By Theo Campbell
Dr. Lucky, who has taught this course in the past, wanted to teach the novel differently this time, in light of the Black Lives Matter movement and the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd: “I always approach this course like Invisible Man is such an important novel…just because I think its an important novel doesn’t mean my students will think its important, nor does it mean they will think its still relevant.” She encouraged both the Villanova students and the men at Chester to think about whether and how the novel might still resonate with their lives and the world around them. And in the end, they all confirmed that the book was just as relevant in 2021 as it was in 1952, drawing what Dr. Lucky calls “amazing parallels” between characters like Tod Cliffton and Black Lives Matter protesters and between the issues Ralph Ellison raises in the novel and other contemporary social movements such as those for LGBTQ rights.
Lily Switka, a student in the class, found the partnership deeply inspiring:
“One of my favorite things about the [English] major is the way people are able to interact, even bond, over what we’re reading in class, and have a really engaged and interesting discussions…This class in particular, being able to read it with people that we never would have met otherwise and whose personal life experience is really tied to kind of the same story of this book, I just thought this was a really powerful message…A lot of the men echoed the same statement which was that one of the things that brings them the most joy, that [allows them] to escape from their current circumstances, is reading, so that reminded me that there’s a real love for reading, for literature, that can be found….sometimes when I’m reading all these books for all my different classes I kind of get caught up in that, so it really took me back to why I like to read and why I wanted to be an English major, both the love of it and also the engaging in discussion with people and seeing how they related to the text was really cool.”
This reminder of how literature has an impact on the world outside the university is exactly what Dr. Lucky hopes to accomplish through partnering with the service-learning office. She thinks that one reason enrollments are declining in the humanities around the country is that students aren’t given enough opportunities to see how the work of the humanities has impacts on the real world and can be used in all kinds of different careers. As a result of reading Invisible Man with men at Chester, some of the students in the class had revelations about their own career paths, such as deciding what area of law they wanted to pursue. The success of this partnership is evidence that, as Dr. Lucky states, “we are not just folks who sit in an ivory tower and just talk about irrelevant things. The work we do in literature classrooms, in history classrooms, in theology classrooms has direct impacts on what happens out in the wider world.”
The timing of the seminar coincided perfectly with the release of Columbia literature professor Fahar Jasmine Griffin’s new book, Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature. Dr. Griffin signed copies of her book for the Villanova students and the men in the reading group, a culminating moment made more poignant by the fact that, ordinarily, incarcerated people have to wait longer than most to read new books because hardback copies are usually not allowed in prisons. In this case, however, the leadership at Chester—whom Dr. Lucky describes as “phenomenal”—allowed an exception. Dr. Lucky credits the success of this seminar to the open-heartedness and academic maturity of her students, who fully embraced the opportunity to synthesize everything they had learned in their four years as English majors and apply it to the world beyond Villanova.
