Raymond is a Professor of English at Shippensburg University. With courses revolving around African-American literature and folklore, Raymond pushes students to think differently about the historical and present-day experience of African-Americans in our country. When not in the classroom, Raymond is either in his campus or home office working on academic papers, journals, and even fiction.
Transcript
My name is Raymond Edward Janifer, Sr. and I teach English and African-American Studies at Shippensburg University. I do about the different ways, different times that Africans were introduced into North America. People typically talk about the slavery experience but there was also a free African experience. When you look at the American Civil Rights Movement from the African-American perspective, it brought along other groups like women, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans. So, it was kind of a springboard movement that they typically don't get credit for. And so, the other thing that I kind of argue with them is well, why do we have to find out about this stuff in African-American Studies if in fact, we're studying American history, we should know about this and it should be integrated into the regular history course. You have to be careful because everyone comes with what I call selective perception, how they were raised, how they worship, how they were educated, et cetera. So, you don't want to attack that. But what I like to do is convince them that perhaps there might be another way of looking at it, another perspective, have you ever thought of? And if I'm effective with that, that will kind of germinate a seed for them to investigate. Well, it actually begins early in the morning when I'm either grading or reading, preparing for class. But the day can start with either class or an office hour and then approximately two to four hours of teaching. Possibly another office hour and then more reading and grading and writing. I'm reading my scholarly material to prepare for lectures. I'm grading papers and then with what time I have left, I'm usually working. And I write scholarly material but I also write creative material and I also write journalism. So, I might be working on a polemic piece, I might be working on a scholarly piece, or I might be working on a piece of fiction.
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