Academic Writing through Animation

A week from tomorrow begins Critical Approaches to Literature–a month-long course I teach at Teachers College that examines both critical and uncritical ways in which literature has been taught historically and currently.  It occurred to me several times recently that the "tried-and-true" way we respond to literature is in essay writing.  I think there are other ways to respond to literature that schools might experiment with.  One way is animation.  Using a site called Go Animate, I’m going to ask students to try responding to literature through animation, or at least to supplant animation for one of the written assignments.  While from the teaching perspective it will be refreshing to think about and critique students’ ideas through a different medium, I imagine creating the cartoons will bring to the surface ways of knowing that would go untapped in the usual prose. 

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