Taking the Hun

I just love a good lecture! I love the buzz in the air as crowds file into theatre-style seats. I love pull-down chalkboards and electric podiums that rise and lower at the press of a button. I love the projection booths and electronic screens. I love the hushed whispers of early comers consulting each other about assigned readings and Scantron tests. I even love the hollow, amplified banging of the double doors at the top of the lecture hall; after all, something weird and wonderful might walk through them at any time.

Most of all, I love the distance between the lecturer and audience, the lecturer structuring her daily dose of truth and putting it up for grabs. That daily nugget may be terrible or terrific but it's out there, the whole of it, to be poked and prodded, affirmed or challenged, without much risk to the audience. This lack of risk can be as much of a gift as a curse to students, especially when it comes to reading literature, and especially when it comes to first reads of a work of literature.

In academia, we usually assume that small seminar-style classes offer more opportunity for building empathy and encouraging students to widen their perspectives. Seminar teachers may find that, if called to the podium, quite a few of their pedagogical devices can, with just a little imagination, prove useful in the lecture hall. The pedagogical scene of the larger classroom also offers opportunity to build a different kind of empathy, an empathy rooted in the act of reading.