Dear Elaine Showalter, You made me feel guilty of what I was not as a teacher !
If I can still take Aristotle seriously for his “well begun is half done” precept, I don’t have to read anything more for the next six months but to reflect on my New Year pick Teaching Literature by Elaine Showalter. A New Year eve with the words of a brilliant teacher and a few days we hanged around were life enhancing. I know her from my BA final year. She took us the other day to the wilderness. And now to the labyrinthine world of teaching and teaching literature in higher education in particular. She penned it drawing on her 40 years of teaching around the world and we get it in 176 pages. As I finished reading the book, I felt I should have read it the day I somewhat answered the question: What I want to do with my life?. If I had by any chance, me and my teaching would never have been the same. I think many of my friends read it years back for I read some of them quote her often. Four years ago, one of my close friends joined a university as an assistant profess