Playing Literature Like an Amateur: Collaborative Pedagogy and the Hermeneutics of the Team
Abstract
My essay considers the pedagogical context of "introducing" literature to non-majors. My essay outlines two rhetorics of pedagogy, which I term as (1) the rhetoric of scientific expertise and (2) the rhetoric of literary amateurism. I outline the risks entailed in unreflectively relying upon "the rhetoric of scientific expertise" in introduction to literature courses for non-majors and propose a "rhetoric of literary amateurism" that recuperates an older form of the amateur as a "lover" of rather than an "expert" of a discourse. I offer a detailed description of an activity I use to introduce literature to non-majors that leverages the rhetoric of literary amateurism in order to help them apprehend literature not as a closed system authorized by experts but as an open discourse they can participate in.Downloads
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