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 […]
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, […]
Here’s an assignment I recently developed and tested out on a group of students and faculty that asked them to do research without using any electronic devices. It worked quite well, and I plan to incorporate it into my classes in the future, though I will probably expand it a […]
This Inside Higher Edarticle about a particularly punishing course syllabus is extreme, but many college professors have policies that are only slightly less extreme, though they may not think of them that way, may not think of them as particularly punishing, certainly don’t think of them as cruel. (I used to have […]
1. For a couple years now, I’ve made it a point to read John Warner’s blog at Inside Higher Ed at least every few weeks, and often much more frequently than that — indeed, these days, I pretty much click over there immediately whenever I learn of a new post. Warner’s writings […]
I’ve turned grades in for this term, so now am beginning to think about my first experience teaching Pass/No Pass courses. As I mentioned back in August (a lifetime ago!), all of the courses in the program I work in now are Pass/No Pass, a concept consistent with the program’s […]
I woke at 3am with the thought that the classes I’m currently teaching are going terribly. After 20 years of teaching, I’m familiar with this feeling, particularly with classes I’ve never taught before. We’re nearly half-way through the term, and it’s usually then that I start waking up in the […]
1. I survived high school by reading books about education. My mother worked at the local college and was using her tuition benefit to do an M.Ed. Often, I accompanied her to the library. High school was tough for me for all sorts of reasons, not least being that I […]
In the Interdisciplinary Studies program where I have begun working, we encourage students to go public with their work. It’s a common idea well beyond interdisciplinary studies: for students to feel more engaged with the work they do, to feel that what they are doing matters, they need to do […]
At the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Lingua Franca blog, linguist Geoffrey Pullum declares, “We should not be sending students to a text as myopic and antiquated as The Elements of Style, not in any edition.” Pullum has written extensively about the failures of The Elements of Style before, and I have no […]