The final assignment for my upper-division modern British literature course (taught at the University of Minnesota Duluth in Fall 2023) was to ask a question about a text from our syllabus and answer it in a format and medium of the student’s choosing. Beginning with Zadie Smith’s 2012 novel NW, John Leppik asked the question: … Continue reading NW Elysium by John Leppik (Introduced by Kathryn Van Wert)
Offering a Hand Up: Insights and Aid for First-Generation Students by Whitney Jacobson
*Essay adapted from a 2022 MCTE Spring Conference presentation I have taught at the university level for over nine years. I’m the editor of Confluence (formerly CLArion), the annual newsletter of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Minnesota Duluth. I’m also an assistant editor of Split Rock Review, a … Continue reading Offering a Hand Up: Insights and Aid for First-Generation Students by Whitney Jacobson
Establishing Contact: The Idea of Writing Center Studies by Jennifer Forsthoefel
In the physical writing center space, we encounter the mass differences that exist across the student and faculty population as well as the disciplines these populations are housed in. As a result, writing centers have made possible in the past, and create new possibility in the future for, teaching and learning across varying disciplines, positions, … Continue reading Establishing Contact: The Idea of Writing Center Studies by Jennifer Forsthoefel
Education in the Time of Pandemic: Projects to Engage Student Inquiry by Joaquin Muñoz and Abigail Eck
The purpose of this article is to describe curricular adjustments made to a course in response to the Covid-19 pandemic which began in the United States in 2020. We intend to approach this paper in a collaborative spirit, as student and teacher, to describe the distinct experiences of implementing the adaptations we describe. While developed … Continue reading Education in the Time of Pandemic: Projects to Engage Student Inquiry by Joaquin Muñoz and Abigail Eck
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: A Cautionary Tale of Totalitarian Ideology by Shahin Hossain
In Texts and Pretexts, first published in 1932, while discussing his concern regarding the present and future, Aldous Huxley asserted, “Personally, I must confess, I am more interested in what the world is now than in what it will be, or what it might be if improbable conditions were fulfilled” (6). In the same year, … Continue reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: A Cautionary Tale of Totalitarian Ideology by Shahin Hossain
Internalizing the Message by Kay J. Walter
I had a few extra minutes that day when I entered the classroom in which I was teaching composition to second-semester freshmen at my university. I teach at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, a public university in rural Arkansas attended mostly by first-generation students of higher education. I try to start each of my … Continue reading Internalizing the Message by Kay J. Walter
Minding the Body: Towards a Pedagogy of Enactment by Catherine Fox
Although unable to theorize it at the time, I dropped out of college when I was nineteen because the disconnect had become intolerable. To be a disembodied mind, taking in the “knowledge” of the professor and regurgitating it in the form of papers and exams, was severing me from the interconnectivity that, I now believe, … Continue reading Minding the Body: Towards a Pedagogy of Enactment by Catherine Fox
Seriously, What’s the Difference? by Jeanette Lukowski
It all began with an article from The New York Times titled “The Community College / ‘Real College’ Divide.” The article was part of an assessment tool being used by the community college for whom I was an Adjunct English Instructor that fall semester of 2016; the Assessment Coordinator was asking all teachers of Composition I … Continue reading Seriously, What’s the Difference? by Jeanette Lukowski
A Few Confessions of an English Teacher by Alexandra Glynn
Preparing for classes rouses up the guilt again. I teach writing, but I don’t do what I tell my students to do. I plagiarize, in a sense, all the time. I don’t read articles; I skim them enough to make them seem read. And when I write, I really don’t consider any of the items … Continue reading A Few Confessions of an English Teacher by Alexandra Glynn
Infographic-Making Activity by Michael MacBride
[pdf version here: MacBride-Infographic-activity] Objective: To encourage the use of charts, graphs, maps, and other infographics in student writing. Approximate Time Required: 30 minutes Materials Needed: A computer with access to the internet and access to the video “Kurt Vonnegut on the shapes of stories” available a number of online locations, including: https://vimeo.com/53286941 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-84vuR1f90 … Continue reading Infographic-Making Activity by Michael MacBride
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