“We couldn’t talk about politics in high school,” my students tell me. “They said it caused too many arguments.” This experience is not universal among my students. Many of my students are activists in their communities and on campus. But as we read and write together about Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the students consider the relevance of this germinal text as it applies to and contrasts with current events: As we begin our study of the “Letter,” I offer supporting background for kairos, the rhetorical term that foregrounds our work. Kairos is context, the rhetorical setting or occasion for writing. We watch a video of George Wallace delivering his inaugural address as the new governor of Alabama in January 1963. Wallace proclaims, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” We listen to a BBC interview with a demonstrator from the Birmingham Campaign’s Children’s Crusade, speaking of her experiences on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Birmingham actions. We watch raw footage of the demonstrations themselves, the children marching in the streets of Birmingham, their arrest, their incarceration, and barking dogs and the fire hose blasts. I offered a trigger warning for this video because the footage is so powerfully disturbing, and in offering that warning, I apologize for not alerting students to the strong words and images in the other videos. On another day, for a discussion on the power and possibility of topic sentences, I bring in one of my t-shirts from the Occupy Wall Street Screen Printers. The t-shirt has a dot matrix photo of Dr. King’s mug shot from Birmingham. In place of his actual booking number, the placard reads “OWS 99.” The caption for the photo is taken from “Letter”: “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.” Occupy Wall Street unfolded nearly five years ago, and some of the students are not familiar with the events of the autumn of 2011. As we break apart the different images of the t-shirt’s meme, I offer details. In one class, I speak while sitting on the classroom floor, to offer a face-to-face demonstration of direct action, and to show the possibilities of thinking outside the box. Another day, an itinerant preacher is speaking on our campus, surrounded by a crowd of students. The preacher’s style includes language that attacks the bodily integrity of women students. We can hear the preacher’s voice through the walls of our classroom, even as he speaks a half-block away with no megaphone. Later I will file a noise complaint with the police. I know from participation in Occupy Wall Street about the power of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and how those basic tenants from the Bill of Rights apply to all of us. I would not, I suggest to the students, want to keep Occupiers from speaking.  Nonetheless I apologize for the preacher’s hurtful language against women, that in 2016 such language is still considered acceptable. “We’re used to it,” the women tell me, and I express regret that conditions have not improved since my own years as an undergraduate. Subsequently some of the students decide to write about this preacher, in order to contrast his style and intention to Dr. King’s use of language. Like the itinerant preacher, Dr. King also carried the gospel wherever it was needed. We identify the passage in “Letter” where Dr. King addresses this point. All the while, the presidential primaries and caucuses play out. We have useful discussions that connect “Letter” to the political discussions of our current time, and to the candidates that, like Dr. King, offer specific messages for specific purposes in specific settings. I have the opportunity to attend a rally for one of the candidates, and the privilege of shaking the candidate’s hand at the end of the rally. Our state’s votes are considered significant, and several of the candidates visit nearby cities and suburbs. We discuss a protest held against one of the candidates in which demonstrators blocked the main road to the town where the candidate was speaking. Students decry these tactics, suggesting that people not risk their own lives and inconvenience others just to make a point. Working hard to practice nonjudgmental awareness in my tone of voice, I remind students of the tactics of the Children’s Crusade, and the anger that Dr. King’s methods often provoked. We agree to disagree. Days later, after a peer review session, a student who disagreed with the 2016 protest offers that Dr. King’s “Letter” inspires writers to elevate their own standards. Dr. King’s use of language, and the intent of the “Letter,” written by hand in the margins of newspapers, forces all of us to grapple with the power and possibilities of language. Later that week the unthinkable happens. Our state makes national news for voter suppression. My husband and I had to cast provisional ballots because the state claimed that we had registered our political party as “none.” Many voters found themselves in this situation, and none of these provisional ballots were counted. I detail for the students how, when we switched our registration from New York State, we knew about the closed primary system and registered with the DMV using the party affiliation that both of us had used for our entire lives. In order to do this, I break the rule that I learned in graduate school about not disclosing party affiliation to students. But my affiliation is not shocking to the students, and I offer additional details. For instance, some voters in the county where our institution is located stood in line for five hours, and discovered the winners of our state’s primary before they had had a chance to cast their vote. I note that my husband and I will attend a hearing at the state capitol to register protest over the suppression of our votes. We discuss the connections to “Letter.” We spend time writing. The essay is due shortly thereafter and our unit on “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” comes to an end. The following writing prompts and videos helped to foreground our discussion as our state continues to remain in the headlines. Writing prompts Is “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” still relevant for 2016? Why do you think so? What circumstances make the “Letter” relevant? What questions arose for you in your readings of the “Letter” and what did you do to answer those questions? How would you translate “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to fit the circumstances of your community (either an ASU community or a home community)? What examples would you use? Why? What questions arose for you in your readings of the “Letter” and what did you do to answer those questions? What did you find surprising about the circumstances of “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”? Why were you surprised? What questions arose for you in your readings of the “Letter” and what did you do to answer those questions? Readings and videos January 16, 1963: Alabama Governor George Wallace Inaugural address​ Video from the BBC World Service: “The Children’s Crusade: Witness #31”​ Birmingham Campaign (footage from 1963) Statement by Alabama Clergymen “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (text)​ “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (audio) Photo A dot matrix photo of Dr. King’s mug shot from Birmingham. In place of his actual booking number, the placard reads “OWS 99.” The caption for the photo is taken from “Letter”: “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.” ... View more

Today's guest blogger is Jeanne Bohannon​ (see end of post for bio). This semester has been all about comfort zones for me, both in how I connect with my student audiences and also how I participate in my own research. As are many of you, I am attending CCCCs (#4C16) this week and am conducting an interactive workshop similar to a feminist Wiki Write-in, with the topic "Mis-represented Women in STEM fields."  For this week's blog, I want to reflect on a democratic learning opportunity that initially took me out of my comfort zone as a new teacher.  The assignment I describe below is the inspiration for my #4c16 workshop, a set of brainstorming sessions of a wiki writing project that I did with a group of English 1102 students using Andrea’s ideas of writing to the world and writing for value.  Context for Working the Assignment The seed of a public, crowd-sourced text for recovery of misrepresented women throughout the history of STEM fields germinated in a democratic class community and an idea that students want their writing to have meaning and value to others. The original document lives at our English 1102 Women in STEM Wiki.  Here is how we brainstormed as a class for the assignment: Our project goals were to recover the life experiences of 20 women who contributed to STEM fields, research digital and physical texts and visuals associated with them, and produce encyclopedic entries that highlight these forgotten women, with the ultimate goal of disseminating the digital wiki document to Science organizations and schools for curriculum enrichment.  As a large group we used Google Docs and the Internet as invention heuristics, completing a “speed”-date” process to decide on our top twenty list of forgotten women in STEM. We researched and drafted facts in 10-minute  spurts using a style template. By the end of the class hour, we had the beginnings of 20 entries. Pacing for a Wiki Brainstorm 10 minutes total for each entry: Choose an entry subject: 1 minute Technology-driven brainstorm: 2 minutes Research and draft pages: 6 minutes Plan next steps for shared writing and next entry: 1 minute Measurable Learning Objectives Practice research methods in digital spaces Analyze and create meaning from a diversity of live experiences Synthesize content-meaning through dialogic writing and shared semantics Create a collaborative, public document for multiple audiences Background Reading for Students and Instructors Acts of reading and viewing visual texts are ongoing processes for attaining learning goals in dialogic, digital writing assignments. Below, I have listed a few foundational texts. You will no doubt have your own to enrich this list. The Everyday Writer​: Ch. 13, Doing Research; Ch. 25, Writing to Make Something Happen in the World The St. Martin’s Handbook: Ch. 11, Conducting Research; Ch. 26, Writing to Make Something Happen in the World Writing in Action: Ch. 3, Writing to Make Something Happen in the World; Ch. 13, Doing Research EasyWriter: Ch. 6, Writing to Make Something Happen in the World, Ch. 37, Conducting Research Reflections on the Original Assignment – Student From 1102 Wiki Co-Editor Amelia Dunbar: "Who knew an English 1102 class would lead to a collaboration with others to produce an educational Wiki about the “forgotten” women who have had major accomplishments in STEM?  The idea of the wiki was to create a scholarly resource about women in STEM fields, to be used as a learning tool for middle- and high-school readers. This assignment was a crowd-sourced effort for the entire class.  I enjoyed the opportunity to help others revise and edit their articles. Editing other student’s articles also helped me improve my proofreading and editing skills. I also helped students with English as their second language. It was a great experience to work with students of different backgrounds and have more meaningful types of interactions than I would encounter in a typical general education class." My Reflection I am excited to take Andrea's idea of "writing for value" and apply it to the #4C16 Wiki-Workshop.  I hope that this fledgling project will grow into a global write-in effort to recognize women's contributions in STEM fields and to recover the life experiences that influenced them along the way.  What makes Wiki-Work meaningful to me is that its digital and public nature creates opportunities for feminist scholars across the world to contribute to collaborative knowledge productions and to bring women's work to the forefront of our shared, cultural heritage(s). Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! Jeanne Law Bohannon is an Assistant Professor in the Digital Writing and Media Arts (DWMA) department at Kennesaw State University. She believes in creating democratic learning spaces, where students become stakeholders in their own rhetorical growth though authentic engagement in class communities. Her research interests include evaluating digital literacies, critical pedagogies, and New Media theory; performing feminist rhetorical recoveries; and growing informed and empowered student scholars. Reach Jeanne at: jeanne_bohannon@kennesaw.edu and www.rhetoricmatters.org ... View more

Blogging started for me with the desire to enter our vast digital public square for conversation. As a writing teacher, I love watching my students’ fearlessness as bloggers. They understand the blogosphere as an open, experimental space, where they can self-publish, posting their passions and opinions.  As a writer, I wanted to experiment with new subjects, improvise with new forms, and write to the world to see what the world has to say back. When given the chance to blog for Huffington Post’s lifestyle page—“Life Begins at Fifty”—I started, tentatively, writing more of a 600-word exploratory essay than a blog.  And, mostly, I got blogging wrong, in that first post, by violating the first principle of composition—know your audience! But I was immediately hooked—hooked on the freedom of the form and the opportunity to test and try out ideas. My subject, in that first blog, was choosing a name for myself as a grandmother. It turns out, in the world of grandmothers, you get to choose an affectionate name for yourself, a name like a stuffed animal with comforting sounds—Granny or Gammy, Bubbe or Omi—names that didn’t fit comfortably when I tried them on.  As I started thinking about the subject, it occurred to me that my knowledge about grandmothers comes less from my memories as a granddaughter and more from the decades of reading students’ essays about their grandmothers. I wrote the blog in the familiar voice of a composition teacher who loves reading students’ essays about their storybook grandmothers handing down family history while standing at the stove.  And I wrote to an audience I know—my fellow composition teachers—who have also read hundreds of grandmother essays and understand why students don’t easily revise essays about grandmothers: grandmothers aren’t a venue for critical thinking.  What I didn’t do is to write to Huffington Post’s lifestyle audience or shape the purpose of the blog to meet audience expectations.  It would take further experimentation to learn how to write to the thousands of anonymous readers on the other side of the screen. Since that first post, I’ve blogged about a range of topics— family and food, birth and death, exercise and health. What I’ve learned is that successful blogs convey one point, a single idea clearly, concisely; they do not begin mid-conversation, as essays often do. They are ephemeral, intended to be read in a minute or two, and to vanish from the Huffington Post within a day or two.  And to be successful, they need to create a role for the audience to participate in the blog—whether as a reader who likes and links it, giving it thumbs up, and passing it forward to friends, or a more basic, human role to converse with a writer whose voice and sensibility are simpatico.  Without an active role for readers, there is no conversation around a blog. Readers move on. Yet something quite wonderful happens for a writer in those few moments when a blog is most alive.  That something, it seems to me, is the essence of why I write. It is the pleasure of finding an audience who will run with my words, add their own, amplify and expand my story.  Blog readers want to participate in this public, collective, conversational form of writing. And as a writer, I want to create roles for them to participate. At CCCC, on April 8 th , 2 PM, I will be talking about blogging  and what I’ve learned as a writer from the freedom of the form and the pleasures of writing for a new audience.  I look forward to seeing you in Houston! ... View more

Earlier in my career my teaching assignments, which were primarily introductory composition courses, had me working with students who elected any major other than English. These days I more often teach students who have chosen to major in English, but even so I regularly have students in my courses who would really rather not have to write about literature. They’ve been attracted to the English major because they love creative writing or love reading, but not writing, or are frankly not entirely sure why they’ve found themselves in this pursuit. I’ve thus always had to make a case for why writing about literature is valuable to students. I first tried a very common approach—the “reading literature makes us better people” approach—and found it as inspiring as any “take your vitamins” persuasive speech. This may be because I am no Robin Williams in Dead Poets’ Society, but it also might be because while on some levels I believed what I was saying, on other levels I did not. I do truly believe that the patient unpacking of literary texts plays a role in our leading thoughtful, reflective and even ethical lives. Interpreting literature often involves exploring how we should live in complex circumstances or understanding how our culture came to shape our identities. Doing this in ways that respect texts and their writers requires an ethical attention to detail and a willingness to truly listen and consider possibly layered and simultaneously conflicting understandings of what a text means. All that said, understanding how literary study affects our values is such a complex terrain that we would be wise to tread cautiously in making quick claims about a one-semester course contributing to the shaping of all students’ belief systems. I am also too aware of the fact that throughout history a liberal arts education that has placed literary study at its center has surely yielded some of humankind’s greatest thinkers, but also some of humankind’s most despicable despots. It isn’t so easy to say that simply studying literature makes us better people. The approach I have found more persuasive, both to myself and to my students, is to work on honestly revealing how the enterprise of writing about literature is a “real world” practice, not only or merely a classroom practice. To understand this “real world” practice means we have to explore how literary analysis is both a task and a genre owned and used by literary scholars. The MLA, for instance, is not merely a citation style, but an actual association filled with people who deliberate, share ideas, have some common goals and, yes, develop and constantly revise some conventions for doing things like crediting the texts they use. It means we draw on the idea of a “discourse community” from rhetoric and composition in order to see that the writing we engage in and the tools we use to interpret have very human histories to them. Newcomers—students—need to learn these ways, tools, and genres in order to participate in such a community or risk unintentionally flouting convention, offending, or misunderstanding the enterprise they are engaged in. Taking this sort of anthropological approach to seeing our work as quite consciously entering a new community has obvious “buy in” with students who readily wish to enter this community and become literary scholars. But again, I know few such students. What is more interesting is considering how this approach works with students who have no intention of going on to become literary scholars themselves. While they may not wish to enter permanently the discourse community of literary scholars, they do wish to enter other professional discourse communities, and they do have past experiences with joining and learning to navigate other discourse communities. Helping them see that what we are doing is no different allows them to draw from these past experiences, to clarify for themselves what they learned from them, and to train their vision for what to pay attention to in order to successfully navigate the communities they wish to join later. While the genres, conventions, tools, and ways may differ from community to community, the rhetorical savvy needed to analyze the new situations and draw upon this analysis to make successful contributions is not. What I most like about this approach is that it reframes the sometimes frustratingly difficult experiences of learning to write about literature. Instead of interpreting this frustration and difficulty as a sign of failure or lack of intelligence, we can interpret it as a normal part of the process of learning the ways of an unfamiliar yet long-established community. I encounter this frustration myself when I am called upon to write in an unfamiliar genre for audiences my usual reading and writing habits have taught me little about—things like grant proposals or obituaries. When I see the difficulty as one that’s normal, and that I can overcome with some research and help from discourse community “insiders,” I am less demoralized and more motivated to tackle the challenge. I’ve seen this in my students as well. Suddenly they see “real world” reasons for some of the otherwise seemingly nonsensical conventions of writing about literature (present tense verbs, anyone? No plot summary allowed?). The professionalism of our whole enterprise increases even as it remains fun. We playfully explore many possible meanings of texts while also engaging in a rigorous seriousness as we genuinely try to motivate members of this discourse community to accept still further interpretations. This mixture of play and professionalism prepares students for other “real world” writing contexts for which writers have to offer novel contributions that their audiences will take seriously. So if literary study does make them better people, they’ll be better equipped to share that wisdom with others. ... View more

Just back from ten days of cruising around the Caribbean with my two sisters, soaking up sun and all the history and local culture we could manage. As always, I kept an eye out for teachers and students, and I learned a little about what constitutes public education—and how that differs from French West Indies to British Virgin Islands to U.S. Virgin Islands, and to those islands that are now independent entities. Discipline seemed fairly strict everywhere, and we saw lots of uniformed as well as high-spirited kids. The people with whom we spoke were all public school educated (“You have to pay to go to private schools,” which are mostly Catholic). And for college, some students go to France or Britain or the U.S., though there are many universities—and especially several highly ranked medical schools—in the Islands. My favorite island remains Dominica, which is lush, green, and pristine, thanks to the fact that sugar cane couldn’t thrive there in the steeply mountainous and rocky terrain. Once there, a guide took a small group of us on an indescribably tortuous track some miles into the mountains to visit the Bois Cotlette “estate.” It was a total ruins when it was bought some five or six years ago by an American who was looking to leave the hedge fund business in search of a sustainable life. With his wife and four children, he has now restored one of the original buildings which he uses as a welcome hall for visitors, though it was originally a large sleeping room for workers on the estate. He also has built a cabin for his family and, with the help of an historian and archaeologist, excavated parts of the other buildings. He is learning not only what they looked like and were made of but also what their functions were. So far, the estate is sustainable in terms of water and energy (solar), and they grow much of their food as well as crops like cocoa and coffee. The children have been home- and online-schooled, though the 18-year-old heads off for college in the U.S. next fall and the 16-year-old will finish school in Miami. The whole family however, seems committed to building a sustainable lifestyle on this gorgeous and relatively unspoiled island. Another high point for me was visiting the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton on Nevis, sister island to St. Kitts. The tiny house is now a tiny museum in honor of Hamilton: I loved looking at the old photos and posters and news stories and reading about his boyhood before he moved to St. Croix. According to the museum, Hamilton wasn’t allowed to attend the local public school, since he was “illegitimate,” but he seems to have received some education at a Jewish school. I picked up a pamphlet about Hamilton, with a rip-roaring essay by Evelyn Henville, director of the Nevis Historical and Conservation Society—“Alexander Hamilton for National Hero!” Henville’s enthusiasm for the first secretary of the U.S. treasury is infectious. She asks “How does a boy born on little Nevis end up on the U.S. $10 bill? And answers with ten reasons, from “He learned the importance of work” and “He learned about slavery and he learned about liberty,” to “He learned about smuggling, tax evasion, and truth” and “He learned to think.” Having seen the megahit musical “Hamilton” this last fall and now reading the Chernow biography that inspired it, as Lin-Manuel Miranda says, by “changing my life” forever, I was especially keen to visit this spot and to think about the role of Hamilton and so many other immigrants whose lives and works have shaped these United States of America. Miranda speaks eloquently to this issue in his musical as well as in talks and writings. In a recent New York Times op ed piece, Miranda speaks of his own upbringing in Puerto Rico and calls on Congress to act in response to the huge economic crisis there—as it would if that crisis were a little closer, both figuratively and literally, to Washington D.C. As I write this post, demagogic Presidential candidates are calling for building walls, for excluding immigrants, for surveilling citizens of the Muslim Faith. Alexander Hamilton would have been horrified—and ashamed—of these attempts and he would have spoken out in opposition, as many are doing right now. So Hamilton’s commitment to freedom and equality for all lives on, though it is certainly embattled. Alexander Hamilton for national hero! ... View more

I have been using a remix assignment as the major project in my Writing and Digital Media class for a several semesters now. I still like the assignment, but I have recently been trying to make the activity a little more demanding. Some of the options and the related tools don’t lead to the best work. For instance, the tools to create fake Facebook profiles and timelines show a dated Facebook interface and don’t match the functionality of Facebook timelines. I was still exploring alternatives, thinking I might give up and just repeat the assignment as it stood, when one of my students shared a video that she made for her marketing class. Their project was to create a short personal branding video that could be used as part of a job search. They posted the videos on YouTube and incorporated them in personal profile websites, made using Strikingly. Here’s her video: Video Link : 1586 Hours after she showed me the project, I was still thinking about it and how I might use it in class. I wrote and asked if I could use her video in class for a short project, and with her permission, I began planning. There are some limitations on what I can do. I am not teaching marketing or public relations, and I want to avoid wandering into another department’s territory. That said, we began the term with an online profile statement and talked about branding and how people represent themselves online. The idea behind this video would tie in nicely with that starting point and create some nice unity and closure for the course. To maintain the digital storytelling and remix concepts from the original assignment, I decided to ask students to create branding statement videos not for themselves but for a fictional character or historical figure. So for the fictional side, I might see 60-second branding videos from Hester Prynne, Janie Crawford, Daisy Buchanan, Jane Eyre, Lady MacBeth, Sula, or Lena Younger (Mama). Animal characters and monsters would work as well, like Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web or Grendel’s Mother from Beowulf. For historical figures, I might see videos for Amelia Earhart, Elizabeth Blackwell, Helen Keller, Marian Anderson, Leslie Marmon Silko, or Mae Jemison. Once I dreamed up a list of possible characters and people, I realized there was no reason to stick to characters and people. Why not add branding for a specific place, group, or cause? I would love to see branding videos for tours at Pemberley and for the latest designs from Folkspants, Unlimited (Miss Celie’s business). Students interested in a historical focus could focus on branding videos for topics like Victoria Woodhull’s presidential campaign or Ida B. Wells’s newspaper Free Speech and Headlight. I’m excited about the many wonderful possibilities this assignment has. The branding videos will be one of several items students create in a multigenre narrative remix, but more on those ideas next month. Do you have any suggestions for the project? Can you share advice on using videos in the writing classroom? Tell me more by leaving a comment below. ... View more

The balance of powers among the three branches of the federal government has been one of the foundations of American politics from the beginning. The fact that members of the Supreme Court serve for life largely removes the threat that they will be unduly influenced by a single sitting president. Congress writes the laws that the Court must uphold; the president holds over Congress the power of the veto. The choice of a Supreme Court justice is always controversial. Replacing Antonin Scalia has been even more so because of the timing. Obama has now announced his choice for Scalia’s replacement. Even before he did so, however, Republicans in Congress had decided not to approve him. How does this work as an argument? There is a claim of policy on each side of the argument: President Obama, of course, is arguing that, because of his qualifications, Merrick Garland should be appointed a justice of the Supreme Court. The Republican leadership made clear early on that their claim would not be based on qualifications. That claim: No individual nominated by President Obama should be considered for appointment as Scalia’s replacement.  According to the Constitution, the president "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . Judges of the Supreme Court." The relevant article of the Constitution says nothing about the time frame. However, according to Michael Gerhardt, a professor in constitutional law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "not a single president has ever refused to make a nomination to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, regardless of its timing. No president has ever abdicated this authority, not even when they were lame ducks. In fact, six lame-duck presidents have made six Supreme Court appointments." A case like this one can give students a chance to analyze the support on each side of a controversy. President Obama, in this instance, has an easier case to prove. He has proceeded with the nomination process as he would have at any other point in his presidency and has presented for consideration a candidate whose credentials he believes warrant the appointment. Republicans who do not want to consider any candidate nominated by Obama have a more difficult case to support because they are essentially arguing that the normal procedure for appointing a Supreme Court justice should not be followed in this case. To accept that argument, one has to be willing to accept their reasons. There are a number of reasons they do not want to support an Obama nominee. Your students can easily come up with these: They do not want another liberal on the Supreme Court. To add a liberal judge will give liberals on the court a 5-4 advantage in making decisions. They want the next president to nominate Scalia’s replacement, and they hope the next president is a Republican. None of these is support for not considering an Obama nominee. The Republican leadership undermined their argument when they very vocally declared an unwillingness to even consider an Obama nominee. Had they instead quietly refused to approve Garland—or anyone else—it would have been impossible to prove that they were acting on anything other than the nominee’s credentials. When they started saying no to Obama’s nominee before that nominee was named, they opened themselves up to charges of partisanship. ​[Photo source: David on Flikr] ... View more

On May 5, America is going to get entangled in another civil war. Well, to be precise, Captain America is, along with Iron Man, Black Widow, Black Panther, and a lot of other Marvel superheroes in the latest installment of the never-ending Avengers saga. Captain America: Civil War, the thing is called, soon to be in a theater near you. Not to be outdone in the civil war department, the DC franchise is set to release something called Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice the day after this blog is scheduled to appear. And while this movie is not explicitly identified as a civil war per se, what else are we to call something that pits America’s original superheroes (Superman, b. 1938; Batman, b. 1939) against each other in violent conflict? Both movies are sequels to previous films, carrying on story lines that began years before their up coming release dates, with the Avengers flick in particular picking up a comic book conflict from 2006. But I still find it significant that they are appearing now, as America continues its ever-more-alarming spiral down a rabbit hole of red state/blue state divisiveness, Fox News/Comedy Central shootouts, Tea Party rebellions, government shutdowns, rancher uprisings, and, most recently, a presidential campaign free for all in which it appears that everybody is against everybody. Which is to say, that at a time when America’s great divide has suddenly widened to Grand Canyon proportions, it is not surprising to see the superhero syndicates jumping on board. What an opportunity! Not only do you get a guaranteed box office but you can leverage an already boiling-over cauldron of political passions into a frenzied demand to see cinematic justice done against those miscreants who just don’t seem to see things your way. If you think it is too far fetched to see civil war allegories in a movie called Captain America: Civil War, just consider the premise of the thing: Captain America and his allies go to war against Iron Man and his allies, over the matter of government regulation. If that’s not enough to trigger obvious ideological associations, there’s the fact that Captain America’s entire shtick is to be a poster child for old fashioned, corn-fed American patriotism, while Iron Man’s deal is to be a sophisticated urban industrialist. Something very similar is going on when that small town farm boy who fights for “truth, justice, and the American way” goes after a slick urban financier with a bat fetish. I mean, they could have cast these things with nothing but elephants and donkeys. The whole thing is like those professional wrestling theatricals, where the bad boys of the day stand for whatever is bugging the core audience, while a muscle-bound good guy fights for the right. Of course neither movie, I gather, is going to take us all the way to Appomattox, because in films like this there is always someone worse in the room (or universe), who poses such a colossal threat to the fatherland that the heroes suspend their spat and start pulling together to defeat the larger menace. But reality, unfortunately, is a whole lot messier than that. If, fifteen years ago, al Qaida managed, albeit briefly, to pull America together, ISIS isn’t doing that at all this time around. Americans continue to face off against Americans in ever more non-negotiable combinations, and while the movies can make that sort of thing entertaining, they sure as shooting can’t bring it to an end.   [Photo via: Election 2016 by DonkeyHotey, from Flickr] ... View more

This year’s election cycle is certainly the most bizarre in memory—though not yet as frightening as the 1968 race was (to me). That’s not to say it’s not scary in its own way, which it certainly is. I’ve been watching Town Halls, debates, and reports on rallies until I am practically blue in the face—with months and months more to come. We have seen some good commentary on language (Donald Trump’s spoken language is at third grade level—at best; Hillary Clinton doesn’t use as many “feminine” markers as does Trump). Each candidate has a signature phrase or two that keeps popping up like a jack in the box. But what has struck me most about both candidates and reporters is the contempt with which they use the word “rhetoric.” When a candidate lies, it’s “rhetoric.” When claims aren't anchored in any truth at all, it’s “rhetoric.” When reporters describe exchanges during debates, they almost always invoke “rhetoric” as getting in the way of reasonable, sensible language. Recently, one candidate said that Donald Trump’s “rhetoric” has incited violence at his rallies. Of course, rhetoric has been tarred with the insincere/deceptive brush since ancient times (see Plato, for one). And down through the ages, rhetoric has often been compared to dialectic, seen as the scientific and worthy pursuit of Truth, while rhetoric itself is linked with doxa (common belief) and “little t” truth, or the best choice possible amidst many competing claims. Of course rhetoric can be used for good or for ill: no one denies that Hitler was enormously effective as a persuader. We could name many, many others who have used language to deceive and to harm. That’s why I think it is so important to draw a distinction between the destructive use of rhetoric and its opposite. If students know the word “rhetoric” when they come to my classes, they have these negative associations with the word. Yet I am soon able to introduce them to my definition of rhetoric—the art, theory, and practice of ethical communication. This is the rhetoric Wayne Booth held up against what he called “rhetrickery,” the practice of deceptive, dishonest, destructive communication Hitler—and many other demagogues--practice. It seems to me that candidates and commentators alike could use this concept of “rhetrickery” today, because it signifies what they are actually complaining about and does so with a very memorable label. They might then be able to compare that harmful rhetrickery with candidates who practice rhetoric as the art of ethical communication. In any case, I hope that all teachers of writing are taking time during this campaign season to work with students to analyze the arguments being put forward by candidates. Once students understand that they can break a speech (or advertisement or news release) down into its claims and the support for the claims, once they know how to identify the tropes and stories a candidate relies on, once they can do fact-checking for themselves—they are exercising that part of rhetoric which is for self-protection, for seeing through deception and dishonesty clearly enough not to be harmed by them. Rather than being caught up in mob psychology, they can take a step back and differentiate rhetoric from rhetrickery. As this seemingly endless campaign drags on, we need clear thinkers and ethical speakers more than ever. ... View more

I’ve always felt it important to have a good, broad mix of readings in Emerging.  It’s important to address contemporary issues like technology, yes, but it’s equally important to ask students to think about what some might consider enduring issues, like art.  In fact one of my favorite essays in the first edition was “The Art of Collecting Light Bulbs” by Michael Kimmelman, which used unusual collections (such as a light bulb museum) to think about how collecting itself is a kind of art. In this edition we’re introducing Rhys Southan’s essay “Is Art a Waste of Time?”  Southan is a screenwriter exploring the philosophical and ethical Effective Altruism movement, which has a fundamental goal of maximizing the amount of good each individual accomplishes in life. EA, as the movement is abbreviated, has some interesting implications, since it seemingly suggests that individuals should pursue careers that allow them to achieve the most good possible, which often means working hard to earn a lot of money so that you can give it all to the needy. In this context, Southan investigates, what good is art? Art is not in itself incompatible with this approach to living, Southan finds, and yet he unearths the complex relationship between ethics and aesthetics, the good and the beautiful, creating and helping others. It’s a great piece not only for what it has to say about art but also because (like so many readings in Emerging) it has a lot to say about a lot of things, ranging from capitalism to career choice to utilitarianism to ethics. I also think it’s the kind of reading that could prompt some vigorous discussion in class since it poses a fundamental question that students will need to answer for themselves.  I can’t say how they will answer it of course, but I do feel part of the goal of the FYC classroom is to encourage students to find (and support) their own answers.  To that end, this is a great reading to check out. Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! ... View more

Last week, I wrote about a Stock Photo Stereotypes Assignment that asked student to explore stereotypes in relationship to stock photography and then create their own satirical article, in the style of a Buzzfeed article. Now that I have had a chance to see all their work, I want to share some of their work with you. Certain themes were repeated in their work, like the necessity of multitasking and the role of ramen in the student diet. One group focused exclusively on the fact that College Students are Addicted to Caffeine. There were several jokes about students not paying attention, with students focusing on Netflix and video games instead of whatever the class was doing. #Facts About Student Life at Virginia Tech This group shares crucial realities such as ”Netflix has the power to erase time” and “Mom knows everything,” with some images that could easily be part of an iStockPhotos collection. Our College Album Covers Not quite stock photography, the images this group created parodied album covers, replacing the original title with a stereotype about college students. Taylor Swift’s 1989 album cover became 1989 Thousand Dollars in Debt, with a weeping college student standing in for Swift in the Polaroid. Traits of Exceptional College Students!!! These four students poked at racial and gender stereotypes by positioning themselves in roles like Chinese Student Exhausted from Math and Culturally Diverse African American Student. College Kids: What Are They? This group included two drama majors, who hammed it up in front of the camera. While they were clearly having fun, they took on some tough topics: race, politics, political correctness, and the high cost of tuition. Rather than sticking to the minimum requirement, they included eleven photos, with pairs showing a storyline. You can find more examples on the projects website for my course. They're all fun. Some could use a little revision, but our course calendar hasn’t allowed time to work on them further. I will definitely do the project again, possibly focusing on slightly different stereotypes. Stereotypes about college football could be a great theme for the fall term. I think I want to work on the project earlier in the semester as well. It did a great job building community, so working on it during the first weeks of the semester would help bring the class together. Part of the success to this project was the small group work. Students had to collaborate and enjoyed getting to know one another. Do you have group projects that help build community? Please tell me about your projects by leaving a comment below. [Photo: Nikon CoolPix S560 by slgckgc, on Flickr] ... View more

What does it mean to think? And how do you know you’re doing it? Let’s consider the question in three different scenarios: listening to a lecture; driving; writing a college essay. Is thought necessary in any of these scenarios?  When I discuss these questions with my students, a consensus emerges that the mental activity in the three scenarios differs. In a lecture, one is passive, receiving the auditory data and processing it as best one can. Behind the wheel, the monitoring of the inbound data requires constant attention, so that one can react as the unfolding situations demand.  While thinking is possible in each situation, it is also possible to do each without actively making decisions. This is clearly the case with listening, as one can’t stop the sounds from entering one’s ears, but one need not attend to them. And, while it may seem that driving is of a different order altogether, the inability to recall huge chunks of a long drive suggests that, whatever mental activity turning the steering wheel and hitting the brakes requires, the vast majority of the experience is defined by routine. So routine, in fact, that drivers feel they can drive and text, drive and carry on phone conversations, drive and shave, etc. Writing seems a different beast, doesn’t it? When my students tell me that writing requires a different kind of thinking, I’m skeptical. With twenty-five years’ experience reading and responding to student work, I have plenty of evidence to the contrary. Sure, you can’t write while shaving, but it sure seems like I receive a lot of writing that has been completed while watching streaming video or chatting or skyping. Writing that has emerged during the defining experience of our time: multi-tasking. I press the point and a distinction emerges. Sure, driving involves a multitude of micro-decisions that leave no trace in memory, barring something cataclysmic, but writing seems to require a different kind of mental activity, as is evidenced by the fact that the micro-decisions that result in writing leave behind their traces for us to consider—as words on the screen or scratches on the notepad. We can use those traces to get a glimpse of what is going on in the writer’s mind. In the final scene of Boyhood, Richard Linklater’s loving evocation of the experience of aging, the film’s main character, Mason, is sitting with Nicole, a girl he’s just met on his first day at college. They’ve skipped freshman orientation, ingested some pot brownies, and driven out to Big Bend National Park to watch the sun set. Nicole, leaning towards Mason, asks rhetorically, “You know how everyone’s always saying, ‘Seize the moment’?” Once Mason avers, Nicole says, “I don’t know, I’m kinda thinking it’s the other way around. You know, like the moment seizes us.” In standard Hollywood fare, the scene would end with the two kissing. But, that’s not how the movie ends. Mason agrees: “Yeah. Yeah . . . I know. It’s constant, the moments, it’s just . . . it’s like always right now, you know?” And Nicole says, “Yeah.” Then there’s a few more awkward seconds of silence and the screen goes black. Credits. On the threshold of adulthood, Mason is experiencing time as: now and now and now, ad infinitum. Those who haven’t seen the movie might be tempted to argue, based on the dialogue alone, that Mason is experiencing a version of enlightenment, but there’s nothing in the film to support this reading. Mason hasn’t been on a spiritual journey and he’s an especially thoughtful or remarkable young man. He’s just older than he was when the film started—twelve years older, in fact. His life as a thinking person, if he’s going to have one, lies ahead, on the other side of the rolling credits. I asked students in my 21 st Century Narrative class to reflect on the representation of time in Richard Linklater’s film Boyhood and any of the other texts we’d worked with in the course so far. To a one, the in-class written responses connected Linklater’s film to one of the other texts via the word “and.” This, despite the fact that Boyhood: is the only film we’ve watched in the class so far; was filmed with the same actors over a twelve year period, so as to visibly document the passage of time on screen; and has no sustained narrative action, but rather is a series of vignettes. Somehow, the task of writing obliterated all the differences between Boyhood and the other texts we’ve encountered so far in the course, leaving behind a pile of responses showing that Boyhood and text X were both about time. Is writing of this kind evidence of thought? Instead of grading these responses, I came to class and wrote on the board: Boyhood + text X = time And then I said, “Having said this, what do we know that we didn’t already know?” Not much, the students had to admit. Indeed, since the writing wasn’t going to be graded, we were free to wonder: could text X be any text at all and still support the observation that both were connected “because of time”? As long as the connection is kept at that level of generality, sure. Is this thinking? In its most rudimentary form, yes. Like to like to like, ad infinitum. It’s not the kind of thinking I am interested in, though. I’m looking for thinking that makes connections via distinction, qualification, nuance. I’m looking for thinking that delights in subtleties and complexity. And, although the initial written responses my students handed in didn’t evidence this, they know how to do this kind of thinking. They just don’t have much practice at it. So, I start over.  Is the flow of time in Boyhood like the flow of time in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad? The short stories in George Saunders’ Tenth of December? The second season of Sarah Koenig’s Serial podcast?  Not really. To move beyond this observation, the students need to get into the habit of making connections that qualify and connections that offer alternatives. They need to start using “but” and “or” as the hinges of thought, so that they can move from thinking exclusively through similarity and begin to think through difference. And, as they practice making connections that qualify and that consider alternatives, they will be acquiring the habit of self-reflection—the habit of seeing that the way one first sees the world is not necessarily the only way to see it. ... View more

Many educational policies today, including elements of the common core, encourage active learning, deep learning, learning by doing. In many ways, such policies have circled back to John Dewey and his progressive philosophy, and they echo philosopher Gilbert Ryle (in The Philosophy of Mind) who argues that “knowing that” (that is, knowing about something) must be augmented and balanced by “knowing how.” I have always understood literacy to be about actions, about doing, about embodying and being. Perhaps that's one reason why I'm such a fan of the current food literacy programs I see popping up all across the country. I've written before about the magnificent Food Literacy Project in Louisville, Kentucky and about the exciting collaboration between Brent Peters, who has turned Fern Creek High into an “edible campus,” and Rex Lee Jim and students from Window Rock High of the Navajo Nation (dubbed the “Navajo Kentuckians”). The students in these schools and communities are developing as writers and readers, to be sure, but they are doing so in the context of gardening, of farming, of tending the earth and its nourishment. I have seen firsthand how such programs impact an entire community, as the students teach their friends and relatives about how they can better control their lives by controlling their diets. I can only imagine what such a program in every community could do to address major health issues such as childhood obesity, diabetes, and eating disorders. I recently learned of the Food Literacy Center in Sacramento, where they are teaching “low-income elementary children cooking and nutrition to improve our health, environment, and economy. And I've been following Kirk Bergstrom, Executive Director of Nourish Initiative. In one of his postings, Bergstrom chronicles his own journey to food literacy: At Nourish, Bergstrom and his colleagues define food literacy as “understanding the story of our food from farm to table, and back to the soil.” You can check out Nourish online and take a food literacy quiz. Looking back on my childhood, I realize I grew up in a fairly food literate family. While my dad and some of my aunts and uncles had “day” jobs in offices or factories, they were country people. All my uncles and aunts had large vegetable and fruit gardens; they grew most of what we ate. They churned butter. They milked cows. And they kept pigs and chickens, and caught fish, for us to eat as well. So we knew where our food came from (in fact, I was often sent to the garden to “scrabble” for small new potatoes or to pick cucumbers and tomatoes for salad, and after dinner I got to collect all the scraps and feed the pigs, a task I absolutely loved). But that was then. Most kids today are like Bergstrom; for them, food comes from a grocery store or a fast food place; they have no such direct connection to what they consume. I am hoping that my grand-nieces Audrey and Lila will have access to a food literacy program so that their food literacy can match the other literacies they are developing. I wish the same thing for every other young person. Among college students, I see a growing awareness of food-related issues and a growing commitment to eating local and to sustainability. When we offer first-year courses on any of these themes, they are always fully subscribed. So I'm wondering what writing programs, and writing teachers, can do to help further the food literacy movement. Certainly we can introduce our students to the movement and engage them in doing research about it. But I wonder if we could go further: could writing centers, perhaps, adopt a garden space and plant and maintain it? What might come of such an enterprise in terms of traditional literacy? My bet is that such a program would lead not only to learning by doing in the garden but by a lot of very rich talk and writing and research about the experience.   So—how about a gardening across the curriculum movement? [Photos via: USDA, on Flickr, and Masahiro Ihara, on Flickr] ... View more

Sexualities and gender have always played an important role in Emerging. As a gay man, I have a vested interest in these topics, more so now that I am also serving as the Interim Director for Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. We’ve added some great new readings on these issues in the new edition of Emerging. In this post I’d like to highlight three of them. First, I’m quite happy to have Julia Serano back in the book. Serano is a transgender writer and activist who appeared in the first edition of Emerging. This time we selected her essay “Why Nice Guys Finish Last,” a complicated engagement of men and rape culture. I’m particularly happy to include a reading that engages the problems of our current sex/gender system for men and I am also happy we have a reading that can broach the troubling issue of rape culture. Roxane Gay’s “Good Feminist?” is similarly complex and reminiscent of Ariel Levy’s “Female Chuavinist Pigs” in that it requires students, to some degree, to read against the grain to unearth the real argument. In this case Gay is arguing for an expanded definition of feminism by detailing all the ways she is a “bad” feminist given current, limiting definitions of that term. “Complicated” is the theme here as Ruth Padawer’s “Sisterhood is Complicated” (as its title would suggest) also presents sexuality and gender as a deeply complex issue. Padawer examines the challenges presented by transgender men attending all-female colleges such as Wellesley. It works great, too, in any series of assignments on higher education, but in this context it underscores the ways in which shifting notions of gender and gender identity challenge our comfortable norms. Of course these aren’t the only essays in the book that investigate these themes, but I think you will find they’re all great new inclusions. Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! ... View more

Sometimes the best assignments are borne of the worst situations. Virginia Tech’s installation of WordPress became hopelessly slow recently. It was taking over 60 seconds for a page to load. Sometimes the pages timed out. It was happening in the classroom and off campus, no matter what Internet connection or machine students were using. I ultimately decided that it was unfair to ask students to continue working on a project when the technology wasn’t performing properly. I turned in a technical support request and began looking for a short-term project to fill in while WordPress was being fixed. In my collection of assignment ideas, I found the Mashable article “Vince Vaughn ingeniously promotes new film with stock photos” and the Hubspot article “13 Hilarious Examples of Truly Awful Stock Photography.” That gave me my inspiration: students would explore stereotypes in relationship to stock photography and then create their own satirical article, in the style of a Buzzfeed article. Step One: Discussion of Stereotypes I began by asking students to brainstorm stereotypes about college students, without explaining how we would use the lists. I only promised that we would use them later in the class. We used a shared Google Doc in each class to collect students’ ideas: 10:10 Stereotypes about College Students 11:15 Stereotypes about College Students 01:25 Stereotypes about College Students With their lists complete, I asked students to discuss the Vince Vaughn stock photos and the 13 Hilarious Examples of Truly Awful Stock Photography. Next, we looked at some stock photos of college students on iStock and Shutterstock, and then discussed how the images relied on stereotypes much like the business photos we had looked at. Looking back at their brainstormed lists, students talked about how some of their ideas were represented in the photos and why other ideas were not there. Finally, we went over the assignment as a class, including looking at some additional stock photography articles. A perfectly-timed NPR article on the Rent-a-Minority website led to lots of discussion. Step Two: Group Photo Shoots Working in small groups, students reviewed the stereotypes and chose a focus for their project. They collected props and decided on wardrobe. Those who did not want to be in the photos didn’t have to be, but everyone had to participate in the project. We devoted a full 50-minute session to the photo shoot. I set some ground rules, which included the following: If the groups went too far from our classroom building, they had to tell me in advance. If the groups had questionable props, they had to let me know so I could come to their rescue if necessary. [There were some empty beer bottles and red Solo cups.] At least one person in the group had to write down the phone number for the classroom phone to use if something went wrong and they needed me. Students scurried off, while I watched their belongings in the classroom and helped them. One group wanted to take photos in the bathroom, but because they were mixed genders they were worried about getting in trouble for being in the “wrong” bathroom. I served as their escort. There was much giggling that class session, and during every section at least one student proclaimed this “the best assignment ever.” After taking their photos, I asked each group to upload their photos to a shared folder and to make sure that everyone in their group had access. Step Three: Collaborative Writing With their photos complete, during the next two sessions, groups worked on editing their photos and writing the accompany Buzzfeed-style article. We discussed the expectations for the article before groups began. Each article needed to do the following: incorporate the group’s stock photo images. provide commentary or analysis on the images. uses layout and design choices to make the document easy to read. be written and shared online. Their pieces were published on a class website, without students’ names attached to the pieces. Since the photos show stereotypes, they could be misconstrued by someone seeing them out of context. I want to avoid having these photos and articles coming up when some future employer does a Google search on their names. In addition, students individually wrote an assessment of their group’s work to let me know how each member contributed to the project. Conclusions I think we were all a bit disappointed to have to go back to the WordPress portfolios when the stock photo project ended. Students were highly engaged in critical thinking and webmaking, and they had a great deal of fun at the same time. I’m still grading their work, but what I have seen so far is nicely done. I hope to share some examples in the future, but for now, I need to focus on giving everyone feedback. Have you worked with stock photos in the classroom? This project worked well, so I am looking for ways to improve on it. If you have some advice, please leave me a comment below. I look forward to hearing from you. [Photo: vaTechonline by USDA, on Flickr] ... View more