The following set of blog posts summarizes the work I have done with an organization called Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL). My first post described CLTL, next were two interviews with former CLTL students, Ken, Sheila, and Veronica. This final post of the series, “Can literature change lives?” provides several empirical studies that appear to validate the ability of humanities education to assist individuals struggling through poverty and drug addiction—two major, interrelated factors in most crimes. Overall, these studies bolster the eponymous tenant of CLTL: that reading literature changes lives for the better.

The Clemente Course and Hope House

Social issues such as crime and poverty go hand in hand, yet individuals affected by both are unique personalities. CLTL uses literature and writing to stimulate students’ minds and reduce their chances of reoffending. The overall goal is to use literature for social change. Beyond work with criminal populations, Earl Shorris’ Clemente Course in the Humanities has taken a similar approach to humanities education as CLTL. The Clemente course focuses on all urban poor rather than just criminal offenders. Instead of literature, the eight-month Clemente course teaches logic, art, history, and moral philosophy. According to Shorris, the intensive study of the humanities is an effective way to move people out of poverty and into community engagement and meaningful work.

Similarly, at Hope House, a California rehabilitation centre utilizes volunteer, female Stanford professors to teach classes in philosophy and the humanities to groups of fifteen to twenty female addicts and ex-convicts who have been placed in a residential drug and alcohol treatment program (The Hope House Scholars Program). This Clemente-derived course focuses on classic texts with an emphasis on political and social issues, borrowing much from the successful Clemente model. A study done by program founders Debra Satz and Rob Reich revealed that approximately seventy percent of the women who participated in this program remained drug free and out of prison, far better than the national average for rehabilitation programs.

Humanities in Perspective

In Portland, the Humanities In Perspective (HIP) Program has been offered to impoverished individuals for the past five years by the Oregon Council of Humanities in collaboration with Reed College. As a comparison group for the course, HIP was also introduced to a group of incarcerated inmates at a nearby medium-security correctional facility. Like Hope House, the HIP program follows the Clemente Course paradigm—in this case, a progression from ancient classics to twentieth century American literature.

In the Fall semester students read key ancient Greek works drawn from texts in history (Thucydides), philosophy (Aristotle & Plato), poetry (Tyrtaeus & Sappho), and drama (Sophocles & Euripides). In the Spring Semester readings are drawn from more contemporary texts including Emerson, Thoreau, Mark Twain, Flannery O’Connor, Tennessee Williams, Martin Luther King, and Toni Morrison, exploring four central themes: knowledge and virtue, power and justice, love and desire, and social responsibility.

In 2005, the Portland group of urban poor and the incarcerated inmates completed pre-course and post-course surveys. The Portland group reported increased self-esteem, verbal abilities, and open-mindedness, while the incarcerated group reported increased desire for civic involvement, literary reading, and goal setting.

Can literature change Lives?

Changing Lives Through Literature was also the subject of an empirical research study (Jarjoura and Krumholz, 1998). This study compared a group of 32 former CLTL participants with a control group of 40 regular probationers. A follow-up analysis indicated that only 6 of the 32 men in the reading group (18.8%) were convicted of crimes after their experience in CLTL. In the control group, 18 of the 40 men (45%) had reoffended. According to these results, CLTL graduates were three times less likely to reoffend.

Currently, new versions of CLTL are being adopted by academic programs such as the English department at Curry College and the English department at the University of Rhode Island. Curry College is considering having their English majors intern with CLTL as a unique educational experience.

Further psychological Evidence

Research from the cognitive science of reading literature (alternatively called Cognitive Poetics or Empirical Studies of Literature) provides the important theoretical and empirical backdrop against which to set the effectiveness of programs of CLTL and the Clemente Program, potentially explaining why CLTL works.

Probably the most persuasive studies come from Professors David Miall (English) and Don Kuiken (Psychology) at the University of Alberta and Keith Oatley (Psychology) at the University of Toronto. Their collective research outlines how reading fiction allows us to script, or rehearse, scenarios that we do not normally encounter in our day to day lives. In doing so, reading allows for inner speculation about how we ourselves would react in the fictional situations characters face, causing readers to empathize with characters. Furthermore, the plot structure of fiction involves a surplus of cognitive activities like planning and imagining. All of these simultaneous cognitive activities lead to, as Miall and Kuiken state, “larger implications for the self”—which means that characters and plotlines transcend the experience of reading itself and simulate experiences that motivate readers towards self-change.

Oatley’s studies further this argument, his work demonstrates that engaging in fictional worlds improves our empathic abilities—that is, fiction reading was positively correlated with the ability to empathize with others. Fiction reading thus increases understanding of the necessary and appropriate social interactions of everyday life.

Ultimately, I believe Oatley and Miall’s work provides the psychological backdrop explaining how CLTL works: it offers disenfranchised readers the opportunity to enjoy and reflect on the emotional benefits of the reading experience, while also choosing to make more socially appropriate decisions in regarding their futures and their interactions with others.

In conclusion, I’d like to recognize an excellent new essay by CLTL facilitator, Dr Erin Battat, a postdoctoral fellow in Harvard’s American Studies program. Please leave comments or read there other posts I’ve written for the CLTL blog, Changing Lives Changing Minds:

Book Review: “Missing Sarah” by Maggie de Vries

Has the Torch Been Passed? A Review of the 2008 Annual Conference

A Different Light: Report from the 2009 Changing Lives Through Literature Conference

Starting and Maintaining a CLTL Juvenile Program: An Interview with Michael Habib

The following set of blog posts summarizes the work I have done with an organization called Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL). My first post described CLTL, next were two interviews with former CLTL student, Ken and Sheila. This fourth post, “Interview with Veronica,” discusses the importance of writing in the CLTL classroom and highlights the last of three interviews I conducted during a February trip to Boston.

Writing and CLTL

Writing is used in many ways in the Changing Lives Through Literature classroom. Some facilitators begin a class with writing, while others schedule writing periods in the middle or at the end. But, according to long-time CLTL facilitator Tamlin Neville, feedback is of central importance for CLTL writing assignments:

Students write more easily than they speak.  A quiet student may shed her reserve when she takes up her pen.  One who speaks distractedly may become a different person on the page, composed and able to organize his thoughts. . . . with writing, teachers enter into a one-to-one relationship with a student.  This is a place where a teacher can really listen and attend.

Professor Taylor Stoehr, Ken’s facilitator, has his students begin and end the class by writing for ten minutes on a question raised by the text.  Stoehr collects the work, adds his comments, and returns it, typed and printed, to the students. In this way, each student’s work is “published” once Stoehr distributes copies. At graduation, students receive a booklet of their own writing plus an anthology of class writings.

CLTL allows students to see reflect on their lives through novels, short stories, memoirs, poems, discussion, and writing. According to Stoehr:

These students have been told they are incompetent readers and writers, and this tends to make them so. But the incompetence is superficial in most cases. Their speech skills are usually more than adequate and often superb . . . A student’s own writing helps them objectify their experiences, and this, in turn, opens the way for change.

Veronica

The West Roxbury courthouse women’s CLTL program is specialized for women suffering from mental illness, drug addiction or both. Veronica, a single mother, was more reserved than my previous interview subjects, Ken and Sheila. Yet Veronica’s shyness is nothing compared to her crippling inability to communicate before taking CLTL. Veronica told me, “I would never talk to nobody before; I never got along with nobody.” She continued:

In front of the class everyone would get a chance to talk about their problems. I have never opened up to people like I did with Adita, the people In my class, and Leigh, the teacher. I got to learn a lot and become closer with people. Now I’m very open.

The opportunity to share her thoughts and feelings in reading/writing group environment changed Veronica’s ability to communicate with others. But she also told me about some other positive benefits of CLTL, specifically benefits for her daughter:

I never used to read before, now I read, I have a library card for the first time ever. I write more, read more, talk more. Reading keeps you out of trouble. I even read more to my daughter now. She loves animal books!

Volunteers like Adita Velasquez, Veronica’s probation officer, and Leigh, the Boston English professor who facilitates Veronica’s course, used a structured program of reading and writing to effect the positive changes for students in the West Roxbury program. But, as Veronica puts it, “we’re finished but we’re still not finished.” Each year, Leigh collects and publishes the best writings from the CLTL group. As in the men’s Dorchester programs, this is the first time Veronica have ever seen their writing in print.

In conclusion, I’d like to recognize an excellent new essay by CLTL facilitator, Dr Erin Battat, a postdoctoral fellow in Harvard’s American Studies program. My next post will align the insights I’ve gathered from my work with CLTL with several similar projects that seek to use humanities education to help impoverished or disenfranchised populations. Please leave comments or check other posts I’ve written for the CLTL blog, Changing Lives Changing Minds:

Book Review: “Missing Sarah” by Maggie de Vries

Has the Torch Been Passed? A Review of the 2008 Annual Conference

A Different Light: Report from the 2009 Changing Lives Through Literature Conference

Starting and Maintaining a CLTL Juvenile Program: An Interview with Michael Habib

This is the second post in my Great Minds series, a set of interviews with writers and thinkers who have inspired me. My academic work has introduced me to numerous professors doing fascinating work on literature, cognition, and social action. Lara Varpio is my second great mind.

Assistant Professor in a Faculty of Medicine is not the first place one would expect to find an English PhD graduate, but that is just where University of Waterloo Department of English Language and Literature PhD alumnus Dr. Lara Varpio finds herself at the University of Ottawa. Lara is a recent PhD graduate with a job, and that should be an inspiration for current and potential PhD students alike. I hope this interview with Lara provides as many valuable insights for my peers as it did for me.

A: How did you end up in the English PhD program at UW?

L: I should start by saying that the work I do now is fairly removed from standard department of English training. I am originally from Sudbury. I did my BA in English at MacMaster. I soon realized that I wouldn’t get too far with a Bachelor of Arts. The Master of Arts professional writing stream at UW interested me. But my work was not related to medicine at all.

A: Could you discuss your experiences as a grad student?

L: After completing my MA, I moved to Sweden for 3 years. I was a professor and I taught Business Communication. After one year, I was bored intellectually. So I contacted Catherine Schryer to find out about doing my PHD from abroad. I talked to the department chair at the time, Neil Randall, and, despite the fact that nobody had ever done a PhD from abroad, the department let me in. So I started my PhD while living in Sweden . . . I remember for a course with Professor Michael MacDonald, I submitted my class presentation on a CD-ROM. I found a video camera and one of my students in Sweden videotape my presentation. I completed two terms of coursework abroad. For the third term I came back to Canada for the residency requirement and then I realized how homesick I was. I completed my work in Canada.

I didn’t want to waste time on a dissertation that didn’t engage me. I approached Catherine Schryer and told her that I probably would not complete a PhD if I didn’t find something intellectually engaging. She introduced me to Lorelei Lingard, who introduced me to the medical education community at the Wilson Centre [for Research in Education] at the University of Toronto. We joke that I went there for a 3 day visit and stayed for 3 years. I brought my experience with Actor Network Theory and Rhetoric to the table, and I was the first PhD student that the Wilson Centre co-sponsored.

A: What advice do you have for current graduate students?

L: It’s so important to find a project that engages you. Aside from that, think outside the box when it comes to funding. So often English graduate students think about OGS and SSHRC. I was the first Arts student at Waterloo to get CIHR funding. So I got medicine to fund me and OGS as well. But I couldn’t get my SSHRC application past the department . . . Also, your supervisors are key. The importance of your supervisor to your later success cannot be underestimated. I am also a big believer in mentorship. You need people to offer guidance. I was lucky to find mentors in Catherine Schryer, Lorelei Lingard, and at the Wilson Centre. Academia is changing and you need mentors and you need people to help you walk down the new academic corridors. Also, complete your PhD studies with the end in mind. Decide on your dream job. It doesn’t have to be tenure-track in a department of English. There are different kinds of PhDs, some are theoretical, some are practical. You can make your PhD the tool you want it to be for where you want to go. You can teach or you can be a researcher.

There will be a dark night of the soul. If you’re doing graduate work, there will be a night where you feel like you can’t do it anymore. It’s important to take those experiences seriously, but it’s also important to look at those moments in the overall picture. Think of those moments in context. Sometimes you will want to give up, and maybe you should; but don’t be too hasty.

A: Do you have any career advice for current PhD candidates?

L: I have found my dream job. I can take all the theories and skills from my graduate work and apply them in a different context. Medical Education is my sandbox and my training in the Humanities is my shovel and pail. Every day I am excited to go to work. I have total control over what I do and how I do it . . . When it comes to finding a job, I can’t stress the importance of networking enough. A lot of jobs will never get posted, and you will never find them if you’re waiting for postings to appear online. I recommend PhD students go to conferences, especially if there is someone giving a talk who they admire. Prepare for the talk by thinking of one good question. One intelligent question—and you can underline intelligent. If you can ask that question, you can start a conversation. If you do it right, you should end up with their business card in you hand. I always did that and I still do. I find the people by attending their presentation, I ask an intelligent question, I ask about a recent article. Build connections with people you want to work with.

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of networking and the importance of being a good networker. You don’t want to be sucking up; you have to look like someone who is interesting and who is doing exciting work.

The following set of blog posts summarizes the work I have done with an organization called Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL). My first post described CLTL, next was an interview with former CLTL student, Ken. This third post, “Interview with Sheila,” highlights the unique interview I conducted while at Boston’s Dorchester Court House. In your opinion, could a similar to CLTL could succeed in Canada?

Sheila

The Dorchester Women’s Program classes are smaller, but, according to Judge Sydney Hanlon, a smaller group allows for a more intimate environment in which to discuss themes of violence, illness, responsibilities for children, and unthinkable tragedies (Trounstine and Waxler, 56). At the 2009 CLTL Annual Conference, Probation Officer Adita Velasquez would later share a similar sentiment:

In the CLTL classroom, I’m aware of what’s going on with each of these women, and I’m listening to what they tell us about those stories. And the same thing happens again and again: violence. The classroom is a special environment for them. We discuss are how they should handle it, what’s there to protect them, and how they see themselves.

At the same conference, Hanlon stated that she once sat in a CLTL classroom with eight women, all mothers. At some point in each of their lives, all of these mothers had witnessed shootings, and all of them had life insurance policies on their children. “Hearing something like that changes a judge: you don’t see people the same way again.”

Sheila and I also met at the Dorchester courthouse. Sheila is an amateur poet and told me she has not been able to put down Hemmingway since recently graduating from CLTL. Hemmingway is one of her “old favourites.” Sheila contrasted her early experiences in the CLTL classroom with the transition she saw in other students:

There was a lot of closed-minded girls that were in the class . . . there was some girls, the things that we were reading, the words they used, you know, especially like the books about slavery, you know how they used the old-time words. And how they would word it and the girls were like offended. But they learned and they changed and they became more open . . . in the class you could see that everyone became more open-minded.

Sheila is still close with one of the girls from the class, but also shared an interesting anecdote about a chance meeting on the subway:

But I do see a lot of them in passing and I do say hi and things like that. And one time I saw a girl on the train, and she was reading! I had to go up to her and tap her in order for her to put her head up. She had like a thick, thick book in her hand and she was reading.

Unlike Ken, Sheila discussed lasting bonds with her classmates, which is unsurprising considering the Dorchester women’s class is five times smaller than the men’s. Sheila’s anecdote on the train shows that CLTL students also form a lasting bonds with books.

Does it work?

Along with Vasquez, Ken and Sheila also expressed surprise at the effectiveness of the CLTL program, Ken told me, “[a] lot of people they did go into [CLTL] to get the 6 months off [probation]. . . But towards the middle of the class you just want to be there. At least for me, you just really want to be there.” A similar comment came from Sheila, “basically what I did [CLTL] for was to get the six months off [probation] . . . But I found myself liking it.” Although CLTL is for criminal offenders, CLTL creates students engaged in a unique and pedagogical approach to criminal justice.

Does it work? Changing Lives Through Literature was also the subject of a research study (Jarjoura and Krumholz 1998). This study compared a group of 32 former CLTL participants with a control group of 40 regular probationers. A follow-up analysis indicated that only 6 of the 32 men in the reading group (18.8%) were convicted of crimes after CLTL. In the control group, 18 of the 40 men (45%) had reoffended. CLTL graduates were three times less likely to reoffend.

My next post will summarize my interview with former CLTL participant, Veronica. Please leave comments or check other posts I’ve written for the CLTL blog, Changing Lives Changing Minds:

Book Review: “Missing Sarah” by Maggie de Vries

Has the Torch Been Passed? A Review of the 2008 Annual Conference

A Different Light: Report from the 2009 Changing Lives Through Literature Conference

Starting and Maintaining a CLTL Juvenile Program: An Interview with Michael Habib

The following set of blog posts summarizes the work I have done with an organization called Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL). This second post, “Interview with Ken,” highlights the unique interview I conducted while at Boston’s Dorchester Court House. I believe a program similar to CLTL could succeed in Canada, but it will require a great deal of lobbying and effort by committed individuals. Now that I am finished my Master of Arts degree, perhaps I will begin this process.

Ken

Built in Boston’s densely populated inner city, the Dorchester men’s CLTL program is by far the largest, graduating a cohort of 37 men last year and requiring a staff of eight, including two English professors (Taylor Stoehr and Bert Stern), three to four probation officers, a judge, and two former program participants. The class meets for ten weekly sessions of ninety minutes each and uses Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of an American Slave as a primary text. Ken is a graduate from that large cohort who promptly arrived to meet me at the Dorchester District Courthouse to cover for a last minute interview cancellation.

When asked about his experience in CLTL, Ken particularly appreciated the feedback he received on written assignments:

[CLTL] opened up my way of thinking a whole lot differently. I found myself writing about stuff that I wasn’t even thinking about. And the more I wrote, once I started writing I couldn’t stop. . . Taylor, when he used to give us comments, he said I got a knack for [writing]. Now I want to write my own autobiography one day . . . [Taylor] gave me a lot of input and he gave me some places where I can go if I want to go to school, you know? Like, who to contact for loans or whatever . . . after you graduate you get this booklet, when they read it, they was like, wow man you got some talent . . . [Taylor and Bert] knew I had a real talent in writing, and Taylor he really made me feel good, his comments . . . I felt real good about myself after that.

When asked whether or not CLTL changed his opinions of other people, Ken recalled being struck by a story the presiding judge told during a group session:

We had a judge there, and he made a movie, a documentary about his father. About how him and his father didn’t really get along, and his father was a just a provider and this and that, but there was no connection. And we talked about how a male child needs is his father; even though a girl needs her father too. So, we touched a lot of subjects like that. Which was good because like I said it opened up different avenues of my mind. You know what I’m saying? My brain. Where before I wouldn’t even think of something like that. I started writing you know and I enjoy it . . .

Aside from the interaction between the instructors and students, that he and his classmates mainly agreed to take CLTL to get six months taken off of their probation:

Some dudes told stories about how what his father did to him to make him do what he’s doing and how he was sleeping in abandoned buildings, and his alcoholism and things like that . . . A lot of people had a lot of different stories. And I think they felt the same way that I felt: that they didn’t realize that they was going to be talking about this stuff. You know what I’m saying? You know, like you going in and you’re like, I’m just going to read some books. But a lot of people opened up.

Ken’s statements reveal that, along with literature, writing, and the facilitators, interactions between class  participants are another important part of CLTL. Ken’s indication that “they felt the same way that I felt” indicates sentiments of empathy amongst the group.

My next post will summarize my interview with former CLTL participant, Sheila. Please leave comments or check other posts I’ve written for the CLTL blog, Changing Lives Changing Minds:

Book Review: “Missing Sarah” by Maggie de Vries

Has the Torch Been Passed? A Review of the 2008 Annual Conference

A Different Light: Report from the 2009 Changing Lives Through Literature Conference

Starting and Maintaining a CLTL Juvenile Program: An Interview with Michael Habib

The following set of blog posts summarizes the work I have done with an organization called Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL). This first post, “What is Changing Lives Through Literature?,” describes the tenets of CLTL based on notes I’ve taken from the past two CLTL annual conferences in Boston. The remaining four posts describe unique interviews I conducted while in Boston for the CLTL 2009 conference. Each interview is between myself and three former CLTL participants. I believe a program similar to CLTL could succeed in Canada, but it will require a great deal of lobbying and effort by committed individuals. Now that I am finished my Master of Arts degree, perhaps I will begin this process.

Changing Lives Through Literature

Ken, Sheila, and Veronica are a unique group of Literature students. Unsurprisingly their classes are held at the University of Massachusetts, in the town of Dartmouth, but perhaps surprisingly their enrolment began at Boston’s Dorchester and West Roxbury courthouses. These three individuals are criminal offenders engaged in a rehabilitative program called “Changing Lives Through Literature” (CLTL). This program is comprised of dozens of classes, taking place in a variety of locations throughout the United States. No two classes are the same—the curricula differ, the syllabi differ, the terms of graduation differ, and even subject matter differs. An example of the latter case would be in Texas where the focus is not on literature, but philosophy and politics.

For the past 15 years, CLTL participants, judges, probation officers, and facilitators have acted under the overarching belief that bringing great works of literature to criminal offenders may help them gain insight into their lives and behaviour, while learning that they are not alone with their problems. CLTL instructors are typically professors of English, teaching students whose presiding judge has offered CLTL in lieu of jail time or probation. Frequently a student’s judge and supervising probation officer will join the class. Judge Robert Kane, CLTL co-founder and Massachusetts Superior Court Justice, tacitly implies that many members of the criminal justice system frown upon CLTL’s grassroots approach to criminal justice:

“The court system is too fast moving and quick paced to really deal with individuals. Changing Lives Through Literature wants to slow things down and treat offenders like individuals, but our peers think we’re crazy. That’s what we’re up against and it’s damn hard.”

Ultimately, CLTL aims to create an environment a where professors, probation officers, judges, and offenders can discuss great works of literature as equals—for this reason the instructors are called facilitators.

For the past two years I have travelled from Waterloo, ON in Canada to Boston, MA in the United States to attend the Changing Lives Through Literature annual conference. This year provided an exciting opportunity to sit down with the three aforementioned CLTL graduates. During these one-to-one interviews, the semi-structured interview protocol asked four questions:

1. Could you please describe your experience with the program?

2. Could you share your experience with the program?

3. Do you think of people differently after taking the program?

4. Do you think of yourself differently after taking the program?

Following these interviews, I also had the opportunity to meet and discuss CLTL with two probation officers: Pam Pierce and Adita Velasquez. The following is a qualitative analysis of this overall these interviews.

Ken, Sheila, and Veronica were each enrolled in different classes, and it is important to first note some of the similarities and differences between how different CLTL classes are run. CLTL programs require the support of a presiding judge who can dictate the terms and sanctions of a criminal offender’s probation. In a way, CLTL’s pedagogical approach to criminal justice is “crazy,” insofar as that indicates a dramatic shift from modern jurisprudence. The implementation of a CLTL program is an elaborate process requiring, at least, one judge, one probation officer, one instructor capable of facilitating a post-secondary level discussion of literature, and a group of students whose position within the legal system places them on probation and with a willingness to engage the program.

While a judge decides the implementation of each CLTL program, each class is organized by one or more probation officers. Adita Velasquez, the West Roxbury probation officer who arranged my interview with Veronica, was ordered by her presiding to begin a CLTL program—mainly because of her Master’s degree in psychology with a specialization in bilingual counseling. “I never in a million years thought a program like this would work” recounts Velasquez:

“I primarily deal with probationers who suffer from mental disease and drug addiction. My judge told me about this Changing Lives Through Literature program and he said another judge was pressuring him to start a similar program in West Roxbury. So he ordered me to do it. I thought he was crazy.”

Judges require probation officers, like Adita, to refer criminal offenders for the program, and an instructor to arrange reading materials, syllabi, writing assignments, and a meeting space. CLTL classes are held on a university campus, and this is often the first time students have entered a university classroom. Judges are encouraged to participate in class, but there is no dictum forcing them to do so. Group discussions are a fundamental part of the CLTL classroom; every student must speak, and every student must complete written assignments that will be shared during the discussions. Instructors type up the students’ writing, provide brief feedback, and return the pieces to their authors. As a graduation token, selections from each graduating student’s writing is collected into a printed volume. Finally, while attempts at mixed-gender classes have been attempted in the past, classes are typically same-sex.

My next post will summarize my interview with former CLTL participant, Ken. Please leave comments or check other posts I’ve written for the CLTL blog, Changing Lives Changing Minds:

Book Review: “Missing Sarah” by Maggie de Vries

Has the Torch Been Passed? A Review of the 2008 Annual Conference

A Different Light: Report from the 2009 Changing Lives Through Literature Conference

Starting and Maintaining a CLTL Juvenile Program: An Interview with Michael Habib

This is the first post in my Great Minds series, a set of interviews with writers who have inspired me. My academic work has introduced me to numerous professors doing fascinating work on literature, cognition, and social action. University of Connecticut English professor, Patrick Hogan, will be my first great mind.

I greatly admire Professor Hogan’s work, his expertise in comparative literature—the study of literature and art from across world cultures—allows him to present evidence of cross-cultural similarities in how humans use arts. Specifically, Dr Hogan is most well known for his work on literary universals, the similarities across all world cultures on the structure and function of narrative and poetic art. His excellent book on this subject is The Mind and Its Stories (2003).

Before entering his PhD studies, Dr Hogan studied under Marshall McLuhan, Northrop Frye, Walter Ong, Jim McCawley, Donald Davidson, and Paul Ricoeur. After completing his MA, and at the suggestion of Walter Ong, Dr Hogan applied to the doctoral program in English at SUNY/Buffalo, primarily because of Norm Holland’s center for the psychological study of the arts. The majority of his ‘literary’ studies there continued to be on philosophical and psychological topics.

Professor Hogan is a prolific author, publishing books and articles on cognitive science, post-colonial literature, and literary theory. He was also kind enough to allow me to publish this interview on his writing habits, his work on Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and his work on literary universals.

1. How are you such a prolific writer? What is your writing schedule?

I don’t really have a schedule for writing. I’m not one of those people who writes every morning from 7 to 10 or something. I mostly write an article or a chapter when I feel ready to do so . . .

I am interested in a wide range of academic topics and, in keeping with that, I am usually working on many things at once—things that are different, but related. For example, over the next few days I have to revise an essay on grief in Hamlet, finish drafting something on guilt (by the way, I do sometimes write on cheerier topics than guilt and grief!), prepare for my class on Medieval Arabic literary theory, respond to your questions, and prepare for a seminar where participants will be discussing something I wrote on nationalism and war. (They have sent me an intimidating 3-page, single-spaced list of questions!) Suppose I only had to revise the grief essay. I simply didn’t feel like doing that now. If I had nothing else to do, I would have piddled around, putting off the revision. Since I have a range of things to do, I was able to choose something that I felt like doing.

On the writing itself, I’m pretty boring as a writer. I am always trying to read things on topics of interest to me. They usually overlap with several things I am working on (e.g., a book on collective guilt might relate to the guilt essay and the war/nationalism chapter). I take notes on what I am going to write about, usually for months beforehand. I then gather the notes, make an outline, and largely follow the outline—though, of course, the argument expands greatly during actual composition. I usually do a lot of focused secondary research after writing a first draft. I incorporate the research, then re-read and revise the essay one or two times on the computer, then several times in print-outs.

2. In my opinion, you’ve written the best analysis of Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Can you tell me about composing that piece? How long did it take? Was it frustrating dealing with such a complex text?

I’m very pleased that you know that article. People who know my cognitive work tend not to know my postcolonial work (and neither tend to know my political writings), though they are interrelated.

Well, here’s a sort of long version. I don’t really have any training in any literary period. I was hired at the University of Connecticut to teach literary theory. But that is only two courses a year (at most). So they had to have me teach something else. I had done some work on Irish literature, mostly Joyce, so they put me in the Modern British course. I soon noticed that postcolonial authors didn’t fit anywhere in our curriculum. I began teaching them in Modern British, eventually creating new undergraduate and graduate courses in “world literature in English.” (I had to teach myself a slew of new authors anyway, so why not African and Indian authors, who interested me more anyway?) I somewhat foolishly began teaching Midnight’s Children in those courses. I say “somewhat foolishly” because it is a complex book, which means that you either spend a lot of time on it in class or you cover it only in a cursory way.

Anyway, having taught the book several times, I knew it pretty well. I had also read some criticism about the work and largely felt that criticism to be misguided. You may remember my analysis of Gandhi’s death happening at the wrong time in Rushdie’s novel. The usual interpretation of this, which questioned the objectivity of historical events, seemed to me to miss the point entirely. This is just one example of the problems I felt were present in that body of criticism. This led me to wish to write on Rushdie’s book, if only to respond to some standard views that I felt really were not helpful to people trying to understand the novel.

My wife is Kashmiri and I had been to Kashmir with her before the revolution began. For this reason, I had a particular interest in the Kashmir section. When working on postcolonial literature, I usually do a fair amount of scholarly research on culture and history before I begin writing. Given the fairly close historical emplotment of Rushdie’s novel, I knew that the Kashmir section would almost certainly be tightly interrelated with Kashmiri history. So I began reading about Kashmiri history. I was already partially familiar with the Islamic (specifically Qur’anic) backgrounds, but I checked those as well. As sometimes happens, I was (I believe) fortunate in what I found.

3. What has the response to your work on Literary Universals been like? What do your critics have to say?

My work on literary universals is by far the best known of anything I have done. It is what has led to invitations to write articles in various outlets and to speak in many places over the past several years. The idea excites people, and there have been some interesting and valuable developments of the idea (e.g., in the special issue of Consciousness, Literature, and the Arts 6.2 [August 2005]). But I must say that, when I go to give talks, I find that almost no one has any concrete idea of what I have said about literary universals, other than the actual person who invited me. When I submit articles or books, referees routinely ask me to explain and often ask me to defend the idea. This gives rise to a logistical problem of how to get the relevant information into the new work while still leaving room for whatever is new in that work.

But I don’t at all want to complain. I’m grateful that the work has gotten any attention at all. Moreover, there has been an enormous change from, say, ten years ago. When I first started submitting The Mind and Its Stories to presses, they wouldn’t even look at it. I remember putting the manuscript in the mail one Thursday and getting it back the following Tuesday. From what I could tell, the editor at the press simply saw the word “universals” in the title and sent it back. Indeed, when it was finally accepted, it was done in a psychology series, not a literary series. (An exception to this general literary aversion to universals was Bill Germano at Routledge, who commissioned Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts.)

For the most part, prominent mainstream literary theorists have not dealt with the issue of specific narrative universals. However, there is far more openness to the idea of universals, not only among editors at presses, but among mainstream theorists—in part because of some recent work by Judith Butler (very different from mine, of course, though we share some criticisms of identity politics).

I would say that the most hostility to my work has probably come, not from social constructionists (as one might  expect), but from critics drawing on Evolutionary Psychology (EP). Of course, some have been very supportive of my work. But the problem is that I have been very critical of the EP program. My contention about narrative universals is that they are not innate per se. Rather, only proto-emotion systems are innate as such. These emotion systems tend to develop in similar ways due to similar physical and caregiving environments. The caregiving environment is only in part the result of genetic predispositions. It also results from convergent development through group dynamics. Moreover, narrative structures themselves undoubtedly stabilize after periods of innovation, again with convergent results. Put differently, my contention is that there is only very limited and somewhat distant genetic determination of narrative universals. To a great extent, universals result from historical and cultural developments. However, my contention is that such historical and cultural developments may be convergent rather than divergent in some cases—perhaps even in many cases.

Finally, unlike most EP critics, I see literature as circulating a great deal of dominant ideology. So, I do not see literature as evidence for, say, gender differences. Insofar as research apparently reveals a consistent pattern of such differences in literary representations, my hypothesis would be that this shows converging patterns in patriarchal ideology, not some truth about men and women. Moreover, even apparent patterns of this sort may reflect the ideological orientations of the researchers (including coders who have been trained to produce matching results) more than unequivocal patterns in the texts themselves.

Probably one of the most rewarding experiences of my life has been my experience as a volunteer for the Extra-Judicial Youth Measures and Sanctions Program form the John Howard Society of Kitchener/Waterloo. Founded on the belief that everyone deserves second chances, the John Howard Society provides counselling, support, and opportunities for people who have broken the law. In my role, I represent the Kitchener/Waterloo community and discuss the consequences and implications of crime with young offenders who have been diverted by the courts—this means that a judge or the police feel the offender deserves the opportunity to perform services in lieu of criminal charges.

Every two weeks, once around 7:00 and again around 8:00, I meet with a young offender and their parent or guardian. These young offenders have been charged with a variety of crimes, typically Theft Under $5000, Assault, or Possession of a Controlled Substance (almost always marijuana). Over the past year, I estimate I’ve met with 40 youth. But tonight, I met a really special young person. I can’t tell you anything about this individual. I can’t tell you their age, gender, appearance, or family background. That’s all confidential. What I can tell you is that this young person changed my life.

It’s funny how the world works: there are haves and there are have-nots. But I think it’s more important to focus on how the haves and have-nots behave in society. Tonight I realized how amazing it is that some people are born with every opportunity presented to them, and they’ll never amount to anything; others are born ‘doomed from the womb,’ but go on to positively change many lives.

So this brings me back to central point of this post: do you volunteer? If you don’t, I really recommend that you do. Sure, it’s kind of a pain to ‘donate’ your time when you have a million other things to do. You work hard, study hard, raise your kids, etc. The last thing you want to do at the end of the day is offer your time to someone for free. Or maybe you’ve been meaning to volunteer for a while but haven’t gotten around to it yet?

I know the feeling: before every trip the John Howard Society, I can think of ten reasons to cancel. But you want to know what keeps me going? The feeling I get when I leave. It’s not relief, like when you finish writing an exam. It’s the feeling that I made a difference in someone’s life; or, like today, the feeling that someone made a difference in mine.

In my opinion, volunteering is the most important civic service an individual can offer their community, even more important than voting. So if you know a volunteer, shake their hand; and if you’re not a volunteer, think about it.

I think one of the most beautifully rendered, extended allegories of 2008 was Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine. Beginning with an interesting study of the relation between early psychological shock therapy experiments conducted by Ewen Cameron, whose strategy for correcting madness theorized memory erasure and psychic rebuilding, Klein outlines how the CIA and capitalist pundits found Cameron’s work particularly useful. Funded by the CIA, Cameron headed Project MKUltra, a project aimed at understanding and developing strategies for mind-control:

Cameron believed that by inflicting an array of shocks to the human brain, he could unmake and erase faulty minds, then rebuild new personalities on that ever-elusive clean slate. (31-2)

Klein uses the tenants of MKUltra as an extended conceit for the deliberate deployment of corporatist, capitalist economic reforms across the world from the 60’s to the present. Klein’s analysis follows the spread of professors from Milton Freidman’s ‘Chicago School’ of economics across the world’s states, outlining the metaphorical relation between Cameron and Freidman that sets up the rest of the book:

Freidman’s mission, like Cameron’s [shock therapy research], rested on a dream of reaching back to a state of ‘natural’ health, when all was in balance, before human interference created distorting patterns. Where Cameron dreamed of returning the human mind to that pristine state, Freidman dreamed of de-patterning societies, of returning them to a state of pure capitalism, cleansed of all interruptions—government regulations, trade barriers and entrenched interests. Also like Cameron, Freidman believed that when the economy is highly distorcted, the only way to reach that pre-lapsarian state was to deliberately inflict painful shocks[.] (57)

While Cameron’s experiments required only a laboratory and patients on which to experiment; drastic means of crisis were required if entire nations were to be ‘shocked’ into new ideologies. “Like a prison interrogator,” Klien writes, globalizing agencies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) used the “pain” of “crisis” to reduce “countries to total compliance” (334). Klein’s entire book, one of the best critical political histories of the world ever written, shows how research on the human mind broadly applies to research on society—what can work on one mind can also work on many; a fascinating perspective on the metaphor of the ‘body politic’.

Klein, like all great writers, is a master of the art of the metaphor. I share this particularly striking passage, about the deliberately instigated Asian economic crises of the late 90’s (a prime example of the dark side of globalizing “stabilization programs”), as an example of her beautiful style and an invitation to read this important book:

The truth is that Asia’s crisis is still not over, a decade later. When 24 million people lose their jobs in a span of two years, a new desperation takes root that no culture can easily absorb. It expresses itself in different forms across the region, from a significant rise in religious extremism in Indonesia and Thailand to the explosive growth of the child sex trade

Employment rates have still not reached pre-1997 levels in Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Korea. And it’s not just that workers who lost their jobs during the crisis never got them back. The layoffs have continued, with new foreign owners demanding ever-higher profits for their investments. The suicides have also continued: in South Korea, suicide is now the fourth most common cause of death, more than double the pre-crisis rate, with thirty-eight people taking their own lives every day.

That is the untold story of the policies that the IMF calls ‘stabilization programs,’ as if countries were ships being tossed around on the market’s high seas. They do, eventually, stabilize, but that new equilibrium is achieved by throwing millions of people overboard: public sector workers, small-business owners, subsistence farmers, trade unionists. The ugly secret of ‘stabilization’ is that the vast majority never climb back aboard. They end up in slums, now home to 1 billion people; they end up in brothels or in cargo ship containers. They are the disinherited, those described by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke as “ones to whom neither the past nor the future belongs.’ (332-3)

As promised, this is the last of my three part series on metaphors (sorry for the delay, Amy). I’m going to discuss why metaphors are becoming one of the most provocative new topics in the field of cognitive science—the study of thought and intelligence. You’ll recall in this series’ initial post that I discussed dead metaphors like fishing for a compliment or planting seeds of doubt. After all, there is nothing inherently seed-like about doubt, nor does seeking a compliment resemble the sport of fishing. Yet these terms became parts of our daily language because at some point in the past some group of speakers related seeds and fishing to doubt and seeking compliments. But, as the saying goes, this is just semantics. Or is it?

Metaphors operate at much deeper level in human language than just leaving behind dead metaphors. In fact, research on metaphors is changing the way language scholars envision how our minds process language. Take, for example, the concept of cognitive metaphors, originally developed by George Lakoff and Mark Turner. The theory behind cognitive metaphors proposes that instead of thinking of language as a massive dictionary of words and meanings contained in our brains, human language actually relates quite closely to the way our minds situate our bodies in time and space.

For example, think about what you’re doing right now. Likely sitting in a chair, reading this post from a computer screen. Your mind has a 3-D model of the room you are situated in; you know approximately how far you are from the walls and ceiling; you know where the room is in relation to the rest of the building; you know that if you pick up a pen from the desk, lift it over your head, and drop it, that the pen will fall; you also likely know about the weather outside and how that will affect your plans later in the day. You’re not aware that your brain is doing this, but as you read this paragraph it probably conjured a few mental images—called image schemas.

Whether or not you’re aware of it, your mind is constantly creating image schemas that orient you as you do something seemingly simple, like looking across the room, or something seemingly complex, like skating backwards. Cognitive linguists like Lakoff and Turner argue that this process of image schemas is also fundamental to human language. They argue that perception of space and time has built a model of time and space into language as well, and not just English, every language.

But we’ll stick to English. Take the following example from Metaphors We Live By: “Things are looking up. We hit a peak last year, but it’s been downhill ever since. Things are at an all-time low. He does high-quality work.” According to cognitive linguists, these metaphors all contain an inherent cognitive metaphor: GOOD IS UP; BAD IS DOWN. Similarly, this cognitive metaphor explains phrases like on top of the world, down and out, top notch, and under the weather. These phrases all use words of spatial orientation, called prepositions, to connect concepts and emotions to space and time.

Metaphors have always been considered frilly language, just decoration to bring extra attention to a message—as I mentioned in my previous post on metaphors in marketing. But as it turns out, there is something much deeper and fundamental about metaphors:rather than decorating the meaning of a message, metaphors are required for language to exist in the first place. As a developing language scholar, I find this possibility quite exciting.