Last week, Karen Nestor wrote about her experience teaching in a Books@Work special program with Veterans living at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center Domiciliary. Karen’s was an hour-long program for the entire residency—but, in partnership with Ohio Humanities and several individual donors, Books@Work has been serving this community with weekly seminars over the past six months. Each week in this program, a group of Veterans came together with a professor to discuss a short story. Recently, I had the chance to speak with Professor Peter Haas about his experience guiding these discussions. Peter is an ordained rabbi and served as a chaplain in the United States Army before entering academe. He retired in the summer of 2016 from Case Western Reserve University, where he was professor of Religious Studies and former chair of his department. Here, Peter talks about the power of the short story and the moving discussions he was able to lead and take part in at the VA Domiciliary.
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When it comes to teaching, I confess that I’m a sucker for iconic texts: Shakespeare’s Othello, Mary Godwin Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Frankly, it bothers me that these authors’ fame derives from ubiquitous cultural allusions so divorced from their work. Boris Karloff immediately comes to mind when people hear the name Frankenstein. People blithely characterize someone as a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-type” without knowing the original story. And they refer to a talented person as a Shakespeare without having read enough of the Bard to know why he’s a genius. With the mission of connecting cultural allusions to their sources, I have introduced these texts to Books@Work readers, and several anecdotes will tell that tale of how well my approach has worked.
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Teaching with Books@Work has given me an exceptional opportunity to learn about myself at work. It alters my understanding of what it means to teach literature well, enhancing my appreciation for literature, as well as for the artistry of teaching.
It also, not coincidentally, demands a fair amount of humility.
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We were delighted to participate in the first annual Cleveland Humanities Festival, in partnership with the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University. Supported by Ohio Humanities, the Festival hosted speakers and events around the city over a two-week period in early April. Linked by the theme “Remembering War,” the Festival sought to “engage the public in addressing some of society’s most challenging issues and pressing concerns” in partnership with the region’s major museums, educational institutions, and arts organizations. For us, the Festival provided an opportunity to bring Books@Work beyond the workplace, and use diverse narrative representations of life experience to challenge assumptions and appreciate the memories, stories, and courage of others.
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I’ve been leading seminars at Books@Work for a couple of years now, and the book I always find myself using is Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry. It is a great book, a rich book, and I’m teaching it for the third time. Depending upon who is reading it, the book prompts discussions about intimacy, friendship, trust and compassion—and each time I share it with a different group, I see it anew. In fact, teaching this book three times has been enlightening, as it gives me a fascinating glimpse at how our own experiences frame the way we read and interpret a story. As a result, I’ve been privy to remarkably different conversations each time.
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Professors contribute very important elements to the success of our programs. Their years in the classroom help them foster thriving conversations in our discussion groups. Their time spent facilitating discussion helps them create safe spaces for difference and even productive disagreement. And their subject matter expertise brings an added layer of depth to discussion sessions. Most of all, professors are curious. They are curious about the participants’ life experiences and the way in which these experiences shape their reading of a text. They are excited to share their own interests with others.
Curiosity—the kind professors exhibit and foster—is a key to knowledge retention, making it instrumental to lifelong learning.
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Unlikeable characters pose a problem for readers. It’s hard to finish a book when the main character annoys or even outrages you. But the payoff for perseverance is real. By cultivating patience and empathy for an unlikeable character, we learn about ourselves and others—and we are reminded that disagreeable characters and people alike have hidden depths we cannot measure. Professor Joshua D. Phillips reflects on one unlikeable character, and what grappling with it taught him and the Books@Work group he was leading.
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As an undergraduate, I took as many classes as possible. Each course refracted the world back differently to me, shaping my perception and teaching me the value of nuance and depth. But I found myself fascinated by the professors themselves even more than I was interested in the course material. Most of all, I was taken with their curiosity. Though they taught courses that spanned centuries of history and knowledge, each professor approached his or her subject from a highly-refined specialty. Professors were experts in a small, specific area. They were deeply as well as broadly curious – about their subject matter, about their students. Their curiosity was contagious.
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We talk a lot about the powers that literature seemingly holds in our world. Literature can inspire, bridge gaps of time, place and experience and offer perspectives into people’s lives that are far removed from our own. As a Books@Work instructor, I have come to experience the power of literature to equalize and humanize.
The first Books@Work session that I led was for a well-established downtown law firm. As I walked into the imposing art-deco building, the faces of partners from decades past gazed out at me from gilded frames.
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