Teaching at SDSU After 9/11

Reading Differently After September 11

By Jerry Griswold

If I can speak on behalf of others, the events of September 11, 2001, have increased Americans’ sense of vulnerability. In the words of a song by Sting now associated with these events, we have come to learn “How fragile we are.”

Since 9/11, our lives have been different at the university: we read and teach differently. Now, for example, students seem genuinely moved when they read Homer’s description of Hector’s farewell to his family before he leaves to fight the Greeks at the gates of Troy, more sympathetic for the Irish when they learn of English atrocities in the Seventeenth Century.

I teach Children’s Literature to university students in San Diego...

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