Two Readings, October 20th & 21st

University of Richmond is fortunate to have two really dynamic writers giving readings on campus this week.  Both readings are free and open to the public.

Pam Brown – Australian Poet – 20 October 2008, 8pm, Weinstein Hall's Brown-Alley Room

 

Pam Brown has earned a living as a librarian, nurse, publisher's assistant, postal worker, artworker, and teacher of writing, multi-media studies and film-making. She has published fourteen books of poetry and prose, all with independent publishers. Her volume of new and selected poems, Dear Deliria, received the New South Wales Premiers Award and was cited for "its provocative and witty engagement with personal, social and political issues," ability to invite "reconsideration of mundane experiences and events," and "edginess of language and €¦ emotional honesty, daring, and intellectual curiosity." She has been Associate Editor of the online journal Jacket since 2004. Her most recent book is True Thoughts. She has lived in Sydney for the past 40 years.

 

Margaret Gibson – American Poet and Memoirist – 21 October 2008, 7pm, Keller Hall Memorial Room

 

Margaret Gibson is the author of nine books of poetry, including Long Walks in the Afternoon, winner of the 1982 Lamont Prize, and The Vigil: A Poem in Four Voices, a finalist for the National Book Award in 1993. Her most recent work is a memoir, The Prodigal Daughter: Reclaiming an Unfinished Childhood, in which she writes about her upbringing in Richmond, Virginia, and the process of making peace with the dichotomous forces of her past. As Shannon Ravenel confirms, "Margaret Gibson’s evocation of urban southern society in the 1950s is so on target it’s scary. This is a brilliant book." The recipient of an NEA grant, a Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Fellowship, and two Pushcart Prizes, Gibson is presently Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut and lives in Preston, Connecticut.

“Immersive” assignments: students correct US

I am using a wiki this semester without a spell-checker and I’m not the best proofreader on earth.

In addition to that issue, I often forget to READ MY WORK ALOUD before I submit it.  Thus I find small errors cropping up. How do I keep myself honest and students engaged?  I give them extra credit on work if they spot an error in my own online posts and assignments. If I violate one of my own Pet Peeves, they get more credit still.

One of my class mentors said the wiki (and the work in Second Life) provide a great example of “immersive learning” for students.  I suppose they have at least learned that all writers must take care and be mindful of an audience’s watchful eyes.

 Score so far: 3 errors by me, no Pet-Peeve violations. Stay tuned.

composition and media: fruitful interplay

A useful assignment for writing classes, especially when studying creative nonfiction, is to assign a reading of Ned Zeman’s 2004 Vanity Fair article “The Man Who Loved Grizzlies” a day or more before a viewing of Werner Herzog’s 2005 documentary “Grizzly Man”  inspired by Zeman’s article. Not only does the grisly tale grab student attention and spark engaged debate, each text offers a trove of interesting compositional choices that can enhance student understanding of narrative and the various media by which it travels.

Students take notes on their impressions as they read Zeman’s article and attempt to describe the image of Treadwell that is conveyed before they view Herzog’s film. As we review the article, students notice graphic layout, the clever beginning, the range of evidence, and the variety of specific detail and skillful description. By the time we view Herzog’s film, students have a loose framework for comparison that sharpens their eyes and ears for detail.

Follow up discussion builds upon these observations and moves to include closer examination of each medium, narrative choices, documentary approaches and directorial/authorial intrusion, as when Herzog denies viewers a hearing of the audio evidence yet positions himself within the frame, back to the camera, listening to it with headphones. Though the film is about the wild, technology is foregrounded in Treadwells 100+ hours of video footage where we can see the profound impact of a technology that is a kind of portable audience – or at least a promise of one.

Students can pursue focused research papers inspired by the film, or write critical analyses of each narrative, noting the specifics of how each achieves its unique effect or they can delve into drafting an argument essay about the environmental issues raised in the film, or the concept of authorship, or the the various limitations of each medium for this particular story.

Whether we call the documentary an “adaptation” or not, the interplay of message and media is a fertile space for intellectual exploration and the development of thinking through close reading and significant writing.

Writing-focused Opportunity for Service

The ESL Tutoring Project coordinated by the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement connects native English speaking members of the UR community to non-native English speaking members of the UR community who wish to improve their English skills. Students & staff from countries such as Haiti, Bosnia, Mexico,Iran & many others meet one-on-one on a weekly or biweekly basis to converse in English and work together on various learning exercises.

Interested staff and student volunteers or participants should contact the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement at 804-484-1600 or through e-mail at ESLProject@richmond.edu.

Useful Resources for Teaching Essays

I’ve come across several new-to-me resources for teaching essays.  Despite the fact that these sites are variously geared towards “creative nonfiction” or “literary nonfiction,” these resources should be of general use for any writing-related course, particularly considering the malleability of those genre labels.

The first, Brevity, is an online magazine devoted to “the Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction.”  The magazine contains lots of interesting essays, but the craft essays might be of particular interest for teaching.

The Brevity site also links to a blog called You Gotta Teach This Essay, which is a forum where teachers “share information on those essays that [they have found] particularly useful in teaching the art and craft of literary nonfiction.”  The entries generally contain synopses of the essays, suggestions for pedagogical approaches, and links to the texts (when possible) or other information on locating the texts.

From You Gotta Teach This Essay, I ended up browsing Quotidiana, a repository of 340 public-domain essays.  Aside from general interest humanities applications, this site might have particular relevance for the CORE course, for History courses, for Women’s Studies (especially given the separate drop-down menu highlighting the women essayists included in the archive), or possibly for Political Science settings.

A welcome from “Plain Old Joe Writing”

Changed my handle here.

Now, as program director, allow me to welcome all of you to this blog. I also want to post something cheerful and not as gloomy as the response to Carr’s article.

We will work with writing in some form, no matter the trajectory of human evolution. I have long advocated a richer use of those online spaces and new forms of media. We can, I feel, tame the machine and put it to its best uses.

But then I’m a digital immigrant. It’s the “natives” who will decide this issue.

Implications for Reading and Writing: Heavy Online Use

This is Joe Essid, for now using the user name “writing” (uggh), as if I were some Socratic essence.

In a recent issue of Atlantic Monthly, Nicolas Carr published “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

He posits that our minds are changing neurologically from using technology so much.  Sounds far-fetched, but neuroscientists have observed changes in our brains for some time, especially among children. Note this response to Carr from the letters to the editor in the current issue  of Atlantic:

Nicholas Carr correctly notes that technology is changing our lives and our brains. The average young person spends more than eight hours each day using technology (computers, PDAs, TV, videos), and much less time engaging in direct social contact. Our UCLA brain-scanning studies are showing that such repeated exposure to technology alters brain circuitry, and young developing brains (which usually have the greatest exposure) are the most vulnerable. Instead of the traditional generation gap, we are witnessing the beginning of a brain gap that separates digital natives, born into 24/7 technology, and digital immigrants, who came to computers and other digital technology as adults.

This perpetual exposure to technology is leading to the next major milestone in brain evolution. More than 300,000 years ago, our Neanderthal ancestors discovered handheld tools, which led to the co-evolution of language, goal-directed behavior, social networking, and accelerated development of the frontal lobe, which controls these functions. Today, video-game brain, Internet addiction, and other technology side effects appear to be suppressing frontal-lobe executive skills and our ability to communicate face-to-face. Instead, our brains are developing circuitry for online social networking and are adapting to a new multitasking technology culture.

Gary Small, M.D.
Director, UCLA Memory & Aging Research Center
Los Angeles, Calif.