April is National Poetry Month! We've asked some of our LitBits bloggers to discuss how they approach poetry with their literature and creative writing students. Before the first workshop of the semester in any class I teach, I pass out a stack of papers, face down, and instruct my students to take one each. When everyone has a paper, we flip them over. I’ve given them a poem: "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye.  Without introduction, I read the poem. I pause when I reach the ending. Some students’ heads are bowed, gazing at their copies. Some have their eyes closed. Some are watching me. “Why do think I wanted to share this poem with you today?” I ask. The responses from my students vary depending on the course I’m teaching. But often, one of the early answers is a question: “Because you like poetry?” “I do like poetry.” I smile. “But what is it about this particular poem?” Soon, someone points to the lesson plan on the whiteboard. “We’re going to talk about workshopping.” Another adds, “And you want us to be kind to each other.” “Great observations. So what can we learn about kindness from this poem?” The room is quiet. My students frown at the poem, or at each other, or at me. It’s time for a short writing exercise. I ask my students to write their answers to two questions: what can you learn about kindness from the poem? How does the poem make you feel? Most of my students are used to analyzing writing. They are used to looking for meaning. They are not accustomed to looking inward, at their own feelings, at how the work is affecting them. Poetry, in this instance, helps them identify their feelings and prepare them for the vulnerable process of workshopping. An honest conversation about something other than workshopping encourages them to trust their ideas and each other before diving into their own work. After a few minutes of writing I ask my students to share their responses with a partner next to them, if they are comfortable. I walk around the room, eavesdropping. “This is a sad poem,” several students say. “But it’s hopeful,” others point out. “I don’t understand all of it,” some students say, and their peers offer, “I think that’s OK.” I bring the class back together and encourage my students to share their responses. They are animated, responding to each other, almost as if I’m not present.   “I don’t like poetry much, but this is deep,” one says. “It’s like reminding you to walk in someone else’s shoes, you know?” “Everyone has sadness. I’ve got sadness, you’ve got sadness.” A student points to herself and then to her peers. “So we have to respect each other,” says another student. “Even if we disagree.” “Especially if we disagree.” I step into the conversation after a few minutes. I encourage my students to point out their favorite lines. “I like the opening: 'Before you know what kindness is you must lose things.'” “You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.” “It follows you like a shadow or a friend.” All or almost all of my students participate in the conversation about the poem, even my quieter students. The poem animates them. They connect with each other over favorite lines and ideas. They connect over confusion and questions. It’s these connections that are vital to successful, thoughtful, and trusting workshops. I read the poem one more time after our discussion, so students can listen to phrases they haven’t noticed before, memorize lines they hold dear, and remember how kindness will take them far both in workshop and outside the classroom. ... View more

I had the privilege of presenting as part of a CCCC panel on “Writing about Writing at the Community College” a couple of weeks ago in Kansas City (along with Elizabeth Johnston and Angelique Johnston of Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY). One theme reiterated throughout the panel is that implementation of writing about writing pedagogy needs to be rooted in the “community” of the community college – the local context and culture. In my case, the context is teaching writing about writing in a sheltered ESL first-year composition course with an IRW co-requisite. I use six “anchor” texts that introduce my students to writing about writing (WAW) during the term, and students write about these (multiple times) in connection with other essays drawn from our departmentally selected reader. The first assignment for students is a literacy narrative; they connect their own experiences to those of other writers and to the concept of Discourse (from the work of James Gee, our first anchor text). The literacy narrative has revealed a lot about the language, reading, and writing experiences of my students. This semester I decided I wanted more information about my students’ reading habits and strategies, beyond the stories they had chosen to tell in their first assignment. Mid-term, I gave students an anonymous survey to gauge how they were working through our anchor texts, by far the most challenging of the reading assignments in the course. I queried them about the amount of time spent on these, the number of times each text was read, and the strategies they used—as well as the areas that caused the most trouble and the suggestions they had for me to facilitate their reading efforts. Some of the findings were expected: students were reading the challenging selections less than 3 times, on average, and spending an average of 3-4 hours (total) with each one, despite my recommendations to revisit them multiple times. Students also reported that the vocabulary was the primary impediment to reading, and they requested reading and vocabulary guides in advance of the readings. Given the experiences they have described in previous English language instruction, these findings were not surprising. Fifty percent of my current students also asked for more time to discuss the readings in class, and many commented that they don’t feel comfortable with the readings until after class discussion. Again, given their accounts of previous education experiences (in which there was no need to do assigned reading in advance because instructors would “go over it” in the next class) these comments were expected. But when I asked students what strategies they were using when reading outside of class, I noticed something I had not seen before: while almost all students reported annotating texts (as we have taught them to do) and using dictionaries or translators, only one student reported talking to another student about the text, and none reported talking to an instructor about the text outside of class. Also, students said they did not use graphs, charts, or pictures to organize their thinking about the readings, even though we frequently create such charts, graphs, outlines, and pictures (as well as paraphrases and responses) in class.   These results led to an epiphany about my students’ reading process: this particular group views “text-talking” and making visual representations of assigned texts as teacher-directed, in-class processes. Their literacy narratives suggest that they engage in text-talk easily enough when it comes to self-selected reading, but that practice has not transferred as a strategy for approaching academic texts. So this is my next IRW challenge: how can I foster text-talk and visual representations of texts outside of the classroom as reading strategies? Of course, I could assign an out-of-class discussion, require students to stop by my office and chat, or work with a team to build a graphic presentation before class. But will these activities transfer beyond my class as effective strategies for reading complicated texts? I can’t answer that yet. I will need to keep experimenting. What are you doing to get your students engaged in “text-talk,” especially for challenging academic readings? Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post?  Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! ... View more

While there appears to be some significant doubt over whether Cambridge Analytica really had much effect on the outcome of 2016 presidential election (Evan Halper at the L.A. Times makes a good case that it didn't), the overall story of the way that millions of Facebook profiles were mined for partisan purposes is still something that is of profound significance in this time when digital technology seems to be on the verge of undermining the entire democratic process itself. As such, the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica controversy is a worthy topic for a class that makes use of popular culture in teaching writing and critical thinking.   If you happen to be using the 9th edition of Signs of Life in the U.S.A., you could well begin with John Herrman's "Inside Facebook's (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political Media Machine." In this extensive survey of the many ways in which Facebook has fostered an ecosystem of political activists who invade your news feed with ideologically targeted content, Herrman shows how the marketing of online behavior has been transformed into a "(Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political Media Machine." That our Internet activity is being tracked and our data mined is no secret anymore, and many people don't seem to mind—so long as it only results in specially curated advertising pitches and coupon offers. But what Herrman describes goes well beyond product merchandizing into information manipulation, the building of highly politicized news silos where the news you get is the news that someone has calculated that you want to get, and nothing else, as more and more Americans transition away from such traditional news sources as newspapers and television to Facebook, Twitter, and a myriad of other social media.   Brooke Gladstone's "Influencing Machines: The Echo Chambers of the Internet" (also in the 9th edition of Signs of Life), succinctly explains the effect of this shift. With no pretense of presenting a balanced palette of news and information, the new media are exacerbating and deepening the social divisions in America, creating ideological echo chambers that effectively constitute alternate realities for those that inhabit them. The result is a kind of political and cultural echolalia.   It's little wonder, then, that the contending parties in America cannot find a way to communicate effectively with each other. Already divided by a history of cultural conflict and contradiction (chapter 7 of Signs of Life explores this division in depth), Americans have vanishingly less in common with those whose lives lie on the other side of the great divide.   There is something profoundly ironic about all this. For many years it has been assumed that the effect of modern mass media has been to chip away at America's regional differences, flattening them out into a kind of unaccented (literally and figuratively) sameness: a mass culture watching the same TV shows, eating the same food, and talking in the same way. But now something is changing. Rather than tending towards a common culture, America, sliced and diced by digital algorithms, is dividing into mutually hostile camps.   William Butler Yeats said it best long ago at a time when his own country was divided in two: "Things fall apart," he lamented, "the centre cannot hold." Now there's something to hashtag. Image Source: "Facebook security chief rants about misguided “algorithm” backlash" by  Marco Verch on Flickr 10/08/17 via Creative Commons 2.0 license. ... View more

Like many in our field, I had second, and third, thoughts about attending CCCC this year, given the NAACP’s travel warning for people of color. I followed the debate on several listservs and read all of the statements sent out by CCCC leaders explaining their decision to keep the conference in Missouri and the steps they were taking to work with the NAACP and other groups to support civil rights in Missouri. In the end, while I believe that our organization should have pulled out of Missouri (we have taken such action in the past, so there is precedent) and while I supported the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition’s decision not to meet at this year’s CCCC, in the end I decided to attend for one day (Thursday) in order to be part of a panel on “Feminist Rhetorics in the Age of Trump.”   That panel was inspirational to me, as I knew it would be, but I also got a surprise treat when I attended another panel, called “DBLAC: Challenging Narratives of Deviance and Disruption in Writing Spaces.” This panel was a surprise because I had not known about DBLAC, and it was a treat because the talks were all outstanding! As its website defines it, Digital Black Lit (Literatures & Literacies) and Composition or DBLAC is a digital network of Black graduate students in the United States, formed in May 2016 at the Digital Media and Composition Institute (DMAC) at The Ohio State University. We are comprised of graduate students who self-identify as Black in the fields of Literacy Studies, Literature, Writing Studies, Rhetoric, English Studies, Creative Writing, Digital Humanities, and other related fields. This network provides safe spaces for members to testify to, discuss with, and share support for each other in response to the continued marginalization of Black bodies in academia. DBLAC also acts as a learning community for professional development, networking, and resource-pooling aimed at the academic retention and success of its members.      The panelists introduced us to this fairly new organization, and told us a bit about its history and their involvement in it. As I listened to them talk about establishing safe spaces for graduate students of color and about how to establish a supportive community, I finally noticed what they were wearing: each member of the panel had on a black t-shirt with a series of names printed in large, white block letters. When these finally came into focus for me, I realized they were the names of these panelists’ mentors, scholars of color who had provided safe spaces for them. BANKS, ROYSTER, GILYARD, MOSS, NUNLEY. . . and others. In short, the panelists were embodying their message, delivering it not only through their words but through their actions and clothing.   Khirsten Echols, Brittany Hull, Louis Maraj, and Sherita Roundtree each shared experiences of being in UNsafe, hostile, and disrespectful spaces in the academy, stories that are all too familiar to all who have had the privilege of working closely with graduate students of color. They didn’t stop there, however, going on to share their research and scholarship on recognizing, respecting, and valuing the knowledge and insights of young scholars of color.   Sherita Roundtree, in “Black Women’s Noise and Institutionalized Spaces,” argues that Black women are often “scripted out” of spaces of belonging and that addressing this long-standing act of exclusion calls for literally making space and recognizing the right of Black women to occupy it, in their scholarship, teaching, and professional development. They have been kept from occupying such spaces by what Roundtree identifies as “noise,” a term used by Jacqueline Jones Royster in her award-winning essay, “When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own”: At the extreme, the African American community, as my personal example, has seen and continues to see its contributions and achievements called into question in grossly negative ways, as in the case of The Bell Curve. . . . Such interpretations of human potential create a type of discourse that serves as a distraction, as noise that drains off energy and sabotages the work of identifying substantive problems within and across cultural boundaries and the work also of finding solutions that have import, not simply for a ‘race’ but for human beings whose living conditions, values, and preferences vary.   In her presentation, Roundtree took this concept of “noise”—the chatter/clatter that distracts attention from African American women’s achievements and contributions, that literally drowns them out-—and then expanded it. In Roundtree’s work, “noise” affects the perceptions of African American women in such negative ways, yes, but the term also signals something else: the “noisiness” of Black women is not negative but can instead be thoroughly grounded in Black culture and ways of knowing and being. Roundtree’s goal goes beyond reducing the negative noise that affects Black women so profoundly; in addition, she aims to explore “the perceived and known noisiness of Black women GTA’s in the academy and their teaching of writing,” thus seeking to “develop a more nuanced understanding of Black women as teachers, learners, and mentors.”   As I listened to this group of very smart and very talented researchers, I wished that everyone at CCCC could have heard their presentations. In the meantime, I urge everyone who works with graduate students of color to make sure they know about DBLAC!   Credit: Pixabay Image 2488359 by gtjoflot, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

  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. ... 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Today's guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn‌, a Professor in the English Department at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning, 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. Multimodal composition relies heavily on the relationship between text and image. As teachers in this context we can emphasize to students that composing images takes the same kind of thought and energy as composing written texts. We consider our audience, purpose, subject matter, and context and make rhetorical choices that communicate meaning. Of course, students can just snap pictures and capture strong images by happenstance, but I try to get them to understand that composing images involves rhetorical strategies and an understanding of visual rhetoric. Kenneth Louis Smith in the Handbook of Visual Communications (Routledge, 2005), helps make that distinction.  Not every visual object is visual rhetoric. What turns a visual object into a communicative artifact--a symbol that communicates and can be studied as rhetoric--is the presence of three characteristics. . . . The image must be symbolic, involve human intervention, and be presented to an audience for the purpose of communicating with that audience. This definition is a good place to start our conversation. How do we symbolize? What is the difference between literal and representative images? How can we use visuals to move beyond pretty pictures and create persuasive communication? I use this and other sources to introduce students to the idea of image rhetorics and discuss particular rhetorical strategies to consider while composing visuals. I find it useful for students to think about metaphors and their relationship to designing visual content. Thoughtco.com and other online sources offer glossaries and definitions for rhetorical devices and visual metaphors. I also use Sean Morey’s discussion of Image Rhetorics (The Digital Writer) to investigate terms and to help initiate students into learning the language of visual composition. He discusses the following rhetorical lenses and image categories: Analogy, Metaphor, Metonomy, Synecdoche, Enthymeme and provides detailed visual examples of each. Morey also talks about the importance of text and image relationships and suggests terms like Anchorage and Relay, Juxtaposition and the distinction between Denotation and Connotation. Students learn the language of visual composition and start to see ways to change and enhance their visual composing practices through this assignment.  Background Resources: The St. Martin’s Handbook: Ch. 16, Design for Print and Digital Writing; Ch. 17, Presentations The Everyday Writer (also available with exercises😞 Ch.22, Making Design Decisions; Ch. 23, Presentations  EasyWriter (also available with exercises😞 Ch.3, Making Design Decisions; Ch. 11, Creating Presentations Steps of the assignment: Have students study and learn image rhetoric terms and strategies. Look online for examples that demonstrate the principles of visual rhetoric. Gather students into teams and have each team compose a collaborative Image Rhetoric Slide show through Google Slides. Each student is responsible for a single slide that features a different rhetorical term in which they 1) Define the term, 2) Compose an original visual example, and 3) Provide an explanation of the meaning they are trying to communicate (and what makes it effective). Students present the slide shows in class and discuss examples. Reflection: It is one thing to understand a definition and repeat its characteristics on a test. It is another to apply that knowledge through this kind of exercise. Students found interesting connections and creative ways of presenting persuasive visual communication. Students come to see larger connections between cultural concepts and learn how images can bring complicated ideas together in impactful ways. For example, Aiden’s slide provides an analysis of metaphors, creatively combines two concepts, and draws a “comparison between unhealthy fried foods known to be carcinogenic like fries and tobacco products.” This assignment helps students understand that many of the messages around them are composed through these lenses and that they can actively compose persuasive visual images of their own.  I have included two of the team presentations below: Team 1 – Image Rhetorics Presentation Team 2 – Image Rhetorics Presentation Let me know what you think in the comments. ... View more

We’re almost to the mid-point of Nelson’s The Argonauts. Eighty pages in, I’ve had the students spend time in the computer lab drafting and then publishing “interpretive footnotes” in order to explore one of Nelson’s many references and see where the exploration leads. As with the interpretive definition assignment, I publish an example for them to read before they get started.  There are no images in Nelson’s text; but she returns often to the work of Catherine Opie. We’ve discussed the images in class and I’ve had the students write about the experience of looking at Opie’s self-portraits. But, like all discussions, there’s been a lot left unsaid and there have been paths left to pursue. And that’s what I want to happen in the interpretive footnote—for the pursuit to continue, for the connections to keep sparking. Here’s what I published prior to having the students enter the computer lab:  Each time I passed the sign stuck into the blameless mountain, I thought about Catherine Opie's Self-Portrait/Cutting from 1993, in which Opie photographed her back with a drawing of a house and two stick-figure women holding hands (two triangled skirts!) carved into it, along with a sun, a cloud and two birds. She took the photo while the drawing was still dripping with blood. The pacing of Nelson's description here is timed for maximum shock. If you don't know the image ahead of time, what you experience over these two sentences is a crescendo that starts with the word "blameless" and then moves from "cutting" to "carved" to "dripping with blood." The mountains that Nelson passes are blameless because they can't control what other people stick into them; they are the passive recipients of the pro-Prop 8 signs calling for the end to gay marriage. Like the blameless mountains, has Opie's blameless back, too, been defaced? vandalized? made into a site for a political struggle? It's hard to quite know what verb to use here. The one most ready-to-hand is the one Opie provides herself--cut. But, how? Cutting, as a form of ritualistic self-harm, tends to be done on the arms or the legs. How does one cut a childlike picture of friendship or love into one's own back? So, from cutting to carving to drawing, the latter two verbs allowing the knife to turn, to shape, to compose, to redesign the act of mortification. Did Opie do this to herself? That would require fixing the knife and moving her back to create the shapes. It's more likely she had someone carve the picture for her. And then, she took the picture herself, with the blood still dripping. The written description slows the experience of Opie's work down and it asks the reader to construct the image herself. The actual image, though, arrives immediately. Harry and Nelson disagree about what the image means. Or rather, Nelson argues that the image means something troubling and Harry, without commenting on the image, isn't troubled by the possibility that Opie might be grieving the fact that she can't have a "homonormative" family. In this instance, Nelson settles for engaging with the art object via hermeneutics; she interprets it and extracts a stable meaning from it. And then she further locks the meaning down by citing personal information about Opie that confirms that the image is one of grieving. * This stabilizing is only temporary, however. Having introduced Opie's work on page 11, Nelson returns to it on page 64, immediately after recounting all the negative reactions her friends had to Community Action Center, a film that gave Nelson a glimpse of freedom. Ugh, one of Nelson's friends says, why did we have to stare at so many hairy pussies? As if in answer to that question, Nelson returns to Opie and observes that Self-Portrait/Cutting is "in conversation" with another of Opie's self-portraits, Pervert. The childlike picture on Opie's back is "in conversation" with "the ornate script of the word Pervert, which Opie had carved into the front of her chest and photographed a year later." And this image is in conversation with Opie's Self-Portrait/Nursing, taken a decade later, where the scars from the chest-carving remain, leaving a "ghosted" trace of the word "pervert" above the nursing child Opie cradles in her arms. Here, it's clearer that Opie has had the word "pervert" and the ornamentation beneath it carved into her chest by another person. There are other details about the portrait that Nelson elects not to mention, details the unsuspecting viewer may well find difficult to behold: Opie is seated in this image; her head is encased in a dark black leather mask, with a brass ring at the neck; both of her arms have matching rows of flesh piercing needles running up them; she is topless; she is wearing leather pants with a leather belt; the fingers of her hands are interlaced; the posed figure seems relaxed and calm; the figure faces the camera head-on, but can see nothing. This description also slows down the experience of beholding the image. What is this image saying to the Cutting image? It's the same body in both images. The self in both portraits has a face that can't be seen; it is a self that presents her body for others to see. One facet of that self entertains or entertained childlike visions of coupledom. Another facet takes pleasure in receiving pain, in submission, in being at the mercy of another. It's the same body, but visually, the desire for a partner and the desire for pleasure can't be united in a single image. * Which bring us to the third self-portrait: Nursing. Here, in the definitively maternal act of nursing, Opie reveals her face. She looks into her child's eyes; her child looks at her. The child is too young to know what scars are, let alone how to understand their meaning. The child's sex is not revealed. The ghosted scar offers a rebus of sodomitical maternity: the pervert need not die or even go into hiding per se, but nor is adult sexuality foisted upon the child, made its burden. Is this image the place where Opie's identity is secured and stabilized? The one that brings her safely back within the perceived societal norms? I think it would be a mistake to force such a reading on the image either in isolation or in context of the series. The "sodomitical mother" encrypted in this image is a many-faceted self: Opie can show her face in this image because it is the image of Woman that all women are expected to fulfill. And, if the image is looked at quickly or carelessly, the scratches on Opie's chest might be missed altogether or misinterpreted as a skin condition, signs of aging, unfortunate lighting. The three images together allow the viewer to see some facets of Opie's self, facets that sink beneath the surface when she removes the leather mask, picks up her hungry child, and turns her face to the camera. She's had non-reproductive sex and she's reproduced; she grieves, has a fantasy life, has sexual desires, has maternal desires. Doesn't that make her, in the end, a "normal" human being? That's not the conclusion Nelson wants us to reach or that Opie thinks is true. When Nelson returns to Opie on page 74, she quotes Opie, laughing, as she says, "becoming homogenized and part of mainstream domesticity is transgressive for somebody like me." While Nelson isn't laughing along with Opie, she emphasizes the insight at the heart of the laughter: "it's the binary of normative/transgressive that's unsustainable, along with the demand that anyone live a life that's all one thing." Opie moves between the poles of that binary; engaging with her work requires that the viewer resist the pull to sap the images of their power via norm-driven acts of interpretation. Here, again, we find the call to an erotics of art, rather than a hermeneutics, as a practice for self-definition. ... View more

Dr. Lockett is an Assistant Professor of English at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. She deeply enjoys serving the oldest historically Black college for women, and is committed to teaching and learning about the relationship between composition, new media, sustainability, and collective intelligence. At Spelman, Dr. Lockett actively contributes to the English Department’s writing minor in the areas of professional and multimedia composition. She also provides leadership to the Comprehensive Writing Program in major curricular initiatives like First-Year Composition and Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines (WAC/WID). In 2015, she was awarded a $10,500 grant from the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) Grant to organize and lead a faculty development symposium on Integrating Wikipedia into Writing-Intensive Courses at ACS Colleges. She continued her work with Wikipedia in 2017, organizing Spelman’s first-ever Art+Feminism–Black Women’s Herstory Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. Currently, Dr. Lockett is the proud recipient of the UNCF/Mellon Faculty Residence Fellowship (2017-2018) where she is a fellow at Emory University’s James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference. While in residence, she is working on her book project Overflow: Rhetorical Perspectives on Leaks.    Diversity and inclusion.  Equality.  Social justice.    These terms and concepts comfortably blanket educators asserting their desired vision of the world in a distant, cold, and bitter wasteland. Part of the mystery of such words lies in the major assumption that historically white institutions (HWCUs) need to be more integrated, or at least appear mildly interested in some kind of commitment to this effort. However, what exactly do these words mean to faculty and administrators at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and single-sex colleges?     In my own personal experience teaching writing and unofficially administering the Writing Intensive initiative at Spelman College—a historically black college for women in Atlanta, Georgia—I feel alienated from the framing of diversity discourses. Before I discuss certain aspects of my experience, I want to clarify those conversations may be very applicable to predominantly white contexts that are more or less typical for the majority of instructors and researchers participating in our discipline. However, black women faculty face major challenges in work environments where they are a highly represented demographic. Arguably, this educational space comes with significant risks that are sometimes muted by the nature of the college.    I didn’t start to notice the systemic silence surrounding faculty and student demographics at Spelman until I started developing and leading faculty development workshops about the teaching of writing at the college across and within disciplines. Faculty often did not explicitly discuss what it meant to teach black women, or what it was like for black women of various ranks to exchange teaching and learning. There was a kind of assumption that since we were mostly black women gathered in a space, we would know what to do.    And I thought I would know.   The allure of being part of the demographic majority when you are used to being represented as a minority is intoxicating. After living in some of the whitest towns in America from 2001-2013—Kirksville, Missouri; Norman, Oklahoma; and State College, Pennsylvania—the first week of working at Spelman felt unreal. Black women of every size, shape, color, hair type, hair style, and age moved through the space with smiling faces that lent sparkle to the sun and shine on skin that blinded me with the power. We saw each other, feeling that shared electricity of novelty and glimpsing hope. Potential filled me up like fresh fruit. Alive. Fleshy. Ripe. I moved more slowly than at Penn State where I needed to be small, dart fast, and move out the way. And those other places where I regretted being seen or taking up space, where I communed with the trees during breaks to avoid the concrete jungle of young white bodies shuffling about swiftly and completely enough to swallow me whole. In that small private college in Atlanta, I felt an indignant right to be there. Not to color the place, and not to sit on a margin, but to be at the center of its life.    But we weren’t *all* black women faculty, and the black women faculty there most likely had been teaching in predominantly white American college classroom spaces before coming to Spelman. Did we understand that we needed to talk about the meaning of teaching black woman somewhere? To talk about what it means to work with other black women? That we needed to know more about our assumptions about the meaning of our bodies to the students in those classrooms? In faculty meetings? How were students receiving our instruction and what did they expect?   After participating in first-year writing portfolio assessment with an interdisciplinary jury for the past few years, as well as several writing-intensive faculty development workshops on topics like “Integrating Wikipedia into Writing-Intensive Courses” and “Teaching Black Women Writers,” I strongly believe that we need to do even more research on several major issues facing HBCU faculty—including but not limited to:   Their attitudes and expectations towards their training and work environments. Their deliberate or unconscious reproduction of the field’s dominant discourses in writing instruction at HBCUs Their students' responses to an instructor’s demographic embodiment and social relationship to (and within) the black community Their scholarly knowledge of and/or production of research projects centered on Rhetoric and Writing programs at HBCUs—historically or present Their sociopolitical relationship to the HBCU and how it influences access of and distributions of resources both within and outside the college   Next week, March 28-31, I am thrilled to attend my first-ever HBCU Symposium at Howard University, sponsored by Bedford/St. Martin’s and the Howard University Writing Program. This event will be the second time that I have been to a professional development opportunity that organizes HBCU writing faculty representing various institutions in a single space. Two years ago, July 25-28, 2016, I attended a UNCF/Mellon Teaching and Learning Institute on Critical Hip-Hop Rhetoric and Composition led by Shawanda Stewart and Brian Stone at Huston-Tillotson University. This event enabled me to network with a number of passionate writing teachers operating under financial and pedagogical constraints. Although much of the institute’s focus was on teaching students, especially those in first-year composition courses, this event brought up some glaring issues about how the field does diversity in terms of faculty development. For example, Asao Inoue—2018 Program Chair of the CCCC and one of our featured speakers—offered a dynamic, memorable workshop on assessment. Inoue’s discussion about how we may be unknowingly institutionalizing whiteness through our grading practices at the expense of marginalized students resonated with many of us. The fact that HBCUs could be subject to white supremacy by its own instructors was hardly surprising, given some of our colonial histories. Moreover, some of the institute’s attendees were white, and seeking to leverage the most value from diversity and inclusion strategies.   But when we started talking about our institutional context, as scene and agency, the conversation uncomfortably shifted to unknown terrain. To prepare for Inoue’s visit, we were required to read his book, Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future. Feeling as if Inoue was not writing to underrepresented instructors, I asked him to explain how his theory of antiracist assessment applied to HBCUs after we were well over halfway through his planned workshop. Other instructors also wanted to discuss this problem. Moreover, I wanted him to help me understand how to get linguistically conservative instructors to manage “gradeless” classrooms. I recognized quickly that if we were going to have that conversation, it would deviate too sharply from the workshop he planned. I stopped pushing it, and Inoue gracefully and thoughtfully acknowledged the validity of my concerns. Nevertheless, the disconnect between Inoue’s antiracist aims and their relevance to HBCUs seemed jarring, given that he knew he was communicating with an audience of HBCU writing instructors.   Even at a workshop at an HBCU with HBCU faculty, I was compelled to engage “diversity” pedagogical hypotheticals about represented students we don’t teach and instructors whose bodies are not black like me. (For more info about this audience issue, see the endnote.)   At the upcoming HBCU symposium, I am looking forward to discussing some of the unique challenges of teaching writing in the HBCU space. Engagement with contemporary sociopolitical issues may be encouraged even as student deficiency is focused on more than the task at hand. The teaching of grammar is often believed to be the primary and exclusive duty of English departments and Writing Centers, which positions us as easy targets to blame for student failure during faculty meetings. We often lack examples of how to structure and administer our programs because our history and traditions have yet to be fully incorporated in our field’s dominant disciplinary historiographies, our most widely circulated First-Year Composition readers and Rhetoric textbooks, or our conference panel offerings at NCTE, CCCC, ATTW, RSA, NCA, Computers and Writing, etc. Certainly this was illustrated by the teaching and learning institute at Huston-Tillotson.   Moreover, I look forward to using the space of the HBCU symposium to collaboratively develop more resources that racially diverse HBCU faculty need to effectively serve our unique demographic. In this historical moment, I’d love to see conversations about the role of HBCUs in contemporary society take the lead on cultivating an empowered faculty. Without a culture of empathic and collaborative collegiality, black and brown women teachers are just as alienated as they are at PWI/HWCUs. How can we be expected to uplift our beautifully diverse students when it seems so socially unacceptable to mention, let alone critique, the environments we labor in?   Endnote   This audience issue is discussed at length in Sarah Banschbach Valles, Rebecca Day Babcock, and Karen Keaton Jackson, who argue that diversity scholarship about Writing Centers tends to assume that directors are “middle-aged White female(s) and the student, or in some cases the tutor, is the Other” (Writing Center Administrators and Diversity: A Survey, 2017). As their article demonstrates, scholarship about the field’s administrative leadership such as Writing Center Directors and WPAs is scarce, raising questions about the racial landscape of the field’s entirety of practitioners and those they serve. While Jill Gladstein’s National Census of Writing Project offers some sense of institutional writing program representation, it does not collect data about the bodies occupying them. One recent exception is "Race, Silence, and Writing Program Administration: A Qualitative Study of US College Writing Programs,” published by Genevieve Garda de Mueller and Iris Ruiz last year (2017).    References   de Mueller, Genevieve Garda, and Iris Ruiz. "Race, Silence, and Writing Program Administration: A Qualitative Study of US College Writing Programs." WPA: Writing Program Administration 40.2 (2017).   Fulford, Collie. "Hit the Ground Listening: An Ethnographic Approach to New WPA Learning." WPA: Writing Program Administration 35.1 (2011): 159-62.   Green Jr., David Frank. "Notes of a Native Son: Considerations when Discussing Race and Privilege in the Teacher's Lounge." The Journal for Understanding and Dismantling Privilege 4.2 (2014): 261-75.   Hocks, M. "Using multimedia to teach communication across the curriculum." WPA: Writing Program Administration 25.1-2 (2001): 25-43.   Howson, Emily, Chris Massenburg, and Cecilia Shelton. "Reflections on Building a Popular Writing Course." Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy 3.1 (2016).   Rose, Shirley K., Lisa S. Mastrangelo, and Barbara L'Eplattenier. "Directing first-year writing: The new limits of authority." College Composition and Communication (2013): 43-66.     Taylor, Hill. "Black spaces: Examining the writing major at an urban HBCU." Composition Studies 35.1 (2007): 99-112.   Valles, Sarah Banschbach, Rebecca Day Babcock, and Karen Keaton Jackson. "Writing Center Administrators and Diversity: A Survey."   ... View more

This semester, students have been invited to engage with reading a whole nonfiction book from a choice of three twentieth-century texts: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, and Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge. I chose these three books because excerpts from them are frequently anthologized in first-year essay collections, and each text deals with a still-contemporary issue of relevance to my students: decolonial theory (Anzaldúa); racism (Baldwin); and climate change (Williams). Students could chose to work individually or in groups on a creative project that would merge in-school and out-of-school concerns.   The assignment for the creative projects is copied later in this post. The general invitation asks students to create a multimedia piece that is not necessarily digital, but that can be digitally documented, such as a handmade collage or mural that can be photographed, or spoken word lyrics that can be transcribed to a document and uploaded to our institution’s eportfolio system.   A creative project, according to the assignment, is essentially a rhetorical act that asks students to seize the circumstances of the moment (kairos) to persuade audiences to move toward action, or at the very least to pay attention to issues that have long been ignored and that continue to provoke dire consequences.   One example of a previous creative project that I shared with students (and previously on Bedford Bits: A Single Story (audio file)) was a song based on Chiminanda Ngozi Adiche’s TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story.” The song riffs on the theme of Adiche’s talk, inviting listeners to consider the complexities of identity that resist stereotypes and that move beyond a “single story.” The three assigned books also address complexities of identity, and work rhetorically to persuade readers to consider everyday life as deeply embodied in its complications.   This semester, the introduction to the creative projects was preceded by a moment of silence for victims of gun violence. Our classes met the day after the walkout efforts initiated by the students in Parkland, Florida, to commemorate the first-month anniversary of gun violence and the murders of seventeen people at their high school. The walkout and activism surrounding the many recent occurrences of gun violence are examples of creative projects, as a student noted by drawing the class’s attention to a recent exhibit of murder victims’ shoes on the lawn of the Capitol in Washington, D.C.   At the end of this project, students will write an analytic essay that asks them to reflect on their processes of making their creative project and the insights gained from reading the book they selected. We are just at the beginning of this work. I hope to report back later in the semester.    Writing Project 2: CREATIVE PROJECT For WP 2, you are asked to make a creative project based on the book you have chosen. The creative project contains two parts:   PART 1: Create a multimedia piece that shows your relationship with the book. For the multimedia piece, you can create (alone or in collaboration with others in class): photography, music, video, artwork, poetry, spoken word, podcast, interview, poster, collage, graphs, charts, experiments, blueprints, demonstration, performance, fiction, memoir, zines, graphic novels, service project, and so on. The piece can relate to your major, to interests outside of your major, or to interests outside of school. Post your piece on our eportfolio system. The original piece need NOT be digital, but make sure that you can make a digital record of your work to post online.   PART 2: Write an analysis that focuses on your relationship with the book, your process work for the multimedia piece, and your final multimedia product. Here are some questions to begin, but remember to go deeper as your work moves forward:   Your RELATIONSHIP with the book What seems most significant? What causes cognitive dissonance? What connections did you find to 21st-century thought and action? What points seemed confusing? Your PROCESS work for the multimedia piece How did you decide what to create? What steps did you take? What successes did you have? What frustrations did you find? Your final multimedia PRODUCT: Does the multimedia piece truly reflect your relationship with the book? If so why? If not, why not? What would you change? ... View more

At this year’s CCCC, I participated in a roundtable on “Feminist Rhetorics in the Age of Trump.” Noting that the narrative spun daily by Trump is filled with lies, mis- and dis-information, and “alternative facts” (a phrase that won Kellyanne Conway the 2017 NCTE Doublespeak Award), and that we must do everything we can to help our students resist this narrative, I offered a series of exercises and assignments aimed at helping students to STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN before they TALK (much less TWEET).   These exercises and assignments all aim at reflection, contemplation, and careful looking and listening. They aim for understanding rather than winning at all cost, for stepping back and analyzing the full context of any statement or situation before rushing to judgment or conclusions.   One “looking” assignment I have used throughout my career is to ask a student, unobtrusively, to serve as “observer of the day.” This student watches interactions intently, noting who speaks before and after whom, for how long, and in what clusters. How much the teacher talks and who responds. How turn-taking works and to what ends. Who never speaks. What body language can suggest about the ethos of the classroom that day. Then the observer reports findings the next day and we discuss just how well our classroom is working. I like this exercise because it engages students in careful reflection and self-reflection, and because I learn so much from it as well: on more than one occasion, I have been surprised to see how much I dominate discussion, how I seem to elicit comments from only certain kinds of students, how I may have silenced someone. This kind of quiet reflection and contemplation can help to counter, I hope, the narrative of “winners” and “losers” the president is so intent on fostering, and can encourage stepping back and taking the long view, so I recommend it.   But as I should have known, now there’s an app for this! Called Equity Maps, it’s an app for tablets, marketed by iPad for iOS devices (at a cost of $2.99), and aimed at helping teachers “Effortlessly trace and assess your students’ interaction, performance, and involvement.” I think I may spring for the $2.99 and take a much closer look to see how Equity Maps and its analytics may help me improve on my old-fashioned “observer of the day” method. But I won’t be too surprised if I decide to stick with my tried and true version rather than its electronic replacement!   You can check Equity Maps out for yourself, or perhaps you already have: if so, I’d love to hear what you think of it!     Credit: Pixabay Image 2557399 by StockSnap, used under a CC0 Creative Commons License ... View more

Earlier this month, the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA) premiered their Labor Resource Center. The site provides an amazing array of resources on labor equity and equality for both those working with and in writing programs and those researching writing programs. Housed on Colorado State’s Center for the Study of Academic Labor website, the collection of resources grew from ideas exchanged at a pre-conference institute at the CWPA conference in 2013. Now, five years later, the newly launched center provides artifacts and materials that focus on the labor issues most relevant to writing program administration. The Labor Resource Center includes example documents and guidelines that can help answer questions such as: What is typically included in a job description for a director of first year composition? What should I pay attention to if I am writing a self-evaluation of my work as a faculty member? What examples are available for student evaluation of teaching? What should a candidate keep in mind during a job interview? What should a search committee consider? What position statements address working conditions? What databases are useful for research on writing instruction and academic labor? What should I read if I want to learn more about working conditions for composition faculty? As the site explains on its home page, it is “(Always) In progress.” Its Forthcoming Pages/Projects link indicates that the site will ultimately include additional materials including an FAQ page, details on job negotiation, sample contracts, and research on class size. Whether you are a newcomer to teaching in the composition classroom or an experienced administrator, you will find relevant resources on the CSAL website. I encourage you to visit and explore the already rich collection. If you have suggestions for materials to add to the collection, you can email Seth Kahn, who serves as the chair of the CWPA Labor Committee and is the primary administrator for the site.   Image credit: Word Cloud from the CWPA Labor Resource Center by Traci Gardner, on Flickr, used under a CC-BY-SA 2.0 license. ... View more

As teachers and writers, we know that spell checkers, grammar checkers, and style checkers have limitations. Students, on the other hand, sometimes succumb to the promise of accuracy and accept whatever these tools suggest. So how can we convince them to question the advice that they receive? With my students, I introduce the topic with a discussion of an article that demonstrates the complications that checkers can introduce and a complementary article that discusses the value of accuracy. Here’s the prompt I use, which you are welcome to copy and customize for your classes: We all rely on grammar and style checkers to help us find the small errors in our writing. Anyone who has had autocorrect go wrong, however, knows that grammar and spell checkers are not necessarily accurate. Sometimes (as in the case of the unicorn-riding police officer in the meme image on the right) these tools can change our messages to say things we never intended. In the same way that you must double-check the changes that autocorrect suggests, you have to pay attention to the grammar and style tools that are available in your word processors. Read the Slate.com article Microsoft Word’s Grammar and Style Tools Will Make Your Writing Worse for examples of how Word can suggest changes that will confuse your readers. Compare the Slate.com piece to the BBC’s article on The true importance of good spelling, which discusses why correctness and accuracy matter by considering how readers react to errors in texts. Be prepared to discuss the following questions in class: Have you been in situations when you judged someone by their spelling or grammar OR when you were judged on your spelling or grammar? If you are comfortable with sharing, tell us what happened. Have you been a victim of autocorrect gone wrong or an incorrect correction from a spelling or grammar checker? What happened? How did readers react to the autocorrected text? How do your experiences and those that have been shared in class compare to the attitudes toward correctness and accuracy discussed in the BBC article? In what situations are grammar or spell checkers likely to give incorrect advice? Why do these situations lead to mistakes? What suggestions do you have to help people avoid taking bad advice from spell and grammar checkers? What can people do if they are unsure of the advice they are given? To build on the discussion, follow up with “Mistakes Are a Fact of Life”: A National Comparative Study by Andrea A. Lunsford and Karen J. Lunsford, which is mentioned in the BBC article. Either ask students to read the 2008 CCC article itself or to read some excerpts from the article that demonstrate ways that spell and grammar checkers lead writers to make errors. After reading, have students consider how the categories in the CCC article compare to the different situations they identified in which grammar or spell checkers are likely to give incorrect advice. Encourage students to consider how the categories from the article can help them identify inaccurate advice from spell and grammar checkers. As students work on drafts for the course, I ask them to note times when they receive poor advice from their word processors. I invite them to share incorrect corrections in a discussion forum. They provide a screenshot of the correction and then explain why the advice is wrong. Ideally, they use the categories from the CCC article to indicate the kind of error that the advice would result in. The resulting examples help the whole class understand the importance of double-checking the advice that spell and grammar checkers provide. How do you discuss spelling and grammar in class? What activities do you use to help students understand how to use spell and grammar check advice effectively? Please leave a comment below with the details. I’d love to hear from you.   Credits: Police Issue Unicorn from Autocorrect Fail. The Lunsford and Lunsford article is from CCC 59:4/June 2008, pp. 781–806. ... View more

The news of the death of Allan G. Johnson, path-breaking sociologist, was a punch to my gut. Most writing instructors have go-to authors whose foundational ideas become the central analytical lens of a course. For example, Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of “contact zones” shaped many semesters of my early teaching years in the 1990s, as did Gloria Anzaldúa’s theory of “new mestiza consciousness.” Similarly, Allan G. Johnson’s succinct definition of “systems of privilege” is a concept that can anchor an entire semester, providing a lens through which students can consider myriad issues. Johnson explains, “The concept of privilege refers to any advantage that is unearned, exclusive, and socially conferred” (455 in FIAW). It’s hard to imagine a topic in a writing class that would not benefit from this analytical lens. For just this reason, my co-author, Stuart Greene, and I include Johnson’s helpfully clear and brief essay, “What is a ‘System of Privilege?’” in the 4th edition of our book, From Inquiry to Academic Writing. While many students are familiar with the general concept of privilege, they sometimes react defensively. They might throw out challenges, either personal (“No one has ever given me a free ride!”) or drawn from the media (“What about Oprah?”) to critique anecdotally the claim that there is structural inequality in our culture. Anticipating these detractors, Johnson preemptively notes, “…privilege does not guarantee good outcomes for the privileged group or bad outcomes for everyone else” (456). Instead, privilege “load[s]the odds one way or another,” working like “rules in a game […] in which everyone participates” (456). Johnson’s point that we are all part of a system, whether we want to be or not, is a “click” moment for many students. We can’t opt out a structurally unequal society, but once we see that we are implicated in the system, we can begin to figure out how to maneuver, resist, and create change. Johnson lays out categories of analysis that are easily graspable by students: “A system of privilege — a family, a workplace, a society — is organized around three basic principles: dominance, identification, and centeredness” (456). Each of these might offer analytical tools for in-class brainstorming that can form the basis of more developed student essays. Dominance: Consider white privilege, in which “the default is for white people to occupy positions of power” (456) so that people of color are seen as exceptions to the rule. How many examples can your students generate, linked to your other readings, to consider the significance of phrases like “black director,” “Asian comedian,” “Latinx author,” or all the other ways whiteness is rendered “invisible” by being dominant? Identification: Consider the way male bodies, for example, are seen as the standard for human beings. What examples might your students come up with, from medical testing, leadership in almost any industry, or films like Black Panther (since, despite strong women in the Black Panther plot, power moves are between men in this film about re-centering black identity)? Centeredness: Johnson defines this as “the tendency to put white people and what they do at the center of attention” (456). How many examples can your students develop, based on looking at the front pages of newspapers, magazine covers, advertising, or, to return to our film example, the significance of black centeredness in Black Panther? (Students should discover that upending one system of privilege [racism] does not necessarily upend other systems of privilege [sexism]). Once students grasp the multifaceted implications of “systems of privilege,” you can help them see how transferrable it is to almost any issue involving power, from the #MeToo movement, to #BlackLivesMatter, to the coverage of the Parkland high schoolers or to the many “evergreen” topics we often explore with our students, such as the meanings of identity, community, or inequality. Johnson’s insights have the power to become more than a tool for your classroom; the concept of “systems of privilege” can be a lens for understanding life. Photo Courtesy of April Lidinsky ... 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