The Semester Begins

The academic year in the Faculty (College) of Letters officially began on December 1. On that day, there was a meeting of the department chairs to finalize the course schedule, so no classes really began then. There is still work to be finished from the previous academic year, and some other problems (including that professors have not been paid since October.)

I have been a bit eager to start my courses, and everyone is encouraging me to begin. Whereas the standard procedure is to teach until you finish the course (some courses from last year are still in progress), my time here is finite. Allowing for school closings and other delays, I don’t want to find myself with three courses remaining to give in July. It works out well all around actually because the students are ready to begin. It is to their advantage and mine to stagger things, rather than having X courses all beginning the same day, having midterms the same day, and final papers due the same day. I am starting with an upper-level undergraduate American literature class that I will probably complete in two months, so that much of the work will be done by the time other classes begin. It has been difficult for me to get my bearings on the system, but now that it is underway I feel like it is all good. At least for the undergraduates. I need to wait for the graduate students’ registrations to be processed (since they are Assistants, it involves the Ministry of Education, a government bureaucracy).

I decided to begin my class last Thursday. The schedule they are using is last year’s so my name and one of my courses are not listed. So I found a time, posted an announcement and of 9 students, 3 showed up (and 2 of those I had called in advance). But the class met, and the word will spread and the rest of them should be here this week. This is how it typically works. When I was giving the class at a table in a sort-of-lounge-area, there was another group of students looking on. Afterwards, I found out they asked my students about the American professor. On Saturday (not considered a weekend day at the university), I was in the department office and a group of three students came in to petition to have a course with the American professor, making the case that it was a unique opportunity for them. I would love to think that it had to do with their desire to learn more about Frederick Douglass (the subject of the first lesson they overhead), but it is more about me being the first native English speaker (and white and American) to give a course in the Department of English at UniKin. After the students left, the chair and I discussed an American literature class for underclass students, which I agreed to teach if he could drop one of my other courses. It will probably work out; I’ll know more later this week.

As for the American literature course currently underway, we are beginning with Douglass’s 1845 Narrative, will move to Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” Gilman’s “Yellow Wallpaper,” a unit on African American music and poetry, and Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.