By Megan Ruge Asst. living and arts editor
On Monday, Oct. 10, Susquehanna will host the first annual River Hawk Readers Choice Awards from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
The River Hawk Readers Choice Awards was invented by Drew Hubbell, associate professor of English. Six student groups from Hubbell’s Literary Themes class will display a poster representing a particular novel and will give a 10-minute PowerPoint presentation. At the end of the presentations, those who attend will be able to vote for their favorite novel. Hubbell’s class will choose two of the novels as texts for the second half of the semester.
“I wanted to develop a class project that had real-time impact so that my students would understand that what we are doing is real, not just an abstraction that exists in the non-space of college,” Hubbell said. “Rather than just study the way book prizes shape communities of readers and the category of literature, my students and I developed a book prize, and they are nominating books for that prize.”
“For seven weeks, my students have been researching literary prizes, aesthetic values and American novels published in 2016,” he said. “They have been reading book reviews and consulting award lists, researching novelists, publishers and critics.”
Throughout the process, the class did their research to make sure their award was as authentic as possible, according to Hubbell.
“We are going through all of the steps that any group of professionals would go through to create a credible literary prize, recruit nominations and select a winner. The whole class is a radical experiment in teaching literature,” he said.
The students of Hubbell’s class have developed a list of criteria for judging literary quality, which will be used when voting on the six books they propose.
“The winner and runner-up will be the books we read in the second half of the semester, so their choices are crucial for the content of the course,” Hubbell said.
Hubbell added that he designed the course to provide a series of projects and seminars that build the class’s skill sets and knowledge so they are able to recognize and select the best writing of 2016, based on criteria they have identified. They were also given the skills to defend these decisions in public.
“I’m flipping the class and having the students choose two-thirds of the content, which means they have to become experts—or expert enough—to make informed choices,” he said.
The project may encourage people to read the books proposed by Hubbell’s students. He said they are some of the best American novels published in 2016.
“I hope it will also encourage people to see that they are part of a community of readers and that we actively shape the category of literature by our choices. And I hope that the project strips away the ideal of ‘literary prize,’” Hubbell said.
“This is a very complex process, filled with imperfection and politics and assumptions about aesthetic quality,” he continued. “The category of ‘literature’ is a construction that reflects the values of the community of readers who make the choices.”
The Blough-Weis Library will host and sponsor the event. After the event, the posters for the proposed books will remain in the library and the books will also be ordered so people can read them.
“My students will hopefully understand that what they do in class has a meaningful impact on the lives of people at [Susquehanna]. They are contributing to the community’s knowledge and the book culture here,” Hubbell said. “I also hope they will feel empowered to be curious about their world and know that their research, writing and critical thinking skills position them to be important players in the world no matter what subject they are passionate about.”
