Hope Long ago, when the Earth was young, I enrolled in a poetry workshop led by Liz Ahl, and one of the assignments was to write a “how-to poem” — that is, a poem instructing readers on how to do something. I wrote a poem called “How to Have Qualms”, […]
1. The toll of the last year on my teaching, work, and life is evident in silence. I last wrote here in November, shortly before my school began an extended winter break. Though I had time to write here, and I had ideas about things to write, it was difficult […]
Matt Brim’s Poor Queer Studies is the most exciting book about academia that I have read since Cathy Davidson’s The New Education, and for me personally it is even more exciting than Davidson’s wonderful volume because Poor Queer Studies is about the world I have spent much of my life […]
The coronavirus pandemic has revealed many fissures and failures in U.S. society, some of which have long been obvious, but were more easily ignored in better times. For instance, the pandemic has revealed just how much the U.S. power structure stands opposed to the concept of the public good. There […]
Buildings and bridgesare made to bend in the windto withstand the worldthat’s what it takes.All that steel and stoneis no match for the air, my friendwhat doesn’t bend breakswhat doesn’t bend breaks… —Ani Di Franco How Does Rigor Mean? Among educators, the word rigor often has a talismanic power. That […]
Last weekend, I took an online seminar (via The Shipman Agency) led by Garth Greenwell, one of my favorite contemporary American writers, titled “Some Recent Queer Aesthetics”. It was glorious and exactly what I needed — during the pandemic, for various reasons, I’ve been feeling disconnected from both body and […]
I’m participating in Plymouth State University’s Cluster Pedagogy Learning Community (CPLC), and this post is a response to the following prompt: “Write (and share if you feel comfortable doing so) a self-assessment on your own development of the Habits of Mind. Pay particular attention to the signposts on the benchmarks […]
I’m participating in Plymouth State University’s Cluster Pedagogy Learning Community (CPLC), and this post is a reflection on one of the first activities of the year’s CPLC. For the activity “A Community of Values”, we brainstormed a list of values for our work at a university, how we see ourselves […]
The Internet Archive has decided to respond to the corona virus crisis by creating what they call the National Emergency Library, and they have gained publicity from the likes of Jill Lepore at The New Yorker, from NPR, and from lots of people who support open access projects, open educational […]
Published almost 25 years ago, Ira Shor’s When Students Have Power: Negotiating Authority in a Critical Pedagogy is a book full of practical ideas that will still be of interest to teachers today. Indeed, it’s depressing how relevant is remains. But this is also no surprise. On the second page […]
At this year’s MLA Convention, I was a member of a great panel discussing “The State of the Syllabus”. It was tremendously well attended, especially for a session on the very first day of the Convention. My contribution was a brief discussion of the syllabus as an instrument of cruelty. […]
I did not intend to abandon this site for months, but the past term was a busy one, and then the holiday break got even busier and more stressful in many ways. I’ve wanted to do some reflection on the past term, but now that past term feels very past, […]
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