by Dalton Greene ’22
Students looking over the Module 3 schedule may have noticed a new topics course among the ranks of English department offerings: Professor Andrea Kaston Tange’s “Down the Rabbit Hole.” The course, which emphasized dynamic approaches to the process of research and writing, asked students to take up unique projects and present them in multiple ways as the module progressed, with an eye toward adapting their research for a variety of audiences. As students read widely and worked on distilling their findings into a compelling, cohesive narrative, we gained new perspectives on the value of research in the humanities.
The first major assignment of the module came in the form of a traditional research paper. After a few weeks of independent research on a topic related to Victorian Britain, everyone in the class drafted the type of academic paper English majors are so familiar with. Then the fun began. The next step was to reimagine our projects into a feature story: a brief article for a non-specialist audience, in the vein of something that might appear on a popular website or blog. Then, as the last component, students were tasked with producing a 5-minute podcast episode discussing their findings (in many cases, with some carefully chosen sound effects thrown in).
The general sense was that the nature of these assignments invited students to think about their research in brand new ways. Trimming a 10-page paper into a feature story or podcast episode prompted questions about what they really aimed to “say” with their work and which details were integral to saying it, and of course, tackling new forms meant working with new audiences in mind. The Words’s own Kira Schukar ‘22 was in the class alongside me, and she especially appreciated the novelty of these assignments. “[They were] something I’ve only been able to practice in a couple other classes at Mac,” Schukar shared with me, “and I think that accessible academic research is so important, and now I feel like I have the tools to translate my scholarship into something that will interest and inform a public audience.”
The experience turned out to be just as exciting for Professor Kaston Tange, who wrote in an email to The Words that it was one of the most fun courses she has taught at Macalester. Noting the “wide-ranging and engaging” projects undertaken, Professor Kaston Tange was pleased with the way students were able to comb through archives, find unexpected sparks of inspiration, and pursue their interests from multiple viewpoints, opportunities she hopes to integrate more into future courses.
Throughout the module, the exploration of new multimedia and digital avenues for presenting their work encouraged students to dive deep and think creatively about the role of research in the humanities in the “real world” beyond the classroom. This lively approach fostered a diverse array of projects, from explorations of Victorian women’s seaweed collections to investigations of clairvoyance and ghost stories. And if any of this sounds interesting, readers are in luck: the English department is working to create a webpage compiling the podcast episodes produced in the course so that the larger community can listen in. Details are still in the works, but will be shared as soon as we are ready to invite all down the rabbit hole!