How to deal with the Glaring Student

Lately I've been tempted to distribute dark glasses in my American Lit Survey class so I'll be oblivious whenever the Glaring Student beams Hostility Rays in my direction.

I have this student every spring--the names and genders change but the behavior remains constant. The Glaring Student will discuss Walt Whitman or T.S. Eliot or William Faulkner without a problem, but the moment we focus on an author who's not some dead white guy, the student's behavior changes: they cross their arms and glare at me as if I'm forcing them to murder their grandmothers. Later they'll write hostile comments on my course evaluations, angry at being made to read Toni Morrison or Zora Neale Hurston or Maxine Hong Kingston or Langston Hughes--only some of the greatest authors of the twentieth century! What, you'd rather read more Hemingway?

Even though the Hostility Rays appear predictably, I never know how to react in the moment. I could challenge the student (Why are you glaring at me?) but that would lead to either flat denial or distracting defensiveness. I don't want to spend valuable class time defending my syllabus for the benefit of one openly hostile student.

I've had some outside-of-class conferences with previous Glaring Students, but they don't resolve anything. I try to gently suss out the source of the student's hostility, but the response is denial or deflection. Maybe I'm imagining things? But no: I can see the body language, feel the Hostility Rays, and read the comments on course evaluations. Some students just resent reading non-white authors and don't want to talk about why.

So maybe sunglasses are the answer. Dark glasses could deflect the Hostility Rays or at least make them less obvious. But then I'd also need a way to mask the body language--the leaning back in the chair with arms folded like an impregnable shield preventing all unwanted ideas from entering. Tempting though it might be, I can't make the Glaring Student sit under a blanket.

So instead I'll stand at the front of the class doing my best to ignore the Hostility Rays in hopes that exposure to a wide range of authors will somehow pierce the shield, melt the resentment, and help the Glaring Students open their arms to a world outside themselves. That is, after all, what I'm here for.