Results tagged “humanities” from PEDABLOGUE

Follow me on twitter (user: arnzen). Once I figure out the code, I'm planning to use the site as a sideblog, so I can share links and snippets of thoughts related to teaching and academia that don't quite qualify for full-blown blog entries on Pedablogue.

[That twitter account is for my Jekyll. My Hyde side has a twitter account all its own.]

I also finally updated my bio page here on Pedablogue. Aside from a neat photo (courtesy of Jim Judkis, who did that fantastic photo shoot for the article on me in Pittsburgh Professional magazine), the major change is: I'm being promoted to Full Professor and will be Division Chair of the Humanities this coming August!

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.

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Feel free to e-mail me with questions.

Dennis Jerz's Literacy Weblog today points to the new Humanities Resource Center and "a major study that aims to establish benchmarks for assessing the humanities" from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This looks like a terrific resource for guaging the Humanities and a good assessment tool to delve into at a later date. I have agreed to chair our Humanities Division at our university starting in the Fall, so I definitely appreciate this lead.

We held commencement exercises at Seton Hill yesterday. That means "summer break" is here, though there's still a little grading to be done, graduate modules to teach, five or six freshman orientation sessions to attend as advisor this summer (!), and other things I've been tasked to do as interim division chair of the Humanities this past semester.

One thing our campus does every summer is give a free book to all incoming freshmen during those aforementioned orientations, and early in the first semester we host a large book discussion en masse with all the students, faculty, and staff who want to participate. Generally speaking, it's a good bonding experience, and a great introduction to the sort of literate college life we hope to foster at Seton Hill.

LOTS of colleges have similar programs, too. I notice that schools in our region, like Slippery Rock University, are running them too. Even our "nemesis" out east, Seton Hall University, is hosting a Freshman Reading Project. I say "nemesis" only because people PERPETUALLY confuse their school's name with ours. And ironically, I notice the book selection at the Other SHU this year is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon...the exact same choice as ours!

Since I teach freshman composition I've participated in this program every year, and I generally enjoy it even though it seems like many of the incoming students don't bother to read the assigned title. I think it's good for them anyway to be exposed to the college as a "discourse community" where people get together and talk about texts (and facilitating such a process is essentially all that I do for a living!) But it's also important to try to encourage the students to read the book and actively learn from the experience. I try to accomplish this on my own by integrating the book into my course as much as I can, and at minimum I usually have a "post-discussion" discussion in the classroom, where the students can, at least, share their thoughts about the reading program.

I like to use the web to enhance my preparation for this project, and given what I see online at other schools, I think our campus could better use the web to promote the project. Discussion questions for most mainstream books are almost always available from their publishers anymore, and I easily found the discussion group page for Vintage Contemporaries (which includes questions specific to Curious Incident) since it's listed right on the back cover of the book itself. I notice that a number of colleges that host Freshman Reading Projects have websites dedicated to the project that explain the motives, the processes, and the books themselves online so students can prepare. I really like the design of Temple University's page, which is so well-done it makes me want to rush out and read the book they're using this summer, West of Kabul, East of New York by Tamim Ansary.

I notice that Temple enhances their selection by inviting the author to be a guest speaker on campus. This is one of many tactics that can really enhance the experience for the students and encourage reading. We were lucky enough to do a similar thing last year, with author James McBride, who talked with students about his book, The Color of Water, to much success...and I'm sure it got people reading if they hadn't read it beforehand. Duke University hosts a reflective panel discussion that includes the author and faculty. The University of Texas at Austin hosts a "reader roundup" which gives the Freshman a LIST of books that they can choose from, each one proposed by a different faculty member, and then the faculty who put the book on the list hosts an intimate discussion with all the freshman who chose that title.

Our college usually has "break out" small groups that discuss a list of questions that are handed out, and then we gather together in one large hall to "report" from the groups and have a large shared dialogue. We've talked about switching this order, and moving from large group to small, in order to give the students who hadn't read some issues they can discuss even if they're not directly emergent from the book. We've also discussed possibly hosting the small groups a week or so AFTER the mass discussion, to give students more time to read, in hopes that the mass discussion sparks interest. And I hope I'm not giving away anything here by saying we've also bandied about Dennis Jerz's concept of using weblogs as a way for students to discuss the title before classes begin, though such a method would pose challenges.

I have a feeling that ultimately the selection itself makes a big difference. Curious Incident is a literate bestseller, but it's also a sort of children's book with lots of pictures. I bet we'll get a good response. Reading is worthy no matter what, but as I learned in my graduate teaching experiences, you cannot rely on the assumption that a book will teach itself. It's important to have a good series of questions that raise issues in the book since freshman -- many of whom may never have a read an entire novel on their own -- might not notice the issues or read very closely the first time through. Likewise, those freshman that are avid readers already will feel a sense of community when they come to campus. Critical reading is a skill that takes time to master, so I think it's important to re-read books, too, and I'm glad to see that some of my colleagues in the English program have integrated the summer reading titles into their lit classes, as well.

Today I was directed to a website for the "Top Ten Odd College Courses" buried under MSN Encarta's webpage on College.

And as I read, I wondered: Should I be worried that I've actually taught one of these "oddities" before (to wit: "The Horror Film in Context")?

Actually, I found Encarta's list relatively tame. In graduate school, some of my favorite courses were special topics grounded in the professor's doctoral research or their current book project. Some offbeat classes -- like "African American Lesbian Poets of the 1970s" or "Women, Comedy & Carnival" -- made huge impressions on my desire to do research into cultural studies and taught me more about feminism than I would have picked up otherwise. Though the subject matter may have been non-standard, the theories and foundations underpinning them were just as rigorous as the Shakespeare class offerings. In fact, they might have been more so, given that the teachers who proposed these courses probably had to "defend" their curriculum just a little bit harder than canonical author studies, which can often take their clout for granted.

As an undergraduate in English, probably the "oddest" course I took was a special topics course in Vietnam Literature (taught by Tim O'Brien scholar Steve Kaplan at CSU-Pueblo), and it wasn't very odd at all. It was fantastic. The most "odd" thing I can recall about it was being surprised to be reading a pulpy paperback 'war' title or two to round out the course. I think these specialized courses are great because usually they allow the student to study a topic in depth rather than in the typical breadth of a 'survey' course. But I also think undergrad studies are a place where there are so many foundational, canonical, and historical texts they need to become familiar with (if only to pass the GRE) that there's little room for outre offerings in the course catalogue.

I at first assumed that offbeat courses were only the stuff of huge research universities, but that's not true. At Seton Hill U, where I teach, we often have classes you wouldn't expect. My colleagues in the Humanities division are teaching or are presently designing classes in the Graphic Novel, the History of Sexuality, Gaming and Game Theory, Romance Writing, and more. I think these courses provide balance and lend an interdisciplinary reality to a student's liberal arts education. Obviously, they can be fun, too. They can draw students by the sheer nature of their novelty, and -- ideally -- teach them to apply skills and knowledge they've picked up in general educational courses or stock major courses in a specific and in-depth way. Indeed, some courses get such a "buzz" among students that they become must-takes.

The motives for offering such classes are varied. Some are constructed with the hidden agenda of boosting enrollment in a particular major -- a form of sly advertising or a sign of subtle desparation. Others are simply pet projects of a professor who might not be connected with the real world application of such material in the student's life or work "in the major" after college. But in most cases, I think non-traditional studies and offbeat "topics" courses benefit students by engaging them in deep inquiry and research in a way that is unexpected. The MSN article -- which ostensibly serves college-seekers -- to some degree perpetuates a myth that academic institutions are ivory towers that have no connection to the real world. Their particular parade of odd classes is relatively tame, but in spirit it's reminiscent of those funny lists one sees from time to time of "bizarre academic research programs" that seem like a waste of governmental grant money or the truly outre courses that raise parents' hackles, like courses in "The Art of Pornography" or "Computer Hacking 101." Indeed, sometimes such anti-intellectualism in the press is a somewhat hostile response to the fact that such courses (like, say "The Horror Film in Context") are actually performing inquiry into matters and phenomena that exist in the "real world" (like, say the consumption of horror films as weekend entertainment) or the contemporary culture in a way that, say, a Shakespeare course, is not. In that way, these classes are more pertinent than one might suspect. And both the instructor and the student are usually more passionate about their teaching and learning than they might otherwise be teaching, say, an introductory course in the field. Thus, such classes are also renewing.

I'm just pontificating at this point, but I'm curious what others are thinking. I don't know if this will get any response or not, but to those of you reading this: What are the weirdest classes you've taken or taught (in terms of the subject matter, not the teacher)? What would be the oddest course you'd genuinely like to teach, given the unlimited freedom to do so? Leave a comment below.

Dennis Jerz, my colleague right down the hall at SHU, posts an interesting deconstruction of press "spin" regarding Elizabeth Ito, a teacher who was terminated for promoting her views against the Iraq War in the classroom.

Ito is predominantly seen as a victim in most media treatments of this event. But Ito has also become a politcal poster child regarding political speech in the classroom given the current war climate. The anti-war group, Not in Our Name highlights Ito as a sort of poster child of the Bush administration "coming after the teachers" in the wake of the Patriot Act and you can read the Ito Defense Coalition's website if you're interested in Ito's response to her termination.

Although he treats Ito as a stereotypically "out-of-touch campus radical consumed by an irrational passion for one ideological issue," Jerz sets his sights on the press release itself, unveiling how the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education bias their audience through writing. Although I think any superficial look at the FIRE's website will reveal their political leanings, Jerz' analysis is a pretty good lesson in journalism, and Jerz offers this as an example of how he teaches politically-ripe issues in the classroom. He prefers to analyze the representation of the truth, rather than scrutinizing the truth value of the event itself. This, at least, tries to approach objectivity by taking the attention away from the teacher's politics in order to examine the politics of the texts themselves. In a journalism course, this allows the teacher to show how press releases can -- and ought to -- be read critically by reporters and not just reprinted verbetim, because, "language has the power to heal and the power to destroy." I've done similar analyses in my own journalism classes. And I concur with Dr. Jerz.

But the more I scrutinize the Ito story itself, the more I think of the academic freedom issues that Ito's tale raises -- and that's what FIRE is really after. In many ways, all curriculum is political, all teachers are products of their ideology, and no content is free of bias. This is why academic freedom needs to be protected by structures like tenure. If a course is going to discuss political issues, I see nothing wrong with a teacher acknowledging his or her biases and leanings -- in fact, it seems more honest to me than a pretense toward pure objectivity. Naturally, a teacher can go too far in promoting their own views -- and Ito probably did -- and as a fan of the student-centered learning environment, I don't think the teacher should play a dominant role that would allow them to proselytize in the first place. But if we expect our students to have viewpoints and to support them in arguments we shouldn't pretend that we don't have viewpoints ourselves (note: I'm not saying my colleague, Jerz, doesn't already do this). The trick is to try to remain balanced and to be very conscious of the amount of power that a teacher wields in shaping the worldviews of his or her students. Teachers need to respect contesting opinions and alternative belief systems, whether political or religious. Such matters also depend on the class, of course -- my thoughts on this are more applicable to humanities courses, where politics become a matter of open discussion, rather than, say, to chemistry. But even in Chemistry, their might be debates about certain theories. In fact, every discourse community is a contested space where differences emerge. In some classes, particularly freshman composition, I try to make these differences more visible, so that we can dialogue about them and learn from one another.

Ito was also a first year teacher from what I read, which is typically a position with the least amount of power and the most amount of scrutiny and judgment that a new professor has to endure. I personally feel her administration could have "taught her a lesson" without terminating her contract. In fact, I would argue that most good schools do treat events like these as teachable moments -- where senior faculty consult with junior faculty about teaching options and appropriateness of politics in the classroom. (Some schools clearly differ on the level of appropriateness -- when I taught at the University of Oregon -- which was listed as one of the most "activist" campuses in the country -- I regularly saw teachers promote their own views in the classroom, especially graduate student teachers who were so political they had their own labor union). It seems to me that firing Ito was actually more politically radical (or reactionary) than Ito's expression of her beliefs in the classroom. But maybe it wasn't political in the usual sense at all. Maybe it was purely economic.

In looking into this story, I noticed that President Bush actually guest lectured at the school which dismissed Ito just a few months after she was fired.

So I'm giving a lecture about rhyme scheme today near the beginning of Poetry Class and I suddenly realize that virtually every student in the room is assembling their portfolios (to turn in at the end of class) while I'm speaking: binders are CLACKing, papers are shuffling, pages are riffling. I literally hear myself raising my voice to compensate, and then loose my cool. "What are you people DOING?" I cry out, baffled. I say a few vaguely threatening things and complain about their manners. Later I vent to a colleague, and she tells me "It's this generation. They're good at multitasking."

Millenials again. I agree that today's college students are whiz kids at IMing while they talk to one another. And I agree that they might be able to drive a car and work a cell phone at the same time. Corporations see "multi-tasking" as the skill of a productive worker. But I see it as an inability to concentrate for an extended period of time. Part of my job as an English prof -- a scholar of reading -- is to teach concentration skills. I believe multitasking might actually have negative consequences we haven't considered, most of all on learning. And studies back me up....

I'm still learning the culture and conventions of blogspace, and I'm happy to see that already some folks have found their way to The Pedablogue and kindly left some encouraging comments. And people like my colleague Dennis Jerz have even blogged and discussed my opening entries. It's encouraging to know that I'm not just calling out into the abyss, so thanks!

"Commenting" is actually a major teaching topic, especially when it comes to writing marginal notes on a student paper. ...