Results tagged “WPF” from PEDABLOGUE

Thanks to the twitterverse, I was turned on to this video by author John Irving when asked about the future of the book:

The anxieties presently circulating about the marketplace for fiction certainly are causing a lot of changes in the publishing industry lately. In October, price wars among booksellers splashed on the headlines, causing many -- including the New York Times -- to worry about the economics of publishing and the resultant devaluation of the printed book itself. Some speculate that this is all due to the mainstream attention and interest that ebook hardware is finally getting, especially the Amazon Kindle.

Updike speaks to the impact of all this on young writers. I am starting to wonder how the role of creative writing programs and the teaching of creative writing professors will change as a result, since young writers are who we serve. Here are my thoughts -- a rapid fire of brainstorming, more than fully-composed thoughts -- about what, perhaps, creative writing teachers should be considering.

For one thing, we should neither give up on the book, nor hide from the realities of the trade by squatting behind a library shelf or the literary canon. We need to be engaged with the present AND the past, with a toe dipped into the future of our students, as well.

We should adapt to paradigm shifts not by teaching to the marketplace but by teaching to the long-view and by persistently putting publishing into historical context. Students need to be aware of current industry realities, and we need to be engaged in it to understand it completely as teachers. But there is wisdom in our experience and we need to share that experience, in order for students to recognize that publishing as an ever-changing process, and is never "stable" in any fixed way. It has always been historically-contingent, and always been in a state of flux across time. The "book" has always been an artifact of the marketplace of ideas -- a trace artifact of a cultural movement always in-process. This is as true of business trends as it is of artistic movements, and often one change is simply responding and/or adapting to the other.

We should discuss electronic publishing not as the "new" or the "best" but simply one medium for messaging which is as equally valid for expression as any other. When it comes to publishing contracts, ebooks are just one license among many that a writer can act on, and while one license may be more economically viable at any given time than another, all are equally legitimate ways to transfer intellectual property to an audience.

We should inform students about intellectual property law, and advise them to protect their property -- or to know what rights they're donating to the public domain when they unleash it free online or in free ebook giveaways.

We should encourage experimentation with format just as we encourage experimentation with the blank page to poets.

Too often writers glom on to one format or medium or genre and fixate on it (usually because they derived some success within it) -- and this includes everything from the Kindle of today to the illustrated manuscript in days of old. We need to engage new technologies while also understanding the book as a technology itself. But more than that, the key point for new writers to understand -- after they've learned the art of writing and become interested in pre-professional, career trajectories -- is that the products of their imagination and craftsmanship are also ultimately social texts once they become published. Writing, when all is said and done (and revised and marketed) is a form of property that can be traded, and graduates of writing programs rarely learn enough about this stage of the process.

Publishing needs to be considered a stage of the writing process. It is the end stage, but not necessarily the terminus of the process. Books get printed, but the life of the book does not end when the ink dries. There are dialogues that open up (such as in reviews) and books are often updated and revised, serialized and sequelized...and one book experience always informs the next book experience, for writers who survive it.

It is good to teach students "the book life." To think of writing as a way of life in a culture that is not inherently friendly to that way of living. Texts like Jeff Vandermeer's recent title, Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer are movements in the right direction. Courses like our own "Publication Workshop" at Seton Hill U, are others.

Sharing the end results of work produced in a classroom -- in end-of-term class readings, in class-generated anthologies, in online literary magazines -- are all forms of publication. Many teachers neglect to exploit this as an arena for learning the way. Because it's the messiest part of the process, and the part where "rejection" (beyond grading systems) looms. Bridging the conventional forms of classroom publishing (such as a reading of revised work to the classroom at the end of the term) with emergent formats (such as video recordings to be uploaded for public comments from youtube) will engage writing students with the marketplace of ideas today.

In addition to the "book life" and being aware of the status and reality of the economy of writing, there is also something simply called the "reader's life." We should remain role models for engaged readers as much as writers, with an interest in the output of the publishing world. We should advise students to take literature courses and spend time in the library. We should buy books, and practice what we preach by investing in the world that invests in us as authors. We should share and explore new technologies and trends in publishing and talk about these formats with our students. We should show that we are readers as much as writers -- we are bookish. Students need to see us reading, hear us reciting published works, spot us in the faculty break room reading a kindle, recognize us in the audience at a public poetry reading, see us browsing the shelves at the local Barnes and Noble, sit across from us at a table in the library. When they do so, they will see themselves reflected in the world of books as a real, lived experience.

Last week I bought a Kindle. I carried my ebook device around all week not to show off some new gaget, but to say Look...this might be what our future looks like. I'm interested in where this is heading...are you? I opened up a dialogue with readers on my horror writing weblog, about the ebook watershed. I uploaded documents for a Dean's Council meeting to my Kindle and brought it to the meeting instead of printing them out or using a laptop. I showed my Kindle to almost every student who came to my office for advising this past week, for both the "wow" factor and to say "hey, you might be getting your textbooks this way someday." Down the hall, my colleague ordered a Kindle DX for his journalism courses, and posted an interesting blog about the kindle's impact on academics. Teachers and writers open up conversations about books; books are portals into conversations about culture. Writers shouldn't be worried, but engaged and thoughtful; we need to be steeled up against the fluctuations inherent to the industry, but also willing and able to transcend it. That's the skill of the creative writer -- telling a good story transcends the medium and the economics of the exchange. But we also have to be creative in finding ways for getting our stories heard.

And we need to keep publishing our own writing, creative or not, as well. That's the only way to truly learn what it's like out there. To accumulate knowledge of the book world and bring it back to our classrooms, whether explicitly or obliquely. The skills and knowledge that we've always taught will never go out of fashion, but we need to recognize what is at stake in our students' lives when changes are on the horizon.

It seems almost criminal to advise a student to become a novelist without also arming them with some sort of knowledge and wisdom about the marketplace for fiction. The power of an educated writer is not simply to write well, but to join a community of like-minded thinkers and to participate smartly in the world in which they hope to operate, economically as well as discursively. We can react to changes in the industry with optimism or skepticism, but we should never abandon the one certain thing we have to give writers of the future: hope, balanced by wisdom and intelligence.

National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) launched today, sending millions of people "with a book in them" to the keyboard in an attempt to churn out a rough novel-length manuscript (minimum of 50,000 words to 'count') by the end of November. People engaged in this activity all bond on the nano website, encouraging each other and sharing tips, posting and boasting their latest word counts all the way to the end.

I've never done it, but I've always been intrigued by this collective endeavor of binge writing. I've signed up on the site and lurked, just to see what people are up to. It appeals to me, as a writer who works in manic, highly-caffeinated spurts, and as a teacher who believes in the collaborative learning inherent to a writer's workshop community. A number of our more productive Writing Popular Fiction students and even some faculty dare to "nano"...it's awfully difficult for a full-time faculty member to take on such an enormous task during the endgame of a Fall semester, when term papers come pouring in and advising for the next term is afoot, but it can be done.

Maybe college profs need a NaSchoWriMo for writing scholarship? Now is the perfect time to get to work on those conference papers you want to present next Spring, after all.

In any case, I noticed that teachers are actually beginning to use NaNoWriMo in the classroom, and that the site has a Young Writers Program that fosters an educational mission. The site includes some GREAT novel writing workbooks for young adults -- and the program can even lend out NEO word processing hardware to students in need.

It's a great idea. And it can be used creatively. From a class-collaborated story to simply a study of the novel itself, teachers are tapping into NaNoWriMo as a form of learning that reaches outside of the walls of the classroom and participates in the "outside world" even as it focuses the attention needed for cultivating the intimate and interior setting of the imagination.

Daniel Moulthrop shares his experience "Teaching NaNoWriMo" in a google doc, suggesting that the main benefit is "a month of unbridled creativity vs. school as we know it" which leads to increased writing fluency and -- after the initial hurdle of starting to climb what seems to be a very high mountain -- a reduction of fear about writing.

To any teachers out there doing this: GOOD LUCK!

I don't have much to offer, but over on my horror writing website, I have a section called "Instigation" that offers "twisted prompts" for creative writers that you can crib from to get your students working on a dastardly plot point.

You also might get your class involved in twitter.com for this project. There's a lot of activity on that site -- just search for the #nano hashtag or "follow" NaNoWriMo.

I watched this video this morning, as part of my preparation for a course in "The Teaching of Popular Fiction & Writing" next Spring. I liked the level of advocacy here for educational use of pop culture material in the classroom, as well as the emphasis on 'best practices.' You can download the full report from the Center for Social Media.

I share these professors' enthusiasm. But fair use can be a muddy area to define and the issue can get complicated. Even so, the essays available at EDUCAUSE on educational fair use are enlightening for those who are trying conscientously to sort out these matters. One essay from EQ that struck me was "Managing Intellectual Property for Distance Learning" by Liz Johnson, which offers a decision-making model for breaking down the numerous choices that a teacher could consider when sharing materials in an online course, for instance.

Most of what I know about copyright, I learned as a writer, not an educator, and the coverage in the Chicago Manual of Style stands at the foundation of what I know of the subject. I'm no lawyer (so please don't ask me any legal questions on this topic), and whenever I reseach the subject of copyright and fair use in online environments on the web, one of the things that trips me up are nagging questions about new laws: "am I reading the most recent law? does it cover new emergent technology and the latest digital copyright standards or is this an outdated article?"

Regardless, I think it is important to be clear with students about the 'situational ethics' of using copyrighted material in the classroom or in an online environment. I once had a student download an article I shared in an online course, only to turn around and post it to their blog to share with others...I had to inform them that this was a copyright violation, because when I shared it the first time, it was only for educational use and that the author's rights were protected because it was online downloadable behind the firewall/password-protected CMS service. Now I go out of my way to make sure students understand that the principle of fair use is in place in the classroom, and explain that it is a little bit different than how material is shared in the outside world. It might even make sense to make 'fair use' itself a topic for students to study, particularly in any course where the students are learning how to work in an area that produces intellectual property (the arts, writing, journalism, etc. etc.). If one thing is clear to me about fair use doctrine, it's that the context of any use is everything.

A few additional informal points that guide my own praxis on this subject (your mileage may vary):

+ Avoid using outside sources as "window dressing" -- they should be the lumber of the learning mill. Analyze, utilize, discuss, work with whatever you bring into the room.

+ It is wise to do a little research and contact an author if you wish to use their material in a classroom. I have never met a writer who said 'no' and having permissions gives you license to use the work in a way that might expand what 'fair use' dictates. Some will expand your permissions, or offer tips on how to acquire more material on the cheap/free (e.g. have their publisher send you an instructor's guide, or point you to a discount on a book); some will even offer to appear in an online chat or take interview questions. This also expands your network.

+ When in doubt, err on the side of conserving the copyright holder's rights, and be clear about the 'boundary lines'. Not only does this reduce your likelihood of violation, it teaches by example and will set a precedent for respect of property in your classes and with your own intellectual property.

+ Cite as you would like to be cited. Teach as you would like to be taught.

My quest for finding good books on creative writing pedagogy continues. A week or two ago, I decided to drop a chunk of my paycheck on titles I found on the cheap at half.com, and I've begun reading them with great abandon, as I prepare to teach a new online class on the teaching of writing for graduate students in our MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction.

This weekend I've been reading the late Wendy Bishop's book, Released Into Language: Options for Teaching Creative Writing (NCTE, 1990) -- a book that is, astonishingly, available digitally via ERIC, the wonderful Education Resources Information Center. Though a bit dated by this point in time, Bishop's text remains a quite solid study of the different ways that creative writing can be taught well in the undergraduate curriculum, arguing for a transactional and reflective approach that addresses where students really are, and how students really think, striking a pitch-perfect balance between praxis and theory.

While the classroom activities and approaches in the book are not necessarily new to me, what I'm enjoying most about reading this book is the way it articulates how the assumptions of graduate programs in creative writing don't always translate well into the teaching of undergraduate programs in the same field. This is helping me rethink my own assumptions, as someone who often teaches similar material in both venues...and as I read it, I'm recalling just how often I have drawn upon my teaching of composition in the creative writing classroom, and vice-versa. I recommend all writing teachers take a look, if only for inspiration.

The title comes from a passage by Adrienne Rich (from her classic, On Lies, Secrets and Silence), which I like so much I wanted to post it here so I can return to it again later:

At the bedrock level of my thinking about this is the sense that language is power, and that, as Simone Weil says, those who suffer from injustice most are the least able to articulate their suffering; and that the silent majority, if released into language, would not be content with a perpetuation of the conditions which have betrayed them. But this notion hangs on a special conception of what it means to be released into language: not simply learning the jargon of an elite, fitting unexceptionably into the status quo, but learning that language can be used as a means of changing reality. What interests me in teaching is less the emergence of the occasional genius than the overall finding of language by those who did not have it.... -- Adrienne Rich (emphasis added)

Empowerment. Social justice. Transformation. Discovery. It's all encapsulated here, in this brief passage about teaching and writing.

On the topic of the cross-overs between composition and creative writing pedagogy, I'm eager to study another book that I've ordered: (Re)Writing Craft by Timothy Mayers. I think it will prove quite useful to us at SHU, since we are presently considering "(re)writing" our undergraduate curriculum a little bit in the year ahead.

This week I'll be teaching in our weeklong, intensive graduate creative writing workshops for the MA in Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill U. It's always a great experience, and I particularly enjoy getting to teach and work with students and colleagues in my favorite literary genre: horror. Indeed, I'm rather fortunate to be able to do this, since the majority of creative writing programs in this country not only eschew genre labels, but also would likely eschew horror even if they didn't. Genre, most assume, is too formulaic, too emotional, too popular (and therefore too oriented to the lowest common denominator).

Obviously, such hierarchical distinctions are usually an expression of "highbrow" class politics, or a culture which reifies the individual over the collective in the creative arts -- but I won't repeat the lessons of cultural studies here right now. Instead, I've been thinking a lot lately about how genre fiction -- and particularly horror fiction, as I recently argued in a pedagogical essay on "Horror and Responsibilities of the Liberal Educator" -- may actually be more "educational" than many literary academics realize.

Often "literary" fiction and canonical literature is considered of higher educational value because it has historical lessons to teach us about culture, or because it addresses universal issues pertinent to mankind. But this is no less true of genre fiction (and many genre stories are in the canon, actually). Genre fiction is castigated because it focuses more often on emotional payoffs than intellectual ones, but this is not all that genre fiction seeks. Horror stories, for instance, are often "cautionary" in nature, and therefore teach lessons. Readers of romances and children's fiction often turn to these books for models of behavior in human relationships. Science fiction rewards knowledge of the sciences and often teaches readers about emergent research; mystery, likewise, teaches readers about criminalistics and is predicated on the notion that reader and detective alike will be engage fully in critical thinking as crimes are solved.

Thus, I'm mulling over the notion that the writers who create these stories have to be "teacherly" in their approach to the reader, to some degree. I've often heard the notion that the bestsellers of any given period not only catch the interest of the masses, but often teach readers something new -- this draw to discover and learn is a large part of popular genre fiction. It assuages curiosity about "what everyone is talking about." Yet at the same time, writers who seek to educate (usually) cannot be didactic or preachy or dogmatic about some ideological belief. As with "literary" fiction, good authors of popular fiction should raise issues of import (and often they pull these issues from the headlines, which ties them to time at the cost of being 'timeless') while keeping their own biases out of the story and lead readers to think critically about these issues on their own. The characters in a story often are models for such ways of thinking.

For the writers, however, their models are often each other. They read each others' books, or find each other at conventions, or -- for the dedicated -- encounter each other in workshops like the program we host at SHU, or the less-academic-but-more-deeply-focused-on-genre groups like Odyssey, Clarion, Borderlands Boot Camp, Alpha, and the various workshops held in meeting rooms at genre conventions. I've taught at these, and they are not nearly as "amateur" or "commercial" as one might assume. Fan and genre communities are perhaps more critical and knowledgeable about their own genre than anyone else, as the work of Henry Jenkins and others have taught us.

I have the good fortune to appear in a new instructional book for writers in the horror genre, The Writer's Workshop of Horror (ed. Michael Knost, Woodland Press, Aug 2009). Like the Horror Writer's Association guidebook, On Writing Horror, this is an example of how the creative community of genre authors "teaches" within that community. What I like about these books is that they are not just written by a single author, but a gathering together of multiple views and voices in anthology form.

For those reading this who might have the opportunity to teach horror writing, and are looking for resources, you can order The Writer's Workshop of Horror early from Woodland Press; it will be out in August, just in time for school.

I'll end with a small excerpt from my contribution, called "Stripping Away the Mask: Scene and Structure in Horror Fiction," which deals with issues regarding the pleasures of the taboo in horror, and how these are embedded into the structure (not necessarily the content) of horror narratives:

...horror is a striptease of suspense. It is an inherently exhibitionist genre, as much as it is the genre of fear. And this may very well be why horror gets a bum rap from the literati: horror can make a reader feel dirty, because it refuses to obey the inner censor that tells us that such-and-such is morally wrong, that such-and-such is ugly or grotesque, that such-and-such is perverse or unhealthy, that such-and-such is unreasonable or irrational, that such-and-such is dangerous or inhumane. Horror writers seek truth in the darkness. They remove the mask, to peer unabashedly at what it hides, horrendous warts and all....

If you wish to write horror stories, it is imperative that you understand this aesthetic. There are no "rules," really, because readers only expect the unexpected when they pick up a work of horror. In place of rules, we just have a worldview that says: "Readers peek between their fingers. I refuse to look away." We remove the mask.

I got the idea for this essay from the late author Robert Bloch, who defined horror in passing during an interview once as "the removal of masks."

Is this not also the mission of liberal education?

Public Service ALERT:

The following search on our campus -- for a published mystery author qualified to teach creative writing -- has been extended, and will continue until filled. Candidates interested in this position should apply immediately, as we will be considering applicants over the summer. Please pass along or post this information as you see fit:

Assistant Professor of English

Application Due: Open Until Filled
Type: Full Time
Tenure-track, starting January 2010.

Seton Hill University seeks published novelist of popular fiction (preferably mystery/suspense), to teach and to mentor novel-length theses in the graduate low-residency Writing Popular Fiction program (half-load), and to teach undergraduate courses in creative writing and first-year composition. Background in journalism, publishing, and/or editing a plus. Teaching experience at graduate level desirable. MFA required (Ph.D preferred). 4/4 course load.

Seton Hill University is a Catholic, liberal arts University, serving undergraduate, adult and graduate students. Seton Hill is located 35 miles east of Pittsburgh. Visit setonhill.edu for more information.

Send a letter, C.V., official transcripts, statement of teaching philosophy, sample publications, and three letters of reference to Michael Arnzen, Ph.D., Seton Hill University, Greensburg, PA 15601. The review process will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. Seton Hill is committed to a diverse faculty; women and persons of color are encouraged to apply. AA/EOF.

***
Feel free to e-mail me with questions.

[NOTICE: The deadline for applications has ended and we have begun vetting a parcel of strong contenders. Should a viable candidate not be chosen, I will repost.]

*** A Public Service Announcement! ***

FACULTY WANTED TO TEACH WRITING OF POPULAR FICTION

Assistant Professor of English
Location: Greensburg, PA
Category: Faculty - Liberal Arts - English and Literature
Posted: 11/10/2008
Application Due: Open Until Filled
Type: Full Time

Seton Hill University seeks published novelist of popular fiction (preferably mystery/suspense), to teach and to mentor novel-length theses in the graduate low-residency Writing Popular Fiction program (half-load), and to teach undergraduate courses in creative writing and first-year composition.

Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in English, MFA considered. Background in journalism, publishing, and/or editing a plus. Teaching experience/potential at undergraduate level desirable.

Send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, official transcripts, a statement of philosophy of teaching, a writing sample, a teaching portfolio, and three letters of reference. The review process will begin February 15, 2009 and will continue until the position is filled.

Seton Hill University is a Catholic, liberal arts University, educating traditional and non-traditional undergraduate and graduate students. Classes are offered in a variety of formats - day, evening, and weekends. Seton Hill has a student-centered campus culture based on Catholic values, acceptance, community and service. The campus is located 35 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Postal Address: Dr. John Spurlock, Chair
Humanities Division
Seton Hill University
Seton Hill Drive
PO Box 507F
Greensburg, PA 15601
Email Address: spurlock@setonhill.edu
http://fiction.setonhill.edu
http://www.setonhill.edu

***
[NOTICE: The deadline for applications has ended and we have begun vetting a parcel of strong contenders. Should a viable candidate not be chosen, I will repost.]

Just file this one under "thought of the day."

"Writing is less a profession than a professing -- a way of stimulating, organizing and affirming thoughts to give meaning to some slice of life." -- William Safire

I culled this quote from the introduction to a book of quotations called Good Advice on Writing, edited by William Safire and Leonard Safir, (Simon and Schuster, 1992). At first I just liked the way Safire framed the act of writing as something akin to teaching, construing writers as professors, of a sort. But looking over it again, I think those functions he lists are precisely what defines the professorial role:

• stimulating


• organizing


• affirming


• interpreting ["giving meaning to"]

This list (perhaps incomplete) still functions as something of a "writing teacher's taxonomy." We stimulate students to think and act in the world -- a stimulus that produces a written response. We organize our curriculum and our syllabi content and our daily class periods, and we arm students with organizational strategies for their own ideas. We affirm what students do right in our comments and we reaffirm the wisdom of the textbooks and literature in our discussions and reinforcement of them. We interpret the world and its culture -- and by employing and modeling the methods of our discipline, or by having students interpret one another's work in peer groups, we help students develop these skills on their own.

The better writer you are, perhaps, the better teacher you can be. I see this all the time in our Writing Popular Fiction program, which on top of having a rock solid full time faculty base of PhDs who write fiction, also brings in professional writers as adjuncts to mentor novelists and teach courses in the craft. I see the transference of good writing to good teaching in the Freshman Comp courses taught by people who enjoy the craft and employ it as part of their career both in the English major and throughout the disciplines; and it is self-evident in the student tutors who work in our writing center, hired because of their strong writing skills. I see it in the writers who have taught me much in their non-fiction instructional books about the art and craft and methods of teaching, learning, writing, reading.

In "Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students" (Campus Technology, Oct 2008), Dr. Ruth Reynard talks about the mistakes she's made using weblogs with her grad students. It's a fantastic, enlightening essay, revealing how to not only avoid errors but how to utilize weblog technology well. In a nutshell, here are the problems Reynard outlines:

• Ineffective Contextualization


• Unclear Learning Outcomes


• Misuse of the environment


• Illusive grading practices


• Inadequate time allocation

Her section on "unclear learning outcomes" is significant, describing how such levels of Bloom's taxonomy as "synthesis" and "application" can shape blogging assignments.

I don't use blogs as a teaching tool nearly as much as my English colleague at SHU, Dennis Jerz, does (see our campus blog portal for a peek at all that he administers). But I do routinely ask my student authors in the Writing Popular Fiction graduate program to keep a blog as a reading journal. Reading Reynard's article, I feel that "illusive grading practices" may be something I still need to work on: often, I just append evaluative comments on a student's blog entries without giving much thought into the >kind< of entries I'm evaluating. Reynard recommends making a rubric that outlines various "statement types" that students can bring to their blogging, such as: "Reflection statements (self positioning within the course concepts); Commentary statements (effective use of the course content in discussion and analysis); New idea statements (synthesis of ideas to a higher level); and Application statements (direct use of the new ideas in a real life setting)." I may borrow from this idea and design a handout for students that asks them to approach their journal entries -- which essentially are reading responses -- as different "types" of statements -- possibly asking them to do one of each. Another good idea, naturally, is to request students to tag entries along these lines, as warranted.

I also like Dennis Jerz' structured RRRR sequence -- a method for routinizing student blogging assignments in his Writing for the Internet course. It encourages students to interact with each other and class alike, and functions to support his challenging "Just in Time" teaching method.

My essay on the teaching of horror fiction -- "The Unlearning: Horror and Transformative Theory" -- just went live in the debut issue of the journal, Transformative Works and Cultures. Here's the abstract:

"The Unlearning: Horror and Transformative Theory" by Michael A. Arnzen

Abstract:

Building on the foundational concepts of transformative learning theory, I argue that horror fiction strongly encourages perspective transformation by challenging student assumptions about both genre writing and educational experience. I informally describe a specific creative writing class period focusing on the motif of the scream in diverse horror texts, and I illustrate how students learn to transform what they already bring to the classroom by employing a variety of particular in-class writing exercises and literary discussions. Among these, transformative writing exercises—such as the revision of an existing text by Stephen King—are highlighted as instructional techniques. As cautionary literature, horror especially dramatizes strategies of fight versus flight. I reveal how students can learn by transforming their knowledge through disorientation that is particular to reading and writing in the horror genre.

I started thinking about the ideas in this article after writing a blog entry back in 2005 called "Shifting the Paradigm: Transformative Learning Theory" -- a response to an essay I read by Kelly McGonigal called "Teaching for Transformation."

McGonigal's article got me to rethink the role of the reflective essay assignments in my classes, and I soon found myself in the library, catching up on transformative learning theory by reading the works of Jack Mezirow and others who seek to change the worldviews of adult learners. The key role of the "activating event" in transformation got me thinking about how "cautionary" tales and other works in the horror genre often trigger anticipatory thinking that requires a revision of what one initially assumed to be true. After applying these lessons to a course I taught in horror fiction writing last year, I captured some of these ideas in a conference paper in March 2008 at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts...an early draft of this now-published version. I invite comments here or at the journal, which includes a number of good articles on fan studies and popular culture.

I tried something new in my introductory-level fiction writing course this term: using a page of graphic fiction to show students how structure and the other elements of fiction (character, setting, viewpoint, etc.) work in tandem to make a story. I think it worked well, so I'm sharing the exercise here.

The idea was actually derived by the work itself (and I wouldn't be surprised if others have used the source material in the same way): 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style, by artist Matt Madden (who maintains a related weblog, as well). The goal of Madden's 99 Ways, which was inspired by French writer Raymond Queneau's prose experiment, Exercises in Style, was to provide "as many variations as possible on a simple one-page non-story."

This is the template he provides on page one, which is followed by 98 graphic variations of the same sequence:

Madden calls this a "non-story" but it does have all the elements of a story, and these elements come to light when he draws and presents variations on the template: for example, one page (called "Subjective") has identical frames drawn from the point-of-view of the male character as he makes his way to the fridge; another (called "Upstairs"), depicts the same event in time, but shifts the viewpoint to the character above the spiral staircase who is responsible for calling down about the time. Many of the variations are radical and eye-poppingly ingenious, like the "Underground Comic" and the "Map" versions of the same template.

On the first day of class, I used this book in class by showing students a variety of these variations using the document/overhead projector, and simply asking them what exactly made each page different and unique. It allowed me to briefly touch on core elements of the craft, like character (in one variation, everything is the same except for the man, who is drawn like a cartoon skunk), viewpoint (there's a lot of these in the book, including a monologue where the male character sits behind a desk and talks about what we see in the template), setting (a la "upstairs"), and conflict. The point that I think was successfully made in class was that every single choice a writer makes can radically change the story as a whole, and that a virtual infinity of choices are available to the writer, constrained only by a core structure of sequence that readers need to make sense of a series of events.

What perhaps was most difficult to show here was the "plot" of the template. While I did ask the class "What's the conflict here? What is the core problem, or struggle that the character goes through?" they were slow to respond. They deduced that the man was hungry and needed something from the fridge, but was frustratingly interrupted on his way. I asked them about that interruption: "We don't see who the source of the voice is... is it a live-in lover? A housewife? Who?" They seemed to agree it was his significant other. But then I asked them if it might very well be God. This question -- while perhaps stretching into absurdity -- allowed me to suggest that this story might be saying something universally human and profound, or epiphanic, even if that "theme" wasn't on the surface at all.

But all of this was a precursor to an actual writing assignment, which was really my intention. I asked students to take Madden's template (I photocopied it for educational use) and write a short-short story of significance based on it. I did NOT give them any more specifics than that, and a few students sent me curious e-mails about how far they could change things. I told them their imaginations were the only limit, but that any reader in class ought to be able to tell that this was a variation that might have "fit" in the same book as the one I showed them in class.

The following class period I asked a few students to share some of their stories orally with the class as a whole. A lot of fun was had. I noticed that many of them added something new on to the end of the comic strip, as if it were all a precursor to something else, or as if "revision" only meant "adding." But it was a fruitful and productive exercise, I think, and I think most creative writing exercises try to do something similar: to posit a prompt or template idea that students later can share, to reveal the variety of choices (stylistic and beyond) which reveal the variety of choices that are available to a writer, and the repetition-with-a-difference that compels our fascination with storytelling.

Writing about this reminds me of other classes I've taught that have used comix in similar ways. It's been a long time since I've done so, but I recall once using a Garfield comic strip in my basic writing course. I photocopied a 3 panel strip of Garfield doing a monologue while looking at -- and then away -- from a sunflower in a pot. I don't even remember what wry commentary Garfield was making -- all that mattered to me was the structure. I blotted out all the words in the thought balloons and then photocopied (and enlarged) the strip before distributing the strip to students. I asked them to "fill in the blanks" of the thought balloons with the main ideas of their paragraphs. I was trying to illustrate the way that paragraphs don't simply chain together a list, but move a thesis through a process of thought that changes as the paper progresses. I'm not sure how successful that was, but I remember that the students enjoyed working with the handout and were excited to share the results in small groups.

I hope to look into Raymond Queneau's work for more ideas. But at this point I am convinced that making structure visual is always a good idea. This is why we diagram sentences and outline essays and use organizational charts. The structures of graphic fiction can make this process both entertaining and educational, while appealing to visual learners. I intend to keep looking for more ways to integrate such matters into the classroom. Your own experiences are welcome -- leave a comment.

I just discovered Marc Bousquet's excellent blog based around his eye-raising book, How the University Works (from NYU Press). Two sample chapters are available on his site -- I read the Intoduction (.pdf) -- a sobering examination of the consequences of the corporatization of academia -- and discovered that my pangs of anxiety about this issue were justified and that things are a lot worse than I suspected.

But reading the sample chapter on students and labor, "Students are Already Workers," (.pdf file) really got me thinking about my students, as I plan for the classes in the year ahead:

The reality of the undergraduate workforce is very different from the representation of teen partiers on a perpetual spring break, as popularized by television (Girls Gone Wild), UPS propaganda (“they’re staying up until dawn anyway”), and Time: “Meet the ‘twixters,’ [twenty-somethings] who live off their parents, bounce from job to job and hop from mate to mate. They’re not lazy—they just won’t grow up” (Grossman; for more, see Bartlett).

There are more than 15 million students currently enrolled in higher ed (with an average age of around twenty-six). Tens of millions of persons have recently left higher education, nearly as many without degrees as with them. Like graduate employees, undergraduates now work longer hours in school, spend more years in school, and can take several years to find stable employment after obtaining their degrees. Undergraduates and recent school leavers, whether degree holders or not, now commonly live with their parents well beyond the age of legal adulthood, often into their late twenties. Like graduate employees, undergraduates increasingly find that their period of “study” is, in fact, a period of employment as cheap labor. The production of cheap workers is facilitated by an ever-expanding notion of “youth.” A University of Chicago survey conducted in 2003 found that the majority of Americans now think that adulthood begins around twenty-six, an age not coincidentally identical with the average age of the undergraduate student population (Tom Smith).

The idea that college instructors are teaching students to be "pre-professionals" before they enter the workforce is becoming an anachronism. Students are working more and more...whether in work study or in jobs to support their degree. More and more they come to my office door, asking for extensions or accommodations that can work around their employer's schedules. More and more, I see students in campus offices, doing much of the grunt work. I go out to a local restaurant or a downtown bar, I see my students...but they're not eating or partying; they're taking my orders or pouring my drinks.

So what? one might wonder. What's the harm? Students work, just like everyone else. I have conflicting feelings. For one thing, college can and maybe should be a temporary sanctuary away from the work world. But as someone who also worked in a "real world" job throughout college (and who signed up for the GI Bill and spent a few years in military service just to afford to attend college to begin with), I've always felt that these struggles are beneficial, ultimately, because they can teach a person the ethics required to survive in the workforce, like disciplined time management and the art of delayed gratification (e.g. work now, pay later). We "pay to work" when we go to college, in the interest of not only learning skills and information, but also earning the social capital it takes to raise one's status.

But clearly economic benefits should not be the sole outcome of a college degree. Everyone recognizes -- students most of all -- that there's a bit of exploitation that goes on in the minimum wage labor class, but its treated like a natural form of paying one's dues to raise oneself up economically -- and this is the "script" that parents and culture-at-large often hand students. I hadn't really considered how this script might be a symptom of a larger form of class exploitation, or a symptom of a rising "age of adulthood" that for the most part (as Bousquet argues) serves the interest of corporate employers. As teachers, when we see student workers through the lens of our own similar past work experiences, and treat it as "paying one's dues," then, as Bousquet suggests, we might also be guilty of "reinforc[ing] commitments to inequality" systemically, even as we assume that we might be liberating students via their education.

But even beyond the political economy of all this, the increase in student commitment to working for survival (let alone experience) results in a reprioritization of the role of learning in a life-well-lived. Too often, the classroom is an atomized part of a "workweek" schedule that is understood to be, simply, more work just like everything else that is not overtly part of leisure culture. It's up to teachers to transform that workspace, but it can be difficult.

The problem isn't just that students are overburdened with work and oppressed by the class system -- they also tend to deprioritize learning in order to just survive through the grind of the day. When students arrive in the classroom wearing their work or athletic uniforms, it always signals to me that their outside lives are competing for their time and attention. They are overscheduled. The agenda for the day becomes marching orders, and the mind can only process so much. And some students are not shy at all about reminding everyone in the room that that this class meeting is just a brief pit-stop on the race from point A to point B. It is my job to make that pit-stop a meaningful place that doesn't just fuel them up with knowledge and send them back on the track; instead, the pit-stop needs to be a temporary but FULL stop -- a place where both the track and the rules of the race are better understood -- if not revised altogether. Sometimes school can be a place where maps are discovered that leads one into the more exciting and rewarding territories off-road altogether.

Metaphorical ideals aside, I hope to overtly raise issues of economic class in my courses in the year ahead, if only to heighten student awareness about their cultural identity and to learn how I can better accomodate student needs while remaining committed to a liberal arts mission and not some other economic interest. In creative writing courses, I have assigned the theme of work broadly and have always been amazed with what students have to say about it when given free reign to explore their relationship to the workforce. Perhaps I'll even assign this chapter from Bousquet's book for a discussion or research. For me, one of the main goals as a teacher is consciousness-raising. Bousquet frames the questions at issue in this debate in a way that might lead to some productive discussions:

For me, the basis of solidarity and hope will always be the collective experience of workplace exploitation and the widespread desire to be productive for society rather than for capital. So when we ask, "Why has higher education gotten more expensive?" we need to bypass the technocratic and "necessitarian" account of events, in which all answers at least implicitly bring the concept of necessity beyond human agency to bear ("costs 'had to' rise because..."). Instead, we need to identify the agencies of inequality and ask, "To whom is the arrangement of student debt and student labor most useful?"

The answer to that final question, unsuprisingly, is never "to the student."

I'm trying to compile a bibliography of books on the art of teaching creative writing. There are a wealth of titles on how to write for publication, and a lesser-but-still-rich number of books on how to teach writing -- but the latter are predominantly about teaching composition skills or scholarly argumentation. When I search for pedagogy for fiction teachers, I only find a paltry few -- and so many of them seem targeted at elementary ed teachers, rather than higher education. Nothing wrong with that, but I'm looking for help in developing teaching skills for adjuncts and graduate students attached to our Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill U.

Even the Association for Writing Programs has little to offer, from what I can tell (though I did find a free .pdf on their site for Program Directors).

If you know any titles, or have any recommendations, please post a comment below or e-mail me.

I'm building a new weblog called THE POPULAR UNCANNY. It's a supplement of sorts for my upcoming non-fiction title from Guide Dog Books by the same name.

The book is a critical study of theories of the Uncanny/"das Unheimliche" as they appear in advertising, film, bestsellers, and online. Chapters include examinations of such topics as the icon of the dismembered hand in the history of horror cinema, and a treatment of the advertising world's "Doublemint Twins" as uncanny doppelgangers. (The Popular Uncanny, btw, was originally my doctoral dissertation at the University of Oregon.)

While the entries in the new blog will tend to lean toward the "academic" side and may refer to theories not all readers will be familiar with, my hope is that the blog will keep my research fresh and fun while also giving me a place to muse about the weirdness in pop culture -- in addition to raising awareness about theories of the Uncanny. As a horror writer as well as a scholar of the horror genre, I think the blog will also help me merge these two interests in new ways. The site design and structure is still under construction, but posts have already been released on such things as the "gaze" in The Ring and the uncanny in a new 'singing robot' art exhibit by Talking Heads frontman, David Byrne. Comments and recommendations are always welcome.

Pedablogue, of course, will continue. I'll post news here about the book when its publication is imminent in Spring 2009. For now, I invite you to come on by the new weblog, anytime.

[See also: "Uncanny Teaching"]

I was browsing through a list of open source academic journals on the web this morning and found Critical Studies in Improvisation -- a journal of music and performance theory, mostly -- whose latest issue [Vol 3, No 2 (2007)] is a Special Issue on Improvisation and Pedagogy.

Having studied Keith Johnstone's book, Impro, as a source for ideas in the teaching of writing, I found it a worthwhile follow-up. Teaching is always improvised, to some degree, but what these writers focus on is how improvisation in the classroom generates learning.

Of particular interest to me was R. Keith Sawyer's essay on "Improvisation and Teaching" which draws on cognitive learning scholarship to define the skills of "expertise":

1) Deep conceptual understanding. Experts haven’t simply memorized a large repertory of facts. Of course they know a lot of facts, but in the expert’s mind, those facts are embedded in complex conceptual frameworks. Experts understand the mechanisms underlying phenomena and are able to explain surface features in terms of underlying mechanisms and conceptual structures.

(2) Integrated knowledge. Each piece of knowledge is highly interconnected with all of the other pieces of knowledge. Expertise does not result from possessing distinct compartmentalized knowledge; everything known is related in an integrated framework.

(3) Adaptive expertise. Experts have mastered a large range of standard procedures and solutions. When first encountering a new problem, they typically will quickly recall a variety of similar problems they’ve encountered in the past, and they will begin by considering one of the solutions that has worked in the past. But experts do not simply apply these memorized procedures in rote fashion; they are able to flexibly modify the routines they’ve mastered or to combine elements of distinct routines as is appropriate to the new problem.

(4) Collaborative skills. Experts work together with other experts in teams and in complex organizational structures. Unlike the hierarchical corporation of old, where everyone’s job description was quite specific, the boundaries between each team member are fluid, and many tasks require the simultaneous and joint contributions of multiple experts to be successfully accomplished.

Sawyer draws specific connections between these skill sets and the needs of the improvisational musician, but argues that too often, the Industrial age classroom model (chairs lined up in rows, teacher-centered lectures, "banking model" frameworks etc.) inhibits -- and even prohibits -- these skills from fomenting. Such outdated models, moreover, are inappropriate for contemporary culture, which "requires a new learning environment" that is project-based, inquiry-based, or problem-based. "These new learning environments are unified by their improvisational nature—they place students in loosely structured environments, where they work together in a relatively unstructured, improvisational fashion."

One of the reasons this article spoke to me was because I recenty saw a news report on MSNBC that revealed new studies in the brain function of jazz performers, in which scientists have musicians play keyboards while inside an MRI machine. They hope to unravel the "secrets of creativity," and so far their findings suggest that the brain of a creative artist in action, performing live, functions in the same way as a dreaming brain does. This does not come as a surprise to me at all, but I think it is important to recognize the way that irrationality and the unconscious always play roles in the overly rational space of the college classroom, and that what we sometimes see as nonsense is often the most productive classroom experience.

As I prepare to teach some graduate learning modules in the Writing Popular Fiction program later this month, this article reminds me to keep the environment improvisational and not to over-plan the courses into dull singalongs. I think I often have approached teaching in an improvisational way, creating an open and collaborative learning environment, but I tend to think of the literary texts or student writing that we employ as "composition" -- that is, like sheet music. But, no, perhaps the texts are the instruments themselves in the student hands, not a set of directions. Learning occurs when that texts are processed, following student comments and discussions that riff off one another. The teacher can conduct, or perhaps better yet, play along. In the cacophony of student group work and open class discussion, an outsider might hear chaos -- but I need to remember that that's what learning sounds like, as I try to assist students toward a sense of knowledge mastery and expertise.

I've been reflecting on an approach I consciously employed last week in two different class scenarios -- an online chat with graduate students and in a discussion of a literary reading with advanced writing students -- just to see how it might stimulate the conversation.

I launched both by being contrary to student expectations. Students often inherently assume that because they have been assigned a topic or asked to read an essay, that the teacher inherently advocates for those topics or the points in those essays. This comes from reading information-centered textbooks, which often is delivered by the teacher as immutable truth. But ideas are issue-driven, and I think a good teacher models the good scholar in the field by showing how critical thinking circulates in that field. They risk raising issues about the assumptions that frame or underpin a statement of fact. They play devil's advocate and are receptive to student questions and challenges. So in my classes this week, I took this to the extreme and I started the discussions from a negative, even somewhat hostile, position. I denounced the very idea of having a conversation about the text or the topic in the first place.

"Hostile" is probably connotes anger; that's not what I mean. I have in mind antagonism and conflict rather than aggression. Let me explain what I did.

In the first instance, I was a "host" of a gathering of graduate Writing Popular Fiction students in an online discussion that was entitled "Work Habits for Writers." The chatroom had no controls -- it was a "free for all" conversation, with perpetually scrolling lines of input as students made their points or asked questions. But I worried that the topic threatened to bore them with dull dogmatic claims about the writing process and discipline, so I began the chat by tossing out a question, rather than making a claim. And I didn't ask them "What are bad work habits that writers have?" but rather said "So do writers really need work habits all? Aren't habits bad?"

To my happy surprise, it immediately summoned answers in defense of the topic, asserting why habitual work discipline is necessary and good. The students started listing all of their own habits, and explaining why they depended on them, and why these routines were productive for them. But more importanty, they immediately took OWNERSHIP of the topic, rather than just waiting for the teacher's wisdom to be handed down. It was as if they felt the duty to remind me that it was my chosen topic and that it was my duty to run the show, and -- dagnabit -- if I didn't take ownership of it, they would. It also worked as a preemptive strike that allowed those who wanted to be curmugeonly to get their say and get over with it. I was a little worried before the chat that if I took the negative position that everyone would say "I agree" and then we'd have nothing left to talk about. But instead, the novelty of the approach raised critical thought. The remainder of the chat -- an hour long -- really put me on the "question-raising" side of the conversation, probing and challenging student comments, pressing them to answer the question "why" as much as "how."

In my Publication Workshop course -- an undergraduate face-to-face class in the English major which usually involves full class critique of a writer's manuscript or a book chapter -- I put the students in a circle to discuss a chapter of Annie Dillard's great book, The Writing Life, which they'd read for homework. I'd taught this excerpt before, and anticipated that it would be a very divisive reading: the pragmatists in the class (the majority of them) would be overly critical of Dillard's whimsical musings and metaphor overload; the poets and philosophers would fawn over it, completely in love. Though I lean toward the latter of the two, neither reaction, I think, is justified because most undergraduates I've taught don't quite understand her phenomenological approach to writing, where form follows content.

This time I wanted to cut off those reactions from the very start. So I took a contrarian approach -- pretending at the start that Dilliard is not all she's cracked up to be. I began the conversation not by asking a question but by reading from a review of The Writing Life by Bruce Bawer called "Author-Suffering" that appeared in American Scholar. In my opinion, it is a very negative review, but one that offers critical reasons for its response. As I read the most negative sections from the review aloud to the class, students laughed and covered their mouths at the audacity. It liberated the conversation, because "anything goes" after something like that. But the students who liked Dillard's writing were immediately put on the defensive and came to the fore. Some saw the validity in Dillard's writing and argued those points, and some thought Bawer had gone too far. But -- truth be told -- most students tacitly agreed with Bawer's response. The review gave them permission to share their feelings, feelings which students in upper division courses are often hesitant to share because they don't want to feel contrary to the teacher. Here they very carefully worded their reactions, which weren't quite as hostile as Bawer's but still based in a negative evaluation. This allowed me to offer probing questions that tested the criteria behind their evaluative reactions (Why do you think she uses "too many metaphors"? How many are too many? Where exactly do you draw the line?).

Because Publication Workshop is a course in writing for a public audience, the specter of what happens when you get a bad review was also released in the room, allowing us to address author fears and anxieties (which followed up on our class conversation about the first half of Betsy Lerner's book The Forest for the Trees). Reading bits and pieces from Bawer's review aloud to the class -- and hearing the vocalized reactions from the class -- helped the more "literary" writers in the room to see the dangers, too, of being too literary. I raised the notion of epistemology -- and even read a definition of "phenomenology" to the class from a book of literary terms -- so they could better understand Dillard's approach, but they still weren't buying it.

To cap it off: for homework, I had asked all the students to write an extended metaphor for their own writing process to bring to class on the day we read Dillard. Going around the circle rapidly at the end of the hour, I asked everyone to report what they compared their writing process to ("writing is like fishing on a row boat..." etc.). After making the full round, I asked. "So was that too many metaphors?" Eyebrows lifted and heads nodded and I could see that -- from the perspective of the respondant -- the planned structure of the class itself helped make my point. Thus, beginning with negativity, and being contrary, I still had a position on the issue all along...but self-evidently, it was not the ONLY position possible, or even one that was articulated as the final one. They left class, still mulling it all over. That's a great way to end.

"Half my job is asking questions of those who can’t generate questions, in order to model the will to curiosity." -- from "Creative Writers in the Academy," by Orante Churm

Churm got me musing over this great line in his otherwise provocatively subversive essay. As a creative writing instructor, I see my role as very similar to Churm's, particularly when it comes to raising questions, because this is at the core of creative writing, literary interpretation and, well, all forms of critical inquiry. When I teach using the "permeable lecture" method, I am modelling this will to curiosity.

A short while ago, I was asked to guest blog about "critical reading" for author (and SHU WPF alum) Kaye Dacus' weblog. In response, I wrote a short article called "Questionstorming" that looks at the sort of questions that writers should ask when they read a story -- but mostly, I assert, they should ask the question why:

Every drop of ink that you see on a page is a choice that a writer has made. That choice has a motive. A reason. A rationale. Thus, critical reading is — at its base — a search for that reason. It simply involves ASKING THE QUESTION WHY.

What Churm calls "the will to curiosity" is often not merely a desire to raise this question, but also the courage to find the answers, no matter how much work it might require, how complex those answers might be, how radically life-altering they might be.

Why ask why? Because there's a thrill in the risk, and a satisfaction in knowing that you've moved one step closer -- but never all the way -- toward the cliff-sharp edge of the truth.

During my sabbatical, I had the opportunity to be a guest writer for a weekend at the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop -- an outstanding workshop for writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror literature, run each summer out of St. Anselm college in New Hampshire (a place you may recognize from the recent presidential primaries) by my former editor from Dell Books, Jeanne Cavelos.

Today, Odyssey posted their latest podcast: a recording of my guest lecture on "Humor in Fantasy Writing" from July 2007. Here's the full description of the event from their site:

Michael A. Arnzen was a guest lecturer at Odyssey 2007. Michael led the class in a wild exercise that revealed some of the qualities that make us laugh and discussed the fascinating connections between humor and horror. In this fun and illuminating podcast, Mike explores the characteristics of humor. What qualities are necessary for humor? When is the weird and gross funny? Mike reads his amazing story "Domestic Fowl" and discusses how you can develop a comic perspective, how to be funny without trying, and how to make humor arise organically out of your story. How is a funny story different than a joke? What joys does comedy provide the reader?

You can download this lecture on the Odyssey Podcast page, or even subscribe to all the Odyssey lecture podcasts on iTunes.

If any of your students is (or if you yourself are) a writer of fantasy stories, horrific tales, or science fiction odysseys, you ought to consider the Odyssey workshop. We get a number of Odyssey graduates in our Master's program in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill, so I can attest that it is not only a well-run and fun program, but that it also produces great writers who are very savvy about the genre and publishing.
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I'll no doubt be writing a lot about horror genre writing workshops this term, since I'm running an undergrad course in Horror & Suspense this term. See also my horror writing blog, The Goreletter, for a post on this, Odyssey, and other Horror Writing Courses & Academics in 2008.

I'm trying not to blog until I finish writing a short story I've promised to an anthology editor. But I thought I'd post a few links to interesting reading I did online this winter, relevant to teaching.

Student Pressure and Your Average English Department by Sanford Pinsker. The 'Irascible Professor' raises some interesting points about the rise of pop fiction in the literary curriculum...and the potential hazards of bending the canon to the whims of popular tastes and trends. As a teacher of popular fiction, I felt a little insulted by this one. The author assumes that a text taught in a lit class will only be a model example of "good writing" and not a text that offers up valuable "critical analysis". But it's a thoughtful essay.

Over the winter break (which ended with today's classes), I read two books by Terry Caesar, who I have come to admire from his excellent columns in Inside Higher Ed. Those columns are always great reads, but to get real glimpse at his more radical English-professor side, I recommend reading "Affiliation and Mourning in a Career of Specialization" from Symploke journal online. In it, he deconstructs the function of "specialization" in the self-identity of the college professor, uncovering it as something of a myth -- and contemplates why the "accumulation of experiences" we make as generalist teachers often doesn't seem to "count." It's a complicated piece.

Finally, a link to lifehack.org, which espouses one primary rule, before all others: "Do the Work". And that's not saying "Just Do It."

And on that note, I better get back to my short story....

Who's there?

Summer. I think.

It's summertime, and while I'm still keeping busy with prep work for a summer residency for our Writing Popular Fiction graduate program, I've started wearing shorts again and doing some creative writing and generally trying to relax. On my agenda: finding ephemeral DVDs and watching obscure films with an eye toward adding something new to my Art of Film course next Fall.

One lucky find the other day was a copy of Short Cinema Journal #10: Chaos in the bargain bin at a local used media place. It includes Electronic Labrynth, George Lucas' student film precursor to THX 1138 (which I've never seen, but now want to). It reminded me of Chris Marker's work. But an even better discovery on this disk was Po Mo Knock Knock by Greg Pak -- a wonderfully comedic spin on Derrida that borrows heavily from Bergman's Persona (a film which is permanently on my syllabus for the film course). While I might not use it for film studies, I'm definitely going to use it in Literary Criticism, to complement the screening of the Derrida biopic and lighten things up a little bit. After all, "play" is a fundamental part of deconstruction.

I love using short films for the class. One of the troubles with teaching film studies is handling screenings, since most films have a running time of 2 hours, and even in a 3-hour course session, it's hard to organize the time. I typically have two screenings of full length features hosted outside of class (often proctored by a work study) -- treating the films themselves as "texts" which must be read as "homework" before we analyze them together in the classroom during regular meetings. Analysis is usually clustered around clips. Since my course is a once-a-week, three hour session, that also gives me time to regularly fit in a short film to study and discuss "live" and these can be the most rewarding experiences of the course since the "short film" genre is rarely known by students going in -- and they're often experimental uses of the medium, playing with camera technique or lighting...or historical documents from before the studio hegemony commodified the viewing experience into two hours.

Here's a list of my favorites (most of which seem to be either humorous or surrealist): Autobiography of a Jeep, Black Ice, An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge, Un Chien Andalou, Food & Dimensions of Dialogue, Fall of the House of Usher, La Jetee, Meshes of the Afternoon, etc.

There's something thrilling about sharing these movies with students, particularly those who only know film through Hollywood. I'm getting eager to teach this course and summer has barely begun.