Teaching Piers Plowman (A Roundtable)
Sponsoring Organization(s)
International Piers Plowman Society
Organizer Name
Jennifer Sisk
Organizer Affiliation
Univ. of Vermont
Presider Name
Jennifer Sisk
Paper Title 1
The Pedagogy of Piers Plowman
Presenter 1 Name
Katharine Breen
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Northwestern Univ.
Paper Title 2
Piers Plowman and Diversity
Presenter 2 Name
Michael Calabrese
Presenter 2 Affiliation
California State Univ.-Los Angeles
Paper Title 3
Piers Plowman and the Common Core Curriculum for Eleventh and Twelfth Graders
Presenter 3 Name
Bryan P. Davis
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Georgia Southwestern State Univ.
Paper Title 4
Super(Plow)man
Presenter 4 Name
Gina Brandolino
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Univ. of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Paper Title 5
Some Pedagogical Problems and Teaching Strategies for Piers Plowman
Presenter 5 Name
Mary Clemente Davlin, OP
Presenter 5 Affiliation
Dominican Univ.
Paper Title 6
Twenty-Four Ways of Looking at Langland
Presenter 6 Name
Thomas Goodmann
Presenter 6 Affiliation
Univ. of Miami
Start Date
10-5-2014 10:00 AM
Session Location
Schneider 1140
Description
With the imminent publication of the MLA Approaches to Teaching volume, the time is right to talk about the challenges and rewards of teaching this difficult text. This roundtable will focus specifically on the experience of teaching Piers Plowman in the undergraduate classroom. Despite the fact that Langland’s poem is the most challenging—and perhaps even the most alienating—text in the Middle English corpus, it has a surprising allure for today’s college students. What is it about Piers Plowman that resonates so strongly for them, and how are their interests congruent (or incongruent) with our own scholarly approaches to the text? How can we help our students deal with Langland’s difficulty? When and how should we introduce them to textual scholarship and to the poem’s multiple versions? What contextual materials or electronic resources best support undergraduate learning? What assignments—analytical or creative—can we design to support active and passionate engagement with the text? This roundtable addresses these and other questions.
Lawrence Warner
Teaching Piers Plowman (A Roundtable)
Schneider 1140
With the imminent publication of the MLA Approaches to Teaching volume, the time is right to talk about the challenges and rewards of teaching this difficult text. This roundtable will focus specifically on the experience of teaching Piers Plowman in the undergraduate classroom. Despite the fact that Langland’s poem is the most challenging—and perhaps even the most alienating—text in the Middle English corpus, it has a surprising allure for today’s college students. What is it about Piers Plowman that resonates so strongly for them, and how are their interests congruent (or incongruent) with our own scholarly approaches to the text? How can we help our students deal with Langland’s difficulty? When and how should we introduce them to textual scholarship and to the poem’s multiple versions? What contextual materials or electronic resources best support undergraduate learning? What assignments—analytical or creative—can we design to support active and passionate engagement with the text? This roundtable addresses these and other questions.
Lawrence Warner