{"id":4610,"date":"2025-07-30T15:25:59","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T19:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/case\/?p=4610"},"modified":"2025-07-30T15:26:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T19:26:00","slug":"meet-mary-jo-kietzman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/case\/2025\/07\/30\/meet-mary-jo-kietzman\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Mary Jo Kietzman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Professor of English<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cI want all of my students to feel liberated in what they do; this time must be meaningful for them, not just following a set path or paying for a piece of paper, but a time for them to truly unlock themselves, find their trajectory, and learn how to take what is essential about themselves and share that with the world,\u201d says Mary Jo Kietzman, professor of English at the University of Michigan-Flint<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though Mary Jo\u2019s grandmother and mother were both teachers, and she grew up in a household with two women constantly talking about school, she didn\u2019t enjoy traditional education as a child. \u201cI hated it! I couldn\u2019t sit there and do worksheets all day, I felt like I was being socialized just to fill out forms and not to learn anything, so I really rejected it in elementary school,\u201d she recalls. \u201cEventually, I realized that there was no way out of it, and so I needed to figure out how to make it about more than just getting good grades. It was a strange but really formative experience \u2014 and here I am, still in school all these years later!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of high school, Mary Jo suffered a significant loss: Her father died suddenly in his sleep, and she didn\u2019t know how to process that grief. She had recently discovered Emily Dickinson\u2019s poetry, and it was a revelation. \u201cThe language she used spoke to the heart of what I was experiencing, and I began to sort of gravitate toward these literary moments, instinctively, as a way of understanding what I was feeling, even if I didn\u2019t know that was what I was doing at the time,\u201d she explains. \u201cHonestly, I was a little bit lost, but these writers, these characters in these novels, were terrifically influential on me; they almost mentored me as I felt my way through to discovering my vocation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During her undergraduate studies, Mary Jo took an architecture course in London that featured Turkish buildings, and she decided to visit them in person. \u201cI really threw myself into things, I think that was part of my grieving process, and maybe I was a little bit reckless, but I wanted to take risks, to push the edges of what I knew,\u201d she shares. \u201cI bought a $50 bus ticket and went to Turkey on my own, without knowing any Turkish, and that made me more vulnerable in a way I don\u2019t think I understood at the time. But taking that risk, going out in the world and discovering things in a new way, that excited me, and I knew I wanted to keep traveling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After graduating, Mary Jo continued her studies at Boston College, where she received her PhD in English. \u201cIt was a very small program, and was created by a woman who was dissatisfied with the programs at Harvard and other institutions because she thought it was more valuable for the students to have a hand in shaping the curriculum. It was then that I kind of started moving back in time,\u201d she notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From more contemporary and modern literature, Mary Jo began studying medieval writers. \u201cI had a wonderful time reading Chaucer \u2014 the strangeness of the vocabulary, the lyrical qualities, it didn\u2019t feel dead! It felt alive, like hearing the underwater calls of whales,\u201d she explains. \u201cAround that time, I had a relationship breakup, and so I, again, worked through that loss with literature. This time, it was Chaucer, with whom I felt like I was having this conversation across time. My connection and resonance with literature have always helped me discover aspects of myself that weren\u2019t apparent at the time. It\u2019s something that I encourage my students to explore; that they might not recognize that\u2019s what\u2019s happening as they\u2019re going through the experience, but those moments \u2014 when something speaks to us, hits us where we least expect it, surprises us \u2014 that\u2019s self-discovery. That is how we grow new parts of ourselves, how we learn to adapt and grow and act more effectively in new situations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Mary Jo joined the faculty at UM-Flint in 1996, she initially taught Shakespeare each semester; however, she subsequently expanded her courses to meet the interests and needs of her students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI love working with and teaching in the Flint community, which is mostly working-class, like me, and has had to learn how to adapt to changing circumstances,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I first started at UM-Flint, we taught night classes for the factory workers who needed to train for new careers, and it was inspiring to see older students pursue new subjects and skills, to keep on learning. It brought me a new appreciation for the relevance of the humanities. From my perspective, our entire society is at a similar inflection point, and there will need to be a significant shift in how we think about education, learning, and knowledge, as well as the skills that are inherently and uniquely human. The humanities can guide us in that; I know some of my peers don\u2019t think we should have to make a case for why what we teach is important, but I think it\u2019s important for us to do so for our students, to show them how studying literature and art and culture and societies will benefit them in the long run. Because I truly believe that it will.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After spending time in Kazakhstan as a Fulbright Scholar in 2010, Mary Jo returned to UM-Flint with a newfound love for teaching project-based classes. \u201cI came back to Flint energized by developing curriculum centered on student experience. What do they want to know? What do they bring to this class? Many of my students have never had exposure to literature at this level, and I enjoy working with them to discover how these texts resonate with their own life experiences,\u201d she shares. \u201cIn 2013, the class adapted and performed Shakespeare\u2019s \u2018King Lear,\u2019 called \u2018Lear, Reassembled,\u2019 which was set in Flint and explored the economic and social challenges of that time. There was a lot of violence happening in the community \u2014 shootings and arson \u2014 and the factory closures were really fresh. Everyone in that play is thrust out of their roles, everyone is lost, and they\u2019re all forced to rebuild. So, imagining that within the context of Flint was inspiring for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mary Jo has continued her creative adaptation approach, using Shakespeare and other classic literature as a framework for student exploration. A subsequent class adapted \u2018As You Like It\u2019 to \u2018As You Like Flint,\u2019 which addressed the experience of living in Flint during the height of the Water Crisis. Her most recent Shakespeare course, in Winter 2025, involved adaptations of scenes from five different plays by the Bard, with students bringing his ideas and language into the 21st century<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne thing that concerns me with many of my students today is their aversion to risk, of needing to know how things are going to unfold before you even start it. Now, in some cases, that makes sense, there are safety considerations, but when you\u2019re talking about something like reading a book, you don\u2019t need to know what it\u2019s about before you read it, that\u2019s part of the process,\u201d Mary Jo says. \u201cThere are things that you will discover along the way, and some of them will take your whole life to understand. And that\u2019s good! Focus more on the journey than on the destination.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mary Jo’s Creative Highlights<\/h3>\n\n\n\n