Students need more practice in research, in the application of knowledge to real life problems. In our current world, more than ever, students need to be able to create logical arguments rooted in evidence. We teach them that in our ENGL1010 Composition 1 classes, and I am not opposed to that as part of our ENGL1020 Composition 2 classes. They will also receive that experience in their sociology classes, their psychology classes, even their history classes. What they will not receive in those other classes is an understanding of and appreciation for the artistry, the beauty, the significance of language as an expression of the human heart.

So many of my students do not read, read superficially, have never read a book all the way through, do not like to read, see no value in literature. ENGL1020 is not just a composition class—although it is that. It is also a literature appreciation class. My students hated to have to read The Tilted World by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly. But they read it, and more importantly, they liked it. The novel and the stories that they read for class, the poems that we explored, spoke to them, reached them on a level that goes beyond the academic to the very heart and soul of what the humanities mean and what our mission states.

We hear so much about the irrelevance of the humanities, the pragmatism that suggests that education has no purpose other than to prepare people for the practicality of the workforce, that every effort should be made to create students shaped to the needs of their employment.  Many of the classes that students take do just that.  But there is more to an education than the pragmatic.  Education opens people to the possibilities of life.  Education awakens the mind and the heart.  There is more to life than the drone of the worker bee gathering honey for the honey pot that someone else will eat and enjoy.

If someone needs a pragmatic reason for the study of literary analysis, let it be this.  The core of the scientific method is the systematic observation of data, the search for patterns of meaning, and the application of those patterns to the data for the purpose of directing human efforts toward understanding and control.  Rarely do students engage in unfettered application of the scientific method at the freshman/sophomore level.  Instead, they are taught the basic formulations, language, and discoveries of science with some practice in applying those methods in limited, experimental settings.

In ENGL1020, focused on literature, students are taught to engage in close reading of a text, to tease out of the text the relevant details, to search for the patterns that stitch those details into meaning, and to weave those details into a pattern of explanation that reveals the significance and meaning of the work.  Every assignment immerses them in this methodology that is analogous to the scientific method.  The data that students explore is different, but the methodology is the same.  More than any science class, they are immersed in the practical application of the scientific method.

But, while the scientific method is a tool for understanding and appreciating the complexity of the world around us, the study of literature opens us to the realities and complexities of the human mind and heart.  When Oppenheimer declared at the successful testing of the first atomic bomb, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” he was not speaking from the domain of science but the wisdom of literature. Two years later, his explanation of that comment was not one rooted in science, but one rooted in the realization of the implications of science drawn from the revelations of literature. “In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humour, no overstatements can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose” (Temperton). The humanities stand as the counterbalance, the reminder that our actions have consequences, that there is more to this world than just existing.

I told this story for the first time last year to our Chatt State visiting Writer@Work Tayari Jones. She suggested then that I should write it as I had thought of doing on various occasions. Today, a high school friend posted about being proud of being white, and I posted this as my reply to her post. I thought I would post it here as well.

Growing up, I never thought of myself as white. I thought of myself as Pennsylvania Dutch, as part Irish, as Pennsylvanian, as Christian, as American. Over the years, people have thought I was Jewish or Iranian or Greek, various shades of not-quite-white. Some years ago, a perfect stranger asked me if I was Jewish. When I told her no, she asked, “Well, what are you then?” I answered the first thing that came to mind, “Pennsylvanian.”

Nowadays, with everyone talking about “white,” I resist the label. I recognize most people see me as white. Over time, my internal self-image has adjusted to having a beard, to being old. I suppose I will one day become accustomed to being “white.” But I can’t think of anything about it that would make me feel pride, something I can point to with pride.

The first time I knew I was white was the summer of 1972. I was working at Teen Encounter in York, PA, a local ministry similar to Youth for Christ. Several local black churches had asked to use the Teen Encounter Tabernacle on Duke Street for a gospel music festival.  I was given the responsibility of locking up after the event.  I love music, but I had never attended a black church or music event. For the first hour or so, I sat with a young black couple from Baltimore who had been ministering at Teen Encounter that past week. After they left, I didn’t know anyone in the room. I was enjoying the music until the last two groups. The next to the last group performed music and were dressed in the style of the Supremes, a style at odds with country church music or any other music I associated with worship. It was nearing midnight when the last group took the stage.  I attended a church almost Amish in its stillness.  This last group, four black men in dark grey suits, hopped on stage, their bodies rigid and drawn tight, their eyes glazed as though inebriated, their faces glistening with sweat.  The music was loud, and the crowd joined in, screaming, hands waving in the air.  Never having attended a Pentecostal service, the people seemed demon possessed, and I was terrified.

Then a young woman shrieked and fell to the floor. What if she died?  What should I do? Should I call an ambulance?  I was responsible.  Several of the older men carried the young woman  into the darkened gym next to the auditorium, and I went back to see how she was.

I learned what it meant to be white and black in America.

I was barely 18, a kid, scared. These black men in their 30’s and 40’s and 50’s came to me, scared, scared that I would cause them trouble. Scared of me. Scared of me because I was white, and they were black.

The young woman was fine. She had just fainted. The concert ended a short time later, everyone left, I locked up and walked the seven or eight blocks back to where I was staying.

I knew I was not going to tell the director about what had happened. I knew how afraid those men were, I could see them still, standing in the darkened room, frightened of what I might say or do, and I knew I would never do anything to justify their fear.

That night I was white. It was nothing I felt pride in.

When I was growing up, the news was delivered by Huntley and Brinkley and Walter Cronkite. Back then, the news was serious business. News anchors sat quietly at their desks and, without fanfare, serious and sober, presented the news of the day. This was the world of adults, and it was a world where momentous things happened. These men were my tutors to the world beyond my everyday life and the small farm where I lived with my parents, my brothers and sisters.

I was in fourth grade when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Evenings and weekends I watched the news with my parents. Listened as Huntley and Brinkley and Walter Cronkite narrated the events of those days, the assassination, the funeral, the transfer of power. Listened as my parents talked about this president that they had not voted for. This was my introduction into what it meant to be an American.

Late weekend afternoons I watched as Walter Cronkite narrated The Twentieth Century, a TV news program covering the significant events of the century. It was Walter Cronkite who taught me about World War II, the atrocities of war, and the sacrifices of soldiers so that we could live in a better world.

July 20, 1969, my mother’s birthday, my family sat in a dark living room late at night to watch Neil Armstrong in his bulky spacesuit take that last step from a flimsy spacecraft to the surface of the moon. Walter Cronkite was there with us, his voice choked with emotion, “The Eagle has landed.”

A few days after 9/11, Walter Cronkite appeared on David Letterman. He told how so many of the local German families were appalled when they entered the death camps like Auschwitz. Cronkite said he didn’t blame the German people for what happened in those camps. He blamed them for not knowing, and he warned all of us of the dangers of going too far in the coming days, the danger of overstepping ourselves, of hubris as we responded to the national tragedy facing us. We should have listened better.

Friday, July 17, 2009, Walter Cronkite passed on. His voice is silent now.

© Bill Stifler, 2009

I read the stories about Hercules and Theseus in grade school. In high school I read about the Trojan War in English class and learned about classical history in World Civ. and Latin class. I read comic books whenever I went to the barbershop, and my favorites were Superman, Green Lantern, and Thor. By 8th grade I was reading The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I read many other science fiction and fantasy writers, some of whom incorporated mythology into their stories.

I went to college with the intention of returning to PA and working at a home mission there modeled after Youth for Christ. That organization, Teen Encounter, had had a major impact on my life, and I wanted to give something back. Unfortunately, the organization changed its focus and opened a summer camp in mid-state PA. I still continued to study theology, but I began to have questions that I couldn’t find answers to, and that I often felt I could not ask in the conservative environment where I attended school and church. So I bracketed my questions as unanswerable and tried not to think too much about the spiritual issues that troubled me.

A year ago, the teacher who taught the mythology classes retired.¹ Because of my background in biblical studies and my skills at online learning, I was offered the classes. I thought, then, that I knew a great deal about mythology, but it didn’t take me long to realize I knew very little.

I began reading works by Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade. I read Bettlehiem and Raglan and others, and I continue to read these and other writers as well as reading primary sources in the myths themselves.

Mythology appeals to me because of its roots in multidisciplinary levels of understanding. I liked literary criticism in grad school, and many critical approaches to mythology parallel the studies I did in literary criticism. I’m also drawn to archetypal approaches to literature. I had read Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism while in grad school, and his approach appealed to me even though I was becoming more adept at applying a variety of critical approaches to my reading and understanding of literature. I am still at the novice stage in that endeavor, but mythology gives me a new opportunity to hone those skills and also to engage in discussions with students on those topics.

Mythology offers me a forum for discussions that ranges across several fields of study of interest to me: sociology, psychology, science, literature, literary criticism, philosophy, and others. It stimulates me to make more connections between these disciplines and also engage students in the same dialogue. I’ve also found that my study of mythology is leading me to re-evaluate and re-formulate those questions I have about the traditional Christian view I had been taught, and I began to see the possibility of answers and resolutions in the critics I was reading.

In addition, mythology permeates our culture. It can be seen in fantasy and science fiction. It appears in mainstream shows like Joan of Arcadia or movies like Adventures in Babysitting and Mannequin. And mythological thinking and mythological ways of viewing the world continue to have a major impact on how we see ourselves and how we define the world. For instance, much of the rhetoric applied to the current Iraq war is expressed in mythological terms.

As I learn more about mythology, I become increasing interested in learning even more, and it is my hope that my students find mythology relevant to their lives, and that it opens up an expanded awareness of the world in which they “live, and move, and have their being.”

[This article was originally posted on my MySpace blog, Sunday, October 2, 2005.]

¹ Linda Reaves, retired Associate Professor of English and Humanities, and the instructor of the mythology classes before me, passed away early February 2009. She is missed and remembered by all of us. Selected works by Eudora Welty as well as several Newberry Award books are being placed in the Augusta R. Kolwyck Library at Chattanooga State as a memorial for her service to students and the college.

© Bill Stifler, 2005

Tonight I took my first ballroom dancing lesson.¹ I’ve wanted to learn to dance for some time. I remember watching the young actor Patrick Dempsey dance in a movie, and he looked so smooth and graceful–Fred Astaire always seemed all sharp angles when I watched him as a kid. I’ve never been graceful or particularly at home in my body, so I had some nervous reservations about the class. At the same time, I thought the class would be very valuable for me. I have trouble with my balance–an inner ear problem–and I thought the class might help me develop coping skills. I lack coordination, and I hoped the class would help with that. Also, I’ve had a problem with assertiveness in social situations involving the opposite sex, and I reasoned that the dynamics of social dancing might help with that. It looks like I may have been right on all counts.

Our instructor Bill Rader is clever. He had the guys line up on one side of the room and the gals on the other. Most of the people there were married couples, but there were a handful of us who are single. I watched the single women match themselves opposite us. Fortunately, I have a high tolerance for rejection and wasn’t bothered that I seemed to be the “last man standing” as the gals sorted themselves out.

My first partner Barbara is about my age or a bit older and married. Her husband can dance but travels, and she wants to learn to dance for him. Bill had us begin by standing facing each other palm to palm. Then, using a gentle pressure, the guys “pushed” the gals around the room. The goal is to build a sense of rapport and “body connection” between the partners. The interesting things was that as long as Barbara and I just chatted, the rapport worked well. We only had problems when we started thinking about it.

I have a weak left arm, and I was concerned about how that was going to work. Barbara decided to pair up with the young fellow beside us, and I ended up with Teresa as my partner. I’m guessing Teresa is several years younger than me. While Barbara is very meek, Teresa tends to lead, which actually helped me at first because she was quicker at picking up the moves. What I realized, however, as we continued was that I needed to lead, and the most effective way for me to do that was to focus on her, feel the rhythm and my balance, and then just move in the way that Bill showed us.

We began with a simple four step that is less about steps and more about shifting balance from leg to leg. Then we added a scissoring motion with the arms that pulled our partners to us. Next he showed us how to spin our partners. That was a challenge for me because of my weak left arm. Bill showed me a right handshake technique, however, that works for me, and soon I was spinning first Barbara and then Teresa. Next we learned a turn for the guys, which was the easiest thing I did. Before our session was over, we were actually dancing. Then Bill had us swap partners, and I again realized how much of what we were doing was about connecting with our partner.

The key lies in balancing with your partner. The guy has to plan his moves in advance, then execute them smoothly. The gal has to be ready for whatever the guy does, and move with him. She can’t anticipate him because if she does she moves out of their balance. I also found that so long as I focused on my partner instead of on myself, the dancing was easier. I had to move with her, and then as we gained balance, gently shift the balance and move into the new pattern.

And isn’t that what the dance of the sexes is all about. We learn to step outside ourselves and connect with our partner. At any moment, only one can lead while the other follows, and if both are in sync, neither will do something that the other finds uncomfortable. I envy the married couples in the class who will go home this week (or I hope they do) and practice. Barbara had to leave before the last dance, and I tried doing the moves by myself, but without a partner to balance me, I couldn’t get into the rhythm.

So if you are married, or if you have just begun a relationship, you might consider ballroom dancing. In addition to great exercise and good clean fun, you might also find that the dancing adds a deeper dimension to your relationship and helps the two of you discover that balance that is at the heart of any good and healthy relationship.

¹ This article was originally posted on my MySpace blog, Friday, September 30, 2005.

P.S.  This article led to my meeting my wife.  While dating, we took a ballroom dancing class together.

© Bill  Stifler, 2005