The 2011 American Literature Association Conference featured a panel on “Pedagogical Approaches to Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins.” The conference participants have graciously agreed to share their materials here. They will be of particular interest to educators at the high school and undergraduate levels. Please feel free to read and adapt the ideas listed here for your own use, but do not reproduce or distribute materials without acknowledgment of their source.
Teaching “The Voice of the Negro”
Nirmal Trivedi, Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow School of Literature, Communication, and Culture The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech)
“In the presentation, I discuss how I use Hopkins’ periodical work in “Voice of the Negro” to teach students about 19th century print culture and its interweaving of literary conventions and geopolitics. Specifically, I show how I use “Of One Blood” as a starting point to how conventional forms, like the the romance novel, can challenge prevailing racial and gender stereotypes. I then move the class to investigate “Voice of the Negro” and especially Hopkins’ series “The Dark Races of the Twentieth Century.” I end by reflecting on the students’ final project, which entails creating a 19th century periodical for a 21st century audience. I include an example of the student periodical entitled ‘Revolutionary Times.'” —Nirmal Trivedi
Trivedi’s presentation notes
Sample student group periodical
Pauline Hopkins in the Classroom
Prof. Hanna Wallinger, Universitat Salzburg
“This short paper is based on a presentation at the 2011 American Literature Association panel on Pedagogical Approaches to Pauline Hopkins. I have added some comments and included some feedback to the activities that my students gave. It is possible to include a Pauline Hopkins novel in many kinds of classes. My particular example is that of a seminar on African American literature, 1865 to 1910, in which Hopkins’s Contending Forces was required classroom reading alongside fiction and non-fiction by Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Frances Harper, Charles Chesnutt, Sutton E. Griggs, and Paul Laurence Dunbar.” —Hanna Wallinger
Pauline Hopkins in the Classroom (paper)
Pauline Hopkins in the Classroom (handout)
