Wayne Koestenbaum has written widely on a variety of subjects. While he is probably known best as a poet, he is also a distinguished professor of English at the City University of New York. In this interview he describes the process of creating an unusual new course of study for his students.
The class he created for his students at CUNY was on the subject of humiliation. After teaching the subject he decided to delve more deeply into this topic. The result is "Humiliation," a collection of essays where the author examines this all too familiar feeling from numerous vantage points.
He looks at the process. What is humiliation? And he examines the results. We consider humiliations that have been made very public like the sex scandals which have engulfed politicians like Bill Clinton, Elliot Spitzer, and Larry Craig. And the author provides his own personal list of sad but rather humorous humiliations.
