This essay argues that only by sharing our mistakes and uncertainty can we fully reflect on our own process as teachers, only by understanding our process can we begin to identify the many factors that contribute to classroom messes in the first place, and only by acknowledging the perpetual messiness of our practice can we fully engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Examines classroom dialog about arranged marriages in Ali Ghalem’s “A Wife for My Son” (as well as several other postcolonial, nonwestern texts) as a means of defining and sharing appropriate curricular and pedagogical modes for classroom discourse and discussion. Urges rethinking the boundaries of English studies and redefining the study of literature more broadly.