{"id":6297,"date":"2015-09-01T15:03:53","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T19:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/?p=6297"},"modified":"2015-09-01T15:03:53","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T19:03:53","slug":"middlemarch-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/middlemarch-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"Middlemarch Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"

English professor Julie Pfeiffer and teaching fellow Martha Park M.F.A. \u201915 launched the Middlemarch Project this summer to bring George Eliot\u2019s 19th-century masterpiece to a community of Hollins readers.<\/h3>\n

By Jeff Hodges M.A.L.S. \u201911<\/em><\/p>\n

\"middlemark-615px\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When Associate Professor of English Julie Pfeiffer contemplated teaching a new first-year seminar this fall, the idea of spending an entire semester on a single novel particularly fascinated her.<\/p>\n

\u201cExploring a novel at that kind of leisurely pace, you discover all kinds of things that you don\u2019t when you\u2019re zipping through,\u201d she explains. \u201cStudents coming to Hollins are literate, but they don\u2019t necessarily know how to read slowly. They don\u2019t know how to unpack complex sentences and make sense of a complicated novel.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Pfeiffer, the perfect fit for such a course was George Eliot\u2019s Middlemarch<\/em>, which was originally published in eight parts beginning in late 1871. The Guardian<\/em> ranked Middlemarch <\/em>21st on its 2014 list of \u201cThe 100 Best Novels,\u201d stating the book \u201cstands as perhaps the greatest of many great Victorian novels.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMiddlemarch<\/em> is a brilliant novel, one that still has a lot to teach us about our own lives,\u201d Pfeiffer says. \u201cIn many ways our culture gives women many more opportunities than that of Dorothea [one of the novel\u2019s central characters], who is this incredibly talented, passionate young woman. But our culture also says to young women, \u2018You need to be practical.\u2019 That\u2019s one of Middlemarch<\/em>\u2019s major themes: What does it mean to want something different, something that people around you don\u2019t understand? What does it take to act on that? Something Hollins does beautifully is to help young women recognize their passion and tell them, \u2018I believe in you and I believe you can do this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Julie<\/a>

Julie Pfeiffer (left) and Martha Park. Photo by Sharon Meador<\/p><\/div>\n

Pfeiffer shared her goals and aspirations for the seminar with Carrie Brown, who last spring completed her term as Hollins\u2019 Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing. Coincidentally, Brown had just read My Life in Middlemarch,<\/em> New Yorker<\/em> staff writer Rebecca Mead\u2019s contemporary tribute to the novel, and she proposed an intriguing sidebar to the first-year seminar: Wouldn\u2019t it be fun to have people all over campus read Middlemarch<\/em>?<\/p>\n

\u201cCarrie had a summer reading group when she taught at Sweet Briar College, and she said, \u2018You know, this could be a neat way to involve current students who aren\u2019t first years, alumnae, faculty and staff, and other people from the community at large who would be interested in a kind of group reading of Middlemarch<\/em> and the opportunity to interact along the way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

What became known as the Middlemarch Project was introduced this summer. Students who read both Middlemarch<\/em> and My Life in Middlemarch<\/em> earned two credits, no tuition required. Teaching fellow Martha Park M.F.A. \u201915 helped Pfeiffer foster the project\u2019s emphasis on community by creating and moderating an online blog and forum for participants.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw my role as a little bit of a cheerleader, just kind of keeping the conversation going,\u201d Park says. She had never read Middlemarch<\/em> before this summer and admits, \u201cIt\u2019s daunting; it\u2019s like this brick. I didn\u2019t understand who George Eliot was for a long time. For me, there\u2019s been a lot of mystery about this book. I do think it\u2019s a commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n

To make Middlemarch<\/em> less intimidating to the reading community, Pfeiffer and Park divided it up so that people would only have to read one of the novel\u2019s \u201cbooks\u201d a week, an average of 100 to 120 pages. The approach gave participants the freedom to \u201ctake eight weeks to do this. Don\u2019t rush yourself. Be thoughtful and give yourself a chance to wonder about what\u2019s going to happen next,\u201d Pfeiffer explains. At the same time, Park structured the online blog and forum so that \u201cstudents and anyone else involved could post throughout the summer and comment on each other\u2019s work without getting any spoilers. Everyone could contribute to the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Middlemarch Project will culminate with Rebecca Mead\u2019s visit to Hollins December 2 \u2013 4 to discuss her relationship with the novel. \u201cIt\u2019s every English major\u2019s dream, to write a book about a book you love,\u201d Park says. \u201cMead has this lively engagement with Middlemarch <\/em>and her writing about it is so energizing. I would love it if we were to create a bunch of Middlemarch<\/em> evangelists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can read Middlemarch<\/em>, you can read and enjoy any 19th-century novel,\u201d Pfeiffer believes. \u201cThere are all kinds of great novels out there that will become accessible and exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeff Hodges is director of public relations.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"divider\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

The insidious dangers of stereotype threat<\/h2>\n

Whistling Vivaldi<\/em> is this year\u2019s common reading.<\/h3>\n

Common readings, assigned to incoming students the summer before they start at Hollins, have been part of the first-year seminar program since its inception nearly 10 years ago. Jon Bohland, associate professor of international studies, and Rebecca Beach, dean of academic services, facilitated the selection of this summer\u2019s book, <\/span>Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do<\/em>. Besides providing a shared experience, says Bohland, the reading \u201cgives first-year seminar instructors something quick out of the gate that we can talk about that\u2019s scholarly and academic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"WhistlingIn Whistling Vivaldi<\/em>, Claude M. Steele, a social psychologist who is also the executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California-Berkeley, tackles many of the problems associated with assumptions based on race and gender. The name of the book comes from a story told to him by his friend Brent Staples, a writer for The New York Times.<\/em> An African-American, Staples deflected any threat he might impose when he walked in white neighborhoods by whistling the classical strains of a Vivaldi composition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis book is largely a discussion of an academic\u2019s life\u2019s work,\u201d says Bohland. Steele and his fellow researchers coined the term stereotype threat<\/em> and defined it as \u201cbeing at risk of confirming as self-characteristic a negative stereotype about one\u2019s worth.\u201d Much of Steele\u2019s work was in the field of test taking. When he taught at the University of Michigan, he noticed that African-American students whose abilities were the equal of their white counterparts struggled to perform well while taking tests. \u201cWhen they felt like they were at risk of negatively affirming something about their group,\u201d they didn\u2019t score as high as their abilities predicted, says Bohland. \u201cPsychologically, it impacted their performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bohland expects the book to spark discussion among students and faculty. In fact, \u201cthe little bits leaking out from the student success leaders [SSLs] about this book are really positive,\u201d he says. SSLs work with the first-year seminar faculty to facilitate discussion and help get new students off to a strong start.<\/p>\n

\"Jon

Jon Bohland<\/p><\/div>\n

Bohland hopes that students get a sense of how subtle stereotyping can be\u2014how it can happen even when no overt speech or action has taken place. \u201cI hope that students will think about their own lives as young women and how many times they may have experienced these things without even knowing it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

In addition to inspiring discussion, reading Whistling Vivaldi<\/em> will serve another purpose that\u2019s fundamental to the college experience. \u201cIt shows how someone went through the research process,\u201d says Bohland. \u201cSo we can also have conversations about: Why did Steele do this? How did he set up his experiments and projects? What was he measuring against?\u201d Bohland\u2019s hope is that students will have a better understanding, right from the start, about \u201cwhat it means to think critically and how to do research and write about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information: Reducingstereotypethreat.org<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

English professor Julie Pfeiffer and teaching fellow Martha Park M.F.A. \u201915 launched the Middlemarch Project this summer to bring George Eliot\u2019s 19th-century masterpiece to a community of Hollins readers. By Jeff Hodges M.A.L.S. \u201911 When Associate Professor of English Julie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6391,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-6297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-summer-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6297"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6388,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297\/revisions\/6388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}