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

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

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

This is part one of a two-part interview with Mia Young-Adeyeba and Michelle Touceda on the topic of online education during the pandemic. Mia Young-Adeyeba is a veteran English teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She has a passion for helping students develop into lifelong learners and for cultivating collaborative partnerships. In addition to being a high school English teacher for Los Angeles Unified School District, Michelle Touceda is also an Instructional Faculty Lead Mentor for new teachers and a past LAUSD Teacher of the Year.  * David Starkey: Mia and Michelle, thanks so much for allowing me the opportunity to talk with the two of you! I read about your work in a Los Angeles Times article about teachers using their ingenuity to help keep their students interested and engaged in online learning. Can you tell me how Distance Learning Educators, the Facebook group you started, came together and what its purpose is? Mia Young-Adeyeba: It all started in the breakout room of a Zoom meeting. We love to start our story off that way. Because we are both ambitious and always looking for new opportunities to grow as educators, our worlds collided during a district professional development course. We actually met for the first time in person to take the photo for the Times article.  DS: A very appropriate way to begin an online discussion group. Michelle Touceda: It's true! We kept seeing each other’s names in teacher trainings and serendipitously we ended up in the same breakout room in training for teaching other LAUSD teachers on Zoom. It was Mia that created the FB group. It was less than an hour old when she asked me to join her in running it. I don’t think either of us expected it to grow so large so fast. From the start, our personalities just really clicked and our different skill sets, I think, came together in a way that neither of us expected, but was obviously filling a void. The purpose is to provide access to education experts we may never have encountered without this particular outlet. The fact that I can get advice from an educator halfway around the world in real-time is amazing, and that I am able to implement it immediately is awesome for my students. That I can then do the same for someone else helps with those feelings of isolation.  DS: And I notice that the group is for all educators—not just teachers. MYA: Teachers, administrators, counselors, superintendents, and even personnel from various departments of education have all joined to build collaborative partnerships and support each other through distance learning. We now have 19 subject-based breakout groups and a dedicated Google Drive. Additionally, many educators have stepped up to help us moderate our groups. It’s been a team effort.  DS: That’s a real wealth of resources. What are some of the online learning strategies that have been discussed in the group that you’ve found most valuable? MT: What I’ve found the most valuable is the support and network of teachers I’ve come to know and rely upon. While I have taken away great strategies on everything from taking attendance on Zoom, to engaging students, to how to teach a lesson on Of Mice and Men virtually, I’ve also found a resource where if I have a quick question on some digital platform or am in need of a sounding board for a lesson idea, I have this group of educators there to help me navigate through the process. I was already comfortable incorporating different digital tools in my classroom, but teaching remotely was something completely new. This group has helped me and others in the same situation feel like we have the support and tools necessary to build on what we already know and find the right strategies to make that shift from in-person to online. DS: So, teacher training is a key component of making online education work. MYA: We both completed LAUSD’s Future Ready program, which highlighted many of the digital instructional tools we would later come to rely on as remote educators such as Nearpod, Flipgrid, and Kahoot. Our group members have helped me understand how to engage students who may choose to keep their cameras off. Some days I facilitate my class with only a Google slideshow and the chatbox and it works! I can check in with my students, I can give them feedback, I can put them into breakout rooms, they can submit videos of themselves, take polls...the methods are endless. DS: Those sound like strategies you can continue to use when you return to the classroom. MYA: Absolutely. Another thing I did last week was create a shared Google slide show and asked members of our group to add their favorite TED Talk along with three discussion questions. Now I have a document with 17 Ted Talks that will last me through the end of the school year. Check it out! The collaborative nature of educators in our group has been the key reason I have been able to manage teaching during a pandemic.    [Part 2 of this two-part interview will appear next month.] ... View more

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

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

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

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

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

To paraphrase Sylvia Fricker Tyson's marvelous song "You Were On My Mind," I woke up this morning with a blogging deadline on my mind, but hard-pressed for a topic. I then performed a self-analysis of this situation, and, lo-and-behold, arrived at two conclusions—one of them pretty obvious, and the other one pretty significant. So, here goes, in ascending order of importance.  The obvious explanation for my relative dearth of topics is that the pandemic is really taking up all the oxygen in the room these days. Yes, the World Series is on, and the NBA championships have just concluded. The Emmy Awards have been held, and the streaming revolution in TV barrels ahead. But popular culture has been sidelined somehow. There's no Game of Thrones, Mad Men, or Breaking Bad to enliven the conversation. Even The Handmaid's Tale and Orange is the New Black have lost the cutting edge. The movies are in hiatus, and no one's going to live concerts. There is, of course, plenty of material still out there for analysis, but there are more burning issues in the air—and I'm not talking about all the fires here out West. So, all in all, I'm rather stumped. But my self-analysis has also turned up something else, for while I have been avoiding my keyboard until right this moment as my blogging deadline approaches (didn't Carly Simon write a hit song called "Procrastination"?), I have been engaged in an ongoing Internet, um, conversation, with a group of COVID-19 deniers on a hobby forum that I've been an off-and-on contributor to over the years. They aren't exactly COVID-conspiracy types (I would never habituate a forum that had that sort of people), but they're all in for playing down the seriousness of the plague, promoting "herd immunity" and whatever COVID cure of the day is making the rounds (hydroxychloroquine anyone?), while attacking Anthony Fauci, fully credentialed epidemiological scientists, and "lockdowns." And, quite frankly (one has to be honest with oneself when conducting a self-analysis), this sort of thing makes me angry, so I am irresistibly drawn back again and again into the fray. And therein lies the significance of the matter: anger is a great motivator. I know that may be disturbing to contemplate, but it explains why the Internet is so full of angry writing. It explains why, almost every day, some professor or other wrecks a career by throwing something out on Twitter that it really would have been a lot better to just keep to oneself (nota bene: I am being very careful in this respect on the forum I have referred to). And it also explains the penchant for conspiracy "theories" that is turning the Internet into a kind of dystopian playground for the paranoid. I'm reminded in this regard of the history of television, which in its very early days was widely regarded as a potential medium for the dissemination of high culture, but which by 1961 had devolved into Newton Minow's notorious "vast wasteland." And so too have the high hopes for the Internet been dashed. The digital global village is now a gladiatorial battleground where rhetorical violence is the order of the day. It's little wonder, then, that people prefer to hunker down within their silos: it's a lot safer there, and all you need to do is hit "like" to express your opinion. Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 4999857 by cromaconceptovisual, used under Pixabay License ... View more

Photo description: Two selfies of Susan standing against two brick walls. In the first photo (2014) she is standing under a sign that says, “Welcome to Normal.” In the second photo, she is wearing a blue mask. The two photos are placed on a drawing meant to resemble the imperfections of a brick wall. To connect students across time and space, I have been making videos for my remote learning first-year writing classes. To create the videos, I use iMovie trailers, royalty-free music from bensound.com, and photo archives of my teaching materials.  “Multimedia Projects: 2004-2020” features multimedia projects created collaboratively with students in face-to-face classrooms in New York City, Houston, TX, and South Central Arizona. In Zoom first-year writing classrooms where students often do not have cameras or microphones, connection might seem like an implausible plan, and certainly not a plan that can be realized through making videos. At the same time, my hope is that a video archive of face-to-face learning can become a form of mutual aid.  In the video, projects from previous semesters present images relevant to remote learning students in 2020. The major themes that emerge from the video are the consequences of state-sponsored violence, the urgent need for equitable access to higher education, and the possibilities for a more just world reflected in nonviolent peaceful protest. In other words, students from previous semesters, through multimedia projects, offer testimony that they, too, endured crisis and catastrophe, even as they struggled for resilience. Students’ lives, before and during the current pandemic, have never been “normal.” “Normal” standardized first-year writing classes are impossible in this pandemic and, for many students and teachers, were not possible under the circumstances of the white supremacy that led to this pandemic. In “America’s History of Racism was a Pre-Existing Condition for Covid-19,” Alan Gomez and his co-writers delineate many of the root causes of racism and oppression, listing the inequality of “America’s education and economic systems,” “decades of discrimination in housing,” “environmental policies” that exacerbate pollution, and “a lack of federal funding” for healthcare.  Oppressive conditions, before and during this pandemic, are not normal.  In my remote learning class, students are currently reading “In a Word--Now,” an essay from the New York Times Magazine, in which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. described strikingly similar conditions in 1963, and suggested that if social transformation was not addressed immediately, that “a seething humanity [would be driven] to a desperation it tried, asked and hoped to avoid.” In strictly rhetorical terms, King’s essay models a proposal or problem/solution essay, demonstrating one writer’s approach to synthesizing ideas for audience and purpose.  In practical terms, this semester and in previous semesters, King’s essay offers a model for social transformation that resists and disrupts preconceived notions of what constitutes “normal.” With images created in response to my former students' interpretations of King, James Baldwin’s “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity,” and other texts that serve as problem/solution models. The video “Multimedia Projects: 2004-2020” ends with a photo from early 2020, in the weeks before remote learning began. Students, based on their reading of Baldwin’s lecture, suggested that Baldwin might respond to current conditions in higher education through peaceful protest. The resulting image attempts to serve as supporting evidence for resisting the concept of “normal.” What defines “normal”? Does “normal” mean dining in restaurants or working out at the gym, or going to the movies? If so, then additional questions need our attention. Who are the workers who clean and serve us in the crowded indoor spaces of “normal”?  What if those workers happen to be our students? In the pre-pandemic world before 2020, was it “normal” to attend face-to-face college writing classes while juggling three gig jobs at the restaurant, the gym, the movie theater? Is earning poverty wages, despite juggling three gig jobs, “normal”?  Is it “normal” when first-year, first-semester students cannot complete a full-time load of college classes, and work three jobs at the same time? At whose expense do we hope to achieve “normal”?  If, as Dr. King suggests in his essay, we must “sweep barriers away,” to pursue racial and economic justice, we must understand that our longing for “normal” comes at the expense of others, including students, staff, adjunct workers, and the many people in our communities living in precarious conditions. Yes, all of us have suffered, and many of us, especially BIPOC, disabled, and the LGBTQ+ community have suffered disproportionately. In a world that has never been “normal,” attempting to create “normal” conditions, always, but especially in this pandemic, means that we continue to ignore the obvious. Yet to heal our suffering, we must do better. We must go beyond the obvious.  We must resist “normal.”  ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor of English and Digital Writing at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning and critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy, and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website: Acts of Composition.    Overview This assignment provides a fresh approach to a traditional, academic assignment: The Critical Analysis. For this assignment, students are to apply a critical lens by connecting a theme/concept that we have covered in the class to the course readings and to their own lives. Students choose and define the theory/ideas and their important characteristics, discuss relevant passages from our course texts, and finish with their own interpretation and individual relevance.   I took this type of critical response (with length requirements and defined criteria) and extended it to include the multimodal component of the Meme Theme in which students create an original meme – a visual representation-- to expand the ideas from their critical responses.   Background Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook - Ch. 7: Reading Critically; Ch. 18: Communicating in Other Media The Everyday Writer  (also available with Exercises) - Ch. 7h: Critical Reading; Ch. 20: Communicating in Other Media EasyWriter (also available with Exercises) Know your Meme – Internet Meme Database – A Database of meme examples, origins and iterations. Imgflip – Meme Generator – An online meme generator   Steps to the Assignment: Although this assignment can be modified for any themes and class concepts, I have included some themes from my American Literature class to demonstrate an extended example. Part 1 Critical Analysis: Student write a focused critical response in which they apply a theme from American Literature. Emphasize strong, interpretive reading and writing strategies that include: thoughtful interpretation; connections across texts; purposeful passages; and appropriate documentation and citation practices. Choosing a Theme: For this particular course, students can choose from the following examples/possibilities for themes/concepts and 3 of the course reading selections that speak to the ideas, and at least one passage from each the selections: Cultural Mirror Theory Invisibility/Masking Social Darwinism/Naturalism Multiculturalism The American Dream Individualism Southern Gothic Nature/Science Isolation/Alienation Coming of Age Part 2: The Meme Theme: Students create an original meme in which they extend the theme/idea they worked with in Critical Response Question.  They can use an online meme generator such as Imgflip or create their own through original images and any programs of their choosing.  The meme must include a representative image and some text that speaks to their interpretation (or some aspect) of their chosen theme.  Meme Definition: I provide a simple definition of memes that work with both text and image to communicate an idea.  Memes draw upon cultural assumptions and operate through unstated knowledge held by the audience.  We share examples to understand the structure and rhetorical strategies of the genre. Students can just conduct image searches or consult Know your Meme for a database of examples, origins and iterations. Some things to consider: The objective of the memes is to have fun, but one should know where to draw the line. I remind students to create memes that are not derogatory towards any race, culture, gender, or community.  The image and the text that must have some sort of correlation. The image and text when seen together should imply something about the interpretation that is insightful. The meme should focus on a theme and a cultural observation – not an author (although they can refer to particular selections to make their point). Remind students that although they are using images (often viral images) that it is in their unique combination of text and image that makes it original for them. It is important to explain that this is an act of authoring and if they use an existing meme (without generating their own text and/or image) it is considered plagiarism.  I want them to get creative. Create a Google Slide: Each student designs a Google slide that includes their meme and their name. The meme is accompanied by a short description of its purpose and meaning, how it is drawing upon their chosen theme and the unstated assumptions that make it effective. They should discuss their understanding of the theme and how their ideas are manifested in their memes and texts they are referencing.     Share the Show: This is the fun part.  At the beginning of class have each student submit their Meme Themes slide to a collaborative Google slide presentation and ask them to show and explain their memes to the class.  This also works very well in a virtual classroom as it creates an interactive presentation in which students participate. Either delivery method works well and provides an overview of class concepts and can act as an engaging exit activity.  Reflections on the Activity: I was excited about how well this assignment worked and the ways that it took a traditional academic assignment and asked students to create a multimodal version and revise their ideas for a different audience – their classmates (rather than just the professor for evaluation).  It brought new relevance to their ideas and pushed them to situate them in our current context. I created this multimodal extension during our first semester of the COVID crisis and found that some students found connections and themes that gave them insight to this unprecedented cultural shift.  Since I used it at the end of the semester for our final day of class, it provided a reflective review of the class and a closure experience in which every student was able to have a voice and quickly show their work in an engaging format. Click here to view some example meme slides! ... View more

The information that we are bombarded with daily through twenty-four-hour news, the internet, and social media these days can be overwhelming. We know that in addition to information from legitimate sites and real, well-meaning people, we are exposed to misinformation from foreign bots and trolls. In their enthusiasm for their beliefs, those well-meaning people also often indiscriminately pass along misinformation. The tension between liberals and conservatives is exacerbated by the fact that some logical fallacies that are floated as truth would be laughable if the stakes weren’t so high. The clash makes common ground and reasoned debate between opposing sides almost impossible.  https://flic.kr/p/8gk72r One of the easiest errors to fall into is the hasty generalization. These overstatements are rampant every day in the news and on social media. The most basic error is assuming all members of a political party or other group are the same: “Conservatives believe . . . .” “Protestors are trying to . . . .” “Democrats are baby killers.” These overgeneralizations lead those attacked to feel that they must defend themselves against a charge that is false instead of against a valid criticism. Maybe that Democrat who was called a baby killer believes that in the case where a pregnancy is not viable, even in the final trimester, the medically induced aborting of the fetus is permissible, but hardly supports the murder of newborn babies. This is the straw man fallacy—tricking your opponent into defending himself against a charge that is much more serious than what he really believes. Examples of the either/or fallacy also hamper communication and reasoned argument. You believe this, or you believe that, with no options in between. One candidate will destroy our democracy; the other will save the American way of life. If you are a patriot, you will not take away my freedom by forcing me to wear a mask. Our country has not been so divided since the Civil War. It is the extremity of the views that each party holds of the other that makes communication difficult. All three of the fallacies mentioned here are fallacies because they carry an idea to the extreme. The ad hominem attacks that one candidate makes on the other only add fuel to the fire. We are learning once again the sad truth that when reason fails—when words fail—the next step too readily becomes violence. Image courtesy of Adam Sporka, via Flickr ... View more

The continued damage that the COVID-19 pandemic is doing to the traditional movie theater industry has gotten me thinking about, well, the traditional movie theater industry and those days when seeing a movie meant "going to the movies," because that was the only way for an ordinary person to see one. My thoughts on the subject are neither personal nor nostalgic, but are, rather, of a more scholarly kind, causing me to reflect upon the truly seminal work of the Frankfurt School that—along with the semiological experiments of Roland Barthes and the collective work of The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies—pioneered the study of popular culture as a serious subject for cultural critique in the middle part of the last century. Since contemporary cultural semiotics would not be what it is today without them, I think that a brief refresher course on their attitude towards what they called "the culture industry" (with the movies especially in mind) would be useful in a blog devoted to teaching popular cultural semiotic analysis.  To get right to the point, that attitude could be best described as "mixed." For their part, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno were decidedly hostile to what they viewed as the counter-revolutionary effect of the culture industry as a whole, and the movie industry in particular, setting out their views most famously in their classic work of cultural-historical philosophy, Dialectic of Enlightenment, whose most pertinent chapter on the subject, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception," pretty much says it all. A sophisticated update of the old "bread and circus" critique of popular entertainment, Horkheimer and Adorno's thesis essentially holds that the culture industry pours out well-constructed pseudo-works of art designed to keep the masses happy and docile by distracting them from the realities of their lives under capitalism. On top of that, Horkheimer and Adorno especially deplored the way that the Nazis had successfully used film for propagandistic purposes. One imagines, then, that both of them would hail the current financial troubles in the movie industry as one of the few bright spots on a horizon that they argue is constantly being thrown back into dialectical darkness. But then there is Walter Benjamin, the tragic associate-without-professional portfolio of the Frankfurt School, whose equally seminal essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," argues that the fascists' use of the movies could be turned against them by a communist cinema. More subtly, Benjamin argues that film, by its very nature, is revolutionary, assaulting viewers with a barrage of rapid-fire images that discourages quiescent (or quietist) contemplation and shocks them into new ways of thinking—much as Dadaist art is designed to shock the viewer into new ways of seeing. Frankly (Frankfurtly?), I've never been persuaded by Benjamin's argument (if anything, I've always been more attuned to the way that the substance of his essay is undermined by its tone, which is plainly nostalgic for the lost "aura" of the days before mechanical reproduction), and have tended to lean more towards Horkheimer's and Adorno's, with the qualification that I think that the main goal of the culture industry has always been making money, not counter-revolutionary propaganda. Indeed, with a nod here to Thomas Frank, the culture industry will commodify anything, even social revolution, if it looks profitable to do so. But whatever one's views on the political effect of the movies, their cultural effect has been profound, having arguably done more to upend the traditional relationship between high and low culture than any other art form. At a time when movies like the Batman and Avengers franchises more effectively mediate (to use another Frankfurt School term and concept) the social conflicts and concerns of our country than anything to be found in the vanishing world of high art (which has become what I call a "museum culture" in an era dominated by entertainment and entertainers), any change in the cinematic medium in itself is something to pay attention to. So, it will be interesting to see whether the days of the movie theater—already under assault by a myriad of new technologies—are coming to an end in the face of a virus over which we have yet no control, partly due to the policies of a president who rose to political prominence in good part because of the culture industry. Photo Credit: Pixabay Image 1861459 by GDJ, used under Pixabay License ... View more

This blog post was originally posted on May 7, 2020. Before the pandemic, I had never heard of Zoom. What a difference a couple of months can make! Now, like most of you I expect, I find myself “zooming” on a daily basis: Boards I serve on meet via Zoom; community volunteer groups gather via Zoom; classes convene via Zoom. Last week I even “zoomed” with the four young men who rescued me and two friends from the Christ Church Cathedral when it was destroyed in a 2011 earthquake in New Zealand; with a former student and his two young children; and with a group of women who were sharing, virtually, wine and cheese. I feel a bit zoomed out! During these sessions, I’ve also had an opportunity to see myself in the little Hollywood Squares boxes—or sometimes on full screen—and it’s been sobering. Of course I look my age—it is what it is!—but to me I look WORSE, sometimes much worse, than in real life. Have you or your students had the same experience? Thinking about this screen presence reminded me of a “media prep” session I was part of eons ago when I was on the MLA Executive Council. A media consultant came in to coach us on how to present ourselves on TV. I remember the consultant telling us that on television, the camera exaggerates everything: “if you barely lick your lips,” she said, “it will look like your tongue is all the way out of your mouth.” And she showed us what she meant! She also coached us to lean slightly forward when looking into the TV camera, telling us that even a slight backward lean would come across as “slouching.”  I don’t remember anything else, but these tips came back to me as I was looking at a Zoom session (or Skype or FaceTime or . . .). What can I do, I wondered, and what can I recommend that instructors and students do to make the most of Zoom and similar sessions? Some ideas came quickly to mind: Make sure you’re in a quiet and uncluttered space so that nothing distracts from what you’re saying. Pay attention to where the light is coming from so that it’s not shining directly down on you, creating weird shadows, or washing everything out. (Some people recommend using a selfie ring light, but I don’t have one of those so I look for places where the natural light is soft and clear.) If you’re using a laptop, prop it up on books so that you can look slightly up and into the camera rather than down at it. And remember to actually look into the camera—something I constantly forget to do! Dress simply in clothes that don’t glitter or glisten. (I learned this tip before a TV appearance where the host insisted I change clothes entirely because the suit I was wearing had a sheen to it which caused a lot of glare on camera. Who knew?!) I’m sure professional media folks can offer a lot more tips, and you probably know more too. (Please send them to me!) In this new world of living online—which we may be doing for the rest of this year—I for one need all the help I can get. So here’s looking at you, kid—on Zoom! Image Credit: Pixabay Image 5059828 by Tumisu, used under the Pixabay License ... View more