There is one more approach to sequencing you can use.  I don’t tend to use because, well, I think you’ll see… We’ve included nine sequences in Emerging, many with options built in for alternate readings and assignments.  So a third method of making your “own” sequence is to modify one of the sequences that’s in Emerging. (And I don’t use this method because it’s not really modifying when I wrote the sequence in the first place [g].) This might be a particularly good option if you just want to try this approach to teaching or if you’re getting your feet wet with sequencing.  We’ve already figured out what readings work together, which themes emerge from them, and what kind of work students might be able to do.  In turn, you can tweak individual assignments or the whole sequence based on your experience with teaching and your understanding of your students. There’s a bonus to this method.  You cut down, I suspect, on plagiarism.  I imagine there are many papers floating around out there on the Interwebs that respond to the standard sequences.  Changing just a few aspects of the sequence encourages students to work without that virtual help. Even if you don’t use or modify one of the existing sequences, I think they can still be useful in terms of inspiration and modeling.  Reading through them might give you ideas about sequences of your own.  Seeing how we’ve fit them together offers a useful model for how to sequence your own assignments.   ... View more

Last time I talk about forming a sequence around a particular reading, but one of the things I love most about this approach to my teaching is that it allows me to respond to things going on in the world right now.  And so a second approach to sequencing is to start with a current event or topic and then build a sequence that explores that issue.  Not only does this method help students to see how what we do in the classroom connects to the world around them but it also offers me the chance to bring in any number of small supplemental texts from the media. I’m writing this soon after the Oscars.  I was struck by racial discussions around the awards ceremony as well as racially inflected comments about Zendaya’s hair on the red carpet.  If I were assembling a sequence right now, I might choose something on this topic.  I think I would title it “Hollywhite: Race and Media.” Having a topic in mind, I use many of the same steps I use when starting with a reading.  I start by locating all the readings that relate to the topic, including readings that are near to the topic and readings that are “universal.”  Emerging offers a number of tools to help in this process: quick annotations of the readings, tags in the table of contents, questions accompanying the reading, thematic table of contents, existing sequences, and the Instructor’s Manual.  When I’m done I would end up with something like this: Alvarez (ethnic identities and economics) Appiah (mechanism of social change) Fukuyama (what makes us human) Gilbert (determining happiness) Muñoz (assimilation) Nathan (education and diversity) Olson (the persistence of race) Pozner (race and media) Savan (race and advertising) Yang (racial stereotypes) Yoshino (civil rights and assimilation pressures) Last time I went for really obvious pairings.  This time, however, I think I want students to think about this issue from a few different angles.  I would want to use Yoshino because he mentions the ways in which Hollywood stars have changed their names to “cover” their ethnicity.  Muñoz would be a good pairing since his whole essay is about Anglicization of names.  Pozner talks explicitly about race and television so I would want that.  And then I think Appiah so that students could think about how to make changes to the situation. Of course, I could also see Savan / Olson / Yang / Alvarez or Fukyama / Olson / Nathan / Gilbert or Pozner / Savan / Yang / Yoshino.  The essays I select are determined by my sense of where I want the sequence to go, as well as some sense of which offer ideas that students can work with. Having selected my readings, I would then spend some time thinking out the order of the assignments.  For me, this is almost an exercise in narrativity.  That is, I am assembling a series of causes and effects in order to locate a central “story” about race and media.  This central narrative then offers a spine upon which students can build their own structures relating to the topic, based on their interests and their critical thinking. In this instance, my central narrative would revolve around pressures to conform, the power of negative stereotypes, and the possibility of change.  Having determined that, then it’s a matter of writing out the assignments, leaving some room for adjustments along the way and perhaps building in assignments that allow students to bring in current events. I like both approaches.  I’m not sure which I tend to use the most since I feel like both offer me good advantages.  I will say, if you’ve not written your own sequences before, I hope you will consider giving it a try. ... View more

A few weeks ago the Internet was lit up by one of the most earth shaking questions of our times:  Was a widely disseminated photograph of a woman's dress an image of a blue- and-black or of a white-and-gold garment?  A lot of A-list celebrities weighed in on this weighty matter and the outcome was a lot of clicks on a lot of story links that certainly resulted in a lot of successful data mining. But while a semiotic analysis of the power of celebrity Tweeters could ensue from this story, (you may find the beginning of such an analysis here) that's not what I want to explore.  What I want to look at is a far, far deeper problem that this amusing little episode points to.  I will call this problem the question of "whatness." "Whatness" refers, if I may use a fancy term, to the fundamental ontology of something: what, basically, something is.  Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it?  But as I contemplate the problem of defining, and teaching, the nature of critical thinking, I am increasingly coming to realize that it is precisely the difficulty in defining, much less agreeing upon, what something is that poses the greatest challenge to critical thinking, and to anything resembling social harmony. Let me try to put it in semiotic terms.  A semiotic analysis characteristically moves from the denotation of a sign to its connotation—that is, from a description of the sign (or its referent) as an object to an interpretation of the sign as a subjectively constituted cultural signifier.  This movement, which involves the situating of the sign into a system of associations and differences, is what semiotic analysis is all about.  But as the blue/black or white/gold controversy trivially indicates, deciding exactly what we are talking about can involve an act of critical thinking prior to that which takes us from denotation to connotation.  If this sounds unnecessary, consider the recent kerfluffle over whether or not Governor Rick Scott did or did not order state workers in Florida's Department of Environmental Protection never to refer to "global warming" or "climate change," whereby both the whatness of the prohibition and the whatness of global warming and climate change are both put into question.  In other words, determining denotation gets us caught up in connotation as facts get tangled up in values so badly that it can be very difficult to decide just what one is talking about. I realize that we are looking here at a potential deconstructive mise en abyme—that is to say, an endless series of prior interpretations before we can get to the interpretation we wish to conduct.  But I do not want to counsel such despair.  Rather, I simply want to point out the need to think critically and carefully about the whatness of a cultural semiotic topic as an essential part of its analysis.  It would be nice to take facts for granted, but that, in this profoundly divided world, is something that we cannot do. [Image source: http://swiked.tumblr.com/post/112174461490/officialunitedstates-unclefather] ... View more

Last post I talked about why I choose to sequence assignments.  In the next several posts I’d like to offer some techniques I’ve found useful in designing sequences so that you can create your own. One of the methods I use is reading centered.  I start with a reading I really want to teach and then I build out the sequence from there.  Given the shape of our semester we can usually cover four readings.  I like to use the following pattern for assignments: Paper One on Reading One Paper Two on Reading One and Reading Two Paper Three on Readings One, Two, and Three Paper Four on Reading Four and one other reading of the student’s choice You might select a different pattern but I will say that having students work with more than one reading offers good opportunities for analysis, synthesis, and critical thinking. So, before the semester I will skim the table of contents and think about a reading I’d really love to teach because it’s interesting or has good ideas or would work well in the classroom.  The quick annotations in the table of contents of Emerging can help with this part of the process if you’ve not experienced a reading before. For example, let’s say I select Michael Pollan’s “The Animals: Practicing Complexity.”  From experience I know that students love this essay.  I love it because it deals with complex adaptive systems, which I love thinking about.  I know it works well in the classroom so it’s a good choice. My next step is to jot down all the ideas and themes in Pollan’s essay.  Emerging offers a number of tools for this, from the tags in the table of contents, to the questions accompanying the reading, to the thematic table of contents, to the existing sequences, to the Instructor’s Manual.  All of these tools help me see what Pollan does and what readings connect easily to his. My list might look something like this: organic farming, food, holons, ecosystems, education, agribusiness, industry, nature, economics, systems, health, eating, animals. That last term, animals, is appealing to me. I’ve never taught a sequence with that focus so I think I will pursue it this time.  My next step is to use all the same tools to look for readings that have some connection to the idea of “animals.”  That list might look something like this: Dalai Lama (genetic engineering with some discussion of animals), Hal Herzog (ethics and animals), and David Foster Wallace (ethics and animals again).  I broaden the list to include useful counterpoints; in this case what it means to be human: Brian Christian (humans and artificial intelligence), Patricia Churchland (genes and behavior), Francis Fukuyama (genetic engineering and what makes humans human), and Richard Restak (brains and technology).  Finally, I look for “universal” essays, ones with ideas that apply to just about everything: Kwame Anthony Appiah (how change happens) and Daniel Gilbert (how to be happy). Now I have a list of possible readings to use in the sequence.  The complete list looks like this: Appiah Christian Churchland Dalai Lama Fukuyama Gilbert Herzog Pollan Restak Wallace I know I am going to use Pollan.  I want to also use Wallace because he’s so fun to read.  Herzog is a natural match because his ideas work so well with the other two.  I sometimes choose a final reading from what seems to be left field, one that picks up on something entirely new and offers students completely new perspectives.  In this case, I might choose something about education.  But instead I am going to stick with the emerging theme and select Fukuyama, who talks about what it means to be human and why, for example, we don’t eat grandma. See the readings together, there’s a clear theme: the ethics of eating. Now I consider the order.  I’ll start with Pollan.  He has a few ideas but also a lot of narrative.  For my second essay I will want something with more ideas in it.  I’ll go with Herzog.  It’s brief but has a good central idea about ethics.  Wallace will work well as third since it’s so cohesive.  Fukuyama will end to open it up to larger issues about what it means to be human. Final step is to write the assignments.  I’ll write the first two, perhaps, and then see how they go, adjusting later assignments as needed. I wrote recently about the intellectual work of sequences.  I think it’s distinctly pleasurable work.  Hope you will give it a try.   ... View more

I chose a sequencing approach to the assignments in Emerging.  I thought it might be useful to talk a little bit about why I made that decision, so over the next few posts I hope to offer you an introduction to assignment sequencing—and also some tips on how to make your own sequences.  Sequenced assignments are a series of assignments in which each new prompt builds on the work that was done in the previous assignment.  Students start by working with one essay in one assignment but then return to that same essay as well as a new one in the second assignment and then return again to those readings in the next assignment and so on.  Most sequences are organized around a central idea or theme and students develop their understanding of that idea or theme by working with the different readings repeatedly. Deciding to use sequencing in Emerging was a bit of a natural choice for me since it’s the approach I learned when I started teaching—I’ve always sequenced assignments.  But I think there are very good reasons for taking this approach: Critical Thinking.  I like the way that sequencing allows me to help students develop their skills with critical thinking.  By using different readings to examine a central theme, students are offered a variety of tools to explore the ideas of that theme.  Sequencing also allows students time to develop more mature understandings of the ideas of a reading since they work with that reading multiple times.  And sequencing presses students to think critically about how they understand readings.  They may feel one way about an author after first reading an essay but by placing that essay in the context of other essays, students are often forced to reconsider their understandings.  Bringing new ideas into play constantly prompts them to think more critically. Coherence.  Sequences bring coherence to my class by establishing a central theme for the semester.  Students spend the class exploring that theme and developing their ideas around it.  It offers them help in terms of writing their assignments, since there emerges a common vocabulary drawn from the readings.  It also then serves as a kind of touchstone for us to consider the world outside the classroom, as current events often reflect and rebound on the theme we’re working on. Depth. Students develop a depth of understanding because they spend weeks working on the same readings.  Often, on the first assignment working with a reading, students “flatten” the ideas to their simplest dimension.  But as they continually return to and reread the essays they are forced deeper into the ideas of the essay, as well as their limitations. Scaffolding.  I imagine that as they enter their disciplines, students will be expected to produce writing that works with multiple authors (perhaps as a researched assignment but perhaps also just in the context of a final exam).  Sequencing offers them some scaffolded experience with this skill. Springboard. Similarly, sequencing can serve as a springboard to researched writing.  Students develop two kinds of skills that will serve them in contexts of research.  Not only do they learn to draw from multiple sources in support of their arguments but they also gain experience with sustained work, both within a paper and across the semester. I don’t think sequencing is for everyone.  And I can tell you now that it has some drawbacks too.  Students, for example, become quite tired of some readings as the semester progresses, though I offer them options in later assignments so that they can jettison works that they have chewed through thoroughly.  Still I do feel that this approach serves students well.  For me, it remains the right choice in my teaching and for Emerging. Next post: some tips on making your own assignment sequences. ... View more

So Disney is returning once again to that old standard, the story of Cinderella, doing it over but with live action this time.  And therein lies a semiotic tale. Because the Cinderella story provides a very good occasion for teaching your students about cultural mythologies, and the way that America's mythologies often contradict each other.  In the case of Cinderella, one must begin with the fact that it is a feudal story in essence, one in which a commoner is raised to princess status, not through hard work but through a kind of inheritance: her personal beauty.  Such a narrative very much reflects the values of a time when social status was usually inherited rather than achieved. Thus the fact that the Cinderella story (and don't forget Pretty Woman) has been told with popular success again and again in post-feudal, bourgeois America, is significant.  As I noted in my blog on Frozen, what makes the reprise of such stories meaningful is the way in which they contradict the bourgeois mythology that links social status with hard work—something that sociologist Max Weber called the "Protestant Work Ethic"—while simultaneously contradicting the American mythology of social egalitarianism. In effect, we find a striking contradiction here between ideology and desire.  Most Americans, I believe, would still claim a powerful allegiance to the ideologies of hard work and of social equality: those mythologies are very much alive.  But at the level of desire, Americans flock with their children, again and again, to feudal Cinderella stories that neither challenge a world of princes and paupers nor question a happy ending of social status achieved through .  .   .  small feet. Widening the cultural-semiotic system in which the Cinderella story functions, we can see that America has a lot of high cultural literary productions that openly challenge the ideology of the work ethic, but from a very different angle.  From The Rise of Silas Lapham to The Great Gatsby, The Rise of David Levinsky to An American Tragedy, we find tales of the corruptive effect of social success achieved through effort.  The pursuit and possession of wealth in these stories is presented as spoilers of what America should be about. So, we have a tradition of high cultural questioning of a crucial American mythology (an "American Dream" achieved through hard work), and a string of highly profitable low cultural appeals to glamorized feudalism (and don't get me started on The Lord of the Rings, a story that I adore but which is, nonetheless, one long paean to the divine right of kings). But it gets even more complicated when we bring gender codes into the analysis.  Because it is no accident that the feudal fantasies involved in the Cinderella story invariably involve girls and women as the rising protagonists, while the literary critiques of the money-corrupted capitalist always involve men.  So from a gendered point of view, all these Cinderella narratives are telling the little girls who are taken to see them that what they should work on is their personal beauty and personality, and some "prince charming" will take care of the rest. Little boys, on the other hand, are being told, in effect, to ignore the warnings of Fitzgerald and Dreiser, because what matters for men is to achieve princely (meaning moneyed) status.  In short, the most conservative of gender coded behaviors are being promoted through the endless reprising of the Cinderella story, and this matters a lot at a time when the most probable real-world avenues to economic success in America involve hard study and hard work in technical disciplines that are traditionally coded as male. It's the same old story. ... View more

Work on Emerging 3e is, thankfully, coming to a close.  Don’t let anyone ever, ever tell you that writing a textbook is easy.  It’s much more work than I ever imagined. Right now I am working on the new sequences.  We’re going with eight brand new sequences, touching on every reading in the book and including two new research-based sequences. What’s on my mind is the nature of intellectual labor, particularly in relation to teaching.  You know, one of my colleagues pointed out that when someone asks us about our work we’re likely to talk about our research, but the truth is that the bulk of the actual work we do is connected to teaching.  For me, working within composition, pedagogy, and writing program administration, the relation between my research and my teaching is even stronger. My passion and my intellectual labor—my work—is deeply connected to teaching: to the classroom, to the design of courses, and to the shaping of assignments.  I’m not sure the depth of this intellectual labor is always recognized by departments or the institution, which is a real shame. I will say that crafting each sequence for Emerging involves re-reading each essay I plan on using, thinking about the ideas of each, thinking about the ideas of each in relation to each other, considering how these ideas sequence, carefully wording assignments to guide students to explore those connections, crafting questions to prompt students’ thinking, integrating work from other assignments connected to the readings.  That’s a lot of thinking. So much has been written about the status of composition and its laborers within the institution.  I can’t help but think that if we continue to foreground not the work but the intellectual work we do then perhaps we can begin to shift the conversation and then the culture. Or maybe I am being totally unrealistic.  Thoughts? ... View more

My candidate for the hands-down “what were they thinking?” award for Super Bowl XLIX is GoDaddy’s now-notorious “Puppy” ad, which was pulled from the broadcast schedule days before the game. The ad, of course, was a parody of last year’s Budweiser puppy ad, highlighting something (oddly enough) that I pointed out in my Bits blog analysis of that ad—namely, that for all the heart warm, the Budweiser puppy was, in effect, a commodity for sale.  GoDaddy’s version made this its punch line, with the adorable Golden Retriever pup returning home only to be shipped out again by his breeder, who smugly observes that the sale was made possible by her GoDaddy sponsored web page. [embed width="450" height="360"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fft_S0jZMGA[/embed] Indeed, I’m really beginning to wonder whether the GoDaddy ad team read my analysis of last year’s Budweiser puppy ad, because I also discussed there how Budweiser’s puppy narrative fit into a system that includes the movie Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, and, sure enough, the GoDaddy ad is packed with Hachi-like music and imagery. But that’s not the point of this blog.  I’m much more interested in noting how the GoDaddy debacle illustrates a fundamental principle of conducting semiotic analyses of advertising. That principle is that advertisements characteristically try to associate some unrelated emotion with a product in order to move consumers towards purchasing it.  The 2014 Budweiser puppy ad does this by appealing to its intended audience’s affection for cute animals (horses as well as dogs) to sell beer.  The emotions stimulated in the GoDaddy ad are a great deal more complex, however.  Audience affection for puppies is anticipated, but it is undercut by the pratfall-like reversal at the end of the ad, which turns upon a doubly humorous revelation: first, that the ad is a parody of the famous Budweiser ad; and second, that it is a satire of the sort of person who breeds dogs for profit. Now, as an ad that plays upon viewer awareness of the prior ads that are being parodied, the GoDaddy ad joins the tradition of such campaigns as the Energizer Bunny series.  Ads of this kind play upon their intended audiences’ disgust with advertising itself, and thus make viewers feel good about the product because the ad that is pitching it is also ridiculing advertising.  Given the track record of such advertisements, the GoDaddy ad should have been a success. But the strikingly unsympathetic character of the dog breeder in the GoDaddy ad is much more ambiguous.  We are clearly not supposed to like her (an emotion that can be anticipated in an audience full of dog lovers).  But, strangely enough, the dog breeder is also the one who is identified with GoDaddy, when she happily exclaims that it was her GoDaddy-hosted web site that enabled her to sell the puppy in the first place as she packs it off again into exile. Um, what were they thinking?  No wonder they pulled the ad—but the damage had already been done. Moral of story: if you are going to advertise a product on the basis of unrelated emotions rather than on the objective facts of the product itself, you’d better get your emotions straight.  Satirical humor can be a very effective way of moving the goods, but there are some things you mess with at your peril—puppies come to mind.   ... View more

I just made my reservations for the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC).  Wow, some lessons learned. The first lesson: reserve rooms early.  I couldn’t get into the host hotel or the backup hotel or even the backup, backup hotel.  I’m only about a mile away from the conference but I know from past experience there is no greater pleasure than getting through a long day of panels and then simply stepping into an elevator and collapsing in my room. This year I will be taking a hike before collapsing.  I have to admit I was really kind of shocked.  I just never expected it to be that hard to find a hotel room in Tampa of all places. The second lesson is closely connected: CV lines are expensive.  I tried every traveler’s trick I know, including Kayak, Orbitz, Hotels.com, AAA discounts, state government rates—everything. I still can’t believe it costs $250+ a night to stay in Tampa. When all is said and done, I will be spending about $1,000 to attend the conference.  Luckily, it’s just across the state from me so I can drive there.  If I had to fly in, that cost would be even higher.  That’s a lot of money, it seems to me, for a line on one’s CV (especially since I am not presenting this year and so, really, it’s not a line on my CV).  It prompts me to think about the costs of tenure: the money we invest while on the tenure track to get our work out there, to stay current, to connect to others, and to move towards tenure.  The cost problem is compounded for me since I won’t be getting department funds to travel this year, as I am technically “out of unit” and up in the dean’s office.  I’m trying to think of this as a critical investment in my career but it’s a tough sell to my bank account. Third lesson: they do an awesome job with the conference.  Yes, I’m in sticker shock thinking of what I am paying for where I am staying.  But in getting things together for the conference I was really impressed with all the work they’re doing.  I watched some YouTube videos about the location, I see they have more poster sessions (with cash awards!), and super kudos to Joyce Carter for all that work—there are a ton of new features to look forward to. I’ll be sure to enjoy many panels and will delight in seeing professional friends that, really, I only see at Cs.  But I have to admit what I look forward to the most is the Bedford party.  For me, it’s the highlight of the conference. Hope to see you there.  And you can bet I will be taking these lessons with me as Cs moves to Houston in 2016.  I’ll be saving up, booking early, and thinking about some new formats to share my work. ... View more

I’ve recently come to realize that I am now what I would consider a “TOACA,” a Teacher of a Certain Age.  Granted, that has more to do with chronobiological age than professional longevity.  And let me be clear that it’s not that I feel like things are “over” (thank goodness). Still, there is a certain sense that I am reaching the top of the hill, so to speak, no matter how long it may be on the other side.  This realization has prompted quite a bit of reflection about my life and career. One of the things I’ve decided is that it is time for me to be teachable again. Curious, I think, for a teacher to seek teachability. I’ve been teaching for quite some time now, successfully.  I say “successfully” but I am now coming to wonder how much of my success results from a certain kind of inertia, the simple fact that I have kept doing what I always did.  Maybe it’s time for that to change.  I’m committing myself to exploring new things in my teaching: new methods and approaches, new kinds of assignments, new approaches to the classroom, new pedagogies.  For so long I thought I knew the answers; maybe it’s time to ask new questions. I’m not entirely sure what this is all going to look like but, as a quick example, I have been thinking a lot about a conversation I had with our point person for student success across the entire university.  She explained that studies show that student learning increases when a teacher takes just a couple of minutes at the start of class to discuss what was covered last class, what will be covered this class, and why it matters. It seems a pretty low stakes change for me and so I feel it’s worth a try.  I can picture myself saying something like “Last class we worked on how to make arguments more specific.  This class as you read through your peers’ papers I want you to focus on arguments to see how specific they are.  Not only will this help your peers to improve their papers but it will give you practice that can help you with your argument as well which will help you improve your writing and your grade.”  So simple, really.  It’s a small change in my teaching but one that may have a large impact. I’ll try to share other little shifts I make in the classroom but the most important shift, I think, is that I am ready to shift.  I’m wondering if I am alone in this.  Well, really, I am wondering if I am the only one with so much hubris as to think that what once worked will always work.  How often do you switch up your teaching?  How teachable are you? ... View more

It is hard not to be aware of the kerfluffle over the many Oscar nominations for the movie American Sniper—especially its nod for Best Picture.  The whole thing was quite predictable: take a controversial book about a controversial topic and have it directed by Hollywood’s successor to John Wayne in the hearts of American conservatives, and you have all the makings of a Twitter Tornado (just ask Seth Rogen and Michael Moore).  Thus, American Sniper is a natural choice for semiotic attention in your popular culture classes.  The only question is how to approach it. Here’s what not to do:  a semiotic analysis should not begin with the presumption of an ideological “right answer.”  Whether you, or more importantly your students, are ideologically inclined against or in favor of the film must be set aside because a semiotic analysis decodes its topic rather than celebrates or condemns it, and while that decoding involves the analysis of ideological and mythological signifiers, it must be open to all possibilities.  Thus, an analysis of American Sniper would consider the signifiers both within the film and outside it in order to describe why it is controversial and what is at stake.  Such an analysis must take nothing for granted, objectively considering, for example, just why the names “Clint Eastwood,” “Michael Moore,” and “Seth Rogen” signify a lot more than the mere referents of three proper nouns.  It must not simply dismiss one side of the controversy or the other, because the primary purpose of a cultural semiotic analysis is to reveal cultural significance, not present uncritically assumed ideological conclusions. In short, when placed within the systematic context of contemporary American culture and politics, American Sniper is a sign—a sign of just how divided America is these days.  When restaurant owners feel the need to “ban” Michael Moore and Seth Rogen from their premises because of a few tweets about the film, you can see just how emotional people are getting over the matter—and that emotion is a semiotic component of the larger system. What is true for the analysis of American Sniper is true for the analysis of any popular cultural phenomenon.  While it is true that one can always move from a semiotic analysis to a political or ethical argument within an essay, the semiotic analysis itself must not presuppose a right or wrong answer or position. But one thing certainly is true: in the current social environment, hardly anything in America is without political significance.  There is very little entertainment that is “merely entertainment.”  Semiotics uncovers the politics behind the often trivial looking surface of popular culture, and given the investment that so many people have in taking their own positions for granted, that uncovering can be the most controversial—but, I think, useful—politics of all. ... View more

I’ve been playing around with video since the Flip cameras were big—so about 7 or 8 years now.  As the cameras on cell phones got better and better, I moved to just using my iPhone 5s to capture video.  iMovie has given me good results for the longest time but having just purchased a Retina 5K iMac, I’ve decided to take the plunge and move to Final Cut Pro X.  Prosumer ho! I’ve been thinking about how to harness what, till now, has been a hobby.  I thought perhaps I would make some videos about Emerging and its essays and how we use it here at FAU.  I talked with Bedford folks about it and they think it’s a good idea, so I’m going to work on a couple and see how it goes.  I was thinking I would start with my take on sequencing assignments—why I chose that approach for Emerging and how I come up with my sequences.  I figure it might be a good way to spark conversations about that aspect of the book. Given that I am going to dump some portion of precious free time into this, I am wondering how to maximize usefulness.  What do you think about video discussions of a book?  Useful or too infomercial-ly?  What topics might you like to see me talking about? I’m open to suggestions, so please jump in! ... View more

I’m happy to say that we’re pretty much done with the bulk of the work on the readings and apparatus for the third edition of Emerging.  Whenever I go through a revision cycle I am reminded of just how much work it can be to put together a textbook.  Fortunately, I am also reminded of just how much fun it can be, too. I’ve had many great and engaging conversations with my editor Sarah just talking about interesting essays: “What did you think about … ?” “I loved it but I am concerned about ….” “Yeah me too but it would work so great with ….”  That kind of work always takes me back to what I love most about teaching: the intellectual energy of shaping a course. And we ended up with some great pieces.  I might talk about them a bit more in coming posts, but for now I will say that one of my favorites is by Yo-Yo Ma.  Why?  Because Ma.  But also because I think the essay represents the kind of work I love to see students do: it is engaged, it is reflective, it is smart, and it draws from multiple disciplines.  Awesome. I still have to work on the assignment sequences and I pray we get all the essays we want (permissions is a byzantine process, to say the least).  But it’s nice to see the next edition coming together. ... View more

Perhaps someday books will no longer have covers, but until then the physical packaging by which a book is presented to the world remains an interesting, if rather specialized, topic for semiotic exploration. Some book covers are famous—like the original artwork for The Great Gatsby, which actually influenced Fitzgerald's composition of his novel.  Others are notorious, like those that adorn the covers of Harlequin Romances.  Sometimes covers are designed simply to let the reader know what to expect, but more often they are marketing devices intended to appeal to a reader's interests, curiosity, aesthetic tastes, or desires. With the publication of the eighth edition of Signs of Life in the U.S.A., I thought I'd describe an insider's view of some book covers.  I have fifteen now, beginning with a book published in 1988 called Discourse and Reference in the Nuclear Age.  It's the only cover I had much of a role in designing.  The book jacket is a deep blue, with large block serif lettering on the front, presenting the title in a kind of gold/brass color, and my name in white.  I was driving for a "classic" effect: restrained but (I hope) elegant. I had no say whatsoever in the covers of my next book.  Also first published in 1988, The Signs of Our Time has three different covers: the first for the hardcover edition, the second for the paperback reprint, and the third for a Japanese translation.  The hardcover's dust jacket is an eye-catching magenta, with large white block letters for the title.  A band of square images bisects the cover about two thirds of the way down, containing artist's renderings of the Eifel Tower, Andy Warhol, a teddy bear, an apple, and a "no littering" sign.  Each of these images is a visual allusion to a semiotic topic taken up in the book, thus indirectly conveying something of its contents.  While a lot blander in blue with yellow lettering, and featuring a circle of images surrounding a human eye looking out at them, the paperback cover attempts something like that of the hardcover jacket, though I do not like it much. The Japanese translation, for its part, is rather unusual to American eyes.  A pocket-sized paperback with a dust jacket, it presents a white cover with Japanese characters in black, while across the bottom are the images of three yellow cheetahs in running stride.  The characters present a new title for the book (The True Face of America: The Mosaic Pattern Which Can Be Seen in the Culture)—clearly something for Japanese readers curious about America—but I don't know what the cheetahs signify.  I rather like the cover as a whole, but it really doesn't convey much at all about the book's contents. This takes me to the covers for Signs of Life in the U.S.A.  Finding good covers for each edition of this book has always been a lot harder than Sonia and I expected.  We've never cottoned to covers with celebrity faces on them, and have always wanted something artistic but not garish.  A book on popular culture would seem to demand a Pop Art cover, of course, but a lot of Pop Art is either garish or rather obscene.  Our editor for the first two editions, Steve Scipione, twice hit pay dirt in the Pop Art vein, however, by finding two different paintings by Tom Wesselmann.  The first edition was represented by Still Life #31, which features an image of everyday life that includes a television set, a mountain landscape as seen through a kitchen window, a still-life table setting, and a portrait of George Washington hanging on the kitchen wall. The second edition sported Wessselmann's Still Life no. 28, which substitutes an image of Abraham Lincoln for Washington, and a green color theme for the grey-blue theme of Still Life #31, but which is otherwise quite similar to #31.  We thought we were in business for the life of the book until we discovered that there are only two Wesselmann paintings in this vein, and that while there are plenty of other Wesselmanns out there, they aren't for us. We've never been able to find any other Pop Art that works for us, so every cover of Signs of Life in the U.S.A. has taken a lot of work.  The art department at Bedford/St. Martin's introduced a square block, reminiscent of a Rubic's Cube, filled with square images of common items from everyday life for the fourth edition.  And ever since then, the basic design theme for Signs of Life in the U.S.A. has been one including squarish rows of ordinary objects intended to evoke the world of everyday life.  While I shudder to use the word, that appears to be the "brand" image that now identifies the book, and that, too, is part of its significance. Simon Evans, an artist based in England but born in America, has provided the cover for the eighth edition of the book.  An artwork called "Everything I Have," containing some 34 horizontal rows of tiny images of the artist's personal possessions (everyday items like blue jeans and kitchen ware, for instance) on an off-white background, takes up the entire book cover, with the exception of blocks for the book title and authors' names.  Expressing a kind of understated grunge aesthetic, it appeals to us both thematically and aesthetically. And this, perhaps, takes me to the final semiotic significance of book covers.  A printed book can also be something of an objet d'art, with each element, beginning with the cover, designed for aesthetic effect.  I've always valued that, but should the e-text ever completely replace the printed book, I won't complain.  As the Lorax would say, the digital book is better for the trees. ... View more

Amazing how quickly the break goes, right?  Here at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) we’ve been back since January 5 (we start so early!) so I’ve been thinking about syllabi and wondering just what a syllabus is (or might be) (or could be) (or should be). I’ve known some who consider the syllabus a contract and in fact implement some form of contract grading (à la Peter Elbow) and certainly here at FAU the syllabus is, in part, a bureaucratic instrument, filled with mandated statements to ensure compliance with various state and university policies.  But I think for me, a syllabus is something else, and I have been trying to figure out what that something else is. Centrally, I view a syllabus is an intellectual project.  It’s my chance to imagine, project, and describe this “class” I have in my head (the one that’s perfect and thus never happens).  I mull over each element, consider how one flows to the next, tweak this and that.  In some ways, I frontload my intellectual labor given how much time I spend designing the syllabus. Syllabi are also design projects for me, which is to say I use them as visual essays / arguments / statements about the class.  I spend a shocking amount of time just choosing the right font.  I also consider the layout, the typography, and images.  I want the design to say something about the class and its goals. So I guess I would say that for me a syllabus is like a mini-essay.  I am laying out a line of thinking about the issues of the class, carefully organized through each week, and I am inviting students as my readers to follow that argument. What exactly is a syllabus for you? ... View more