Arnold Krupat

Educational Philosophy

I believe that college teachers of literature need to perform two equally important tasks in their classrooms. They need to convey the range of aggregated thought about the particular subject matter at hand (Shakespeare, African American literature, contemporary British poetry, etc.), and they need to convey the manner in which such thought is aggregated. That is to say that they—we—need to tell students as much as we can about what we teach, and we need to show students how to discover such knowledge for themselves. The Sarah Lawrence conference system is particularly well-suited, among other things, to allow teachers to determine which of the two tasks should be emphasized at any given moment. It is also particularly well-suited for students to determine those emphases. It’s helpful that students can also discuss these matters with their dons.