Dr. Anuska Sen: Teaching Through Transformation
Dr. Anuska Sen has served as part of Loyola's English faculty for over a year. While obtaining her doctorate in English Literature from Indiana University, Dr. Sen took part in a virtual symposium where she made connections with a few graduate students from Loyola, who she found to be very welcoming and engaged. This interaction left an indelible mark upon Dr. Sen, and when the position in the English Department opened the inviting dispositions of those students drove her to apply.
“With that previous association, and seeing that it was one of the few jobs that fit with my area of expertise, I was very excited to apply. I knew it would be a great fit.”
Dr. Sen’s focus is the fleeting and elusive animal presence in twentieth-century literature, she sees this as an entry point into the challenges of dwelling in global modernity. Understanding that this myopic focus on animals in a text might be considered marginal, she believes that on a deeper level it can help readers pay attention to things they might hurriedly move past. She aims to foster a spirit of careful attention to finer details, emphasizing the surprises, joys, and unnerving realizations that form a deep focus.
“I want to understand the role animals play in literature, especially through metamorphosis. There’s fables, children’s literature, horror allegories, and symbolic readings, but what I want to see is what are some longstanding symbolic associations we have with the text. We know that transformation is often a magical or supernatural affair within the text, however I want to work with the idea of transformation through adaptation. How to enact the idea of metamorphosis within writing itself. How to write, say, a response to a poem in a different style and how to reflect on those changes.
”This idea of change, whether through mutation, merging, shifting, or refocus is an idea that Dr. Sen loves to see in the classroom.
“It might seem a romantic ideal in our day and age, but I love being in the classroom, the physical space, and seeing all my students come together, bringing all their temperaments, energies, histories, and interests; all of this together with the reading of a text, I find this potential so exciting.”
One of Dr. Sen’s goals in the classroom is having students understand the value of sustained attention, to build a space in the class that emphasizes deep thinking when approaching a text. She believes that by giving students an environment that not only allows them to bring their prior connections to a text, but to really dig deep into a text without distractions or interruptions, they will be able to deeply resonate with the work on many different levels.
“I want to create synchronicity, to explore the potential conflict between what students already hold and what the text might be indicating to them. I want to encourage all of us to listen to each other. Some of my favorite classes are when students listen, engage, and respond to each other.”
Additionally, Dr. Sen aims to build an active intellectual community for both graduate students and other faculty members. Her hope is that this community will help graduate students feel inspired to keep doing the work they are doing.
“So many of our students are so smart and creative, but I think that this kind of work can be so isolating at times, most students can feel like it’s happening in a vacuum. For me, as a student, some of my most transformative moments were listening to a scholar we had come to the department and give a great talk and then experience a lively Q&A afterwards. This is when you feel like your field is actually alive, and that the work you are doing is part of a larger conversation.”
Dr. Sen seeks to build a community of collaborators both in and out of Chicago to spearhead some key projects together, including workshops and symposiums. Seeing that Chicago is rooted in literature and houses avid readers, this should be an achievable feat.