: these assigned episodes alternate with our synchronous classes over Zoom and Slack. There’s one on How to Read Plato’s Phaedrus for a reading-and-translation class; and another on How to Read John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book 1 for a 17th-century-literature class.
Anyway, gentle reader: consider this your invitation to listen and subscribe. (I’m told it will soon be on the Apple and Overcast platforms; it’s already on Spotify.)
