Putting Medea on Trial - Center for Teaching and Learning

cuss the subject matter of their courses
with their peers. Third, students do better
when they are actively engaged in
their education, solving problems and
applying what they have learned.
Fourth, students are more satisfied with
their education and less likely to drop
out when they get to know their professors
outside the classroom. (Jaffee B16)
Meeting with the faculty team before the start
of classes, I got a sense of the potential offered
by the cluster format. The faculty in this cluster
were Gail Green-Anderson of English, who
had done the lion’s share of assembling the joint
syllabus; Lynne Alston-Jackson of Counseling,
a learning-communities veteran who possesses
an uncanny instinct for identifying the individual
needs of her students; and Deborah Clinton,
a Humanities instructor with valuable connections
to off-Broadway theater. At every turn
that semester, I was reminded of the deep, solid
support available from our faculty team. The
give and take around the table excited me. The
theme we chose for the cluster, the construction
of gender identity, fit well with the sort of
challenges I like to present to my students to
make their reading less mechanical and more
vividly a part of their development of self. The
texts we shared that semester, including Twelfth
Night, M. Butterfly, as well as <strong>Medea</strong>, were all fascinating
on their own. In combination, they
allowed students to think more deeply about
issues they considered relevant to their lives. I
left that first meeting with visions of a groundbreaking
adventure.
There was a risk, indeed, in confronting the
issues that our syllabus set before the students.
Coming to terms with gender identity, while a
life-long process, has an intensity for college
freshmen that can be overwhelming, and airing
out these ideas in a large group of peers
would be an experience needing the development
of trust in the group. Would the students
come to see the value of viewing their seemingly
unshakeable sexual identities through the
prisms of Euripides and Shakespeare? Students
often tiptoe around such loaded themes. I
admittedly shared some of their reticence in
the early weeks, particularly as cracks began to
show in the student group and cliques began
to form. Still, an adventure it was. This shared
intellectual experiment would ultimately show
that our students, who were considered barely
able to keep their heads above water in a college
environment, could creatively engage in
far-ranging discussions. Students questioned
how <strong>Medea</strong>’s female maternal nature could be
reconciled with her actions in the play and what
it meant to be able to appear in society as a
member of the opposite sex, the aspect of
Twelfth Night that aroused the most (uneasy)
interest. In a paper presented at the meeting of
the American Educational Research Association,
several close observers of the learning
community movement note that “...students
experience and develop an appreciation for
multiple perspectives; learn to use colleagues
as resources; and are more willing to take on
the risk required to tackle complex, ill-structured
problems...” (Wilson, Ludwig-Hardman,
Thornam, and Dunlap).
In addition to our mock trial, we scheduled
a performance of a scene from <strong>Medea</strong> by visiting
actors from the Cocteau Repertory Company,
who were also doing full-length renditions
of the play in our college theater. For the trial
of <strong>Medea</strong> – and the charmingly empty Jason –
we faculty decided to add to the sense of occasion
and gravitas by making our first joint
appearance before our students in costumes
resembling those worn by traditional British
barristers. My colleagues wore academic
gowns; I wore the suit I reserve for weddings
and funerals. The students were properly
amused and impressed.
As many roles as possible had been handed
out to our New Student House cohort, and
the students, in my recollection, played them
for all they were worth, particularly the prosecutors
condemning <strong>Medea</strong>. “These were her
own children, understand, and no matter how
bad you get treated by your husband, you don’t
kill them!” shouted one of the prosecutors, and
those playing the courtroom audience gave
their boisterous approval. The defense attor-
<strong>Putting</strong> <strong>Medea</strong> on Trial • 35