Category: Pedagogy
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From Cardi B to Stranger Things: Reading Sounds, Captioning Meaning
This is the third post in a series leading up to my HASTAC webinar “From Cardi B to Stranger Things: Using Popular Culture in the Writing Classroom.” Disability Studies and Disability Rhetoric ask us to rethink how we arrange our classrooms (physical and virtual) and the course content we provide. Rather than a reactive measure, […]
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Everything I ever needed to know about kindergarten I learned from Nietzsche and Kafka
Two huge posters of Kafka and a portrait of Nietzsche drawn by a former student hang over the desk in my office, my two constant “spiritual” companions. I’ve been living with both of them for a while at this point, but it’s only been recently that I’ve come to understand how closely connected they are—and […]
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From Cardi B to Stranger Things: Circulating Consequences
This is the second post in a series leading up to my HASTAC webinar “From Cardi B to Stranger Things: Using Popular Culture in the Writing Classroom.” Circulation Studies is something I am relatively new to, but considering the speed at which popular culture is shared and re-shared, it makes sense to incorporate discussion of […]
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Notes from Underground
My relationship to my profession—teaching comparative literature, religious studies and philosophy at an elite liberal arts college, DePauw University—is ambivalent. I adore my students, I adore teaching, but I can’t shake the feeling that the kind of institution I’m teaching in perpetuates an enormously broken and unjust system. I can’t shake the feeling that, for […]
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Tips for Students: Distance Learning in the time of COVID-19
Students and people who work with students know that it is difficult to balance school and work, even in normal circumstances. And now, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, that challenge is more acute than ever. Together with my CUNY colleagues Lisa Brundage and Lisa Rhody, we have prepared some recommendations for students who […]
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Two IHE Articles on Teaching in a Pandemic: Community and Assessment
Here are two compassionate, useful articles about teaching in a pandemic. Both were coauthored with Christina Katopodis, I’ve (an extraordinary English doctoral student, Futures Initiative Fellow, and prize-winning adjunct teacher at Hunter). She and I are writing Transforming Every Classroom: A Practical Guide (due out in 2022 from Harvard UP). “ This one is about the […]
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The Inspiring “Adjusted Syllabus” by UNC Prof Brandon Bayne
Check out this inspiring syllabus by Prof Brandon Bayne of the University of North Carolina! Adjusted Syllabus Spring 2020 Brandon Bayne UNC – Chapel Hill Principles 1. Nobody signed up for this. Not for the sickness, not for the social distancing, not for the sudden end of our collective lives together on […]
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Transforming on the Fly: One Model for Easy Synchronous Community in an Online Class
Here is how we switched up what we are doing in class tomorrow. Not every student can be on video (in fact, I’ve not had any luck getting on), so we have divided up our two-hour class, so the first hour is asynchronous and the second synchronous in a variety of relatively easy forms–video, conference […]
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From Cardi B to Stranger Things: Finding the Sonic Narrative
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay This post is the first in a series that relates to my HASTAC webinar “From Cardi B to Stranger Things: Using Popular Culture in the Writing Classroom.” In this post I explore intertextuality–how texts rely on other texts to make meaning–as an important way to help students work through the […]
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Reflections: Teaching writing & critical thinking; giving feedback to students
One of the critiques I got from a student’s evaluation of my teaching last year was that I spent a lot of time telling them what not to do in their papers, and not enough time explaining how to fix their writing problems. This specific instance of teaching was especially challenging for me, since I […]