Living Words

Juniper Ellis, Ph.D.
Department of English

Teaching is an act of faith.  Teaching literature, for me, means taking seriously American poet William Carlos Williams' insight, "It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there."  Seven years of teaching at Loyola College have taught me to base every class on these bold realities.  It is true that every semester I impart to my students an objective body of knowledge.  I thus measure my students' understanding of the tradition of American Literature and Pacific Islands Literature, their ability to think analytically, and their facility with speaking and writing.  But it is also true that my further aim in my courses is to move with my students beyond facts, to stand on the foundation of literary studies and all of the humanities. 

The humanities are humane studies, and as such are at the heart of the Jesuit tradition of education.  They are also, I believe, deeply connected to Ignatian spirituality, and not just because important Jesuit writers and teachers--from Robert Southwell to Gerard Manley Hopkins and beyond--have given so much to the humanities.  They are deeply connected to Ignatian spirituality because they recognize and honor the principle that everything we do that matters most involves an act of faith.

Imparting a humane spirit to my students is something that can be glimpsed--when a student's eyes shine at small and large moments, as he understands a difficult poem in class, or she decides that her career will be public-service law.  But this humane spirit is borne of long traditions of writing and thinking, and in some of its more profound manifestations is evident only in the fullness of the life the student lives.  Thus, I want to give my students the tools they need to think, speak, and write now and thirty years from now; I want to show them something of the awe I feel at the power of poetry to evoke the mystery of human creativity and of all creation.  And I do so with the fervent hope that the skills and the sense of awe may serve them well years from now in ways that I myself will never see. 

Teaching this way means that I am an acknowledged expert, a keeper of knowledge that I am delighted to share; but it also means that I enter into dialogue and learn along with my students.  To show my students how to be alive to ideas, I have to risk being alive to ideas myself.  Teaching this way honors the basis of scholarship, and of service with and for others, both of which are founded on dialogue.  Teaching this way, it is also true, can be challenging.  It means balancing authority and humility, admitting what you know and what you do not know.  It means honoring the Ignatian paradox that through discipline comes freedom; that one teaches--one embraces--a way of proceeding that demands the radical transformation of the self and the world.  As in the Gospels, that transformation can be stunning and terrifying.  But it is that transformation that I work to foster in my classes.  I strive to show my students the way ideas work in the world, the way words help make the world.  Through sharing this tradition of humane studies, I want nothing less than to help my students--and myself--become more fully alive.