There’s a lot of death in literature, and English professor Chris Barrett uses every means possible to convey this to her students.
Even if it includes using Expo markers as knives and classroom easels as swords. 
Barrett, who specializes in Renaissance literature, said she tries to make the stories told in the text relatable to students. She builds discussion time into her lectures and wants to get to know her students. 
To accomplish this in her larger classes, she offers special credit to students who visit her office before an exam. In her office, the students find bookcases nearly toppling over with some of Barrett’s favorite pieces of literature, like John Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”
Milton’s work came in handy at last November’s Louisiana Book Festival.
At the festival, Barrett’s students and other attendees sat and read the 10,000-line poem aloud as a group. 
“We come together as a community around this text,” Barrett said. 
Everyone attending the reading, between 40 and 80 people, took a bite of an apple in solidarity to symbolize Eve biting into the fruit in Milton’s poem. Barrett said a reading of “Paradise Lost” can take nine to 11 hours to complete.
Barrett grew up in New Jersey and attended Princeton University with the intention of becoming a journalist. But she enrolled in an English class and was hooked, she said. 
English senior Brandon Ballard, who has taken three classes with Barrett since her arrival at the University two years ago, said Barrett’s wacky style of teaching and her mentorship encouraged him to pursue a career as a                librarian.
Ballard said Barrett told him “librarians are the guardian angels of academia,” something he will always remember. He said he was sure many students’ lives had been positively affected by Barrett’s teaching and                                   encouragement. 
This year, Barrett received the Tiger Athletic Foundation Undergraduate Teaching Award for her work at the University. 
Ballard said Barrett used a method in one of the classes he took with her called “Style Fridays,” where students submitted anonymous pieces of writing and got constructive criticism and feedback from their peers. He said “Style Fridays” bettered his skills in literary criticism and improved his writing. 
Out of a crowd of great teachers at the University, Barrett is incomparable, Ballard said in a letter to the Tiger Athletic Foundation supporting Barrett’s nomination for the award.  
As a part of her research as a University professor, Barrett is writing a book about society’s qualms during the Renaissance as mapping technology improved. 
People are freaked out by being on the grid, a fact that’s evident in the writing of that time period, Barrett said. She compared it to modern-day reaction to GPS systems, saying it’s nice to be able to use GPS for driving directions, but weird because people’s cell phones constantly know their location. 
Barrett said the faculty who taught her inspired her to teach literature. She strives for participation during her lectures.
Even going as far as asking students to stand on chairs while she gestures with a black umbrella to bring the words to life. 

Gallery • 5 Photos

Javier Fernández

Dr. Barrett talks to the class about Henry the V. She had all the students stand up and participate in the reading on Wednesday, September 17, 2014