Iprovost Newsletter

LaGuardiaProfiles Teaching the Truth of Fiction Jacqueline Jones, Associate Professor of English Profile by Michele Piso Manoukian Raised in the Bronx and educated in New York City public schools, Jacqueline Jones, Associate Professor of English, traveled as a teenager from her Van Cortlandt Village neighborhood to Central Park East, a non-traditional high school located in the heart of East Harlem. Central Park East offered the interdisciplinary education of discovery valued by her parents. “I was able to explore; we didn’t have traditional class periods, and graduation was based on a portfolio system. I had teachers who took me under their wings and let me do the amazing things that prepared me for where I am now.” Describing her teaching style as heavily influenced by her education in New York City, Jones stresses the importance of active, student-centered learning. “I don’t like to just lecture. I want to make sure that students are active advocates in their education, building a learning base for themselves and for the students in the classroom. It’s not all about us as individuals. The classroom is not just about an instructor passing along knowledge to their students; the classroom is also a space for students to create meaning.” Reciprocity as a pedagogical approach encourages the play and evalu- ation of multiple ideas, and promotes appreciation for the expression of individual differences. As important as the transfer of knowledge and skills across courses is “real world application” of classroom learning. More than ever, Jones encounters students who clearly understand that to get to where they want to be, they must acquire higher order skills. In her view, she is responsible for demonstrating the “real world” value of the humanities to LaGuardia. If value is not demonstrated, she asks, “ Why would students pay attention?” Jones’s openness to influence and interdisciplinarity are equally evident in her undergraduate experiences at SUNY Geneseo. In the spring of her first year on campus, Jones took a pivotal course in the history and I don’t like to literature of the Civil Rights Movement. Co-taught by her mentor, Beth McCoy, professor of African just lecture. I want to make American literature, and Emily Crosby, professor of sure that students are history, the class ignited a vital connection to her per- active advocates in sonal life. “I grew up in a home in which my parents sat us down to watch Roots and Eyes on the Prize. And their education... we talked about race, about important things.” Family guidance, open-education, mentoring, and an interdisciplinary approach to literature and history led to her future commitment to African American Studies stand the history and importance of African American at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. As people in our nation, to our world. It wasn’t until I an undergraduate, Jones went back and forth as she was an undergraduate student that I learned so much considered doctoral programs in English, American more. If I hadn’t gone to college, I wouldn’t have known studies, or interdisciplinary studies. When asked why otherwise. I was passionate about the discipline; but she decided upon African American literature and I didn’t want to simply analyze literature. I wanted culture, Jones’s response is sobering and reflective. “I to place literature within cultural, political, and discovered so much that I didn’t know. I don’t think historical contexts.” enough is said or done in this country to really under- Interactive 1 iProvostNewsletter LaGuardiaProfiles and, though they didn’t know what they were getting into, they technically say yes to becoming slaves in order to get their house back. The purpose of these absurd plots is to demonstrate the meaning of community, of home. And to show how vulnerable African Americans are to losing their homes.” The interdisciplinary forces of her undergraduate years continue to exert their power, and Professor Jones hopes to develop her investigations into The Sellout and The Boondocks during a future sabbatical. “We need cultural critics,” she says, “we need people who are really exploring these issues to tell us of the little bits of pieces happening here, there, and else- where.” Professor Jones discovers those fragments in art and in the real world, and she brings them to her literature students and asks that they make con- nections between fiction and their everyday lives. “Everything that we do in this world revolves around The Boondocks series by Aaron McGruder. Image sourced from narrative and story,” said Jones. “We use narratives to Amazon.com help us better understand the world that we’re in and the world that we want to see.” In her classroom and in her research, Jones raises questions that cannot be answered within a single discipline. Her current interests have culminated in Jacqueline Jones, PhD., Associate Professor of English, has taught courses in English composition, literature, the First original, critical perspectives that mix readings of Year Seminar and capstone at LaGuardia since 2010. Her Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, awarded the coveted Man research interests include 20th and 21st century African Booker prize for literature, (the first ever for American American literature and media studies, Black women fiction) and The Boondocks (Season Four), the adult writers, and literature of the Civil Rights era. Publications animated television series created by Chicago- include “We ‘the People:’ Freedom, Civics, and the Neo-Slave born Aaron McGruder. In both texts, depictions of Narrative Tradition in August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean.” home, community, and identity arrest her attention. An essay on Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress, & Indigo Situating her discussion within a larger concept of will be published in March 2020 by The College Language “post-racial society,” the phrase commonly used before Association. Trump’s inauguration as President, Jones reads The Sellout and The Boondocks as refutations of the claim and expressions of the continuing vulnerability of African American experiences. In Beatty’s novel, an African American farmer in a fictitious South Los Angeles suburb lobbies to bring back slavery and racial segregation. “The main character does this because his hometown becomes unincorporated territory,” Jones explains. “One day the town is erased from the map with a horrible effect on the people in that community. They hadn’t understood the importance of their community to their identity, of being named, of having a space, and a place on a map. In The Boondocks, a family loses their house in the subprime mortgage Interactive 2 iProvostNewsletter.

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