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Yes, some of the students who take Fr. Jim Miracky’s
literature classes, particularly those that deal with more
recent work, find themselves surprised both by what they’re
reading and by who’s teaching them. That’s a good
thing, according to Fr. Miracky, for both teacher and students.
“They carry certain expectations, but because I teach
largely contemporary literature, because I have interests
in gender studies and in feminist theory, the material I
teach is very provocative, and I have had students amazed
that Father is teaching this, that, or the other thing; I
sort of get a charge out of that.”
Writing in these pages (Holy Cross Magazine, October ’98)
about Tim O’Brien’s short story collection, The
Things They Carried, Fr. Miracky explains the appeal
that literature holds for him, both as a reader and as a
teacher, particularly work that spills over boundaries and
that deals with difficult topics.
“O’Brien’s book of short stories relating
events surrounding the Vietnam War is a triumph not only
of war fiction but also of postmodern narrative,” he
writes. “Blurring the lines between fiction and the ‘facts’ of
his war experience, O’Brien’s tales of battles
fought and comrades lost thrive equally on love and hate,
horror and beauty to get at ‘truths’ about war
that defy human logic. I get a kick out of seeing students
wrestle with the gray areas of these stories, which resist
the desire for neat explanation and resolution.”
Fr. Miracky is as willing to put himself on unfamiliar ground
as he is to put his students there. Recently, for example,
he taught a course on 21st-century literature, surely something
not yet seen in most curricula.
“Since there isn’t critical writing on this subject,
except for a few reviews,” he told prospective students, “we’re
going to be taking a stab at figuring out what’s going
on here, attempting to create some kind of interpretative
community.”
The fact that he himself was on new ground, as well, was
not a problem. Pedagogically, it allowed for some useful
modeling.
“There are questions out there,” Fr. Miracky argues, “for
which the best answer at the time is ‘I don’t know.’ I
think that encourages our students, that we don’t have
it all packaged up.”
Postmodern literature and postmodern theory, with the challenges
that both pose to the questions of identity, of fixity, of
solid and unchanging answers, strike Fr. Miracky not as threats
but as useful forms of exercise for students, both intellectual
and moral.
“What they come in as can be challenged, changed, exposed
to new things.” he says of his students, “We can
get them to think about the ways in which their identities
have been formed and in which they are constantly being formed.”
And to the degree that the students are further challenged
by the fact that these quandaries are being put before them
by a Jesuit priest, that’s fine, too.
“I think it explodes their categories,” Fr. Miracky
says. “I think it’s helpful, that they see that
religion or religious life is not separate from the rest
of their lives. And that whatever sense they may have of
Catholicism—those that are Catholic or even those that
are not—they come to a place like Holy Cross, and they’re
encouraged to expand their horizons, to learn how to think
critically, to recognize—and this is something that
goes back to a motto of our founder, St. Ignatius Loyola—finding
God in all things, to recognize that we don’t say, ‘well,
OK, here are the areas of life experience that sort of fit
in with what it means to be Catholic (and, for me, to be
a priest), and the rest of this stuff we just turn a blind
eye toward or express disdain for or whatever it is. I very
much enjoy teaching them things that challenge them.”
Donald N.S. Unger is a free-lance journalist from Worcester,
Mass.
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