Nestled into Professor Ichiro Takayoshi’s office in East Hall, I reevaluate my relationship with a subject many do not willingly engage with after high school: English. Of course, books and writing have not fled my life or most Tufts students’ lives, but Professor Takayoshi encourages me to delve deeper—not into the wall of literature gilding the majority of his office space—but into my own feelings about the American literary tradition. Professor Takayoshi explains his focus and fascination with modern American literature—works produced during a brief, 60- to 70-year literary time frame, from around the 1890s to the 1950s. If you went to high school in the US, you probably encountered such novels as The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. Perhaps you were assigned to write essays on them, analyzing seemingly banal aspects of the works like how animals function as symbols within the texts. Professor Takayoshi wants to challenge that. Rather than buckle down and narrow the lens to such confined limits, he describes his research on modern American literature as “panoramic,” opening a door into more authentic class discussions and lively essays that seem to gush from students’ fingertips: “It’s magic, it’s an alchemy of words, and I then have to go into their heads and find out how this magic happens.” Of course, he admits, there are certain writers and texts that must be taught in order to fully appreciate the canon in its historical context, but within a new space of inviting students to be more personal than solely objective about their readings of the works, Takayoshi remarks, “[My students] do say amazing things. They open my eyes to certain characters, details, [and] plot points in the book that I thought were insignificant.” And to that end, Takayoshi qualifies how Tufts students especially bring an emotional maturity to the classroom that pushes back the walls of limitation even further. They aren’t afraid to dive deeply into the exploration of human experiences, ranging from shame to adultery to divorce to friendship. In trying to communicate one’s experience, Professor Takayoshi believes, you learn more about yourself than you would just by sitting alone, coming up with “half-baked, ill-formed, not easily communicable ideas that only make sense to yourself.” The discussion of key questions in an honest space allows the teacher and students to understand more clearly what it means to be human. What is mercy? What is justice? What is friendship? What is betrayal? What is anxiety? What is God? What are sexual double standards? What does it feel like to be a person of this race in this particular context?
To these possibilities, Takayoshi tells me, “Literature is a great teacher that not only makes you understand these facts but also feel these facts.” Teaching how to “feel these facts” leads to a type of scholarship far beyond memorization and regurgitation. In addition to courses in the English Department, Professor Takayoshi recommends psychology, art history, philosophy, and film classes as spaces at Tufts where feeling the facts deepens scholarship, invites more voices into the discussion, and teaches us how to live together with help from the past. To illustrate this point, he asks me point-blank whether people would have cared about the burning of the Notre Dame Cathedral without an appreciation of the humanities. “Is it essential to have this skill of appreciation?” he poses. “No, but you only live once. You have the fullest spectrum of all experience when you have [appreciation], so you better take courses that equip [you] with these life-enriching skills.” The view from our Hill is made even more open by the unbounded circles of inquiry Takayoshi guides. As I glance out his window at budding spring trees, feeling a renewed sense of appreciation, he lends me one last piece of advice. “Tufts is a place where you can ultimately block out other anxieties and focus on learning the therapeutic effects of books and how you can make sense of the world through the humanities,” he says. “These departments have a function—they’re not an appendage. You learn their importance by taking a course in just one of them.” —HASAN KHAN ’22
10
PHOTO BY KATHLEEN DOOHER
Professor Takayoshi takes a unique approach to the literary canon. His students embrace the challenge.
