Upon examining syllabi from 1987-1990 and 1993 seeing the obvious changes Berlin made between those two groups, it seems his cultural studies approach was very much a work in progress. The units we discussed in our meeting and that he discusses in chapter 7 of Rhetorics, Poetics, Cultures, aren't really there in the earlier syllabi. I'm curious how this shows that despite the fact that scholars like Alcorn and Sanchez critique his work as if it's a done deal, it was very much a work in progress at he time of his death. I just stated riffing on some more elegant way to say this, so I'm just reposting it here not to lose it...
It's interesting to look at someone's teaching documents in contrast to published works about those documents. It makes you realize how fragile and less static the former is compared to how academics deal with the latter. In academia, one's published work becomes their identity, particularly if they become known for the article or book and the methods described in it: it becomes a more critiquable doppleganger for the person and their investments. But, looking at teaching documents feels less final or finished. In documents written for use in the classroom, there's always something missing. Subsequent iterations of the documents give you some idea what the teacher thought was missing, or maybe if we read these documents not as having missed something but as reaching out to students, subsequent iterations point out the small changes the instructor or professor made to reach out further or better or differently to students--that is to say subsequent documents demonstrate the teacher's learning from students and desire to commune with students writ large. In examining teaching documents spanning multiple semesters or years, we can see the teacher's movement (if any) and their changing investments, which extend beyond a desire for disciplinary stability or teaching as an act determined entirely by one's content-area.
- Don
It's interesting to look at someone's teaching documents in contrast to published works about those documents. It makes you realize how fragile and less static the former is compared to how academics deal with the latter. In academia, one's published work becomes their identity, particularly if they become known for the article or book and the methods described in it: it becomes a more critiquable doppleganger for the person and their investments. But, looking at teaching documents feels less final or finished. In documents written for use in the classroom, there's always something missing. Subsequent iterations of the documents give you some idea what the teacher thought was missing, or maybe if we read these documents not as having missed something but as reaching out to students, subsequent iterations point out the small changes the instructor or professor made to reach out further or better or differently to students--that is to say subsequent documents demonstrate the teacher's learning from students and desire to commune with students writ large. In examining teaching documents spanning multiple semesters or years, we can see the teacher's movement (if any) and their changing investments, which extend beyond a desire for disciplinary stability or teaching as an act determined entirely by one's content-area.
- Don
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