In today's "What We've Learned" video, Elizabeth Kleinfeld, one of the authors of The Bedford Book of Genres, talks about engaging students by offering them control of their assignments and outcomes, as well as reflecting on the changes in student-proposed assignments since the move to online instruction.   ... View more

Oh, the things we can learn from our students, if we listen. I have been teaching synchronously by Zoom again this semester. Unlike last fall, when students seemed beaten down by virtual life and toxic politics, they now seem hungry for interaction, and comfortable with the tech. Cameras are mostly on, unless there’s a reason private-chatted to me, and interactions are popping, with a whole additional layer of insights and props for fellow students offered up in Chat. (^^YEAH!^^ etc.) Despite all this good feeling, I’ve been reluctant to send students into breakout rooms. Last semester, students reported “dreading” breakout rooms in some of their classes, saying people sometimes stayed entirely muted, cameras off, and just waited out the enforced small group time. Having experienced some stilted breakout rooms myself, I empathized. A couple weeks ago, I ran into an unexpected scheduling snag that meant I’d likely be a little late to my own class. I let students know they could post ideas about the day’s reading on a discussion thread, and told them to hang in there until I arrive. Things went sideways, and I ended up racing to my computer, coat still on, and logging into my own class 38 minutes late, mortified. I assumed few students, if any, would still be on the Zoom. Instead, 21 of the 25 students were logged on, in lively conversation when my face appeared. They welcomed me cheerfully, like a late but not-unwelcome guest: “We were having a great discussion!” And they kept going. I saw smiling faces, laughter, and warmth. “We were discussing the reading, really!” someone said, but I wouldn’t have cared. It was such a joy to see their conviviality. It was instructive to remember that so much meaningful connection can happen in those “free-play” moments in the classroom even if they are harder to conjure remotely. But because of my tardiness, the students conjured it for themselves. I was reminded of this recent article on the loss of “social serendipity” during the pandemic —the conversations that happen without deliberate scheduling. Certainly, the Zoom room was scheduled, but my absence was … serendipitous. Without me, the students roamed through their own conversational patterns. A few students stayed late on the Zoom to assure me both that “we did really talk about the text!” and “it was raw, but really real” since I wasn’t present. I listened. Turning my listening into action, I praised students, again, this week, and pushed past my hesitance, providing more loosely structured time in breakout rooms. After they read an essay about workplace discrimination, I broke them out into randomized groups of five to discuss their own experiences of discrimination and privilege in work environments. I kept checking in to see if they were losing steam, but every room was bubbling with conversation. Everyone had a story to share. They seemed relieved to have compassionate listeners, and an environment that felt free and safe enough so they could be heard. My presence in those breakout rooms was fine but not necessary. I backed off, let them own their spaces. When they reported back, they had riches to share. Shall I say again that I am still learning from students? Perhaps the most important thing we can offer them at this stage of the pandemic is the structure and safety for some “social serendipity,” with the pleasure that comes from being able to own one’s successes.   "DiscussionImageFinal" by spwam1 is marked with CC0 1.0 ... View more

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

In today's "What We've Learned" video, Amy Braziller, one of the authors of The Bedford Book of Genres, discusses the awkwardness of randomly dropping into breakout rooms during groupwork in online courses - an action that feels much more intrusive than moving from group to group in in-person classes, and proposes a potential solution: shared Google Docs, to allow the instructor to look in on the notes from student discussions.   ... View more

Today's "What We've Learned" video, features Amy Braziller, one of the authors of The Bedford Book of Genres, on the difficulty of connecting to students through the computer screen, and on when and how to ask students to help by turning on their cameras.  ... View more

This blog series is written by Julia Domenicucci, an editor at Macmillan Learning, in conjunction with Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. Use one of the ideas below to add Grammar Girl podcasts to a public speaking assignment! National Grammar Day is coming up on March 4! Check out the 2020 National Grammar Day post on Bedford Bits and explore the resources on the Grammar Girl website! Podcasts are well-established, but their popularity seems to increase every day—and for good reason! They are engaging and creative, and they cover every topic imaginable. They are also great for the classroom: you can use them to maintain student engagement, accommodate different learning styles, and introduce multimodality.  LaunchPad and Achieve products include collections of assignable, ad-free Grammar Girl podcasts, which you can use to support your lessons. You can assign one (or all!) of these suggested podcasts for students to listen to before class. Each podcast also comes with a complete transcript, which is perfect for students who aren’t audio learners or otherwise prefer to read the content. To learn more about digital products and purchasing options, please visit Macmillan's English catalog or speak with your sales representative.  If you are using LaunchPad, refer to the unit “Grammar Girl Podcasts” for instructions on assigning podcasts. You can also find the same information on the support page "Assign Grammar Girl Podcasts." If you are using Achieve, you can find information on assigning Grammar Girl in Achieve on the support page "Add Grammar Girl and shared English content to your course." If your English Achieve product is copyright year 2021 or later, you are able to use a folder of suggested Grammar Girl podcasts in your course; please see “Using Suggested Grammar Girl Podcasts in Achieve for English Products” for more information.   Using Grammar Girl Podcasts in Presentations Pre-Class Work: Before you assign the presentation prompt to your class, introduce the concepts of writing a speech using the Grammar Girl podcast “Writing Scripts and Speeches.”  Assign this to your students as pre-class work or take some time in class to listen together. Discuss the lessons, tips, and tricks from the podcast as a class, recording the takeaways in a document that can either be shared or distributed to everyone. Then, choose one of the prompts for your assignment. Prompt A - Summary: Ask students to choose a topic on which there is a Grammar Girl podcast, or assign a topic to each student. Students should listen to one or more relevant podcasts (if you are using Achieve, we suggest you use the folder “Grammar Girl: 25 Suggested Podcasts” and direct students to choose from there.)  Some podcast ideas include: Parallel Structure: Patterns Are Pleasing What Is a Straw Man Argument? Only: The Most Troublesome Misplaced Modifier Top Ten Grammar Myths Serial Comma Students will create a short presentation, using a slide deck, to summarize and explain what they have learned from the podcast about their topic. Students may wish to research the topic further, include examples from something they have read or their own writing, include any questions they still have, etc. All sources should be properly cited. Presentations can be turned over as a slide deck, presented live in class or over a video call, or recorded and shared--whatever works best for your class situation! Prompt B - Argument: Ask students to choose a topic that affects the community. Some ideas include: The available resources of the school’s mental health department The number of hours the library is open Whether asynchronous or synchronous online courses are preferable Students should take a stance on their topic, and then create a short presentation, using a slide deck, to make their argument. Students will want to do further research to support their position. All sources should be properly cited. Presentations can be turned over as a slide deck, presented live in class or over a video call, or recorded and shared--whatever works best for your class situation! Post-Class Work: Using the document created as part of  the pre-class work, ask each student to evaluate their own presentation for effectiveness. Ask them to identify at least one area to improve for their next presentation.    Credit: "Exchange Students Present" by Carol (vanhookc) is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0   ... View more

“Listen and silent are spelled with the same letters. Think about it.”  —Anonymous Browsing the Internet recently, I came across a site called Oatmail, where a young woman posted this sentence: “Listening is a practice in humility. It closes your mouth while opening your mind.” For most of my career, I wanted to focus on writing and speaking rather than on listening: I wanted my students to find their voices and to get their messages out to others; I wanted them to be heard. Not until I read Krista Ratcliffe’s work did I think hard about the crucial reciprocal relationship between speaking and listening and understand that listening is as important—perhaps more important—than any other of the communicative arts. I saw that the binary between the production of discourse (speaking, writing) and the consumption of discourse (listening) was false, to say the very least, and that it depended on an impoverished concept of listening rather than the kind of listening the Oatmail writer spoke of, the kind that is a “lesson in humility” and that “emerges out of wonder.” As you no doubt know, Ratcliffe calls this kind of listening “rhetorical listening”—that is, opening ourselves to the thoughts of others and making the effort not only to hear their words but to take those words in and fully understand them. To truly LISTEN to them. This is the kind of listening some refer to as “deep,” but there are other kinds of listening as well. Based on works like The Coaching Manual by Julie Starr and others by business consultants like Andy Hagerman or Natalie Harvey, I have come up with the following list and descriptions of kinds of listening: Cosmetic listening: I am trying to look like I’m listening but I’m really attending to something else. Download listening: I am listening very selectively, just listening to confirm what I already know or think. Turn-taking: I am ostensibly listening but more likely thinking about what I will say next in the conversation or discussion. Active listening: I am purposefully giving you my attention and am focusing on what you are saying. I am present in the moment and will not be distracted—and I will try to say back to you what I am hearing in order to see if I am really understanding you. Deep/empathetic/rhetorical listening: I am listening actively and without judgment or preconceived ideas. I am listening to your words and also to what lies beyond those words. I am trying to put myself in your shoes and to feel what you are experiencing. I am listening to learn and I will affirm what you have said. I expect that these kinds of listening are familiar to you, though you may not have thought about them in these terms, and I’m fairly sure students have not done so either. What this brief list suggests to me is that listening is very complex—complex enough to spend some time on in class. In fact, I like to ask students to do an inventory of their own listening—to monitor their listening for at least one day to see what kinds of listening they are doing and to write up what they learn about how and why they usually listen: What tends to get their attention? What and who do they like to listen to—and what or who do they NOT like to listen to—and why? Where do they do most of their listening? How would they describe themselves as listeners? Especially when we are all doing so much listening online these days, it seems important to try to better understand our ways of listening and to learn to adjust those ways according to our purposes and situations. I tried monitoring my listening a few days ago—and I was surprised by what I learned. More on listening next week. In the meantime, I would love to hear how you are approaching listening with your own students. Image Credit: "Headphones" by Valentin.Ottone, used under a CC BY 2.0 license ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, Elizabeth Kleinfeld, one of the authors of The Bedford Book of Genres, discusses taking advantage of the chat feature during online synchronous classes. With so much focus on adapting teaching techniques from in-person to online, she additionally reflects on how to bring this online feature into in-person instruction.   ... 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 We have learned much from the pandemic, including flexibility, resiliency, and adaptation. Like many teachers out there, I had to look back on previously successful assignments and rethink them for this new context. I have learned that it is important that we see these modifications as value added rather than simply revisions made based on situational limitations.  Terence Thomas' virtual review of Yellowstone One of these assignments is the Experiential Reviews and Immersive Experiences assignment which I wrote in 2019. been working for years now with the ideas of experiential reviews and immersive experiences—I am fascinated with the ways we can translate real, live experiences into virtual experiences that give readers a sense of being there. Digital and multimodal composition allow students to create these types of non-linear texts that represent reality and allow for interaction and broad exploration for readers. In this assignment, students immerse themselves into a physical environment and try to recreate that for their readers through embedded links, exploratory paths, visual images, and other microcontent. I ask students to go beyond description and provide a triangulated picture while also reviewing the location from their own perspectives. The review is a common digital genre and gives students opportunities to create engaging, non-linear content for public audiences.   Our current “shelter-in-place” status had me return to this assignment and revise it to fit this new reality as a virtual review. At first, I was disappointed that I couldn’t do the assignment as it was originally designed as a physical experience, but I decided to modify it by adding virtual options for students to review. And in fact, our current at-home status created a stronger need and desire for these kinds of experiences in ways we have never before considered. I noticed in my media feeds that so many places and organizations were meeting this need through new virtual tours of their museums, parks, events, and other public spaces. With so many emerging options, it made sense for students to review these virtual tours, compare them and provide feedback on the quality of the experience, and recommend them to others. Again, something that started out as a compromise from the original assignment now felt more meaningful due to our current situation.     Background Resources The St. Martin’s Handbook - Ch. 24, Communicating in Other Media; Ch. 32, Writing to Make Something Happen in the World The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises) - Ch. 20, Communicating in Other Media; Ch. 21, Writing to Make Something Happen in the World EasyWriter (also available with Exercises) - Ch. 19, Writing across Cultures and Communities   Some Resources for Virtual Tours: Take a Virtual Visit to a National Park 12 Famous Museums Offer Virtual Tours You Can Take From Your Couch How to Virtually Explore the Smithsonian From Your Living Room Google Arts & Culture Virtual Experiences   Steps of the Assignment: First, research – Students can search out their own locations for virtual visits, but I had fun researching options to give them ideas. There are many aggregate articles that list virtual experiences and can give ideas about categories for exploration. I included a couple in the resources section above but I like to have students brainstorm on their own and consider the range of possibilities before choosing their site. Once they have reviewed many options (and perhaps shared ideas with others), students choose a virtual experience to review. I encourage them to choose something that fits with their interests. Sometimes students choose something they have always wanted to see (“I was in Paris but didn’t get a chance to see the Louvre” or “I am curious about Yellowstone National Park” or “I wanted to see Washington, DC, and my grandfather’s grave in Arlington Cemetery”) or sometimes they choose a location that they never heard of before and discovered through their brainstorming. It is important that they choose a location that is immersive and allows for a true virtual experience rather than a static website brochure.  Meghan Cobler's screenshot from the New England Aquarium’s livestream Students then go to the virtual location, “walk” around, and note specific perspectives and artifacts they see on their journeys. They should take notes and screenshots along the way to gather evidence that will help them represent this virtual space. I also encourage them to try out Google Street View, which enables them to explore the surrounding area of their locations to get a better sense of context.  Once students collect “field” data, they pull it together as a written review. I have students add these reviews to their course blogs, but they can also create them as documents that allow for links and images and some interactivity. We share resources on how to write a review, emphasizing that it is both a description of their location and recommendation, based on their individual perspectives. We look at samples of different kinds of professional and student reviews to get a sense of the genre. I require that they include purposeful embedded links, images with captions, an embedded Google Map, and references and related resources. We then share them with class members for peer review and live feedback aimed towards revision.   James Daniel’s virtual review of The LouvreReflections on the Activity Students took on the challenge and visited a variety of places both locally and all around the world. They analyzed and produced interesting multimodal texts that speak to the quality of the experience and provide authentic reviews to an audience with a real need. I had students visit world class museums (The Louvre in Paris, The Smithsonian), zoos and wildlife spaces (the San Diego Zoo and Boston Aquarium), historic buildings, town squares, National parks, concerts, music venues, and other local and national events and spaces. Also, of particular interest, I worked with a visually impaired student who chose to visit several of these sites and review them for issues of accessibility and enjoyment for others with visual impairment. It is fun for students to share these experiences with others and realize the potential impact of this kind of writing that represents a live experience and helps us step out without leaving our homes. I have included some links below if you want to see live versions of some sample virtual reviews: The New England Aquarium – Meghan Cobler Yellowstone National Park – Terence Thomas The Louvre – James Daniel Patterson Great Falls – T.J. Wetmore Note: These links may expire, so please refer to the images throughout the post if you encounter a broken link. ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, Nancy Sommers (@nancy_sommers), author of Writer's Reference, Rules for Writers with 2020 APA Update, Pocket Style Manual, and Bedford Handbook with 2020 APA Update, discusses how handbooks provide a shared language for instructors and students to discuss student writing and writing concepts.  ... View more

    Today’s guest blogger is Tanya Rodrigue‌, an associate professor in English and coordinator of the Writing Intensive Curriculum Program at Salem State University in Massachusetts.   In my last post, I provided instructors with a step-by-step approach on how to conduct peer review in an online environment. I suggested the following steps:   Step #1: Teach students what peer review is, what it does, how to do it, and why it’s valuable. Step #2: Teach students what constitutes “good” writing for any given assignment. Step #3: Choose an online platform to facilitate peer review based on the advantages and drawbacks of the platform. Step #4: Choose a peer review activity that best suits the needs of the assignment and your students. Step #5: Make students accountable for providing and using peer feedback for revisions.   In the fourth step of the process, instructors can choose from a myriad of peer review activities. Below I offer six kinds of peer review activities with brief examples, all of which can be used in face-to-face courses and adapted for an online environment. They are organized into different categories according to the extent to which they are structured and the level of direct engagement students may have with each other.   Structured silent peer review This peer review activity is the most commonly used in face-to-face courses and in online environments. The instructor first creates a detailed list of peer review questions. Students then access the questions, exchange their papers, and respond to the instructor’s questions. In an online environment, students can exchange their papers and response in a number of ways. For example, students could upload their papers to an LMS or a third-party platform. Peers can download the papers and write question responses in a comment box. Click here for an example of this kind of peer review activity.   Student-directed silent peer review This kind of peer review activity is student-centered and student driven. Each student is responsible for eliciting the kind of feedback they think would be most helpful at this stage of the writing process. One common structure for such an activity is to ask each student to identify 2-3 strengths of their paper; 2-3 parts of their paper they believe needs strengthening; and a list of specific questions in which they want their peers to respond. In an online environment, for example, students exchange papers, including their peer review guidelines at the top of the paper, in their LMS or on a third-party platform. The student peer reviewer downloads the paper and provides comments in a document or in a comment box. This peer review activity is most effective when the instructor models how to respond to questions and take up the author’s self-identified strengths and weaknesses.    Combination of structured/student-directed silent peer review This kind of peer review combines the structured silent peer review approach with the student-directed peer review. An instructor invites students to ask for specific feedback from their peers and provides peer reviewers with a list of questions in which to respond. Click here for an example of this kind of peer review.   Structured oral peer review A structured oral peer review is a synchronous activity that is carefully facilitated by the instructor, with either direct instruction on how students should engage and comment on each other’s work or loose guidelines for how they might talk about their work. In an online environment, Zoom break-out rooms can be utilized for this kind of peer review. Please note the instructor must ensure each student has access to other’s papers before and/or during the review conversation. One example of this kind of peer review is The Gossipy Peer Review, my all-time favorite activity described in this Bedford Bits blog post.   Student-directed oral peer review Like the structured oral peer review approach, the student-directed oral peer review is a synchronous activity. The student-directed oral peer review is simply an online conversation, perhaps in Zoom break-out rooms, wherein students speak to one another about their papers. I find this approach most effective when instructors provide a basic framework for how to approach a conversation. Students may stray away from the task at hand without such support. Click here for one example of guidelines I designed for my students in an audio storytelling class.    Semi-structured student-directed oral or written peer review This peer review approach is student-directed with some structure and can either be used in a synchronous environment or for a written assignment. Instructors provide students with a set of flexible guidelines and ask them to use these guidelines to give their peers feedback. My favorite peer activity in this category is the use of Bill Harts-Davison’s “Describe, Evaluate Suggest” heuristic. Students engage with this video to understand the method, then use the method to provide feedback on their peer’s work. This feedback approach is most successful when it is modeled by the instructor. Click here to see what this activity could look like in an LMS. ... View more

In today's "What We've Learned" video, Nancy Sommers (@nancy_sommers), author of  Writer's Reference, Rules for Writers with 2020 APA Update, Pocket Style Manual, and Bedford Handbook with 2020 APA Update, discusses engaging students in social, cultural, and public health issues that go beyond the classroom.    ... View more

Bruce Springsteen's notorious collaboration with Jeep-Stellantis is now a part of Super Bowl ad history, and with good reason. For in this rather heavy-handed attempt to promote harmony at a time of severe political crisis, the Boss, it appears, has pleased no one. Commentary from both the left and the right excoriates his sentimental quest for "common ground" in a country that is bursting apart at the seams. Such is the stuff of which cultural-semiotic analyses are made, and I will accordingly pursue a brief one here. The first thing is to set aside the question of whether or not Springsteen has "sold out" by abandoning his long policy of refusing to lend his superstar status to commercial appeals. While this has been a concern voiced by his fans, it is not really relevant to an analysis of the Jeep ad itself. And for what it's worth, I think that his motives were quite sincere in all this, with personal enrichment having nothing to do with his agreeing to take on the assignment. So this is hardly corporate caving by the Boss. Nor do I want to get involved in the argument over the religious imagery that is so prominent in the ad (relevant as it would be to a more extended analysis). It's an "issue" (as they say) all right, as is the question of whether an American common ground can be found that could include the kind of people who think that the Holocaust is funny, or that breaking into the halls of Congress while brandishing Confederate battle flags is somehow a "patriotic" act. To do so would land me in a bog of political partisanship that would lie outside of a dispassionate semiotic analysis. Rather, what I want to focus on is the extraordinarily outdated semiotics of the ad itself, which seeks to present a vision of an America united by the imagery of a pre-industrial, rural land. This is signified by everything from breathtakingly beautiful shots of snow covered prairies and empty wide-open spaces to even Springsteen's cowboy hat and scuffed boots. Brief shots of urban scenes interspersed between the longer, more lovingly presented panoramas of unspoiled nature—along with barns and silos—do little to obviate the message that the geographical center of America is also its moral center: the Heartland at the core of American being that has been so much a part of the Farm Aid benefit concerts. Except that this is two economic transformations behind the times. America's industrial revolution began the shift from a rural to an urban society in the nineteenth century.  The late twentieth century saw the abandonment of the industrial economy for a post-industrial restructuring that transformed much of the American heartland into a financially stagnant Rust Belt now overwhelmed by opioid abuse. The result has been one of geographical socio-economic dispersion, with America's wealth concentrated in urban centers from Seattle to Silicon Valley (and Beach), Boston to Atlanta, and every city with a strong hi-tech and/or financial services economic foundation, while the rest of the country has been left behind. Just look at an election map: blue-voting America constitutes only a small fraction of the actual land area of the nation; the rest is red, and increasingly impoverished. So by seeking to make a metaphor of national harmony out of the cartological placement of a small chapel in Kansas, the Jeep ad simply misses the point. The American dream itself has been so decentered that it can no longer be found in most of the country. (And lest the rich urban centers start feeling smug about their situation, they too have been fractured into an ever-wealthier upper-middle to upper-class caste, squeezing out a middle-class that can no longer afford the rent and gentrifying the ever-shrinking enclaves of the poor.) Basically, an America that has prided itself on building the largest middle class in history now finds that there is no longer any "middle" there. No amount of sentimental advertising harking back to an America that no longer exists is going to change such a situation. Thus, the most significant part of Jeep's Super Bowl sermon is that, apart from some fleeting glimpses of a few people scattered here and there in the ad, Springsteen is all alone, interacting with no one. The American dream has become just that: a private dream, which the ad so much resembles in its cinematography and overall esthetic presentation. Epilogue: Or perhaps a private nightmare, for after I completed this blog the word went out that Jeep has pulled the ad due to an embarrassing Springsteen DUI bust that has suddenly broken cover. Somehow, I think that this is simply a pretext to erase yet another corporate attempt to commodify sweetness and light that backfired.  Maybe the Boss should have consulted with Kylie Jenner before signing on to this thing.   "Jeep" by Eduardo Pelosi is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0 ... 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

In this "What We've Learned" video, Ellen Carillo, one of the authors of Reading Critically, Writing Well, reflects on the process of translating an in-person class to an online class, and how the challenge of changing course types mid-semester allowed her to learn about different features of technology and online instruction.   ... View more