Resilience in the Humanities Classroom

This roundtable invites diverse ways of fostering and thinking about resilience in the humanities classroom. Resilience is associated with perseverance, stamina, and the ability to learn from failures and recover from losses, qualities that have become indispensable in the aftermath of a global pandemic. These qualities are in short supply in humanities classrooms, with many students reluctant or inadequately prepared to engage with a rigorous liberal arts curriculum. Such students may still be suffering from pandemic-related stresses or traumas, or they may have been demotivated by the isolation of remote learning. Moreover, the two-tiered structure of most universities, with its overreliance on contingent labor and underfunding of mental health services, has done little to bolster our morale and everything to compound our battle fatigue. Given these material challenges, why do we persevere in our disciplines and how do we – or should we—encourage our students to do so? How can the humanities help build or rethink resilience in this age of postpandemic precarity, even as their survival is continually threatened by austerity politics and the Walmartification of higher ed?

I invite scholars from different disciplines and with diverse views to contribute to this topic. Papers can address one or more of the following:

• Teaching practices that foster a growth mindset among students
• Pedagogical strategies that encourage self-directed learning
• Curricular materials that focus on resilience (eg, a novel or a historical period that lends itself to thinking about resilience)
• Trauma-informed and/or culturally responsive disciplinary approaches 
• Rethinking resilience in an age of austerity
• Disciplinary-specific methods of building resilience

NOTE: To have your paper accepted, you will need to submit it through the NeMLA website. You can submit your abstract here:  https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/20023