Before anyone could say existentialism, the discussion turned to transcendent notions, social consensus and a priori knowledge à la Kant.
So we must be deep into fuzzie territory? Not exactly. It’s a lit course, all right—Comparative Literature 24Q: Ethnicity and Literature—but many of the students in the bright white room in Wallenberg Hall are confirmed techies. “I think kids tend to take SIS classes that are not in their majors,” says physics major Carey Myslewski.
That’s one reason David Palumbo-Liu, professor of comparative literature, enjoys teaching Stanford Introductory Seminars. “They feel user-friendly and they’re not intimidating because they’re not filled with specialists,” he says. “I get students who say, ‘I’ve never done well in literature, but I would really like to take this course.’ It’s not said defensively—it’s just ‘I want you to know.’ And to me, that’s positive.”
Palumbo-Liu, who has chaired the doctoral program in modern thought and literature for six years, looks for a mix of students from diverse backgrounds for his sophomore seminar. And from Day One he steers them away from the notion that enjoyment of literature is phenotypically determined—that “only if you’re Asian-American can you understand Maxine Hong Kingston.”
Myslewski had studied only American and European literature before enrolling in the seminar. “I’ve always been in the general, mainstream white culture,” she says. Now she’s reading short stories by Japanese-American author Toshio Mori, who spent World War II in an internment camp in Utah, and by Chinese-American novelist Frank Chin. Myslewski gave a presentation to the class about The Man Made of Words, by N. Scott Momaday, MA ’60, PhD ’63, a Native American, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a former Stanford professor of English.
“David has always stressed that there are not black-and-white answers in comp lit,” Myslewski says. “I’d probably say that ‘ethnic literature’ doesn’t truly exist as a genre, but that the mainstream culture defines it as anything that presents a minority point of view. This course has opened me up to many more options that I now feel more free to explore.”
As Palumbo-Liu encourages students to think about the books from multiple points of view, he points to interpretive realms of gray. “Ethnicity is really about relations between various groups,” he says. “More often than not, we find that the texture and meaning of the narratives cannot easily be divided between ethnic and nonethnic.” Working without outlines or notes, he asks quiet, provocative questions: “Why is it that the meaning of literature doesn’t always fully hit us until our lives catch up?”
Earth systems major Katy Yan says she had already studied one book on the syllabus, Sandra Cisneros’s novel The House on Mango Street. “But reading it again for this class was like reading it for the first time,” she says. “Here we’re able to discuss it, and we think more on our own.”
That’s sweet music for Palumbo-Liu, who gets more than 40 applications for the 14 seats at his seminar table. As he reads essays students submit about why they want to enroll, he’s looking for an indefinable intensity. “The more energy they put into the essays, the more energy I know they’ll put into the class.”
On a recent morning, the discussion turned to the ways in which oral storytelling traditions tend to change over time, compared to the relative permanence of the written word.
“We’re so conditioned to look for themes and theses in a book,” Jasmine Hanifi said. “But oral history is more tolerant of tangents.”
The professor was loving it.
“There’s some flexibility in reading a book,” Hassan Abudu said. “But with storytelling, you’re in the spell of the person who’s talking.”
Really loving it.
“An author has the freedom to create environments that don’t exist in real life,” Abudu continued. “The way imagination works, he can drop different cultures into a petri dish to create an experiment.”
Palumbo-Liu rested his chin on his fingertips and smiled. “That’s wonderful,” he said.
“When the chemistry is right between students,” he remarked later, “you learn things you could never have imagined.”
