Q: To start off the interview, could you introduce yourself, please?
A: Hello, I’m Dr. Paul Fortunato, an Associate Professor of English and a scholar of Oscar Wilde and JRR Tolkien. I’ve been teaching at UHD since 2005, and I’m committed to developing students’ ability to read and analyze works of literature and philosophy. In addition, I’m the director of the Reading Books Initiative, a nonprofit aimed at fostering the habit of joining reading groups and fostering a connection to literary treasures in order to gain a strong relationship to beauty and a balanced place in our over-analytic and digital world.
Q: What will you be doing this summer?
A: I have a podcast that I’m turning into a book. The podcast is called The Paper Books Cure. And the idea is: why and how to be a reader of books, and of the practice and the habit. Not just reading one book, but the habitual reading of books, is the necessary ballast to help us stay balanced in a kind of super-accelerated world of distraction, information attainment and social media. If you have a good list of books, you’re connecting with a treasury of amazing beauty and cultural richness.
I also have a website called the Reading Books Initiative. I’m trying to get people to read books, and I’m trying to get myself to read books as well. I started this thing partly because I saw other people needed it, and I saw that I needed it. “Okay, someone’s got to do this because I need this,” so I started this thing to try to promote the reading of books and reading in small groups, so you kind of build friendship and meet and discuss.
So, because the idea, I know this is too much, but the cultural thing we need right now — in our crazy world — is 5 or 6 people sitting around a table with books that they’ve read and talking about it.
Comment: I totally agree, people have lost a sense of community, especially with the use of phones, so I think you have a great initiative here!
I hope so! And so, the research that I’m doing, number one research is on that [ideas on previous paragraph]. I have a couple of threads I’m kind of pulling into this concept of the paper-books here, like neuroscience, and reading a book called Dopamine Nation. Like how our culture is built on getting us addicted to things. There’s nothing bad about dopamine, but our culture’s kind of become sinister in the way that it exploits us. I’m doing that research on Reiki and Aleemki. I’m using [for research] a neurologist named Ian McGilchrist. Some of these texts, I’m using Byun Chul Han and his book called The Crisis of Narration. I’ve also looked at his book, The Burn Out Society, which is kind of like our society.
And I’m also doing research on Tolkien because I’m a Tolkien scholar. I have some unfinished articles that I need to get back to. This summer I’ll work on that.
Q: Nice! So, what courses will you offer next semester? And will they have any creative twists?
So, actually, I’m teaching this summer. It’s English 3387, World Literature, Modern World Literature, is it? Meaning after like 1700s. I’m actually looking at it just now, I’ll be doing some Iris Murdoch, Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis” and a couple of other short stories.
Comment: Oh, Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” is interesting!
Another thing that’s really interesting — kind of strangely interesting now — is a novel called Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie. She’s a Pakistani-British woman. But it’s just now because of our war and everything in the Middle East. [Her] story is of this family in Britain, but they’re from Pakistan. One child — the son, he’s a teenager — gets motivated to join the terrorist group in the Middle East. And the sister is trying to get him out of that. But then he decides to turn away from that. It’s really complicated; it’s in Syria, and in a way, very kind of applicable to what’s going on today.
So that’s the summer. It’s only a 5-week course, so it’s a shorter reading. Then in the fall, I’m teaching 3313, which is the course for Drama Studies. Dr. Dahlberg does something similar to this, where she has the students produce a little scene and write up, like, “Okay, who would be the actor? What would be their costumes, what would be the lighting? What would be the camera?”, to kind of get into it — not just as a text — but as something that’s on a stage or even on a movie.
I would even give students the option to film a scene where they get, like, 2 or 3 students, and they take a scene from Shakespeare or something. They could dress up to some extent and try to work on the lighting, the camera work and the acting. They wouldn’t [have to] memorize much, just a few lines. That would be an option. So that would be like a kind of interesting creative twist.
And I guess for the plays, I need to actually rethink. I try to do different things each semester. But typically, I’ll do an ancient Greek one, like an Oedipus or Antigone. A Shakespeare [play] or two, a comedy and a tragedy. And then kind of jump to the modern, I always tend to do something for Godzilla.
Q: Any other exciting summer plans aside from classes? Are you going somewhere or doing anything interesting?
A: Yeah so I have all these trips all of a sudden. I’m going to Cleveland, which is not that exciting, but there’s a conference called The Symbolic World. There’s a podcaster and a writer [at the conference] and they have a whole thing of analyzing symbolism. And the head of it [the conference] is an artist. He’s a sculptor, but he also writes. He has a podcast; he talks about art and symbolism and how it’s important to us and everything. So, I want to go to that event, and I’m friends with one of the writers in that group, so I’m hopefully going to meet new people there. So that’s in May.
I’ve also been practicing my Spanish. I can communicate in Spanish, but I’m not perfect. I’m going to spend three weeks in San Salvador in El Salvador. It’ll be a vacation slash retreat, so I’ll be doing some religious stuff, but also sightseeing. So I’m going to work on my Spanish, see San Salvador, go to the beach and to the mountains.
Comment: That’s amazing! I hope you enjoy El Salvador and immerse yourself in the culture and language! Thank you so much for taking the time for this interview!
