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Judith Oster
Professor
American Literature, Cross-Cutural Studies, the Jewish Novel, Poetry |
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American literature, poetry, cross-cultural literature, composition, English as a second language (ESL) – these have been my major research and teaching interests. What such seemingly varied fields have in common, I began to realize, is an intense interest in language – how we read those words on the page; how black spots and squiggles on white paper can have such power to move us; what gets lost in translation, whether between languages or between words that may seem to mean the same thing; how it is that the same phrase or poem can be interpreted differently by different readers or readings (and the limits of interpretive possibilities). I have learned to ask myself and my students whether discussing a poem by T.S. Eliot is really so different from (or so much more difficult than) discussing why a dictionary definition of a word a non-native speaker is using is just not working in a particular context. I have taught language as language, and language as poetry, and found that the analyses involved have much in common.
Both in teaching literature and in writing about it, I have been very interested in theories of reader-response and interpretation. This is the theoretical approach I took for my book, Toward Robert Frost: The Reader and the Poet, and has become part of my teaching methodology – eliciting students’ responses to what we are reading.
My first book (arising from my work with teaching composition to our international and immigrant students) was a textbook, From Reading to Writing, which began when I was collecting materials and designing methods for our ESL students. This remained an important part of my task as Director of Composition and the Writing Center – a position I held for many years, and proved useful very recently in designing the ESL component of SAGES. My work with international students over the years was at least as educational for me as for my students – like a cheap trip around the world. In addition to making me pay closer and closer attention to how language works, it increased my interest in other cultures, and the importance of “culture” in its many ramifications. It also led me to participate in conferences and seminars abroad: China, Malaysia, Israel, Greece, Spain, and France.
It was when I piloted the course The Immigrant Experience in American Literature that my love of literature came together with my interest in ESL and other cultures, as well as my experience with students going through such adjustments. It was also the most exciting classroom experience I had ever had, one which yielded some of the best writing ever given me by my students. This experience inspired my next book: Crossing Cultures: Creating Identity in Chinese and Jewish American Literature. Studying these narratives of becoming and between-ness led me to theories of autobiographical writing, one of my foci, and is the direction I am taking next: Jewish American life-writing, especially that dealing with fathers and sons.
I am, incidentally, not only a member of this university’s faculty, but one of its products. I earned my AB, MA and Ph.D degrees here, though at widely different times, and am proud of a place where I have had such rich experiences on both sides of the desk.
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