Riverside Church in New York City: April 2010 (Photo by Susan Bernstein)   For the past few years, students in my first-year writing classes have shared with me that most of their previous school-based writing was objective. By objective, students meant that their supporting evidence was based on information from several sources. Additionally, to emphasize objectivity, students did not include their own opinions and did not use the first person singular pronoun “I.” Our second writing project is an opinion/analysis essay that involves an evidence-based close reading of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1967 speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” For the students, this assignment resulted in cognitive dissonance. Writing their own opinions contradicted students’ internalized rules for “good” writing. The students were familiar with analysis from studying literature. They asked me how they could use analysis to form their own opinions. Before responding to this question, I took a breath. There were various potential responses to this question. Literary analysis is not objective. As writers, we make choices about analysis based on opinions and biases, conscious or not. Analysis allows writers to discover what they believe and why they believe it. As creators and consumers of social media, students already work with opinion-based analysis, especially in the current contexts of the pandemic, the Movement for Black Lives and #StopAAPIHate. In the students’ lifetimes, these contexts might well be studied as history. The events in the last year of Dr. King’s life, including his decision to break the silence with “Beyond Vietnam,” were the backdrop of my childhood. For me, the historical context of the speech is ever-present even as, for most of my students,  those events are long past and often unfamiliar. Familiarity with that context can be a useful tool for analysis. With this in mind, I tweaked the assignment by adding historical context for “Beyond Vietnam.” We watched three videos. The first video, “The Promised Land 1967-1968,” from the Eyes on the Prize series, covered the last year of Dr. King’s life and included clips of Dr. King’s speech on April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City.  The second video was intended for primary school children and offered a brief biography of Dr. King’s life. It focused on Dr. King’s childhood and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Absent were the difficult details from “The Promised Land,” which included Dr. King’s evolving perspective on the need to speak publicly against the Vietnam War, and his vilification by the media.  These two videos were meant to stand in contradiction to each other, and show how “facts” of Dr. King’s life and work could be revealed or withheld based on the intended audience and the opinions of the contented creators. The third video showcased clips from a mural based on “Beyond Vietnam.” In the spring of 2008, I assigned first-year students an in-class multimedia project, and the students created the mural from crayons, blank computer paper, and tape. Using multimedia, students were invited to question the relevance of Dr. King’s work in the twenty-first century. In spring 2008, I suggested to my spring 2021 classes, students were concerned about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with the 2008 presidential primaries. This video was meant to show an affective response to “Beyond Vietnam” that appealed to pathos, and also to ethos and logos. The text and context of “Beyond Vietnam” mattered in 1967 and still mattered to students in 2008. Dr. King’s struggle to break the silence on the global intersections racial injustice, poverty, and war was still relevant forty-one years later. In 2021, students connected to “Beyond Vietnam” through similar intersections. On Zoom, we analyzed  a passage in which Dr. King urges his audience to join him in struggle, using the personal plural pronoun  “we” for emphasis:  Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. ...Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement, and pray that our inner being may be sensitive to its guidance. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.   Dr. King’s struggle feels transcendent and still relevant to everyday lives. How do we break the silence in a world that often responds with hostility? How do we resist old rules and learn new practices? And how do we do this “with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision”? The students’ writing is still in process. Keywords: current events, online education, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,  multimedia, teaching in a pandemic,  rhetorical knowledge, grammar and style, online learning, writing process   ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition Overview As our field shifts and changes, we ask students to write for multiple purposes, audiences, and contexts. Multimodal composition has clearly moved out of exclusively academic settings into a variety of writing and reading opportunities. As we prepare students to write in our world today, we can help them realize the ways that content creation is part of the work of the writing classroom. Lisa Dush reminds us in her 2015 article “When Writing Becomes Content” that the field of writing studies is changing and encourages us to bring this relevancy to our classes through the content metaphor and reconsider the ways we discuss and teach writing. She says, “The real danger is in ignoring content: if content has indeed changed the rhetorical game, composers who ignore it risk failing in their rhetorical attempts, and a field that ignores it risks marginalization and missed opportunities for growth.” (193) As writing teachers, we have embraced this challenge and students now compose blogs, videos, tweets, and other kinds of content that is shared and repurposed across the web and into many interactive formats. I include a range of content variations in my classes and always focus on acts of composition within a rhetorical framework. In my previous posts, I have shared examples of longform assignments that are similar to academic texts, except that students now learn to write non-linear, interactive texts that include links, exploratory paths, and multimodal components. Recently, I have been thinking about the value of including low-stakes, micro content assignments. The term micro content was first credited to Jakob Nielson (2017) who defined it as “a small group of words which can be skimmed by the reader to understand the wider message of the article.” It can take the form of small fragments, phrases, or descriptions that can be added to longer pieces, provide information, or create audience engagement. He points out that micro content generally stands on its own without context and provides a way to skim texts for quick meaning. We have expanded this definition to include a variety of “bite-sized” or “digestible” chunks of information that now include multimedia, mini-content such as photographs, mini-videos, memes, tweets, graphics, gifs, lists, Instagram posts, TikToks, and other small form content. Although this micro content stands on its own, it also engages readers to further explore ideas as they click through and go deeper into long-form or other related content. In other words, these content artifacts work cooperatively to create content packages in which micro content fits together to contribute to larger pictures, ideas, or articles. Micro content is particularly important since our attention span is decreasing and we now get much of our information and entertainment through our phones and consume it in “small bites.”   Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook – Ch. 24, Communicating in Other Media The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises) – Ch. 20, Communicating in Other Media EasyWriter (also available with Exercises) – Ch. 9, Writing in a Variety of Disciplines and Genres   Steps to the Assignment As writing teachers, we already scaffold our assignments and integrate low-stakes writing into our courses at all phases of the writing processes. I combine these two ideas and design low-stakes micro content assignments either as quick, turnaround assignments; as parts of scaffolded, larger assignments; or as stand-alone micro content activities. Background: I find it beneficial to help students define the concepts and terms (content, micro content, long-form content). I present concepts, definitions, and examples of micro content. I often have them read Dush’s article “When Writing Becomes Content” and other definitional articles that explore the nature of content and the shifting roles of writers. Have students search the web to identify and analyze different types of micro content and create a collaborative class list to show the range of artifacts and their variations. You can also have them post links with short descriptions to a discussion post. Share with the rest of the class in a full class discussion. Next, have students choose a particular type of micro content and write a reflective analysis in which they compare and cite examples and discuss the genre conventions of their choice (length, style, links, images, etc.). Challenge students to compose micro content and scaffold these low-stakes assignments into your existing course assignments. Here is a quick list of some of these assignments I have tried in my own courses. Many of these are described in some of my earlier posts: Quick image assignments that combine text and image such as a digital, visual series or short slideshows Longform content rewritten as micro content Memes Mini-videos Researching trending topics and creating micro content based on topics Gifs and emojis Curation on a particular theme or subject area—quotes, articles, sharing of other content #hashtags Infographics Polls or questions—research and survey data Pinned maps Podcasts An optional extension of this work is to have students incorporate their micro content into another long-form artifact created in the class. For example, they might include an infographic to help visualize data in a research article or essay, or embed a short video in a blog post.   Reflections on the Activity Longform content and detailed academic texts will always have a place in our writing classes and in other world contexts. Students will still engage in a range of rhetorical and research practices as they shape their ideas. However, including low-stakes micro content assignments encourages them to reframe the ways they understand their roles as writers who write for many rhetorical contexts. The teaching of micro content communicates to students the ways we can pull together multiple content artifacts to create engaging multimodal writing.   Works Cited Lisa, Dush. “When Writing Becomes Content.” NCTE, 2015, library.ncte.org/journals/CCC/issues/v67-2/27641. Loranger, Hoa, and Jakob Nielson. “Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines.” Nielsen Norman Group, 2017, www.nngroup.com/articles/microcontent-how-to-write-headlines-page-titles-and-subject-lines/.   Image Credit: “Digital Literacy Clipart 1560126” from WebStockReview, used under a CC BY 3.0 license; “Water Drops” from PxHere, used under a CC0 license ... View more

    Today’s guest blogger is Tanya Rodrigue‌, an associate professor in English and coordinator of the Writing Intensive Curriculum Program at Salem State University in Massachusetts.   My last two blog posts, “Facilitating Online Peer Review” and “Various Methods for Conducting Peer Review,” provides instructors with a scaffolded approach for orchestrating online peer review as well as several different peer review methods and activities that can be employed in an online or face-to-face environment. While a pedagogical approach and directed activities are sure to create a productive environment, the only way students will find peer review productive is if they believe it is a valuable activity and will result in feedback that will help them revise their work. Students who believe in peer review as a worthwhile endeavor are more likely to give productive feedback to their peers as well as take up peer feedback for the purposes of revision. Yet how do we persuade our students that peer review is valuable? In this post, I offer several possibilities for doing so.   #1 Deconstruct the notion that peer review is only for “struggling writers.” Students often think any kind of revision feedback, whether it be in peer review or at the writing center or from an instructor, is an indication that they are not a “good” writer. Many think that if they were a “good writer,” they wouldn’t have any “mistakes” and thus not need to revise their work at all. Students need to be explicitly told that feedback is not synonymous with mistakes and is one of the strongest mechanisms in helping people grow as writers and thinkers.   #2 Share your experiences with peer review. Students don’t often recognize that their own professors engage in peer review on a regular basis, either giving or receiving feedback. Students would benefit from knowing the circumstances in which professors partake in peer review and the peer review processes. For example, a professor might discuss the process of journal manuscript submissions with students and show them real peer revision recommendation letters. They may talk students through the process of what they decided to take up and how they decided to revise based on particular suggestions. They might then discuss the differences between the original submission and the revised document.  An activity like this would help students immediately recognize that teachers and students share something in common: they are all writers in an academic setting who receive feedback in efforts to revise and strengthen their writing.   #3 Show students the value of feedback using student work. Students can see the true value of peer feedback in the classroom by looking at other students’ work. An instructor, for example, may ask students to read through a previous student’s draft, the feedback comments they received on the draft, and the revised version that took up some feedback suggestions. A strong revised piece of writing that used feedback effectively would show other students the instrumental role they and their peers could play in supporting one another in producing effective writing.   #4 Show students peer (in the broadest sense) review is ubiquitous. While students may buy in to peer review from learning about its function and value in an academic setting, they are more likely to be persuaded when they understand peer review in broad terms and that it happens in all shapes and forms in life outside the academy. A peer can be thought of as anyone who understands and is willing to read one’s work, and this act can occur in both personal and in public spaces. Students would benefit from specific examples of how professionals and everyday people provide each other with feedback for the purposes of revision. For example, a person on a marketing team might ask their boss for revision feedback on a PowerPoint presentation. A grandmother might ask her adult grandchild to give revision feedback on a letter to an insurance company. A musician might ask their band manager for feedback on a song. People read and give each other feedback in all different settings, inside and outside of school. The recognition of feedback in personal and public spaces normalizes and destigmatizes the practice of peer review and positions it as a common way in which people strengthen their writing.   The combination of fostering student buy-in and using a scaffolded approach to orchestrating peer review is sure to create an atmosphere in which students, their writing, their feedback, and their interaction with each other are important and are valued. ... View more

In an excellent February 2021 article in the Atlantic entitled “5 Pandemic Mistakes We Keep Making,” Zeynep Tufekci contrasts the recent reception of the COVID-19 vaccine with the reception of the polio vaccine in the 1950s: “When the polio vaccine was declared safe and effective, the news was met with jubilant celebration. Church bells rang across the nation, and factories blew their whistles. ‘Polio Routed!’ newspaper headlines exclaimed. . . . People erupted with joy across the United States. Some danced in the streets; others wept. Kids were sent home from school to celebrate.” In contrast, on November 10, 2020, “[t]he first, modest headline announcing the Pfizer-BioNTech results in The New York Times was a single column: ‘Vaccine Is over 90% Effective, Pfizer’s Early Data Says,’ below a banner headline spanning the page: ‘BIDEN CALLS FOR UNITED FRONT AS VIRUS RAGES.’” We teach our students how slanted language can affect an audience’s reaction, how the connotation of individual words can influence opinion. We are also influenced by what is included and what is left out or, in this case, what is emphasized and what is relegated to a single column. Why is there so much emphasis in the media on the negative possibilities of the vaccines and so little celebration of the fact that they exist? Have we become so cynical that we worry about the new variants to the point that we can’t appreciate the drugs’ effectiveness in saving lives? This type of media coverage plays into the hands of anti-vaxxers who welcome any opportunity to denigrate vaccines. Opponents of vaccines in general or of these in particular like to argue that there is really not that much more that Americans can do once they have had the vaccine than they could before it. Yet well below the glaring headlines are the sweet stories about grandparents finally getting to hug their grandchildren again and of nursing homes cautiously opening their doors to visitors. Does the news media’s reluctance to celebrate the vaccines arise from political partisanship? Perhaps. After all, former President Trump issued a statement recently on pseudo-White House stationery, trying to take credit for their existence: "I hope everyone remembers when they’re getting the COVID-19 (often referred to as the China Virus) Vaccine, that if I wasn’t President, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful 'shot' for 5 years, at best, and probably wouldn’t be getting it at all. I hope everyone remembers!" His choice of verb tense (“if I wasn’t president”) reflects his refusal to admit that he lost the 2020 election, or perhaps he’s just not that astute a student of grammar. His supporters might celebrate with him his gift of the vaccines to the American people, but for others, the very thought of Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic from the beginning might dampen down any spirit of enthusiasm.  However, it’s not as though we have to give credit to former President Trump for the existence of the vaccines, but rather to the scientists who labored to create them and the volunteers who participated in the development trials. Should our optimism be guarded because these vaccines were developed quickly? It was unprecedented to develop a vaccine, let alone several, in a matter of months instead of years. As Tufekci put it, “Vaccines that drastically reduce hospitalizations and deaths, and that diminish even severe disease to a rare event, are the closest things we have had in this pandemic to a miracle—though of course they are the product of scientific research, creativity, and hard work.” They show what can be done when the full power of the scientific and pharmaceutical communities come together in a shared mission – something, again, to be celebrated rather than feared. Unfortunately, our nation is not prepared to come together, as a nation, to celebrate anything at this point. We could not celebrate together the inauguration of a new president - not when large numbers of Americans believed the former one’s claims of a stolen election. Nor could we, as a united nation, celebrate democracy and the peaceful transition of power because of those same dissenters, some of whom turned to violence in an effort to stop the lawful counting of electoral votes and disrupt the election of Joe Biden. For the moment, everything is seen, still, in political terms. In a nation where wearing a mask to prevent the spread of COVID or not wearing one became a political statement and led to injury and death for some trying to enforce mask mandates, rolling up one’s sleeve for a vaccination can hardly be seen in apolitical terms. Likewise, it’s hard to celebrate the “reopening” of America when many feel it is coming too soon. We long ago left behind the idea of news as an objective account of the world’s happenings. To deny the political leanings of the news networks would be ludicrous. Maybe the time has come to move back toward some type of balance at least. Ideally a network would report any problem with the vaccines while also reporting successes in getting the vaccines out to more people and making strides toward ending the pandemic—and to keep both sets of facts in proportion. Maybe a time will come when, even if Americans don’t take to the streets in celebration, we can at least breathe a collective sigh of relief that we are returning to something closer to normal, in our news media and in our lives.   Image Credit: "A newspaper with the headline Coronavirus News"  by Jernej Furman, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

Well, of course, The Social Dilemma is the title of the much-watched and much-reviewed documentary film by Jeff Orlowski. It includes a series of hair-raising interviews with many of the people who brought us social media in the first place but have now had second, and third, thoughts about its dangers—so much so that many of them make sure that their children are NOT users of social media. I have a grandniece whose access to screens and social media has not been curtailed, and watching this film practically set my hair on fire. I could relate many of the stories told in it to what I’ve seen in my wonderful grandniece’s experience and behavior. I came away shaken. And so, as we teachers do, I watched the film again and did some reading of reviews, including a neutral one in the New York Times, two critical ones in The Verge and Nir and Far, and several largely positive ones, including a review in Variety. I also went back to re-read Jaron Lanier’s page-turner of a book, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Lanier is featured in The Social Dilemma and I’ve followed his work for many years, finding him reasonable and fairly even handed. Indeed, he concludes his Ten Arguments by saying he knows it is asking a lot to delete all social media and so he asks simply that readers take a pause—a week, maybe a month—and then assess how they feel free of the constant invitations to click, click, click—and to be manipulated. So I’ve often recommended Lanier’s book to my students, asking them just to hear him out and them to consider taking a break from all social media. Some have taken up the challenge, but a lot have not. So I’m left this week not with answers but with questions. Just what is the “dilemma” that social media pose to us and especially our students? How clearly and persuasively is it delineated in Orlowski’s film, or how much is the argument there itself exaggerated in an attempt to manipulate us? And most important, what is our responsibility, our obligation, to our students in continuing to bring these issues to them, to insist that we try working through them together? For my part, I have not deleted my social media accounts yet—but I rarely use them beyond sharing my blog posts. I would very much like to hear your take on the “social dilemma” of our times. Image Credit: "Social Media" by magicatwork, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

I live on the coast of California about 150 miles north of San Francisco in a community called The Sea Ranch. It has quite a history, of which I was completely unaware when—after love at first sight—I bought a lot here in 2000 and eventually saved enough money to build a home. Now I am a ‘full-timer” here and over the years have come to know a lot about this place. It was the home of the Pomo people before a “settler” received a Mexican land grant in 1846 for the property. In the early sixties, an architect surveyed the ten miles of coastal land before a group purchased the property and engaged a distinguished group of young architects to design a community whose watchword was to be “living lightly on the land.” Graphic designer Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, known for her supergraphics, designed the Sea Ranch logo, which you can see below, as well as large and very striking interior paintings for several of the original buildings.  And here’s where fonts come in. As they wrote materials about The Sea Ranch, the founders settled on the very modern, very “in” Helvetica font. As I got to know more about The Sea Ranch and became friends with one of the original architects—the fabulous Donlyn Lyndon—I got curiouser and curiouser about this favored and pervasive font and learned of its rise to prominence as “the most famous” Swiss Style typeface. Launched in 1957, the neutral sans serif design was meant to be versatile and unobtrusive—to go unnoticed. But noticed it certainly was, soon becoming the go-to font for many brands, from Target to Apple’s Macintosh, from Yankee Stadium to the side of NASA’s space shuttle. Wow. Learning a little bit about this history, about the rise and fall and rise of Helvetica, of the wars between those who loved and those who loathed it, made me think of asking students what they know about fonts and why they choose them. I have them work in pairs to choose a font they admire and then see what they can find out about its history, about who created it and why, and about where and by whom it is used. Then we use their findings to launch a discussion of different font “personalities” and to write up little bios of a couple of fonts, describing them, giving them nicknames and character traits. We have some fun along the way, and students become much more conscious of the design choices they are making, often without even thinking of them. So the next time you give an assignment, ask students to pay special attention to the font they choose—and to append a memo to you at the end of the assignment explaining their choice. I always find these explanations fascinating! Image Credit: "helvetica 50" by _Nec, used under a CC BY 2.0 license (top); Photo by Andrea Lunsford ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, David Starkey (@davidstarkey), author of upcoming first edition Hello Writer, reflects on teaching in small, 2-3 minute chunks and the necessity of focusing on the most important information to communicate to students, as well as the surprising opportunities offered by the pandemic for reflection, mindfulness, and equity mindsets. ... View more

My students and I are slowly making our way through Absalom, Absalom! this semester, contending every class meeting with another blast of Faulkner’s tidal waves of prose. Three weeks and three chapters in, we took a break to write together about word choice. The novel challenges even those with the most robust vocabularies and I’ve used this challenge to introduce the students to the value of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). In doing so, I don’t mean to have my students see the OED as the final word on any given word’s meaning; rather, I’ve been at pains to help them see that the meaning of any given word evolves over time and that we can track the changes in meaning by attending to the context within which a given word is used. So, for our week of writing about Faulkner’s language in the first three chapters of Absalom, Absalom!, the students are tasked with producing what I call an “interpretive footnote.” Any of us can type an unfamiliar word into Google and pull up the word’s definition; and anyone in the class can go the extra step and do the same in the OED. That’s a start, but it doesn’t get us any closer to understanding whether the word is being used in a new or divergent way in the context of Faulkner’s chronicle of the South in its time of “undefeat” post-Civil War. Accordingly, the students are to choose a word or phrase that seems important and then provide an interpretation of that word or phrase in context. To help get the students started, I do the assignment myself and post the response along with the assignment. And then, during the week while we are writing together, when I’m not conferring in a breakout room with individual students seeking on-the-spot guidance, I work on a second entry for our collective lexicon. (I’ve done with using websites I administer; this time I used “Piazza,” a wiki app in the Canvas LMS.) When the students are satisfied with their responses, they share what they’ve written with the rest of the class and everyone reads along. Every time I do this assignment (and this is the first time I’ve ever done it with a work of fiction!) I’m amazed at the results. Freed of the idea that the footnote is for facts or for documenting erudition or for stockpiling support, the students use their time to explore nuance and ambiguity; they write about possible meanings and shades of gray. And, with no word limit provided, they keep writing, instead of preemptively tying things off because some outside indicator has signaled that the assignment is “done.” The range of words covered goes from the familiar (“ogre,” “swagger”) to the less certain (“doubtless,” “sardonic”) to the unfamiliar (“chatelaine,” “grim virago fury”). I wish I could share the responses here, but they’re still current students. (We do include examples of student responses in Habits of the Creative Mind from when I was using Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts in my slow reading class.) I can share a slimmed down version of one of my modelled responses, though, . You can show them how to be curious on the page and that, in turn, gives them permission to engage their own imaginative powers as they write.     The Stage Manager: "Yes, he had corrupted Ellen to more than renegadery, though, like her, unaware that his flowering was a forced blooming too and that while he was still playing the scene to the audience behind him fate, destiny, retribution, irony--the stage manager, call him what you will--was already striking the set and dragging on the synthetic and spurious shadows and shape of the next one" (57). As you know, I'm interested in thinking how the participants in Absalom, Absalom! make sense of what is happening to them and why the South lost the war. In my last entry (cf. "vouchsafed instinct"), I looked at how Miss Rosa's way of talking about herself places her at the mercy of the Old Testament God--a god of vengeance and punishment. She also uses words that are more readily associated with Greek tragedy: she speaks of her relatives having committed a "crime" (14) that has left her "family cursed;" and, too, she sees herself and others see her as Cassandra-like. In the passage above, the speaker is Mr. Compson and the topic is Sutpen's influence on Ellen. Compson refers back to his earlier claim that the aunt "would have" described the years after Sutpen left for the war as Ellen's period of "renegadery." In that earlier passage, he elaborates on the form that this "betrayal" took: Ellen comes to take "pride" in her life at Sutpen's Hundred and her marriage to Sutpen. She has cast off the aunt's influence and has "bloomed" into having a bearing that is "a little regal." (This is when she starts going to town with Judith and having all the shopkeepers bring out their wares.) Compson continues that Ellen’s renegadery allows her to disavow reality itself and to see herself as "chatelaine to the largest, wife to the wealthiest, mother of the most fortunate" (all quotes in this paragraph from p. 54). THREE pages after these observations, Compson returns to Ellen's renegadery, as the flourishing conclusion to how fully and completely Sutpen has corrupted her. First he tells Quentin that, after ten years of marriage, Sutpen now “acted his role too--a role of arrogant ease and leisure . . . " (57). Then Compson's analogy catches up with him: if Sutpen and Ellen are acting their parts, who's in charge? Sutpen thinks his "flowering" is of his own volition and so misses that what has occurred is a "forced blooming" set in motion by . . . ? None of the options Compson provides can be construed as being divine or sacred. Indeed, none of the nouns rise to the level of requiring capitalization: "fate, destiny, retribution, irony--the stage manager, call him what you will." The first two options ("fate" and "destiny") deprive Sutpen of free will. There's a reason for what happens to Sutpen but invoking "fate" or "destiny" places that reason beyond human perception or interference. The second two choices ("retribution" and "irony") also deprive Sutpen of free will, but they place Sutpen in a context where whatever happens to him can be cast either as punishment doled out by the [lower case u]niverse or as the [lower case u]niverse getting a kick out of crushing reversals in human fortunes. It is in this context that Mr. Compson adds an additional possible name for the cause of what lies ahead for Sutpen: the stage manager. As soon as Mr. Compson invokes this evanescent figure, he makes clear that nothing significant hangs on which term one prefers: "call him what you will," he says. What matters is that Sutpen thinks he is charge of his life, as he settles into the comforts of his enormous estate, his outsized cotton profits, his progeny, but "the stage manager" has already struck that set and is preparing the next one, which will also be composed of "synthetic and spurious shadows." All of which drives me to note that Miss Rosa is the one to invoke God in the opening of the novel; Mr. Compson, covering much of the same ground and covering it more exhaustively, doesn't look to God or a god to explain why the South lost the war. He gives us, instead, the stage manager, who is a puny figure indeed.       ... View more

In Everything’s an Argument (soon to be in its 9th edition!), John Ruszkiewicz and I devote an entire chapter to defining terms and arguing that definitions matter, legally, socially, personally—and providing lots of examples to back up that claim, from the way the word “marriage” is defined in the now infamous Defense of Marriage Act to how "racism” is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary (a definition the dictionary revised after recent college grad Kennedy Mitchum wrote to them pointing out the inadequacy of their current definition). And we point out how definitions can shape or control or oppress us personally, as when a label (“developmentally disabled,” for example) puts us in a category that limits our potential. During the second Trump impeachment trial, I paid close attention to the words and phrases the two sides used most often, remembering an analysis from the first impeachment of the former president that compared the frequency of words and phrases used by the two sides and found that they seldom overlapped. I’m hoping one of the news organizations will undertake similar research for this second impeachment. But in the meantime, this event provides a fine opportunity for our students to investigate, explore, and perhaps challenge frequently used words and their definitions. Here are just a few we might start with: impeach/impeachment oath of office managers desecration mob incite/inciting insurrection fight/fight like hell patriot traitor acquit/acquittal convict/convicted These are words I heard over and over, with numbing regularity, as I listened to speeches and statements and watched video clips. But how were these words being defined by those who used them? How should they be defined? Where do these words come from—what’s their history? (I learned for the first time, for example, why the representatives bringing the charge of impeachment from the House are called “managers.”) So perhaps we can give students a chance to process some of what has happened during the impeachment trial through the analysis of terms. Ask them to work in pairs or small groups to research the history and derivation of a term on the list above—or choose another one they heard mentioned often—and then try to deduce how it is being defined by those using it during the trial. Then ask them to offer a definition of their own, with their reasoning fully explained. I think doing so may lead to some good critical thinking and also to an engaging class discussion based on substantive reasoning rather than often uninformed opinions. And on a completely separate note, the big news here in my little part of the world is that I got my second vaccination on February 14: Happy Valentine’s Day! Image Credit: "Dictionary" by greeblie, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

  Over the last few years, I’ve written and spoken often about the power of stories, about why we “need” stories, and about how the stories we create can lead to narrative justice. In short, the stories we tell shape realities, and so stories that continually represent a group of people in negative ways create injustice for the people in that group. It’s our obligation to resist and replace such stories. (This is the major point of a talk I gave at the 50th anniversary of the RSA, which you can read here.) As I was doing research on stories and storytelling, I was thinking a lot about the speaker, the teller of the stories, and about how to create just stories. But it takes (at least) two for stories to work, and so lately I’ve been thinking about the hearers of stories, the listeners, and about listening in general. Krista Ratcliffe has been teaching us about the importance of listening for over twenty years now, and her lessons have never been more germane than they are today in an age of echo chambers and of stories that can reach millions in seconds and reiterate them endlessly. So it was with particular interest that I read about the work of Professor Uri Hasson and his colleagues at Princeton who have been studying stories and the connection between speakers and listeners. During experiments using brain scans, these researchers noted that in certain narrative circumstances the sound waves of a story “couple” the brain responses of the speaker and the listener. As TED Conferences puts it, “a great storyteller literally causes the neurons of an audience to closely sync with the storyteller’s brain.” That’s an oversimplification, of course, but it gets at Hasson’s finding that our brains have evolved to develop a “neural protocol that allows us to use such brain coupling to share information.” In a series of fascinating experiments, Hasson and his colleagues had speakers narrate text to listeners in various ways: read backwards or out of order, and so on. While these experiments led to some surface-level coupling, only the story, its narrative elements intact, led to coupling deep inside the brain. Furthermore, Hasson found that “the better the listener’s understanding of the speaker’s story, the stronger the similarity” between the two brains. In rhetorical or compositional terms, Hasson’s findings demonstrate that effective, meaningful communication depends on establishing common ground. The current climate of distrust and division, of viral misinformation repeated endlessly, makes finding common ground increasingly difficult if not impossible. When listeners hear the same thing over and over again, day in and day out, they will have trouble “synching” with anyone telling a different story. The message for us as teachers of writing seems clear: we must work harder than ever to engage students in listening to and understanding stories and perspectives they are not familiar with or that differ significantly from their own. When novelist Richard Powers points out that the only thing in the world that can change a person’s mind is “a good story,” he now has neuroscientific evidence to back him up! Stay tuned for more on listening in the coming weeks. Image Credit: "Orange and Blue Brain Anatomy Hoop Art. Hand Embroidered." by Hey Paul Studios, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition   Overview Ralph Waldo Emerson in his famous essay, Nature (1836), talks about becoming a “transparent eyeball,” a philosophic metaphor that he describes as a state of being that can only be achieved in nature.  It gives him peace and allows him to see beyond the structures that define him and see things in new ways. He says "I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing, I see all."  Emerson believes that in order to truly appreciate nature, one must go beyond merely looking at it and instead feel it and engage with it as both a sensory and intellectual experience.  The transparent eyeball is “absorbent rather than reflective” and therefore a path to symbolic meaning and unexpected connections.  I send students outside, to a place of their own choosing and ask them to spend time in nature and practice the intellectual exercise of moving between the micro and the macro.                       1 - The Micro                                                                                        2 - The Macro Steps to the Assignment Have students read and respond to Emerson’s Nature essay. It is important that students have a strong understanding of his philosophy and the metaphor of the transparent eyeball. Ask students to post 3 thought-provoking questions and 1 passage from the text.  Ask students to post the passages from the reading onto a collaborative Google document to guide discussion. Engage in full class discussions about the passages and questions and ask students to explain and interpret particular passages for a deep understanding of the text.  Next, I ask students to go physically into nature and see what they can learn when they focus on it. Encourage students to focus on both sensory and intellectual experiences of nature.  They can find a place in nature--a tree, a park, their back yard, a field, somewhere on campus, etc.  and choose a place that is relatively free of distraction.  I ask them to spend at least 15 minutes writing (no need to type this assignment) and try to record what they see, hear, notice, think.  I want them to shift their attention back and forth from micro to macro and engage their “transparent eyeball.”  I urge them to exercise the cognitive practices of moving back and forth between the whole picture and the parts--from the forest to the trees to the trunk to the bark to the ant to the blade of grass. It is important that they write freely and pay attention (and record) what they are seeing, feeling and thinking.  Let them know it is OK to let their minds and writing wander wherever the experience takes them. Have them record the waves of their thoughts and the ways new thoughts emerge the longer they sit there.   Using their phone cameras, have students take 10 total images – 5 micro and 5 macro. Choose one from each category (micro and macro) and post them to an individual slide to contribute to a collaborative Google slideshow.  Have students include their names, location they visited and a significant passage from their experience transcript. Show or post the slideshow and have students share with the class.      Reflections on the Activity Students experience a range of feelings and ideas from this assignment.  They are often surprised at their reactions and ideas that surface during their time in nature. The concept of the transparent eyeball and the intellectual act of moving between the micro and the macro acts as a new lens and emphasizes the value of this kind of meditative experience.     Here are some of the responses and ideas generated through the assignment:   “I am noticing I am having a hard time separating the humans from the environment during this exercise. Probably due to the human geography/GIS course I am taking, probably due to the kids who are currently here playing on the other side of the park. Either way, humans ultimately are part of the environment, arguably even more now than when Emerson wrote his essay.” Brody “How many others, like me, have let society overpower their sense of adventure and discovery?” Sydney “It’s just wonderful how the world falls together to create little pockets of peace, and how those pockets are different for everyone.” Kelsey “Nature is cool like that; it can give you what you need without you knowing exactly what that means. Nature is freeing. It's a place where when everything in the world doesn't make sense, nature is there to slow you down and zoom out- help you look at the bigger picture.” Hannah “Just by concentrating on nature, I can block out everything that I haven't been able to get out of my head for days. . . This experience has brought a significant surge of happiness.” Litzy   The assignment is both experiential and multimodal and reminds us of the importance and connectedness with nature.  Students are usually motivated to incorporate these ideas into their daily lives and find a deeper sense of gratitude and awareness of their surroundings. ... View more

One of the readings that Sonia and I have carried over into the 10th edition of Signs of Life in the USA is Massimo Pigliucci's "The One Paradigm to Rule Them All: Scientism and The Big Bang Theory." This amusing yet highly informative analysis of one of television's premier comedies focuses on the way that the series made fun of the belief that everything in the world can be reduced to one sort of scientific explanation or another. Called "scientism," this reductionist credo is constantly on display in The Big Bang Theory, running its protagonists (especially Sheldon) into absurdities whenever they try to push it too far.  The current belief in "big data" and "analytics"—the conviction that all of our problems can be solved if just enough numbers can be crunched and the right software can be developed (remember MOOCs?)—is an expression of scientism. So, The Big Bang Theory's entertaining reminders that there is more to being human than meets the algorithm can certainly be seen as a useful corrective. But as I contemplate the astonishing resistance in America to the most fundamental medical realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, I see something in far more need of correction than scientism: this is what I will call anti-science-ism, which is practically the exact opposite of scientism. From climate change denial to the anti-vaxxing movement and beyond, anti-science-ism is one of the most powerful forces in America today, and it can be found across the political spectrum. So, without singling out any particular example for close analysis in this blog, I'd like to offer a brief semiotic explanation for what is going on. Of course, entire books can be devoted to such an analysis, and all of them would do well to begin with the battle between religion and science that erupted during the Enlightenment and which has been reflected most prominently in America through a continuing resistance to the teaching of biological evolution. But the current virulence against science is something else again, raising the temperature beyond anything we have ever experienced before. The Scopes Trial almost seems quaintly provincial in comparison to what is going on now. I think the key to the matter lies in the Greek origins of the word "physics": phusis. Phusis is "nature," material reality, and that is what physics—or more generally, science as a whole—is concerned with. Now, reality has an obdurate way of getting in the way of human desire, so at a time when very large numbers of people have become dissatisfied with their reality (and the ongoing collapsing of the American dream has been contributing a great deal to this dissatisfaction), they are rejecting both reality and the scientists who study it—along with any other duly credentialed authority who tells them what they don't want to hear. Thus are born conspiracy "theories" (note the cooptation of the word here), which redefine reality according to what the spinners of such tales want to believe is true, rejecting as "hoaxes" anything that gets in the way of their beliefs. Given the fact that things only stand to get worse in the years to come, with more and more political polarization as the gap between the educated "haves" and the less-educated "have-nots" continues to widen, we can expect to see only more anti-science-ism in the land, more versions of "realities" that are completely ungrounded in reality, and more denial, even as the temperature, literal as well as figurative, continues to rise. Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 1044090 by geralt, used under Pixabay License ... View more

This post is difficult to write, and I approach writing this week with humility and a sense of empathy for the challenges that all of us are facing. I have ADHD, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), and I have written, reflected, and created multimedia as a way of processing how these disabilities interact with my brain and the rest of my body. I cannot say how Zoom fatigue feels for anyone else, but for me it was a shock to the system.  ADHD helps me hyper focus when I teach on Zoom, but I cannot shut off the hyper focus when I shut down Zoom, and then, also off camera, GAD kicks in. After two months of fully synchronous Zoom teaching, GAD erupted in shrieks and loops of non-stop thinking. Overthinking, over-emotional, idealistic, taking life too seriously—all the words applied to me by others in childhood, graduate school, and afterward, came ripping out of my brain again. This was quarantine, but also not quarantine, the election, but also not the election. This was my brain on too much Zoom. In “Higher Ed Needs to Go on a Zoom Diet,” Joshua Kim suggests: “Whatever the reason that Zoom tires us out, we should all start listening to our bodies and begin making some adjustments.”  The first body part I knew I needed to adjust was my brain, and I decided to ask for accommodations for next semester: I would need to spend less time teaching on Zoom, and more time working with students asynchronously on email and google.docs; work I already knew how to do because of online training I received years before this pandemic, and my current employer’s online training. Changes in policy and scheduling are mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and as an adjunct, I understand that asking for such changes presents risks. Yet, as Eddie Glaude, Jr. reminds us, James Baldwin urged that we use our pain “to connect with other people’s pain; and insofar as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way around too; insofar as I can tell you what it is to suffer, perhaps I can help you to suffer less.” In other words, it seemed an even greater risk to ignore what felt like a tornado in my brain, and there was no option to keep the tornado invisible.  Sharing our suffering shares our humanity as well. With white privilege, and with the privilege of excellent mental health care, which is rare in this country, comes the responsibility to resist invisibility. I asked for accommodations and received them. Thanks to the ADA, with proof of documented disabilities I am legally eligible to receive reasonable accommodations to do the same job as everyone else. In The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, Audre Lorde, “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” who also lived with disabilities, writes, “I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into a perspective gave me great strength.” Indeed, we cannot wish away the problems and consequences of this pandemic. But, for me, for my students, and for my colleagues, my hope is that those of us with disabilities feel less invisible, less ashamed, and less alone. ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition Overview One of the most exciting things about multimodal writing in digital contexts is that we can compose non-linear texts that encourage readers to connect deeply and individually through engaging links, images, and exploratory paths. Writing and reading become participatory experiences in which we create dynamic spaces that encourage exploration and critical reading. When we read and write in non-linear spaces, we have opportunities to combine content in ways to create multidimensional experiences for our audiences.  Educational researchers, Howell, Reinking and Kaminsky define this process as writing in which readers and writers go beyond two-dimensional writing and, “add a third dimension of depth by simulating layers of visual elements.”  These features are also referred to as multimedia stories which, as media theorist, Jane Stevens, explains are “ a combination of text, still photographs, video clips, audio, graphics and interactivity presented on a web site in a nonlinear format in which the information in each medium is complementary, not redundant (Multimedia Storytelling, 2019). It is these additional layers though which writers can create interactive texts where readers choose their own paths and directions as they navigate documents.  In order to create non-linear writing that is complementary and not redundant, writers must choose content that does more than tell the same story.  Instead parts of the story are told through different media, secondary research and different paths for readers to explore. Through following these paths, readers are able to engage, and understand multiple perspectives through a more comprehensive lens.   I find that it is often difficult to communicate this idea of non-linear, multidimensional writing to students although they interact with these texts all of the time on the Web.  I find that they rarely consider how much content we consume is inherently interactive.  Students are so used to presenting material in linear formats that this type of assignment challenges them to compose through the lens of interactivity to create depth and audience participation in online settings.  Interactive components can take the form of text, links, video, audio, images, animation, graphics, etc. The most challenging part of this assignment is getting students to understand interactivity and the ways composing takes on new shapes in digital contexts. I find that it is useful to concentrate and distinguish between three important concepts: Purposeful linking, Multimodal Components, and what I call Exploratory Paths. Purposeful Linking involves students in embedding links within their texts in order to guide their readers in a direction that will both engage them and extend their subjects through secondary sources.  I help students to consider linking in meaningful ways. Many students will link merely for duplication rather than extension or link to commercial sites that do not really add value or depth to their conversations.  Like other research practices, we look for students to evaluate their sources for integrity, validity, and interest.  It is also important to teach students about the logistics of purposeful linking and how to contextualize and place their links.  Students will often link to “here” or some other generic nomenclature.  They need to learn to carefully name and find the places in their sentences that connect most directly to where they are linking.  Multimodal Components add a visual and potentially interactive dimension to texts as we engage readers through images, videos and other graphic content.  The difference between multimodal components and embedded links is that these components appear on the original pages and do not require readers to follow them to other content.  Instead, they add to the reading experience through reinforcing and extending ideas through visual components. Exploratory Paths take readers deeper into productive, related tangents that allows readers to experience different layers that extends their content.    Unlike embedded links or multimodal components, exploratory paths are authored by the student on embedded pages.  They takes the form of mini features (or chunks of Composing Exploratory Paths (courtesy of author) information) in which students compose, interpret, synthesize and extend on ideas related to their subjects from their own perspectives. These paths include links or graphic connectors where readers engage and interact for related feature information. Essentially students create a master feature, along with associational content to give a larger picture that includes multiple perspectives and positions on their subjects. Background Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook - Ch.11d: Conducting Internet Research; Ch. 18b: Planning Web-based texts The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises) - Ch. 10f: Use Web and Library Resources;  Ch. 20c: Plan Features of texts EasyWriter (also available with Exercises) - Ch.13d: Finding Useful Internet Sources; 13a: Conducting Research Steps to the Assignment: Have students generate an essay, story, feature article, or research paper. Ask students to search for copyright free images to include in their writing that extend or reinforce their ideas.  Have them include a caption for each image and pay attention to location to anchor their images close to their ideas. Discuss and show examples of purposeful and non-purposeful linking. Ask students to research and embed links that extend their subjects in purposeful ways through secondary sources. Emphasize that these links should extend, not just duplicate information in their texts. Discuss placement, purposeful naming and location of their links within the document. Introduce the concept of exploratory paths in which students find several related subjects and ideas to shape into mini-features that expand their ideas or offer synthesized perspectives. Have them include links or graphic connectors that take readers to this supplemental content. Have students pull together their drafts and elicit response and feedback from Content Design Teams (peer response).    Reflections on the Activity I find that although these concepts can be difficult for them to grasp, students benefit greatly from understanding these basic practices.  Most of us were taught to write linear documents that are read from top to bottom.  We have to retrain the ways that we think and compose. These principles provide a foundation for purposeful multimodal and interactive writing. References Kaminski, Rebecca, et al. “Writing as Creative Design: Constructing Multimodal Arguments in a Multiliteracies Framework.” Academia.edu, 2015, www.academia.edu/14079689/Writing_as_Creative_Design_Constructing_Multimodal_Arguments_in_a_Multiliteracies_Framework. Stevens, Jane. Multimedia Storytelling: Learn the Secrets from Experts. 22 Feb. 2019, multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/starttofinish/. ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned," Erica Duran, one of the authors of Science and Technology, discusses the challenges of motivating students remotely, identifying why students might be struggling, and supporting students through personal challenges by offering understanding, care, and the resources they need. ... View more