English literature classrooms in universities across the globe are grappling with an unprecedented technological force, which is, artificial intelligence. We are currently navigating contested ideas of what are the implications of being an English major student at college, considering that AI can draft assignment essays, research proposals and conference papers. It is imperative here for us as educators to develop strategies for a more experiential approach towards building literary acumen, rather than a reductive approach grounded solely in literary theory, criticism and philosophy. One such strategy can be conceptualized around the concept of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, with a specific focus on connecting spatial intelligence and linguistic intelligence. This will take the form of interdisciplinary integration between geography and English literature as students create narratives — all while recording real-time weather, exploring historical maps, and going on nature walks.
Historical Maps, Memoir, and Travelogues
Students can explore historical maps and travelogues as they study literature across periods of literary history in college. This is an intellectual exercise that is unlikely to depend much on AI as it has kinesthetic and spatial components to it. Some ways how different writers from literary periods can be analyzed by students enrolled in B.A. English courses are as follows:
Charles Dickens (Victorian Era): Consider giving out handmade or printed maps of Victorian England to students and asking them to mark locations which were integral to Charles Dickens’ literary inspiration and then write a travelogue imagining themselves to be Dickens. William Wordsworth (Romantic Era): Give students a painted map of natural landscapes of Romantic-era Lake District and ask students to write a fictional memoir of Wordsworth imagining themselves walking and coming across scenic beauty in Lake District.
Record Real-Time Weather to Create the Setting of a Novel
The setting, in terms of the natural environment, is an essential component of any work of literary fiction — it is an aspect of Freytag’s pyramid that needs to be planned in the very beginning of the creative writing process along with primary characters in the novel or short story. Whether the setting of a novel begins with a raging stormy night or a silent and serene morning, it sets the tone and mood of the storyline, often foreshadowing what’s to come next.
Here are a few steps for college students who are exploring a creative writing module as a part of their BA English course so that they can create the setting of their fiction:
Go outdoors and record the real time weather through graphic organizers. The graphic organizer can have the elements such as: Meteorological elements (temperature, humidity, wind, precipitation) What do these meteorological elements signify symbolically or culturally? Multi-sensory encoding (impact on 5 senses) Cognitive and affective atmosphere (emotion and mood generated by weather) Transform the observed weather into a genre-specific setting (noir, gothic, cli-fi, magical realism). Think and imagine about how the weather can initiate conflicts, foreshadow events and structure pacing. Transfer the affective impact which the weather had on you to the affective response to the setting by your fictional characters.
AI, as of yet, is unable to capture the emotive response to real-time weather and hence, this is a language arts task that will remain ‘human’ at the core in the foreseeable future.
Environment, Nature Walks, and Graphic Storytelling
Literature course syllabi in universities often consist of visual texts such as pieces of photojournalism, comic strips and graphic novels. Here are some tips to integrate geography with literature so that students can think beyond AI:
Students can go on nature walks, take pictures of aspects of geographical sciences including wildlife, rocks and water bodies, and create photojournalistic essays on climate change, biodiversity and environmental conservation. Further, if one would also want to integrate visual arts, students can go beyond capturing photographs, make sketches of what they see during nature walks and use the sketches in creating comic books. While the photographs and sketches can be given as prompts to AI tools for generating output, it cannot replace the human decision-making that is crucial for let’s say photojournalism. A student makes decisions such as where to stand and click the photographs, whether to intervene or remain an observer during the nature walk, and make ethical choices such as deciding whether the moment should be photographed at all, and if the photographed image respects the dignity of the subject — aspects which are of importance while capturing pictures of, for instance, wildlife.
Thus, spatial-visual intelligence and linguistic intelligence can certainly be integrated together in language arts activities such that we create students who are creative and critical thinkers with cognitive abilities that are far more advanced than what AI can do for us. In an educational landscape where pedagogical choices are increasingly influenced by artificial intelligence, literature professors need to cultivate forms of thinking that transcend AI output. This will empower students to move beyond passive consumption of AI-generated content and create immersive learning experiences for them rooted in lived experience, imaginative engagement with the world and ethical awareness, ensuring that they grow into irreplaceable thinkers and creators in the age of AI.
Manjima Misra is an IB International Baccalaureate English Language and Literature Educator working at Genesis Global School, Noida, India.
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