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Faculty Resources
Ideas for the Classroom
Below are several classroom ideas and discussion topics for using this year’s Campus Read, "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel, in all sorts of classrooms. Whether these be exercises specifically about the Campus Read, or warm-up discussion topics, we think you’ll find lots of value here.
The Bookmarks Exercise
This ice-breaker exercise makes use of the five Campus Read bookmarks containing discussion-worthy quotes
- “Survival is insufficient.”
- “Survival might be insufficient . . .but on the other hand, so was Shakespeare.”
- “We traveled so far and your friendship meant everything.”
- “The more you remember, the more you’ve lost.”
- “A life, remembered, is a series of photographs and disconnected short films.”
Worried about using excerpts?
Chapter Six: “No more . . .”
Chapter six is the most excerptable part of the novel, containing a list of experiences and features of modern civilization that have been lost. The whole thing can be read aloud, or you can focus on a specific part, such as the very beginning:
“No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.”
Have students write briefly on some element of civilization they’d miss without the technologies sustained by organized society and by public utilities like the electrical grid. What would they miss? How would they replace that? What part of their university education might they use to fill in those gaps? Using a think/pair/share method, have students share their responses and report out.
A Discussion about Hopefulness
Consider Robin Parrish’s definition of post-apocalyptic linked below. A key quote:
But watch closely, and you’ll see a recurring theme in post-apocalyptic fiction: the rise of the worst failings of human beings — cruelty, greed, suffering, a desire for power, selfpreservation. Basic animal instincts of survival take over when people are stripped of all pretenses and facades.
This year’s Campus Read seems to confound this definition—the book takes a hopeful and optimistic view of humanity after the initial panic. Several questions might follow from this observation:
- Without the structures of society, are people likely to become more brutal, or are they likely to retain some humane features of our present culture?
- What humane features of our present culture would you work to retain or recuperate?
- How do your plans for your education / your major / your life after college reflect these priorities?Are those plans fundamentally optimistic about contributing to a humane society?
Parrish, Robin. “A Brief History of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction.” MythBuilders. 2017. https://mythbuilders.com/brief-history-post-apocalyptic-fiction/ 13 August 2018.
Honors College Summer Reading Assignment
The Honors College asked their first-year students to arrive on campus having completed the novel and written an essay. To see their prompts—to build on in your discussions or perhaps to see what your Honors first-years have been thinking about—visit here:
Honors College Poster Challenge
Sections of the Honors Orientation course are doing a “Project Rebuild” poster
competition, in
which students will create a "
Station Eleven"
-themed poster (8.5x 11) done in the style/motif of
the video game
Fallout
. The posters will be judged by leaders in the Honors Student
Association (HSA) and leaders in the Honors College.
Some other discussion prompts related to "Station Eleven:"
• What makes a culture?
• What are the uses of the arts?
• What are the characteristics of human resilience?
• What is the value of friendship in the context of survival?
• What does the threat of violence do to our humane selves?
• How do we remember and respect those we have lost?
• How does a pandemic spread?
• How/would we care for one another in the context of contagion?
• What would healthcare look like without advanced technology?
• What technologies would we pursue, reinvent, reinvigorate?
• What knowledge and skill would it take to rebuild our technological infrastructure?
• How would we educate ourselves without experts?