This article relates and reflects on my teaching experience spanning from spring 2009 through spring 2013, when I was engaged in constructing and reconstructing a course called ＂Reading Bestsellers.＂ Principles were...This article relates and reflects on my teaching experience spanning from spring 2009 through spring 2013, when I was engaged in constructing and reconstructing a course called ＂Reading Bestsellers.＂ Principles were altered for the course design virtually each semester, starting from an attempt to offer variety in readings, undergoing a plan to downsize the reading list for neatness, and then a challenge to seek a balance between fiction and nonfiction. Despite the change of the principles, one principle has remained unchanged-the overarching principle of trial and error. Given this general guidance, I have reconstructed the course with a choice of high-end bestsellers. I have become aware that there should have been less concern about the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction than about the need to defy narrow categorization whenever necessary. Academic neatness may be desirable but impossible to tackle in-between intricacy, which proves to be the essence of life, and for that matter, the very essence of literature.展开更多
文摘This article relates and reflects on my teaching experience spanning from spring 2009 through spring 2013, when I was engaged in constructing and reconstructing a course called ＂Reading Bestsellers.＂ Principles were altered for the course design virtually each semester, starting from an attempt to offer variety in readings, undergoing a plan to downsize the reading list for neatness, and then a challenge to seek a balance between fiction and nonfiction. Despite the change of the principles, one principle has remained unchanged-the overarching principle of trial and error. Given this general guidance, I have reconstructed the course with a choice of high-end bestsellers. I have become aware that there should have been less concern about the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction than about the need to defy narrow categorization whenever necessary. Academic neatness may be desirable but impossible to tackle in-between intricacy, which proves to be the essence of life, and for that matter, the very essence of literature.
