Rutkowski 2011.pdf

Rutkowski 5characters on the page. The act of reading becomes an experience that is to be savored, ratherthan rushed. My notebook is now filled with text rather than space, as I continue to record myreactions and feelings about the texts I read. Then, when it comes time to write about the book, Ialready have a developing thesis. As a whole, my performance as an academic grew as I learnedto appreciate the art of writing, because reading became more than a simple test of everything Icould recall, but also an act of self-improvement. I became, as Rosenblatt puts it, an aestheticreader who “pays attention to the associations, feelings, attitudes, and ideas that these words andtheir referents arouse within him” (25). This practice where content knowledge becomessecondary to the experience of reading is undoubtedly Expressionistic, as it calls for a muchmore personal experience in reading.One of the more interesting areas an aesthetic reading of literature is advocated is in therecent debate of the use of Historical Fiction in classrooms beyond the study of literature. Manyeducators have spoken out about the success of utilizing historical fiction in the social studiesand history classroom because of the interest it generates in the students. They are not, however,advocating teaching only historical novels, but see the genre as a valuable supplement to the dry,objective tone of textbooks. In Kathy Nawrot’s article “Making Connections with HistoricalFiction,” she states that “historical fiction humanizes the study of history by focusing on thehuman sequences of historical events” (343), and thatTextbooks often treat the study of history as a science, offering objective analysisthat the student is required to apply to events. The student is the outsider, lookingin…Historical fiction, on the other hand, involves the reader in the experience,offering a synthesis rather than an analysis. (343)Nawrot does not suggest that students should draw facts from historical novels, but understands