Literature

Interdisciplinary Book Panel Discussions

In this lesson, students integrate additional texts with course readings and themes. Each student reads one of a select number of additional texts picked by the professor, write a short paper integrating the additional text with course materials, and then present these connections to the class as part of a panel discussion with the other students who read that specific additional text. This lesson is ideal for adding more interdisicplinarity to upper-level courses, ideally towards the end of the semester.

Lesson Plan

Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader: Holocaust, Justice, and Guilt in Literature

Students in this unit analyze the novel The Reader for its standpoints on human rights and the concept of coming to terms with the past. They reflect on the concept of guilt and justice after human rights violations/crimes against humanity and relate the German past to a more personal present.

Lesson Plan