Webb Chapter 6

I really enjoyed this chapter, and I think that's mainly because I'm desperate to find different things to incorporate into the teaching of Huckleberry Finn because, let's face it, we're all going to be teaching it at some point. When I read and learned about this book in American Lit, I hated it, and this was mainly because the teacher I had didn't really have any specific way of teaching the book and he didn't even really make logical literary conclusions based on the content of the book as far as I could tell.

He was more interesting in vague symbolism, like Tom and Jim and Huck being three people, LIKE A RELIGIOUS SIGN!!!!!1111, and that frankly just drove me nuts. I like the fact that you can take all of the symbolism and literary theory, mix in into your lessons when you're teaching Huck Finn, and still use the topic of Racism in literature to drive the class. I think it makes the whole experience more interesting and it has the students learning a lot of things they didn't know before. I didn't know anything about Twain and the Blackface acts he enjoyed until reading about it from Webb. It's encouraging to know that there's a handy dandy book printed with all the criticism of HF inside of it, and I definitely plan to get my hands on it.

Definitely the most enticing thing about Cultural Studies approaches is that you can keep doing what you've always been doing with teaching a work, but you can incorporate more to make sure you're reaching the maximum number of students. It's an interesting concept and I see it played out here more practically than in some of Webb's earlier chapters.