Contact Zones

I very much appreciated Patricia Bizzell's idea for the way in which English courses might be restructured: capturing a conflicted moment in time and reading all the texts which discuss that moment from all different viewpoints. Not only do I like that this approach brings in a variety of different (and often overlooked) voices, I like that it is almost cross-curricular in that it seems to have a heavy emphasis on historical context. It is, of course, leaps and bounds better than the approach which randomly tosses House on Mango Street into the curriculum in an effort to represent minority writers. That sort of willy-nilly approach only has the effect of making the added literature seem more alien and un-canonical.

My concern with Bizzell's suggestion is a practical one. I got excited as I read all of the different types of literature that could be addressed in a unit about the New England region between 1600 and 1800:

...Puritan histories, autobiographies, and captivity narratives would be studied in connection with historical commentaries and memoirs by non-Puritan Europeans (traditionally treated as "minor"), European transcriptions of Native American speeches (problematic but invaluable), and letters, histories, and spiritual autobiographies written by Native Americans in English (unknown in the academy until very recently).

What an awesome amount of information to read! And then it occurred to me...where would I get these things? My school district has fired hundreds of teachers these past couple of years. We can't afford to replace the one or two books we currently have that are falling apart. How would we find the funds to buy all new materials? And such a vast variety of them, as well.

I see my district's online classroom (eTUSD) coming into play here. It is quite possible I could find electronic copies of texts like this, post them to eTUSD, and ask the students to provide themselves with their own copies. Of course there will always be the students who are unwilling or unable to do this, not to mention the incredible use of paper required to have every student print out every reading every year. Perhaps this is an idea that works best at the university level, where students are purchasing their own materials, and requires a scaled-down version for secondary schools.