What Students Need to Find Literature Fascinating

Enrollment in college English departments is declining, with literature concentrations experiencing a particularly precipitous drop in student interest. This may sound like no great loss. Increasingly, American teenagers view timeless works of literature as hopelessly boring and their study of them as yielding no cash value. Even if this trend does not tell the full story behind the decline in college literature studies, it is surely part of the picture. Why would students pay to study a subject that strikes them as dull and unprofitable? In this episode, Sam Weaver reads aloud his article, “What Students Need to Find Literature Fascinating.” In that essay, he argues that a focus on story can make great literature as exciting to teenagers as popular films. Weaver’s article was originally published in New Ideal on August 17, 2022. Podcast audio: