English Department Newsletter, Fall 2007

Suzanne presented a paper titled ‘Ethnographic Inquiry as Interdisciplinary Writing’ at the Association of Integrative Studies conference in Tempe, AZ.

Daley, Kenneth. Rev. of *Nervous Reactions: Victorian Recollections of Romanticism*, Eds. Joel Faflak and Julia M. Wright. Victorian Studies 48.3 (Spring 2006): 551-553.

Says Arielle: “I’m honored to be serving on a state-funded poetry grants panel for the MidAtlantic Arts Foundation.  I’ll be going to Baltimore in late October to “play god with other people’s money” as a friend put it, and in the meantime I’m drowning in grant applications.

Says Ames, “I attended Breadloaf this past August, working with Scott Russell Sanders.

While hardly the most impressive of publications, I wrote an article for The Columbia Chronicle as a part of the Critical Encounters column.  My article is from the week of September 24. 

I will be presenting on Critical Encounters with Lott Hill and Kari Sommers at the AAC&U Civic Engagement Conference in Denver, October 18-20.”

Garnett Kilberg Cohen conducted a panel called "Finding the Story" at the 2007 Northwestern University Summer Writers' Conference in August.  Her short story, "The Fence,"  is accepted for the Spring 2008 issue of PINCH.  Her panel presentation proposal, "Doing Time in America" (with colleagues, Steve Asma and Sara Livingston) has been accepted for the January 2008 Hawaii International Conference on the Arts and Humanities.   And she is currently a member of the Guild and  UIIWP steering committee to bring 6-7 international writers from the University of Iowa International Writing Program to Chicago for a weekend of exchange with Chicago writers and a  reading.

David Lazar has work in the new issue of Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, and an essay in a new electronic journal, the Swansea Review, published out of Wales. He will be giving a reading and serving on a panel, "The Infinite Suggestiveness of Common Things," at the Nonfiction Now Conference in Iowa City in November.

Sarah Odishoo’s nonfiction story "Cubed" will be published in Gastronomica, Journal of Food and Culture, University of California, Berkeley, and her short story "Testing: Exposing Men" will be published in Rio Grande Review (both forthcoming in 2008).

Her lyrical essay "Persephone Matters" was just published in River Oaks Review.

Sam’s scholarly essay, “Racial Melancholia in Ira Sachs’ ‘The Delta’” is forthcoming in the anthology 20th CENTURY REPRESENTATIONS OF MALE BEAUTY, published by Cambridge Scholars Press. Sam also has reviews forthcoming in Shakespeare Bulletin (Hamlet, South Coast Repertory), and Theater Journal (Yellow Face, Mark Taper Forum). Recently, Sam led workshops on the book THE JOY LUCK CLUB for the National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read Initiative, and will be presenting a paper in November at the Midwest Modern Language Association in the LGBT panel, entitled “Contesting Race and Sexuality in Rodney Evans’ ‘Brother to Brother,’” as well as serving as secretary for the Gender Studies: Male panel “Men and Marriage.”

Says Jean: “I'm presenting my essay "Scholarship at the Border: 
Anti-Disciplinarity and the Integrative Study of Literature" at the Association for Integrative Studies Conference at the University of Arizona on Thursday, September 27.  I also published a review of Meridel LeSueur's novel THE GIRL in Another Chicago Magazine (Issue 47).  My book WOMEN AND EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKING received positive reviews in Film International (FilmInt) magazine, and in Woman's Art Journal.”

Says Doug: “I had a review essay published in Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review called "'Bluewashing' the Mountaineer: A Recent Television Trend" (Winter 2007), and had a review of a photography book called FACE TO FACE: THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF LLOYD MOORE published in the Journal of Appalachian Studies (12:1).  Also, I received a Faculty Development Grant in support of my research travel this summer.”

Tony Trigilio's book, ALLEN GINSBERG’S BUDDHIST POETICS, was published by Southern Illinois University Press.  He published poems in North American Review and MiPoesias, and in the anthology THE CITY VISIBLE: CHICAGO POETRY FOR THE NEW CENTURY (Cracked Slab Books).  He was the June featured poet on the Seven Corners blog, and his poem, "Bibles for Vietnam," was featured poem of the week in June on sharkforum.org.  He did poetry readings for his book, THE LAMA’S ENGLISH LESSONS, at Pegasus Books in Berkeley, Observable Books in St. Louis, and Kent State University.

TECH/PED CORNER

Pedagogy 2.0

If you follow technology much, you’ve probably heard the phrase Web 2.0 off and on in the last five years or so.  The phrase describes a sea-change in how we interact with the web.  While early websites delivered static content to readers, many new sites treat their readers like users, asking audiences to interact with, rather than read, the content on the site.  

One example of a site that has moved toward a Web 2.0 model is amazon.com.  In its early versions, Amazon was just a shopping site.  Users could buy and track products, but that was about it.  As capabilities and technology advanced, however, Amazon added features that made its content available for users to do all sorts of things.  Users build lists of favorites, they rate and review products, and they converse with one another.  The power of the site’s vast database allows these ratings to specialize the user’s site, tailoring its offerings to the user (and thus, of course, encouraging more purchases). 

This kind of web production is referred to as social networking, as it relies on a vast group of people for its data.  Social networking sites have sprung up everywhere, from interest-based sites like Flickster and Goodreads, to digital party-lines like Facebook and Myspace.  A similar model has been used to share information, most prominently on Wikipedia.  The common denominator in these sites is that they move away from developer-built content and toward user-centered content.

Most of us can easily recognize the analogy between Web 2.0 and classroom practice.  Since Paulo Freire wrote about the banking model in the 1970s, we’ve been moving away from static presentation of information (Web 1.0) and toward a more interactive, student-centered pedagogy (Web 2.0).  I’d like to suggest, though, that we consider how we might expand beyond our current practices toward a Pedagogy 2.0 model.  Here are some thoughts (many of which have already been proposed in composition literature) this analogy brings to mind:

• Web 2.0: sets up a system of interactions for users to use, but allows users to control content and networking.
  Pedagogy 2.0: writing assignments crafted by the class, within the context of the rules outlined by the course.
  
  
• Web 2.0: relies heavily on commenting and networking among users. 
  Pedagogy 2.0: extensive use of peer review, but also peer editing, collaboration, and networking.
  
  
• Web 2.0: depends on metacommentary to shape and control work.
  Pedagogy 2.0: multiple feedback sessions – about the method and work, not about the content – to help guide other processes.
  
  
• Web 2.0: uses ratings and reputations to build a measure of reliability value about its information.
  Pedagogy 2.0: user ratings significantly influence evaluation and assessment.

Brendan