“The Scarlet Letter had not done its office”

Zoom Meeting: September 6

Zoom Link posted: September 5

Surprise post: the week of the 31st (still TBD)

Book Pairing: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny by Laura Bates

When I teach The Scarlet Letter I usually focus on tone as the controlling device to encourage students to recognize the very human-ness of the story, even as the language and time period may feel distant. The connection through tone and emotion — and since it’s an all-girls’ school, the feeling of persecution — tends to work well, but I also throw in one more element: music.

The primary assignment is called “Almost Synesthesia” and I assign each student a chapter to read and lead the class through. As part of that assignment, they have to choose a song to share with the class that they can argue mirrors the tone of the chapter. This does a couple of things — students have to be able to articulate the tone of both the chapter and song and then inherently they have to share something of themselves in a really organic way, because their song choice is (usually) indicative of their taste in music. They tend to want to showcase their favorite songs or bands and because music is such a badge of individuality and identity, they become personally invested in the text. It gets very emo and it’s awesome. (They also write an essay on this topic before they lead, so they’re very well prepared by that point.)

And it’s a secret pairing.

Reading The Scarlet Letter this month through the lens of The New Age of Sexism has done the same for me. I’ve probably read The Scarlet Letter 20 times but this time I read it through the filter of violence and disgust Bates lays out and it’s both devastating and illuminating.

Last week:

Next Week: SURPRISE

“The scarlet letter had not done its office.”