• Teaching

    Teaching Thoreau in the Heartland of China

    I was teaching Thoreau in a time when the Chinese were migrating from the countryside into the cities. It was a new Industrial Age—but this one was taking place during the age of globalism, cell phones, and Hello Kitty. Experts estimated that a population greater than that of America’s total population would move into Chinese cities within the next 15-20 years.   There I was at the vanguard of this exodus where some of my students had left their families behind in the rice paddies.  These students were their family’s only hope. But for those now living and working in the cities, there was the heady pleasure of shopping. The…