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This post is part of a blog series, ‘Adventures in the New Humanities,’ by Judy Kutulas, the Boldt Family Distinguished Teaching Chair in the Humanities.

Associate Professor of Practice in English Kaethe Schwehn’s English 373 course — Advanced Creative Nonfiction — had me with five words posted on the windows between Buntrock Commons and Rolvaag Memorial Library.

“An autobiography,” they read, “the oldest sister.”

There I was, morning coffee in hand, undoubtedly rushing somewhere or another, but I was stopped in my tracks. Those few words connected me to whoever wrote them. I too was the oldest sister. First a flood of big-sister memories came rushing back. Then I pondered how being a big sister might be different across time and space. Finally, I marveled at how something so brief had the power to evoke so much. 

My reaction, it turns out, was the point of a class assignment that resulted in the student-created Micro-Memoir Creation Station in the Buntrock Crossroads on Thursday, May 9, during Community Time. It was a way for the class, advanced writers all, to practice what Kaethe calls “literary citizenship” by creating a literary community. I knew instantly that I had to find out more about something with the power to make me think hard before I was fully caffeinated. So here it is, my first summer adventure in the new humanities — one I experienced, but did not create. One I absolutely love. 

If you consider college writing from a student’s perspective, you completely understand the need for a literary community. Writing’s assigned; it’s evaluated. Because it’s practiced “across the curriculum,” it’s uncoordinated, which probably feels whimsical a lot of the time. It’s a slow, recursive practice in a fast-moving world. Thus, it often causes frustration rather than satisfaction, true of the assigners and the evaluators as well. I cringe every time I see students writing while distracted, in headphones, on their phones, in the Cage — but they write that way for the same reason so many of us write in coffee houses: writing is isolating. Kaethe’s students were supposed to counter those feelings of detachment and alienation by constructing a community and finding a way to make writing, at least briefly, a shared experience.

The nine members of English 373 began their semester by reading Beth Ann Fennelly’s Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, brief reflections or memories, often from the “margins” of Fennelly’s life, that, together, reveal themes or truths about her experiences. Each member of the class then wrote a series of eight to 10 linked micro-memoirs, that, like Fennelly’s book, needed to cohere in some way. Kaethe thought it a useful opening exercise, relatively “low risk” both in terms of writing and being critiqued. The “literary citizenship” assignment followed at some point later in the semester. Groups of students were to pick a community to work with — Kaethe imagined school children or artists — and to design and stage some sort of communal activity around writing. Her class, though, remembered the Micro-Memoir example, didn’t break up into smaller groups, and decided if anybody needed literary healing, it was Oles. 

Kaethe admits that she had initial doubts about nine people working together; however, they proved to be a very functional collaborative group, which she attributes to experience with group work. Once the class decided the who and the what of their citizenship activity, they next had to attend to the more prosaic details of how, when, and where this would all happen, articulating those details to Kaethe using a sort of grant-writing format. Finally, it all had to come together as an event. 

Some of what followed didn’t actually involve writing. It was reserving rooms, arranging for tables, ordering a sound system — the crucial stuff that can try your patience, especially when you have to figure out how to fix something that went wrong, like your food order. More challenging was imagining how to engage the larger community. You can’t just announce a Micro-Memoir Creation Station and have passersby think to themselves, “Instead of getting a latte, I think I’ll write about my puberty.”

So, the students had to consider how to turn mere passersby into willing writers. They gave the event a fun, hashtag-worthy name: Creation Station. They wrote prompts to help spark creativity. They cited examples from the book that were playful and short, as well as longer and revealing. They spread markers and inviting sheets of blank paper on the tables they’d ordered. They bravely stood in the Crossroads and read their own mini-memoirs into a microphone. They hollered at their friends as they walked by to come down to the Crossroads and participate. They reassured. They turned writing into a community experience, whether the individual outcomes were fun, enlightening, or cathartic. 

Their goal, which Kaethe feared might be optimistic, was to engage 50 people. They ultimately got 70 micro-memoirs. Some were short and funny; others longer, exploring romances, childhood memories, or breakfast. Some people joined the class at the microphone, reading their micro-memoirs to the crowd. After it was over, the class posted the results in the Buntrock passageway, along with a sign to explain the Creation Station for those of us who had been trapped in a faculty meeting when the event occurred. We were encouraged to “enjoy,” but also “reflect upon the ways in which your own small stories contribute to both your personal narrative and our collective human story.” Pretty compelling. 

I was not the only person stopping to read and reflect. I went back several times and was never alone. Sometimes groups would be standing there, talking to each other. Clearly, in ever-widening ripples, the class had succeeded at their task. They had created a community of writers and readers and thinkers. 

I was not the only person stopping to read and reflect. I went back several times and was never alone. Sometimes groups would be standing there, talking to each other. Clearly, in ever-widening ripples, the class had succeeded at their task. They had created a community of writers and readers and thinkers. 

I’m in awe. It was a brilliant assignment that students took to a whole other level. 

As a humanist, I find one of the biggest challenges of teaching these days is creating a student-centered learning environment that blends disciplinary content with interdisciplinary skills. Problem-based learning (PBL) is often touted as a way of inverting the classroom that encourages critical thinking. It began in medical schools, spread to the sciences and the social sciences, but is having a harder time gaining traction in the humanities, probably because people like me can’t figure out how to conceptualize problems in our disciplines. I teach history. How do you solve that?

PBL is more or less what it sounds like. The instructor lays out a problem and teams of students generate solutions. PBL does engage students in disciplinary critical thinking, but in ways that also emphasize those magic skills experts promise us will be useful buffers against workplace change: collaboration, creativity, and flexibility. PBL works well in maker spaces and beyond the classroom, whether officially or unofficially thought of as civic engagement. Problem-solving is particularly suited to what we seek to do in the liberal arts: engage students both broadly and deeply.

Kaethe’s students problem-solved broadly and deeply. They needed enough deep knowledge of creative nonfiction writing to figure out how to explain it — quickly — to whoever showed up. But so too did they need to do a quick dive into how St. Olaf bureaucracies operate in order to handle the mechanical details of procuring tables and microphones and snacks. They needed the communications and interpersonal skills to function as a team and the psychological and sociological knowledge of Oles as individuals and a community to know what would entice but not threaten, what would invite people on their way to lunch or the ATM to stop and bare their souls a bit. Duh, write about yourself!

It turns out my classes don’t need to solve history; they just need to use it. Kaethe treated writing as a vocation that came with responsibilities. She asked her class to practice being professionals, to use the language and format of the field to articulate the problem and their solution. Medical students use medicine to solve problem-based challenges; writers should use writing. Why complicate it?

As for the 70 or so people who had the adventure of being part of a micro-memoir writing community, their motives were likely varied. Some came for the fun of it or to unburden themselves; others because of peer pressure. All got to experience writing detached from classroom baggage, as something relevant and meaningful in ways that, hopefully, will encourage less anxiety and more enthusiasm about writing in their classes. 

That so many people were willing to share their creativity reassures me. I understand that creative writing classes are in demand at St. Olaf and that there’s a growing variety of courses to choose from: poetry, prose, science writing, business writing, screenwriting. Even in the age of tweeting presidents and Instagram captions, our students value the art of writing. I still think, though, that they should stop doing it with headphones on.

Writing creatively, expressively, and personally is satisfying. It is a way of synthesizing ideas, contextualizing experiences, and communicating with others. It’s creative and reflective. It’s expressive. It is the essence of liberal arts learning, toggling between broad skills and narrower disciplinary knowledge, communicating with others. These are all good job skills, but even better life skills. Writing, communicating, reaching other people the way those few deft words about birth order reached me, is what makes us human and what builds community.

Writing creatively, expressively, and personally is satisfying. It is a way of synthesizing ideas, contextualizing experiences, and communicating with others. It’s creative and reflective. It’s expressive. It is the essence of liberal arts learning, toggling between broad skills and narrower disciplinary knowledge, communicating with others. These are all good job skills, but even better life skills.

So I am grateful for that moment in my busy morning when I was invited to pause, ponder, and connect with someone else in my St. Olaf community, to be reminded about my past and its relation to our “collective human story.” Thank you, English 373 and Kaethe. Thank you, practice of literary citizenship. Thank you, micro-memoirs.

Kaethe’s assignment sets a pretty high bar, but I’m hoping some of my faculty colleagues will contribute some ideas, thoughts, or examples of assignments for a late-summer post on teaching strategies as we all begin to ready syllabi. If you have any, please send them to me at kutulas@stolaf.edu. Would anybody come if there was a micro-pedagogy creation station? Just a thought. 

Judy Kutulas is a professor of history at St. Olaf College, where she teaches in the History Department and the American Studies program, along with American Conversations. She is the Boldt Family Distinguished Teaching Chair in the Humanities, charged with helping to revitalize humanities teaching and learning at the college. Read her inaugural ‘Adventures in the New Humanities’ blog post here.