‘Citizen’: English Department launches major effort to teach a single book
Claudia Rankine
Sheri Reynolds
By David Simpson
The book arrived in 2014, a work of art with an urgent message.
Claudia Rankine's "Citizen: An American Lyric" laid bare the casual, everyday racism encountered by people of color in this country — small, often unthinking acts that can cut to the bone. "Citizen" went on to win the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.
"I don't believe it's possible to read 'Citizen' and not be changed by it," says Sheri Reynolds, who chairs Old Dominion University's Department of English.
Last year, Reynolds had a brainstorm. The book had already been chosen as the subject of the 2019 NEA Big Read: Hampton Roads and author Rankine had just been announced as the February 21 speaker in the current President's Lecture Series.
Reynolds wondered: "How many students can we share this book with before she arrives?"
She didn't know, but told herself, "Let's do this."
And so this semester, through the efforts of Reynolds and others, nearly 40 English Department faculty members are teaching the book to more than 2,000 students.
"Citizen" is a blend of prose poems, essays, scripts, and images. The book's depiction of what have been termed "microaggressions" is likely to be eye-opening for people who have not faced such indignities.
Here's a passage:
Because of your elite status from a year's worth of travel, you have already settled into your window seat on United Airlines, when the girl and her mother arrive at your row. The girl, looking over at you, tells her mother, these are our seats, but this is not what I expected. The mother's response is barely audible—I see, she says, I'll sit in the middle.
And another:
At the front door the bell is a small round disc that you press firmly. When the door finally opens, the woman standing there yells, at the top of her lungs, Get away from my house! What are you doing in my yard?
Rankine, a professor of poetry at Yale, also meditates on Hurricane Katrina, tennis champion Serena Williams, slain high school student Trayvon Martin, and Zinedine Zidane, the soccer player who flattened an opponent with a head butt in response to a taunt at the 2006 World Cup Final.
Reynolds says the work instilled in her a new kind of empathy.
"The book," she says, "is a reflection of what we don't often look at, what we try to hide or diminish in our world today — ongoing, relentless racism and structural racism that we may not even be aware of. So we have to look and we have to talk about it."
But how would "Citizen" be taught? Where would the books come from? And how would faculty handle discussions likely to be uncomfortable?
After gauging faculty interest, Reynolds approached Vice Provost Brian Payne and asked if the Office of Academic Affairs had funds that could be used to buy books. She came away with a commitment for the purchase of 2,000 copies.
She next engaged Annette Finley-Croswhite, director of the Center for Faculty Development, to come up with ideas about how to prepare faculty and reach students.
Andy Casiello, associate vice president for Distance Learning, joined the effort and identified funds to make digital copies of "Citizen" available for online students. In addition, Janice Underwood, director of Diversity Initiatives with the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity, brought her expertise to the undertaking.
"I'm so grateful to work in a place where this can happen," Reynolds says, "where our administration recognizes how important it is for us to teach a book like 'Citizen.'"
Reynolds, Finley-Croswhite, Underwood, and Center for Faculty Development Assistant Director Joyce Armstrong then crafted fall 2018 workshops and follow-up brown bags for English faculty so they would be ready to teach Rankine's book in the spring and better navigate difficult situations that could arise.
At the workshops, faculty members Alison Reed, Kelly Morse, Tim Seibles, Luisa Igloria, and Margaret Konkol shared their insights about the book, and Underwood offered strategies for discussing potentially divisive topics such as bias and unconscious bias. Finley-Croswhite worked with Arthur Beltran in the Center for Learning and Teaching to establish a website and blog where resources could be housed and faculty could engage in online discussions.
"This type of integrated initiative is exactly what ODU is all about," Underwood says. One workshop participant commented, "We need more professional development opportunities like this."
Reynolds knows some students will resist the book and some may be disturbed by the content, but she believes ODU students can handle hard topics.
Nevertheless, the organizers have created teams of faculty members whom professors may consult if they run into complications.
Now 38 faculty members in English are teaching "Citizen," mostly in general education sections of composition and literature classes, but in upper-level courses, too.
Beyond the discussions she hopes the book sparks, Reynolds says she wants students to use Rankine's work as an inspiration for their own writing, singing, filmmaking, dancing, or art making.
"I envision a lot of fantastic writing and creativity coming out of it," she says.
She also has a vision for how the book could affect campus culture.
"I'm really excited," she says, "thinking of all these students who will be discussing her work not only in their classes, but when they're standing in line in Webb Center to get lunch, when they're sitting in the lounge area in their dorms, when they're waiting for a basketball game to start, when they're walking back and forth to classes and see other students with copies of this book in hand."
While in Norfolk in February, Rankine will meet with students in small groups as part of an initiative co-sponsored by the NEA Big Read: Hampton Roads and the President's Task Force on Inclusive Excellence.
Finley-Croswhite is pleased with the groundwork that has been laid:
"All of the preparation that has gone into familiarizing our faculty and students with Rankine's work before her visit in February should make for a well-informed audience for the President's Lecture and a stimulating academic engagement that will carry on long after Rankine has returned to Yale."
