Two terms in Ezra

Teaching an undergraduate introductory literature class in the context of a foreign language curriculum is like leading a group of people to the outskirts of an unfamiliar foreign city and setting them loose with a map that they can read only with a great deal of difficulty. It is indeed a labyrinthine proposition. As tour guide, one aims to devise tasks designed to accomplish a couple of important goals by the end of a short period of time: depending upon the interests and proclivities of each particular traveller, one anticipates that most of them will gain familiarity with some sections of town. Moreover, each traveller will hopefully learn some rudimentary skills of mapwriting, or, at the very least, will discover a good map and learn to use it well, although questioning the usefulness of some of its representations. I would like to present here one such task that I devised to help students over the terrain of Bertolt Brecht's drama, Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui. Although the teaching strategy I am presenting here was used successfully in an introduction to German literature course, I believe it is adaptable to more advanced levels, as well. The theoretical issues Iraised with introductory students were always discussed within textually-specific contexts. The following description of these issues employs a more analytical discourse than I used in the classroom itself. However, I find that undergraduate students like to be challenged to think creatively about the stuff of literary analysis: self, meaning, history, language, aesthetics. One of my primary goals in an introductory literature course is to create an appealing, yet challenging invitation to students to engage with the text at hand. This task involves a double-edged approach, one that encourages what Thomas Plummer calls students' pluralistic, experience-oriented1 readings of texts, yet one that also challenges them to develop a more theoretically and historically informed analysis. Teaching Brecht poses particular problems for the first part of such an approach because his texts often become more interesting and accessible in the context of a theoretical and historicalinquiry. Indeed, in teaching Ui, I wanted students to come away with some understanding of both the connectedness of aesthetic and political issues in Brecht's epic theater and the historicalcontext (NationalSocialism) to which Brecht responded in dramatic terms. Additionally, given the luxury of historical hindsight, I encouraged students to feel empowered to evaluate critically Brecht's aesthetic innovations. However, I did notwantto achieve these goals through lectures and readings that would forego the motivational and inspirational act of an initial reading and discussion. In particular, I wanted students to explore the aesthetic and political maneuvers of modemism as an historical problem, so I searched for a means to help students investigate these issues by actively engaging with texts. I found that film was an important medium through which to accomplish some of these goals. More specifically, Ihad begun this unit by viewing and analyzing Leni Riefenstahl's film, Triumph ofthe Will, which acted as a paradigmatic text of National Socialismbothinits textualstrategiesandinitspolitical content. Our reading of Brecht's text became then a constrastive reading. For pedagogical purposes I created a structure of opposition between the two texts which allowed students to explore Brecht's drama within an historical context, but which didn't preclude their subjective interaction with the text. Before viewing Triumph of the Will, a reading assignment or a presentation on German National Socialism would facilitate students' ability to understand the significance of the various speakers and speeches in the film. Between viewing and discussion, studentsshouldbe encouraged to think about the film in concretely textual terms. To this end, I asked my students to make two lists: in the first, they were to reflect upon the ways in which the film spoke to them as viewers, whereas the second list consisted of descriptions of the film's presentation of Hitler and Germany. In class we generated a collective list for each category, which I put on the board and copied for a later comparison with a similar list based on a reading of Brecht's text. Class discussion of the film was focused on its effects on students as viewers, which allowed them to