Experiential Explorations of Literature Through Textile Creation

Hi, I’m Elizabeth Dalton from Ball State University Honors College
When designing “A Fabric of Words,” a literature seminar, I addressed the challenge of decreased reading stamina among college students through experiential learning, community connections, and collaboration, which are among George Kuh’s high impact practices.
During the semester, students read Elizabeth Wayland Barber’s Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years as a foundation, and then they take on novels such as Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities or Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, with a focus on women’s tasks. To entice them into this challenging literature, students are asked to identify a textile craft they wish to learn. Then they find a mentor who tutors them throughout the semester. Students keep a journal to document their skill development.
In addition, local artists, such as Sarah Haley, pictured here with one of her quilts, display their work and provide personal narratives about their artistic journeys.
Connections between student skill acquisition and the literary texts are forged during class discussion and in the reading responses. Shown on the right are selections from two student responses. Each demonstrates a deep understanding of textile work in Whitney Otto’s How to Make an American Quilt, the last major text of the semester.
There need not be a disconnect between humanities education and high impact practices, which are often experiential in nature. Identifying barriers to student learning in humanities coursework and then designing meaningful high impact experiences can provide tangible skills that aid students’ understanding of course material.