Podcast Summary: Carlo Rotella, "What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics"

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Caleb Zakren
Guest: Carlo Rotella
Date: November 18, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features a rich conversation between host Caleb Zakren and author Carlo Rotella about Rotella’s new book, What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics (UC Press, 2025). The book is part memoir and part inquiry, capturing Rotella’s experiences teaching an introductory literature course ("Litcore") at Boston College during the transformative Spring 2020 semester—the period when the COVID-19 pandemic forced a shift to online instruction. The discussion navigates the skepticism of today’s students toward humanities subjects, the mechanics and joys of classroom communication, and current challenges in education, from technology and AI to participation, anxiety, and the value of literature.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Rotella’s Approach & the Book’s Structure

• Hybrid Writing Style: Rotella explains his background straddling academia (he’s an English, American Studies, and Journalism professor) and trade writing, influencing the book’s form—blending memoir, reportage, and literary analysis.

  "This book takes one class, one freshman class, one semester ... and tries to just figure out what happened in that class and what it meant." (03:14)

• Student Voices: A central aim: amplifying student perspectives, often missing from higher ed discourse. He brings profile-writing skills to bear, entering the “heads” of students rather than celebrities.

2. Teaching in a Skeptical, Professionalized Age

• Skepticism about literature’s value—vocational or otherwise—runs high:

  "[Students] are inclined to regard what happens in English class as kind of opaque, as either sort of sorcery or bullshit. And so part of my job is to show them that this is a craft. It's not mysterious..." (07:01)

• Students today are both more “professional and accomplished” (due to competitive admissions) and more anxious, isolated, and averse to awkwardness, with social media and tech compounding discomfort with participation:

  "They're much more anxious and they're much more isolated and they're much lonelier. So. And they also have a much greater horror of awkwardness, which is a sort of legacy of the cell phone..." (13:37)

3. Building Classroom Community

• Rotella details practical strategies for fostering participation, making clear that speaking up is an early and ongoing expectation—lest shyness harden:

  "If you don't talk in the first two weeks of a class, you basically won't talk. Right. A kind of writer's block sets in..." (07:01)

• Styles make fights: Drawing from boxing, he celebrates diverse participation styles. He employs writing exercises and tailored outreach to integrate quieter students while managing dominant ones.

  "I need to make room for all those kind of things ... The majority find it difficult. And there were 33 people in this class. That's a lot of people." (12:17)

4. Syllabus Design & Thematic Focus

• The course theme was “the misfit”—a relatable lens for first-year students undergoing self-remaking. Rotella selected a diverse reading list (e.g., Stuart Dybek, Edith Wharton, Junot Diaz, Hunter Thompson, Joan Didion) to expose students to "different kinds of English, different kinds of language":

  "The idea was that whatever else you want to ask about a text, you can always ask ... how is this person misfitted to their social order? And what does that tell us about their social order?" (15:31)

• A central teaching method: Start with “noticing”—move from observations to patterns, then to interpretation.

  "Let's start by Lowering the bar way down to just noticing things about it, right? ... And then once we've made kind of a pile of these observations, then we start looking for patterns..." (17:46)

5. Student Struggles & Classroom Dynamics

• Classroom and personal struggles are entwined—students often wrestle with identity, confidence, and loneliness, particularly in the emotionally charged context of literature.
• Rotella shares the story of “Dan”—a standout, dissenting, working-class student who shaped classroom dynamics and modeled productive disagreement:

  "[Dan] became a very important character in the class because he modeled for other students. The fact that you don't have to just go along to get along, you know, you can..." (21:20)

6. The Pandemic’s Disruption & Online Teaching

• Rotella recounts the impact of the COVID-19 pivot to Zoom—how in-person cohesion could not be replicated online, and how Zoom’s structure stymied genuine conversation:

  "...I just kept having my normal class except on Zoom, which is very, very hard to do. It doesn't really work to have a free flowing conversation among 33 people..." (24:30)

• The years he taught solely on Zoom felt like “a lost year,” with no strong student memories or community—underscoring in-person teaching’s irreplaceable value.

7. Teaching Nonfiction and Applying Skills to the World

• Rotella strongly incorporates nonfiction ("literary journalism") and argues close reading skills are universally applicable—State of the Union addresses, movies, even neighbors' yards:

  "If a student comes out of this class understanding how form expresses meaning. We're almost ready to declare victory, right..." (28:00)

• The skillset is foundational for citizenship, not just employment:

  "These are exactly the things that we're getting an F in as a society in ways that endanger democracy, right?...these are basic citizenship skills." (31:02)

8. “What Can I Get Out of This?”: Reframing the Value Proposition

• Responding to “Why should I study literature?” Rotella offers several answers:
  • Humanities skills underlie most post-industrial work: analyzing and adding value to information.
  • Data shows lifetime earnings don't actually differ much by major.
  • The experience of “going deep” into any subject, and within a passionate community, is of highest value:

    "Pick your major by something that animates you, that gets you excited, that allows you to go deep. Because the experience of going deep on something is the important part, not what the something was." (33:48)

  • Sometimes, it’s just good to practice being interested in required tasks—it's a vital, transferable skill.

9. AI & The Value of Discussion-Based Learning

• The AI “frenzy” has reinforced Rotella’s focus on the classroom encounter as the “main event”—something that can’t be faked or automated:

  "If you write a book about what happens in the classroom ... a lot of the response of people in the humanities to the rise of AI is to actually double down on what happens in the classroom..." (37:14)

• He’s adapted his assessments (e.g., blue-book finals) to anchor evaluations in classroom discourse, which AI can’t re-create.

10. The Classroom as Community, Not Just Content

• Rotella and Zakren agree: the face-to-face classroom is a unique, increasingly precious (but unfortunately elite) space for genuine communal inquiry.
  • “You can be lectured to passively, endlessly, forever ... But it's also increasingly set up that it's, it's rarer and rarer that you get to be around other people and have their undivided attention.” (40:29)
  • The classroom is, ironically, becoming "more not less cutting edge" in its artificial, focused, and personal dynamic (41:18).
• The give-and-take of in-person discussion—impossible to replicate online—builds irreplaceable “meta-skills” for life and work:
  • “In my class, you have to contribute. Right. And that's also true at your job. If you never contribute, you get fired. Right. But you also can't dominate ... And really I haven't found another way to, to learn that meta skill other than a face to face classroom.” (44:32)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On skepticism and transparency:

  "[Students] are inclined to regard what happens in English class as kind of opaque, as either sort of sorcery or bullshit." —Carlo Rotella (07:01)

• On participation and community:

  "If you don't talk in the first two weeks of a class, you basically won't talk. Right. A kind of writer's block sets in..." —Carlo Rotella (07:01)

• On the value of close reading:

  "Form expresses meaning. That's...what we're practicing here." —Carlo Rotella (28:00)

• On the irreplaceable nature of the classroom:

  "...by far the most important part of teaching for me, which is being in a room with my colleagues, my co workers who happen to be my students, and doing this thing that you really can't ever do anywhere else..." —Carlo Rotella (26:10)

• On the link between literary skills and citizenship:

  "...the ability to work your way through a 19th century novel probably equips you to understand that that video you saw of George Soros clinking champagne flutes with Satan is probably not reliable..." —Carlo Rotella (31:02)

• On the meta-skills gained from in-person class:

  "One of the meta skills you learn is, okay, I have to contribute ... But you also can't dominate...I haven't found another way to learn that meta skill other than a face to face classroom." —Carlo Rotella (44:32)

Important Timestamps (MM:SS)

• 03:14 – Rotella discusses the book’s hybrid approach and focus on student perspectives.
• 07:01 – On skeptical students and the importance of demystifying literary analysis.
• 12:17 – Addressing participation challenges; most students struggle with speaking up.
• 15:31 – Syllabus design centered on the theme of the “misfit.”
• 17:46 – Rotella’s stepwise method: notice, observe, hypothesize, interpret.
• 20:51 – Addressing the personal impact of literature and classroom discussion.
• 21:20 – “Dan” as a model dissenter and catalyst for classroom community.
• 24:10–26:10 – COVID-19, Zoom teaching, and the limits of online education.
• 28:00–31:02 – Why close reading is vital for life and society, not just literature.
• 33:48 – Reframing the “Why study literature?” question for the career-oriented student.
• 37:14 & 39:15 – AI’s impact and the renewed focus on in-class discussion as “the main event.”
• 40:29–41:31 – The face-to-face classroom as a rare, elite, and valuable space.
• 44:32 – The meta-skills of balancing contribution and restraint, and why they’re uniquely learned in person.

Final Thoughts

This episode provides an insightful, nuanced examination of what it means to teach and learn in a humanities classroom today. Rotella’s reflections, rooted in candid classroom stories and practical teaching philosophy, offer both a celebration and a defense of the intimate, often challenging, but always transformative work of learning together in person. The book and conversation are an essential listen for educators, students, and anyone invested in the future of meaningful education.