Today's featured guest blogger is Lisa DuRose, Professor at Inver Hills Community College “These characters and what they represent are things that I normally don’t read about, but these stories compel me to look at the reality that some women face.”   My student, quoted above, echoes what many others tell me about the works we read in my Introduction to Literature course: these selections are not their usual reading material and these characters have little in common with the protagonists they’ve encountered in some of their favorite works. At this point in the semester, students have been unsettled by characters who face poverty, mental illness, and death. This week, however, we venture into a terrain that is even more emotionally challenging. We are reading a collection of short stories by contemporary author Bonnie Jo Campbell entitled Mothers, Tell Your Daughters. Campbell’s stories often feature strong working class women who mitigate dangerous terrain—troubled relationships, economic hardships, and addiction. Campbell’s first person narrators, however, often present the greatest opportunity for critical analysis. In some instances, these narrators are processing through sexual assault and molestation, and readers are drawn into each woman’s effort to sort out the traumatic details of these violations.  Although we know that posts about sexual assault and harassment swarm students'Twitter feeds, we may be reluctant to engage students in substantial discussions about these highly charged topics for fear that we are ill-prepared to deal with the emotional impact they may have. However, those of us who teach literature understand that the tools of our discipline provide a framework for such discussions. Through the lens of literary devices and critical approaches, we can create a space that allows for both analytical understanding and social empathy, even as we venture through the most emotionally vulnerable themes.  In the case of Campbell’s stories, I ask students to consider how the author’s choice of narration allows readers to glimpse the thoughts of protagonists who have suffered through sexual assault. To aid in their analysis, I provide students with ample background information: my video interview Interview with Bonnie Jo Campbell: Difficult Topics in Literature, a critical essay I’ve written about Bonnie Jo Campbell's Sources of Inspiration, and several reviews of the short story collection. These resources coupled with Campbell’s writing style—which is both lyrical and plain spoken—move my students toward a critical space that invites exploration rather than judgment. Applying literary techniques to Campbell’s story “Playhouse” has led to complex discussions about the roots of sexual violence and the often complicit social responses they prompt, especially among family members. In this piece, Janie, the narrator, gradually discovers that she was gang raped three weeks earlier during a party at her brother’s house. She “feels sick and weird” (15) and her brother hasn’t returned her phone calls. The story opens with Janie returning to her brother’s house and learning that her brother, who recalls more about that night than Janie, is inclined to chastise his sister’s behavior and excuse the actions of his friends, one of whom he calls “a decent guy” (31). As Janie struggles to piece together her memories of that evening, the reader glimpses the emotional nuances of her discovery—experiencing first confusion, doubt, guilt, and then a sort of sickening knowledge. However, even as the events of that night become more lucid, she still struggles to identify the violation. After she tells her brother that she thinks she’s been raped, she second guesses herself: “The word raped feels all wrong, and my heart pounds in a sickening way” (31). When she says the word again, “it feels even more off-kilter, like I really am a drama queen, creating from thin air a victim and perpetrators and accessories” (31). Students are quick to comment about how upsetting this story is, but I’ve noticed that when they are asked to frame their responses around questions of literary techniques, they are able to articulate a deeper understanding of the stories and the theme. When students are asked to apply a range of critical responses—including feminist, Marxist, and reader-response—their interpretations are even more enhanced. Since many of Campbell’s protagonists live in poverty, students learn about the connection between sexual assault and poverty through Callie Marie Rennison’s New York Times article “Who Suffers the Most From Rape and Sexual Assault in America,” which explores how “women in the lowest income bracket are sexually victimized at about six times the rate of women in the highest income bracket (households earning $75,000 or more annually).”  For some students, these topics are highly personal; a few will identify themselves as victims of sexual violence, often commenting about the realistic depictions in these stories. In every case, these revelations have enhanced the level of respect and community in the classroom. These are difficult topics to discuss, but such conversations are already happening outside of the classroom. When we include them in a literature classroom, we can provide a framework that not only enriches our students’ knowledge but stretches their capacity for empathy. ... View more

  As I consider the cultural significance of this year's Academy Awards ceremony, my attention has not been captured by the Best Picture winner—which strikes me as a weird amalgam of Water World, Beauty and the Beast (TV version), and Avatar, with a dash of Roswell thrown in for good measure—but by something quite external to the event. Yes, I'm referring to the clamor over the 20% television ratings drop that has been lighting up the airwaves.   Fortune blames the drop off on "the rapidly-changing viewing habits of TV audiences, more and more of whom are choosing to stream their favorite content online (including on social media) rather than watching live on TV," as does Vulture and NPR, more or less. They're probably right, at least in part. Other explanations cite the lack of any real blockbusters among the Best Picture nominees this year (Fortune), as well as the Jimmy Kimmel twopeat as Master of Ceremonies (Fortune). But the really big story involves what might be regarded as the transformation of the Nielson ratings into a kind of Gallup Poll.   Consider in this regard the Fox News angle on the story: "Oscars ratings are down, and ABC's lack of control over the Academy may be to blame." Or Breitbart's exultation over the low numbers. And, of course, the President's morning after tweet. In each case (and many others), the fallout from the fall off is attributed to voter—I mean viewer—disgust with the "elitist" and "liberal" tendencies of the Academy, which is now getting its comeuppance.   Is it? I don't know: a thorough analysis of the numbers seems to be in order, and I would expect that the ABC brass at the very least will be conducting one in an attempt to preserve their ad revenues. In my own view, whatever caused the ratings drop is certainly overdetermined, with multiple forces combining to reduce television viewership not only of the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl but of traditional televised media as a whole. Certainly Fortune, Vulture and NPR are correct about the effect of the digital age on American viewing habits, but, given the leading role that Hollywood has played in the resistance to the Trump presidency, a deeper exploration of the possibility of a growing resistance to the resistance as evidenced in television viewing preferences could shed some light on emerging trends within the culture wars in this country.   Of course, the Fox News (et.al) take on the matter could prove to be fake news in the end, but even should that happen, the fact that the ratings drop could be so easily exploited for political purposes is itself significant. There are a number of takeaways from this. The first can be found in a Washington Post blog entitled "Trump is supercharging the celebrification of politics." The Post blog surveys an intensification of a cultural process that has been the core premise of nine editions of Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: namely, that the traditional division between "high" culture and "low" (or workaday and recreational) in America is being replaced by a single "entertainment culture" that permeates our society from end to end. The transformation has been going on for a long time, but Trump has intensified it.   But as the hoohah over the Academy Awards television viewership decline demonstrates, this entertainment culture is not a common culture: Americans are lining up on two sides of a popular cultural divide that matches an ideological one, with Fox News audiences lined up against MSNBC's, and innumerable other viewership dichotomies (Duck Dynasty, say, vs. Mad Men) indicating just how wide the culture gap has grown. So now we're counting audience numbers for such once broad-appeal spectacles as the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards to see which side is "winning." This is a new normal indeed, and it is indicative of a country that is tearing apart.   But then again, the same Post blog that I've cited above reports that the most read Washington Post story for the day in which the blog appeared concerned "the season finale of The Bachelor”—a TV event that really puts the soap into soap opera. So maybe there actually is something of world-historic importance for Americans to rally 'round after all.   Image Source: "Academy Award Winner" by  Davidlohr Bueso on Flickr 09/06/09 via Creative Commons 2.0 license ... View more

Many teachers of writing may have read an interview with Lori Salem, who directed Temple University’s Writing Center and is now Assistant Vice Provost and Director of the Student Success Center there. Conducted by Rose Jacobs and titled “What’s Wrong with Writing Centers,” the interview focused on data drawn from a quantitative study of responses from 4,204 Temple students (the entering class of 2009) to a variety of questions, including ones about whether or not to use the writing center.   As Jacobs reports in her interview, Salem found that practices that are near-orthodoxy in writing centers—such as nondirective instruction, in which tutors prompt students to come up with the right answers themselves; and a resistance to focusing on grammatical errors—are most effective for privileged students in good academic standing. . . . These methods, meanwhile, poorly serve the most frequent visitors: female students, minority students, those with low academic standing, and those who are speaking a language other than English at home. In this interview and in other work, such as her prize-winning 2016 essay, “Decisions. . . Decisions: Who Chooses to Use the Writing Center,” Salem argues that we should completely rethink what we do in writing centers and see writing centers as pedagogical workshops—“”a place where writers encounter writing tutors who know their stuff—and a space where pedagogical practices are constantly being developed, explored, and tested.” The rethinking Salem envisions calls for differentiated pedagogies rather than what she calls “policy pedagogies;” that is, pedagogies that reject monolithic policies in favor of basing tutoring strategies on individual students’ perceived needs.   It’s hard to disagree with these conclusions; indeed, the writing centers I have been associated with never followed monolithic policies and certainly tried to tailor tutoring strategies to the students we worked with. Salem says that writing centers almost universally reject working with grammatical issues, but that also has not been my experience: in my own tutoring, I seldom begin with such issues, preferring to first understand what the student is trying to do in a piece of writing and making a plan, with that student, for achieving the goal. That often leads to intense engagement with student writing along with a lot of careful listening. And it can often lead to a discussion of some grammatical element—but that’s not where I begin.   I have two other responses to Salem’s work, for which I am grateful; we need more such studies and we need them badly. First, I question the efficacy of seeing students who use writing centers as somehow “remedial” or in need of remediation. Salem is right that the “remedial” label clings perniciously to writing centers (it’s what Judy Segal, referring to students’ saying that they “love” lectures when we know that such lectures are largely ineffective, calls the “undertow effect”). But that doesn’t suggest, to me, that the students coming to us are remedial or that it is helpful to think of them as such. Taking students as they come, listening carefully to them, modulating our strategies to accommodate their needs and wishes doesn’t necessitate using any labels at all.   Second, I am not as totally condemning of “nondirective practices” as Salem seems to be; she says, in essence, that such tutoring is “not an effective method for teaching language learners in any way.” I know that Salem has research-based evidence for this claim, and I take the point that such practices may be aimed at students of privilege. But, as always, it depends on what you mean by “nondirective.” In my experience, the term means trying first and foremost to get to know the student sitting beside me so that I can get a sense of that student’s fears and also dreams. A case in point: I was teaching in China and doing some tutoring, working with a woman who was returning to college and for whom English was the fourth language she was trying to master. As I got to know her over the course of many sessions, I learned that one of her primary reasons for reading, writing, and speaking in English was to help her four-year-old son. Knowing that helped me know where to begin, focusing on conversational moves and on learning strategies for helping her son begin reading English. Had I launched into a highly directive approach, I don’t think I would have gained these insights into my student’s very particular needs.   Though I do have some questions and challenges for Salem, I continue to be impressed with the work she is doing. The unexamined writing center is not worth working in, and we need more critics like Lori Salem to help us ask hard questions about whose interests we serve—and whose we do not serve—in our Center.   Credit: Pixabay Image 3211179 by rawpixel, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

How to Choose a Doctoral Program Over the next several weeks, students will be deciding what doctoral program to attend. This decision follows from months of researching potential programs, talking to faculty, and often visiting the campus. For students who hope to make community engagement a central part of their work, the decision takes on added complexity, as factors beyond curriculum and faculty must be considered. In this short essay, I want to highlight some of those factors.   Existing Partnerships When coursework is taken into account, most graduate students only have about two to three years to engage in a community partnership. Effective partnerships, however, take significant time to develop. For this reason, many students would benefit most from choosing a doctoral program where a project has existed for a significant period of time. Working within this project will allow the student to understand the complexity of such work, witness what collaboration entails, and begin to understand the range of work possible. In the process, they can also learn the skill sets that were used to initiate the project.   It might seem to be a more attractive option to attend a program where you will be “allowed to develop your own project.” Certainly, a lot can be learned from such work, particularly if you also learn how to build a program that will continue after your departure. The graduate program will also benefit from your labor. It is doubtful, however, that such a scenario actually prepares you with the skills/insights necessary to take on such work in your next institution. This can lead to early mistakes which can create long-term issues for junior scholars.   So, while I would never discourage someone from beginning a partnership as a graduate student, I would encourage students whenever possible to learn by attending programs with existing programs that can model the fullest articulation of such work.   Funding Strategies A central part of any community partnership will be resource development/allocation. Within a project, partners will often have to assess what internal resources are available, and what outside resources are required. One of the reasons to attend a program with existing partnerships is to take part in such conversations, to gain a sense of how such planning occurs. Within this context, students can also learn how to develop, apply for, and manage grants.   Learning how to write grants is often portrayed as a mercenary skill. In fact, grants written for community partnerships are a central way of thinking through issues of power, leadership, and collaboration. Grants directly confront who will control the requested funds, how decisions will be made, and how the funds will be distributed to ensure work is achieved by all those involved. To some extent, grants are the mechanism to establish the working patterns of partnerships. For that reason, graduate students interested in community partnerships must engage in such work. In addition to gaining experience in partnership development, the language of grants helps students clarify their own sense of the work. Grants are morally-based enterprises. In writing a grant, you are being asked to consider how your ethics intersect with another institution – often in language that is more direct then academic discourse. As such, they force the writer to make clear his or her beliefs and values. As students begins doctoral work, such clarity will allow them to build projects which they find personally and politically sustaining beyond the specifics of any degree program.   So, when choosing a graduate program, I would explore what opportunities are available for engaging in grant work, what faculty have expertise in such work, and whether other students in the program have gained such experience.   Interdisciplinary/Intercommunity Partnerships Community partnerships are necessarily interdisciplinary. It would be arrogant to assume that our discipline of composition and rhetoric provides all the tools to navigate the dynamics of a neighborhood or community project. For this reason, students should explore whether a doctoral program has aligned faculty from other departments. Students should also consider whether the doctoral program has non-university-based community scholars who can act as advisors as well. Finally, students should inquire whether there is room within the required curriculum to take courses outside of their “home department” and enroll in internships with community partners.   Here I should add that any successful project I have undertaken in the past twenty years has always been informed by Anthropology, Education, Women/Gender Studies, and Geography professors among others. I have worked with religious and labor leaders; block captains and community elders. Without this consistent dialogue among a broad range of faculty, the work would have been inadequately theorized and enacted. For graduate students intending on taking on community partnerships as a central part of their career, Gramsci’s insight that “everyone is an intellectual” needs to be experienced from the beginning of their education.   So, in considering the advisors/faculty within a doctoral program, students should make sure the list includes more than ‘names in our field,’ but also names other disciplines, communities, and individuals as necessary to gain the education required to engage in community partnership work.   One final note: Mentorship While not directly related to community engagement, I recommend asking current students within a doctoral program the following questions: How often do you meet with your advisor? How quickly is work returned to you? A doctoral program can have all the opportunities in the world to engage in community work, but it if fails to take care of the intellectual development of its own community members, then I would not attend.   (My answer to those questions: In-person meetings no more than 8 days apart; written work commented upon and returned within 10 days.) ... View more

The classroom can and should be a place where students learn to engage critically, and develop the skills necessary to enter nationwide debates as active, democratic citizens. In order to do so, they must understand the rhetoric used by the media, by the government, and by proponents on either side of an argument. The warrants, assumptions, and terminology used in public debate – especially regarding hotly contested issues – often go under-examined.   Case in point, the choice of terminology used in discussing the role of guns in American society reflects the most essential differences between those on different sides of the debate about Americans’ right to own guns. In the aftermath of the most recent school shooting, proponents of restrictions on gun ownership have increasingly used the term “gun safety” rather than the term “gun control” to draw attention to their primary concern. Weighing in on that side of the debate is the emotional appeal provided by Parkland students—and thousands of their counterparts elsewhere—giving a public face to the victims and potential victims of gun violence and voicing their plea for new legislation to prevent similar massacres in the future. Even though it is difficult to argue against gun safety, so far legislators have not been swayed by the terminology or the tactics. Is it simply party loyalty that drives a legislator to vote against restrictions on assault rifles? Is it campaign contributions from the NRA that prevent legislators from voting to increase the age at which an individual can buy guns? Why have some businesses proved more willing to restrict gun sales than our government? If the most basic fear of gun control advocates is that more children and young people will die without more restrictions on guns, the most basic fear of gun control opponents is giving any modicum of control up to the government. Their simplest defense is that the Second Amendment gives Americans the right to bear arms. There is no room in their philosophy for the historical context of that amendment or the consideration of changes in guns that have come about since it became law. Does the right to bear arms mean the same thing in an age of automatic guns and armor-piercing bullets? Does the Second Amendment mean that there can be no restrictions on the type of arms any citizen can bear? What can be more important than keeping schoolchildren safe? The answer has to be keeping American citizens safe from the government. Not just from government restrictions, but from total control by an armed government of an unarmed citizenry. It is the ultimate result of the slippery slope that begins with giving an inch. It is the ultimate extension of the argument by gun owners that they have the right to protect their families. After all, what was “a well regulated Militia” designed to protect our young nation from? What were the Founding Fathers afraid of when they devised this means of protecting “the security of a free State”? The citizenry must be able to protect themselves against enemies from without or enemies from within. Since we have our armed forces to do the first, the only justification for a well-regulated militia is to protect from the latter. This sort of analysis of the warrants or assumptions underlying arguments for and against restrictions on gun ownership can help to clarify, if not resolve, the stalemate regarding any changes in existing laws. Encouraging students to participate in such an analysis not only hones their understanding of argument, but also invites active citizenship. Image Source: "AK-47 Assault Rifle // Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947" by Brian.ch on Flickr 01/19/10 via Creative Commons 2.0 license ... View more

Recently, I had a chance to spend a day with teachers of writing at the University of Texas at Arlington (thank you Justin Lerberg!). I came away impressed with how carefully they have designed their writing assignment sequences for their first and second writing courses and how seriously they were about continuing to analyze and interrogate their assignments and other parts of their curriculum. If the unexamined life is not worth living, it’s my strong opinion that the unexamined curriculum/assignment sequence is not worth teaching.   The first assignment in the first course sequence calls for a discourse community analysis, and they have developed a detailed (four and a half pages!) assignment sheet that guides students through thinking about invention, arrangement, style, and some logistical considerations. They begin by defining discourse community as “a group of people who share common interest, goals, values, assumptions, knowledge of a topic, and . . . discursive patterns, i.e. specialized vocabulary, speech genres, and ways of communicating.” They follow with examples of discourse communities, from fans of a particular sports team to military vets, avid gamers, followers of a TV show or film series, etc.   The major purpose of this assignment, they say is “to demystify the process of entering an academic discourse community . . . and to reflect on and analyze the discursive skills you mastered as an insider in a discourse community.” As they pursue this assignment, of course, first-year college students are also entering, whether they are aware of it or not, the academic discourse community of their particular university. A lot has been written about this process (think of David Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University” or, even earlier, Tom Huckin, Carol Berkenkotter, and John Ackerman’s “Conventions, Conversation, and the Writer” – and later articles that asked whether entering the discourse communities these articles describe was a form of manipulation rather than liberation), which I won’t rehearse here and which the UTA students don’t necessarily need to know about. But putting this assignment in the context of this strand of scholarly investigation would be helpful for those teaching it. Indeed, ongoing examination of and work on assignments demands this kind of rhetorical contextualizing—it keeps us honest!   I also wonder if an assignment like this one can go at least a good way toward helping students not only identify their major discourse communities and describe how they became “insiders” in the communities, but also to examine the assumptions and values (most often unstated) of the communities. Where are they coming from, literally and figuratively? What kinds of people do they include—and exclude—and why? What other groups’ values are furthered by this community and how clearly are they articulated? Adding this layer of analysis would, I think, further enable the critical thinking this assignment asks for.   Finally, I wonder if in preparation for this assignment, it might be profitable to lead the class in trying to analyze a discourse community they don’t belong to—so that they may be more open and able to examine it with a tough critical eye. If so, that experience might help them bring the same critical skills to how they became members of their own discourse communities.   Thanks again to colleagues at UTA for such an invigorating visit and thought-provoking discussion of assignments!   Credit: Pixabay Image 593344 by StartupStockPhotos, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

Your students should use Merriam-Webster.com, for sure. It’s the best dictionary for everyday purposes, and I’ll explain why after I give you a bit of background and do some complaining. Once upon a time, I might have recommended the New Oxford New American Dictionary. But the print edition hasn’t been updated since 2010, and its free online sibling is a bit of a project to find. Click here, and where you see “Dictionary” in white-on-black letters, scroll down to “Dictionary (US).” I definitely would have recommended the American Heritage Dictionary. It’s still good. But once upon a time, it had ample resources and wasn’t shy about offering informed, expert advice. I was thrilled when, years ago, the AHD invited me to become a member of its “usage panel.” But last month, after half a century’s existence, the usage panel was disbanded. And as of this spring, the AHD’s editorial staff will consist of one part-time lexicographer. The AHD ain’t what it used to be. The American Heritage Dictionary was launched in 1969, with the goal of restoring lexicographical standards that many felt had been recklessly abandoned when Merriam-Webster published Webster’s Third Unabridged, in 1961. Web3 did away with usage labels like “colloquial,” “incorrect,” and “humorous.” It lopped 250,000 entries out of its predecessor to make room for 100,000 new words (“unabridged,” eh?). And it was “descriptive,” promising only to inform people about how words are used. If folks said “irregardless,” then “irregardless” was a word worthy of inclusion. (Okay, Web3 does label it “nonstand.”) Its predecessor, Webster’s Second, published in 1934, is widely acknowledged to have been magisterial in its day. It was proudly “prescriptive,” advising people how to use words. According to W2, “irregardless” is “Erron. or Humorous, U. S.” The outrage that, in some quarters, arose when Web2 abdicated in favor of Web3 led to the creation of the AHD. It assembled an impressive hundred-member usage panel (Isaac Asimov! Alistair Cooke! Langston Hughes! Barbara Tuchman!). Their collated opinions about the likes of between you and I were presented as notes beneath the relevant headwords (99 percent of the panel disapproved of between you and I—and I sure wish I knew who the rebel was). As for “irregardless,” it doesn’t look as if the first edition’s lexicographers even bothered to ask for the panel’s opinions. The note beneath the word reads, “Usage: Irregardless, a double negative, is never acceptable except when the intent is clearly humorous.” But the AHD, along with the other major dictionaries, has by now slid some distance down the slippery slope whose bottom Web3 was so eager to reach. Heck, even the incomparable but special-purpose OED now tells you that “literally” can mean “figuratively.” To be sure, descriptivism has qualities that many find appealing. It presents itself as egalitarian, answering “Why should we privilege the locutions of dead white men?” with “We shouldn’t, and we don’t. We tell you how a range of past and present English speakers use words and encourage you to make choices for yourself.” I mistrust that claim, because no doubt all sorts of biases lurk in the underlying data. What’s more, if dictionaries really wanted to help writers and speakers of various English dialects use them more effectively, shouldn’t there be specific dictionaries for many more subsets of English than there are? All the dictionaries I’m discussing purport to cover all dialects. Second, descriptivism is a definable goal that for-profit companies, which publish most dictionaries, can comfortably aim for. Data about word usage is in limitless supply, and it’s cheap and superficially unambiguous, while discernment about usage can be hard to find, costly to engage, and easy to doubt and argue with. Finally, descriptivism feels scientific, like linguistics. And up to a point, it is scientific. Today’s lexicographers have at their command astonishing “corpora”—huge electronic compiled bodies of language, drawn from a wide range of spoken and printed sources—to tease out new information about how the language is used. Big data! Would you, however, consider it a good idea to fold your school’s English composition program into its linguistics department? The two have different purposes and use different methods. The purpose of dictionaries was, until the 1960s, neatly aligned with the purposes of English composition courses: to teach people how to use our common language correctly, clearly, and effectively. Web3 and its successors, including M-W.com, have washed their hands of that responsibility. I’ve even heard lexicographers make fun of the idea that that’s their job. Meanwhile, the rest of us turn to dictionaries in hopes they’ll teach us to use language better. Sorry, that’s not what they do anymore. So why is M-W.com the best dictionary for everyday purposes? Because it’s free, readily available, and easy to use. It has usage notes that give sound guidance. It’s online (as the others are too), so you always see the latest versions of entries. Merriam-Webster itself admits that its .com dictionary is more up to date than the latest edition of its Collegiate. And the Collegiate—and therefore, I have to assume, M-W.com—is in wide use. Stylebooks including The Chicago Manual, and periodicals ranging from The New Yorker to MIT Technology Review, have it as their house dictionary. In descriptivism—as in other things I like better, such as evolution—success breeds success. If the nation’s most widely used dictionary says that the verb “face-palm” is written with a hyphen and “humblebrag” is not, that in itself is bound to skew the words’ spelling toward those choices—until the people who mostly use them decide dictionaries are irrelevant. I’ll write some other time about how to go around dictionaries direct to the sources and be your own lexicographer. Credit: Pixabay Image 1798 by PublicDomainPictures, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

When students are asked to work in groups, they may not know what good teamwork looks like. Like anything in the writing classroom, models can help them understand how to collaborate effectively. The challenge is modeling the process for them. I can demo any number of writing strategies as well as provide step-by-step instructions on technology questions. Modeling group work, however, is not a one-person job. Pop culture to the rescue! The infographic to the right analyzes the teamwork strategies of six pop culture teams. It describes the team, identifies the team members, outlines their strategies, and suggests some debriefing notes. It is long and detailed, so you need to click the image to read the full-sized image or view the original on the Inloox site. As students begin working together in their writing groups, I share the infographic above and ask them to compare their own teams to those in the infographic. I invite them to respond to these discussion questions: How accurate are the characterizations of the teams in the infographic? Would you change them? Does your team match any of those in the infographic? How well does the infographic team compare to your team? Tell us how. How do the characteristics of teams in the infographic relate to those in the readings for this week? After discussing the infographic, I ask students to brainstorm a class list of other pop culture groups that they are familiar with. If they have trouble getting started, I offer some examples of television shows that feature a team of characters that works together to meet a goal, like NCIS, S.W.A.T, or SEAL Team. If students need additional inspiration, I throw out some categories like teams in anime, teams in movies, and teams in literature. With a list compiled, the class can talk about how the various teams compare to those in the infographic and hypothesize why some groups are more successful than others. The ultimate goal is to find teamwork strategies that students can use as they work together, so I close the discussion by asking students to create a list of techniques to use in their own groups. As an extension activity, students can apply their list of strategies by working in groups to choose a team from the class list and collaboratively design an image that presents the team, modeled on the infographic. Do you have an activity to improve student group work? Please share your ideas in a comment below. I’d love to try your strategies in the classroom.   Infographic from InLoox ... View more

I had not planned on writing on this topic as my Bits Blog posting deadline approached. But when a headline in the L.A. Times on February 21st blared that "Conspiracy theories about Florida school shooting survivors have gone mainstream"—and this on a day when America's school children rose up to say "enough is enough" about gun violence—I felt that I ought to say something. What to say, however, is difficult to decide. As I wrote after the Route 91 Harvest music festival massacre in Las Vegas, I am not confident (to put it mildly) that anything meaningful is going to be done—the L.A. Times has a nailed it with a "Handy clip-and-save editorial for America's next gun massacre" and I don't have any solutions that the students now marching for their lives aren't already proposing more effectively than I can. But the whole mess has—thanks to something I've read in the Washington Post—enabled me to crystallize a solution to a critical thinking conundrum that I've been pondering, and that's what this blog will be about.   That conundrum is how to teach our students how to distinguish between reliable and unreliable information on the Internet. It seems like such an easy thing to do: just stick to the facts and you'll be fine. But when the purveyors of conspiracy theories have grown as sophisticated as they have in mimicking the compilation of "factual" evidence and then posting it all over the Internet in such a way as to confuse people into thinking that there is a sufficiency of cross-referenced sources to make their fairy tales believable, it becomes more of a challenge to teach students what's rot and what's not. And as I've also written in this blog, that challenge isn't made any easier by academic attacks on objective factuality on behalf of poststructural theories of the linguistic and/or social construction of reality. So, as I say, the matter isn't as simple as it looks.   Here's where that Washington Post article comes in. For in Paul Waldman's opinion piece, "Why the Parkland students have made pro-gun conservatives so mad," he identifies what can be used as a simple litmus test for cutting through the clutter in an alt-fact world: keep an eye out for ad hominem arguments in political argumentation.   Here's how he puts it: The American right is officially terrified of the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Those students, who rapidly turned themselves into activists and organizers after 17 of their fellow students and teachers were murdered at their school, have become the most visible face of this new phase of  the gun debate, and conservatives are absolutely livid about it. As a consequence, they’re desperately arguing not just that the students are wrong in their suggestions for how gun policy should be changed, but also that they shouldn’t be speaking at all and ought to be ignored. There are two critical reasons the right is having this reaction, one more obvious than the other. The plainer reason is that as people who were personally touched by gun violence and as young people — old enough to be informed and articulate but still children — the students make extremely sympathetic advocates, garnering attention and a respectful hearing for their views. The less obvious reason is that because of that status, the students take away the most critical tool conservatives use to win political arguments: the personal vilification of those who disagree with them. It is the use of "personal vilification of those who disagree" that reliably marks out an evidence-starved argument. Thus, when Richard Muller—once a favorite of the climate change denial crowd—reviewed his data and announced in 2012 that he had changed his mind and concluded that climate change is both real and anthropogenic, his erstwhile cheerleaders simply began to call him names. And you probably don't even want to know about the personal attacks they have been making on Michael Mann. But given the high level of personal vilification that takes place on the Net (the political left can be found doing this too), our students have probably been somewhat desensitized to it, and may even take it for granted that this is the way that legitimate argumentation takes place. This is why it is especially important that we teach them about the ad hominem fallacy, not simply as a part of a list of logical and rhetorical fallacies to memorize but as a stand-alone topic addressing what is probably the most common rhetorical fallacy to be found on the Internet, and political life more generally these days. Now, we can't stop simply with warning our students against ad hominem arguments (we should teach them not to make them either), but we can establish the point as a kind of point of departure: if someone's claims are swathed in personal attacks and accusations, it is likely that there is nothing of substance behind the argument. After all, an ad hominem attack is a kind of changing of the subject, a distraction from the attacker's lack of any relevant evidence. I know this won't change the world, and it is of no use against the sort of people who are now vilifying American school children who have had enough, but at least it's a place to begin for writing and critical thinking instruction. ... View more

This week I want to share an additional resource that I’ve written to help students understand how my labor-based grading system works. First, though, I want to review the materials that students already had available. I explain the grading system on the course website, on the Requirements page (from the current semester). To help students understand how they are doing in the course, I have a page that outlines How Grades Are Recorded in the course grade book. I also share two infographics to further the explanation. One describes what happens When Your Grades Are Based on Labor. Another provides a flowchart that shows How Project Feedback Works in a course with unlimited revision. Even with these resources, students have told me in comments on course evaluation forms that the grading system I use can be confusing. To address the ongoing questions, I created the following FAQs that answer the questions directly: Grading System FAQ Why do you use a labor-based system? I believe that a system that allows you to keep working until you get the results that fit the workplace is more humane than a system that punishes you if you aren’t perfect on the first try. I know there are lots of situations in the workplace that require perfection. If you submit a bid to a client that has errors, for instance, you may not get a second chance—but that’s in the workplace. You are still in the classroom. The labor-based system allows you the chance to learn and improve. You can make mistakes and try again. You can take risks, and if they don’t turn out, your grade will still be okay. How does this system relate to the workplace? I have worked in quite a few places, and in none of them did I ever receive a letter grade for the work that I did. Never ever. It just doesn’t work that way. Sure, my writing was read by others I worked with. Sometimes it was good enough to go out to the intended reader right away. Other times it had to be revised first. Grades just weren’t part of the system. In the workplace, you are assessed on how hard you work and what you accomplish. Managers expect you to show up, put in your best effort, and accomplish the goals that your company sets. If you do nothing or the bare minimum, you will be reprimanded or fired. Grades in this course are based on a similar system. You earn your grade based on your labor—on the time and intensity that you put into your writing and collaboration. You are not punished for making mistakes as long as you work to improve throughout the term. What’s the research behind this system I adapted this strategy from Asao Inoue’s work on contract grading, labor-based grading, and anti-racist assessment strategies. You can find additional publications on anti-racist assessment and on grading students’ labor on Inoue’s Academia.edu page. Why is this system better for students? The most important benefits of this system are explained in the When Your Grades Are Based on Labor infographic. To summarize those benefits, a labor-based grading system allows you to Focus on Ideas (Not Mistakes). Write for Yourself (Not for Me). Take Risks (Don’t Play It Safe). Have Do-Overs (No Penalty). This labor-based system allows you to continue working on your projects until your work reaches the level that would be acceptable in the workplace. Your grade is not affected by what you haven’t learned yet, and you are free to try out ideas as you like. Why is there no partial credit? Work in this class is either ready to use in the workplace (and graded Complete) or it’s not ready (and graded Incomplete). Think of it as a binary system. There can only be 1 or 0, Complete or Incomplete. There isn’t any middle ground, so there isn’t partial credit. The thing to remember is that when a project is returned as Incomplete, you can always revise it until you do have a piece that is ready to use in the workplace. There is no punishment in the system if your work isn’t quite ready, but there’s no credit either. How are labor logs part of this system? You document the time you spend on activities and the level of intensity you put into your work in your labor log. You can think of tracking your work in your log as a parallel to tracking billing codes for what you do in the workplace. I have no way of knowing what you are working on or even how much you are working in an online class. In a face-to-face classroom, I would see you working in the classroom. I could tell if you were working intensely, working at an average pace, or not working at all. Since I cannot see your work myself, I need you to tell me what you’re doing. Additionally, you will use your labor log to gather details about your work when you write your final exam. Keeping track of what you do in your log is easier than trying to remember the details of what you did at the end of the term. Why is there so much emphasis on peer feedback in this system? In the workplace, you will find yourself reading and commenting on the projects of your coworkers frequently. The peer feedback activities you complete with your writing group give you the chance to learn more about that process. Writing in the workplace is as much about what you write as it is about how you help others with their writing. Just as importantly, peer feedback helps you improve your own writing in two ways. First, and maybe most obvious, you get advice on your draft that you can use to revise your document. Second, by reading drafts written by your classmates, you can see strategies that will help you improve your own work as well as notice errors that you can later check your own work for. Naturally, you cannot copy other people’s work; however, you can see useful ideas that you can make your own. For instance, you might read a draft that does a great job with headings. When you return to your own draft, those headings will stick with you, and you can use their example as you revise your own draft. So what do you think? I haven’t added any details that are not included elsewhere on the site; but perhaps the question-and-answer format will help students find the information. Do you have any suggestions for clarifying the system? How do you explain your grading system to students? I would love some suggestions from readers. Just leave me a comment below.   Image credits: Screenshot Excerpt of Canvas Grade Book by Traci Gardner on Flickr, used under a CC-BY-SA 2.0 license. ... View more

Like millions of other comics fans, I am eagerly anticipating the release of Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, starring Chadwick Boseman and a truly all-star cast. In fact, I’ve just been catching up by reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s three-volume Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, the first volume of which contains a map of Wakanda, an interview with illustrator Brian Stelfreeze, a Black Panther chronology, and other background information. These comics are page-turners for sure, with lots of the usual superhero battles and conflicts but also with lots of meditations on questions of the best kind of governance and the responsibility that those who govern owe to those governed. As someone who has studied collaboration throughout my career, I was especially struck by how the leader(s) and people collaborate to choose the best solution for Wakanda and to make sure that the solution “cannot be written in blood and fire.”   Until the film reaches our little movie theater here on the remote northern California coast, I’m enjoying reading about students’ experiences seeing it. You’ve probably heard of the Black Panther Challenge, launched by New Yorker Frederick Joseph to raise money to take kids from Harlem to see the film. That challenge has spread across the country, and just today a retired teacher friend of mine who mentors young women of color in a high school in Tampa wrote to say that one of her mentees had gone with a group of 30 other students to see Black Panther; she is being joined by thousands of other students having a similar experience and returning to their schools to talk about what the film means and HOW it means.   Which leads me to think about what a very fine teachable moment we have here, all across the U.S. The opportunities for students to do some serious research on the origins of the Black Panther Marvel series as well as on the Black Panther Movement, which began several months after the first Black Panther comic in 1966, are many indeed (and the irony that the series was created by two white men gives further food for thought). Broadening the scope a bit, students can also do research on other Black superheroes (like Icon) and on the history of such heroes, as well as on the evolution of the series, on the evolution of the role women play in the series, and so much more. I can easily imagine an entire first-year course developed around these ideas and texts, one that would challenge students to think deeply not only about the adventures, trials, and tribulations of the hero but also, and more importantly, about the message(s) that he sends to us today.   Ordinarily, I am happy to be retired. But today, I would love nothing better than to design a new version of the research and writing-based comics course I taught for so many years. And I know right where I would begin!   Credit: Pixabay Image 1393153 by emiliefarrisphotos, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

“Yet one must also recognize that morality is based on ideas and that all ideas are dangerous — dangerous because ideas can only lead to action and where the action leads no man can say.” Student-selected quote from “Stranger in the Village” by James Baldwin (Notes of a Native Son 1955).   The following activity is adapted from several journal entry assignments that students were invited to write as part of preparing to draft the first essay of our spring semester course, the second semester of Stretch. Many of the students spent the fall semester of Stretch reading and writing about Baldwin, and some had requested that we continue this work in the spring. Because several new students joined our cohort, we began the semester with new material from Baldwin, a refresher for students enrolled in the fall semester and an introduction for students new to the cohort in the spring semester. We began with the often-anthologized essay “Stranger in the Village,” then continued with “Letter to My Nephew,” which serves as a model for the first writing assignment in the course.   ASSIGNMENT Our first writing project asks you to write a letter to a younger audience about a contemporary issue of significance to you and to future generations. An example of this genre is James Baldwin’s “Letter to My Nephew,” first published in The Progressive in 1962, and republished in 1963 as part of Baldwin’s book The Fire Next Time.   James Baldwin uses this genre to introduce his main idea to his immediate audience (his nephew) and his wider audience (the general public and readers of The Progressive). After reading this letter, return to the first three paragraphs to observe how Baldwin creates an extended introduction.   The first paragraph details Baldwin’s writing process and shows Baldwin’s relationship to his nephew and to his nephew’s father (who is Baldwin’s younger brother). Baldwin also introduces his main purpose for writing. The second paragraph describes Baldwin’s relationship to his brother. The third paragraph elaborates on Baldwin’s purpose for writing.   You can model your own opening paragraphs on this template: First paragraph = direct connection to audience Describe your writing process Discuss your relationship to the audience Introduce your purpose for writing   Second paragraph = background about why I am writing (choose from the following or add your own): Events as you imagine them to be in the future Current or recent events Historic events that still hold relevance   Third paragraph = develop your specific purpose for writing: To describe a specific problem faced in the current moment To discuss a specific hope for the future To create a specific plan for the future   The following is a student’s draft of a first paragraph, based on the model.   I have tried writing this letter and have evidently struggled to find the words to express the importance of words. It’s strange that something used in our daily lives could be so influential and important if used correctly. Words can either damage or heal and most importantly change the world. My hope is, dearest readers, that you never lose the fire in your soul. That you face the monsters under your beds with the utmost confidence and vaporize them with the power of your voice.   We workshopped this paragraph as a whole class, and discussed specific revisions: We pointed out the main idea of the paragraph (in bold), and suggested revising the paragraph to clearly present this main idea We were concerned that “dearest readers” was too broad an audience for the specific focus needed for this assignment. Our suggestions here centered on finding a more concrete audience, even if that audience was imaginary for traditional-aged first-year students (grandson, grandniece, great-grandchild of my best friend, etc). ... View more

Yes, it's that time of year again: time for Super Bowl Semiotics, advertising division. And as I contemplate this year's rather uninspiring, and uninspired, lineup, I find myself realizing that the ads were more significant for what they didn't say (or do) than for what they did—like Sherlock Holmes' dog that didn't bark in the night. Here's why.   To start with, one dog that didn't bark this time around was a real dog: that is, after a couple of high-profile puppy-themed ads in the recent past (Budweiser's "Puppy Love" ad from Super Bowl 48 was a hit, while GoDaddy's parody the following year was a disaster—you can find complete analyses of both in the 9th edition of Signs of Life), Madison Avenue decided to let this sleeping dog lie for once, along with the ever-popular cute animal theme overall. I expect to see it come back next year (or soon thereafter) however: cute animals are good salespeople in America.   Of course, there was a fair share of comedy in the lineup (yuks sell stuff too), and the consensus appears to be that the comic ads from Tide took the prize for Best Ads in a Sponsoring Role. The Tide ads, of course, borrowed a page from the Energizer company, whose Energizer Bunny ads—first aired in 1989—employ a sophisticated advertising strategy that is essentially self-reflexive, parodying existing campaigns for other products, and, in so doing, appealing to an audience that has been so super saturated with advertising gimmicks that it has become skeptical of advertising in general. But the big story of Super Bowl 52 was the relative lack of politically themed ads. Given the way that social politics—from #oscarssowhite to #metoo—have been playing such a prominent role in America's popular cultural main events recently, this may appear to be a surprising omission, but not when we consider how the NFL has been witness to an entire season of political protests that have tied it up in the sort of controversies it is not well equipped to handle. And given the ruckus that an immigration-themed Super Bowl ad made last year, one can see why politics was not on the agenda. Not taking the hint, however, the ad folks at Dodge thought that they could enter the political fray in a way that would make everyone happy . . . and fell flat on their face with their Martin Luther King, Jr. spot. Dr. King, as at least one critic of the ad has put it, wasn't talking about trucks. In fact, as some careful readers of the actual MLK speech that Dodge appropriated have noted, King was warning his audience precisely against the power of advertising. Um, maybe a little learning is a dangerous thing. In my view, the ad folks at Dodge tripped up in yet another way during the night, though I don't think that anyone else has noticed this. I refer here to the Vikings-take-Minneapolis Ram truck spot, which took a group of actual Icelanders—dressed up as medieval Viking raiders—from Iceland to Minneapolis in a thoroughly juiced-up journey, all set to Queen's "We Will Rock You." Now, some Minnesota Viking fans have taken the ad as some sort of dig at the football team, but I think the real story parallels what I've been writing here about the Thor movies. All those ferocious blondes, cruisin' for a bruisin' . . . . I don't want to press the matter, but I don't think that this is really a good time to so aggressively display what can only be called a demonstration of raw "white power." Perhaps the biggest story of all, however, is that no ad really made that much of an impact. Oh, there are (as always) lists of favorites to be found all over the Net, but nothing really broke through the ad clutter in any big way. At five million dollars for thirty seconds of exposure (the cost seems to go up by a tidy million every year), that's something of an anti-climax, but perhaps that's as it should be. After all, there is still a football game somewhere behind all this, and, as games go, it was quite a good game.   Credit: “2018 Super Bowl LII Minnesota Banner – Minneapolis” by Tony Webster on Flickr 1/27/18 via Creative Commons 2.0 license. ... View more

In a New York Times op-ed piece, Thomas B. Edsall asks “Is President Trump a Stealth Postmodernist or Just a Liar?” Intrigued by the question, I scrolled through the article, finding that writers on both the left and the right have linked Trump to postmodernism. For the left, Jeet Heer connects Trump’s appeals to nostalgia (“Make America Great Again”), his fragmented and fragmentary tweets, and his conflation of make believe and reality as “the perfect manifestation of postmodernism.” And on the right, David Ernst sees the rejection of truth and embrace of relativism as clear signs of postmodernism at work.   While it’s impossible to imagine Trump reading about—or knowing anything about—postmodernist thought (impossible!!), the popular understanding of postmodernism as positing a rejection of objective truth and as agreeing that “anything goes” or “everything is relative” is widespread and featured in various bouts of culture wars in the last couple of decades. Edsall notes that “scholars of contemporary philosophy argue that postmodernism does not dispute the existence of truth per se, but rather seeks to interrogate the sources and interests of those making assertions of truth.” Had Edsall consulted scholars of contemporary rhetoric and writing studies, he might have learned much the same. Kenneth Burke spoke (and wrote) out repeatedly against what he called “vulgar relativism,” all the while showing how humans together make or construct or build truths that can be accepted as “true,” but “true” without a capital T. Rhetorical theory offers doxa as a useful way to think about knowledge and opinion, presenting doxa as that knowledge that can be taken for granted, or that is widely agreed upon. For Aristotle, doxa was a useful early step in the path to knowledge, a place to begin constructing what can be assumed true through the process of argument and counterargument. As such, doxa is important to the working of a democratic society. Later in his article, Edsall notes the work of Lyotard, who defines postmodern as “incredulity toward metanarratives’” rather than as an abandonment of any semblance of objectivity or truthfulness. He also refers to Andrew Cutrofello, a professor at Loyola University Chicago, who says that “In the present political climate truth and power have become uncoupled to a certain extent” so that it’s natural to wonder whether the notion of truth has been undermined. But Cutrofello suggests instead that rather than losing the category of objective truth, we are mired in “a battle over who has objective truth on their side.” Which brings me back to the President and his seeming indifference to truth and to the norms that have guided writers and speakers for generations. As E. J. Dionne, Norman Ornstein, and Thomas Mann put it in One Nation after Trump, we’ve never had a president who aroused such grave and widespread doubts about his commitment to the institutions of self-government, to the norms democracy requires to the legitimacy of opposition in a free republic, and to the need for basic knowledge about major policy questions and about how government works.  Rhetoric, so often maligned as “just hot air,” is the discipline and art that helps us to understand how norms develop, whose ends they serve, and how they can be used in the pursuit of knowledge and action that come as close to truth as it’s possible to get. As a rhetorician, I took the lessons of postmodernism that made sense from a rhetorical perspective (that truths are constructed, that our understanding is often flawed and fragmentary, and that grand narratives and essentialism are dangerous roads to travel). But I did not give up attempts to build knowledge that aims at truthfulness, that tries to establish common ground on which people with opposing views can stand, and argue, and counterargue.  While President Trump seems to understand, viscerally, how to say what he believes people want to hear, and while he employs some rhetorical techniques effectively, he does not do so in the pursuit of truthfulness. He does not use doxa to build toward such informed and agreed-upon knowledge. So perhaps rhetoricians would agree with Johanna Oksala, professor of social science and cultural studies at the Pratt Institute, who wrote in response to Edsall’s question, “I don’t think Trump should be called a postmodern president, but simply a liar.” For all his power, neither should he be called a rhetor or a rhetorician.   Credit: Pixabay Image 166853 by PDPics, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

President Trump’s recent State of the Union Address was the 95 th annual state of the union message delivered in person by a President to the American people. (In the past, some were written messages.) The State of the Union Address is an event shaped by rigid protocol. It is also an event colored by symbolism, especially this year, when members of Congress used their attire to make silent statements about the state of our nation. Anyone who had watched recent awards shows already knew that this is the year of wearing black as a statement against women’s abuse by men, particularly in the entertainment industry. The #MeToo Movement gave a solemn tone to events like the Academy Awards red carpet, where both men and women wore black clothing and pins declaring “Time’s Up” for the abusers. The members of the Democratic Working Women’s Caucus decided to wear black to the address, according to Representative Lois Frankel, one of the group’s chairs, in solidarity:  “We want to show solidarity with the #MeToo movement, really to first basically thank the victims of sexual harassment who have had the courage to come forward. To have solidarity with…folks who are fighting for a cultural shift that enables men and women to work side by side in safety and dignity free of sexual harassment.” All members of Congress were invited to wear black.  “We’re not trying to make this partisan,” Frankel said. “Sexual harassment knows no party.” When President Trump addressed Congress last year, the Democratic Working Women’s Caucus wore white, a visual link to the women’s suffrage movement. This year, a number of members of Congress, most of them members of the Congressional Black Caucus, used a different look to make their symbolic statement. They chose to enhance their formal wear with items made of kente cloth, a colorful type of silk and cotton fabric native to South Ghana.  They were protesting President Trump’s recent offensive remark about underrepresented countries in Africa and Temporary Protective Status nations, including Haiti, whose people he condemned as the type of immigrants not wanted in this country. Republicans were encouraged to wear red, white, and blue as a symbol of patriotism. According to USA Today, “A female member emailed her colleagues saying it was an idea from a constituent ‘to show our support for the flag, and the country and the troops and to be a contrast,’ Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., told USA TODAY . . . . McSally was the first female fighter pilot to fight in combat and said that the State of the Union should be a celebration of ‘the accomplishments of the past and a vision for the future and I think it’s something we should all be honoring and participating and be positive about as opposed to turning it into some sort of partisan spectacle.’” The one outfit that has drawn the most attention and the most speculation as to symbolic meaning is the cream (not white—not after Labor Day) Christian Dior pantsuit worn by Melania Trump, who arrived separately from her husband. Vanessa Friedman of the New York Times termed it “the final piece of what appeared to be an unprecedentedly politicized use of dress during a State of the Union.” The contrast with what was worn by most others in attendance was noticeable, especially given the white suits worn the year before, and by Hillary Clinton. Some interpret the First Lady’s choice of outfit in light of recent stories about her husband’s infidelity with Stormy Daniels just months after the birth of the Trumps’ son. Friedman continues, “But given that clothes became a symbolic dividing line during this State of the Union like seemingly never before . . . it’s hard to believe that the potential (and, indeed, probable) interpretations of her choice escaped the first lady. And especially given the almost elated reception that greeted her decision to wear a bright pink pussy bow blouse for an appearance during the campaign after her husband’s previous public sexual shaming, the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape in which he made vulgar remarks about women. If she has paid any attention at all to public reaction (or if her team has), she cannot be ignorant of the fact that when she seems to use clothing as a subversive tool to suggest what she presumably cannot say, it provokes a groundswell of support. Though it was unclear at the time whether Mrs. Trump really understood the implications of that blouse choice, wearing a white suit to the State of the Union indicates that, indeed, she did.” Though Trump delivered this year’s State of the Union, the symbolism of attendees’ attire ensured that their voices, too, were heard. ... View more