Remember when a general curriculum American Lit class consisted of assigned readings by dead authors? Did dead writers spur a disconnect between the student, who was probably not an English major, and the work they were trying to interpret? In order to combat the idea that worthy literature was only created in a time other than our own Andrew Smith, an Instructor of English at Tennessee Technologi
cal University, created a course syllabus that focused solely on contemporary authors.
“In literature courses, we love to profess that prose is a living thing, that great works and great words live forever. But in practicing this proposition, we tend to teach the words written by dead writers,” Smith said. “But what about the living writer, the working writer, our contemporaries who today publish and teach and give readings? For 2010, I decided to teach a 21st century American lit course in our general education core. We had one criteria: the writers had to be living and working.”
Blake Marlow, a student in Smith's American Literature class in Spring 2010 confessed, "when I first signed up for the class, I had the image in my head of American literature being dry and boring talking about writers from hundreds of years ago. Instead of this I was greeted with the concept of studying living writers. By studying living writers as opposed to dead ones, I felt that the material was slightly more accessible and approachable because the writers were living." Sarah Raley, another former student, proclaimed, "There are so many talented living writers, and they seem to be neglected due to the fact that Literature courses only teach about old school stuff." In Smith's fall semester course, two of the writers studied in class, David Lazar, Anne Waldman, visited campus to read their pieces and lead writing workshops. Now, selected student works from both the fall and spring semesters are being compiled for an anthology called Breathing Antecedent: Messages from the Living Writers Project.
