Our own Manini Samarth recently published the short story “Simulacra” (under the name Manini Nayar) in the Alaska Quarterly Review. Congratulations, Manini!
Celebrate Professional Teaching
Penn State English NTL Faculty
Our own Manini Samarth recently published the short story “Simulacra” (under the name Manini Nayar) in the Alaska Quarterly Review. Congratulations, Manini!
By Judith McKelvey
It took me a long time to understand the problem that difference can pose for the supposed “normal” guy on the street. I get the gist of it: like everyone else, I lack the superpower of so-called color-blindness, and seeing a person whose gender is not binarily identifiable makes me unconsciously search for the “correct” category to box in that living being in front of me.
So yes, like all animals I notice and react to difference. But my false assumption for many years was that all humans enjoy gorgeous varieties of skin, or seeing what can’t be classified easily under the tab “That’s like me”–because otherwise they’d be bored out of their minds. What has always terrified me is walking into a room where a bunch of people who look alike discuss ways of keeping their yards in perfect conformity. So I fear lawn symmetry, whereas most studies show that the human “norm” is to fear difference, or at least to associate difference with threat, thus causing an initial fear response. This, history has shown, is not always a bad way to go, at least at first, and in certain situations. Over a lifetime, I’ve learned that moving too quickly toward things I don’t yet understand (people talking to imaginary others, the edge of waterfalls) is neither inherently righteous nor productive. There’s a place for healthy caution.
Ok. So fear of difference is characterized in research as normal. And yet isn’t it interesting that most humans in one way or another suspect that we are not members of the normal club? Happily for teachers of rhetoric, that feeling of outsiderness is good for student rhetorical awareness because it acts as a constant reminder that the “other” person they are communicating with is not a fellow clone. Difference-awareness also teaches us all to watch how assumptions are maddeningly built into our thinking, and how often those assumptions are flawed. Which is why the theme of my 202A course—and my life for the last 25 years of raising a child with ASD—has been neurodiversity. It’s a celebration of the spectrum of difference that prompts us to move away from writing for an imagined, flattened, “normal” audience, because that makes for terrible copy. Writing for difference means accepting that every “other” brain has a distinct, non-you way of hearing, processing, understanding, reacting to words, and while that may be scary, it also inspires better writing. Rhetoric teaches us to honor the difference on the other side of the communication act. At its best, rhetorical awareness means we are motivated to bridge that gap instead of resenting the distance we have to leap. In a happy confluence of home life and career, raising a child on the autistic spectrum has been for me a constant boot camp for bridging communication. I may not have the right answers, but baby, I can leap.
Which does not mean we parents of ASD kids get it right. It’s more just that we get an uncompromisingly complicated illustration on an hourly basis of how hard we all need to work to get even a small slice of what we really mean understood in the way we meant it to be understood by the person across from us. Every. Time. We. Open. Our. Mouths. The cascading possibilities for being misunderstood become a Niagra Falls of awareness about how often we fail to get it right. Which teaches us not to fear being wrong. Which makes some of us consider going down Niagra Falls in a barrel an adventure of sorts. Bruises ensue.
You would think that this kind of difference-awareness history would make me a super-clear communicator. Sadly, no. The more shades of grey (ick), the more variables dancing about, the more Picasso-like-points-of-view to take into consideration, the less I can count on an easy formula to use or teach. For me, communication is the wild west. Which I like. All those galloping horses stirring up dust, no boundaries in sight, all sky and possibility and danger.
But. The more I play around with analogies and metaphors, the closer I get to committing an inadvertent rhetorical atrocity. Like associating fun danger with the sick history of cowboys and Indians, or sexing up shoot-outs with guns by setting the scene in the O.K. Corral at dusk.
Which reminds me about why words matter, and why teaching rhetoric with the desire to open minds is both noble, and fraught. My romanticized mental map of the wild west might be your history of genocide. It does not matter how much I like difference—I cannot know, and thus I cannot teach every possible reception of ideas communicated in words and pictures. So what I ask my students every semester is to forgive in advance the confusions of different experiences leading to miscommunication, and to handle inevitable communication gaps by asking open questions with the goal of understanding. If students answer each other’s questions with a sense of adventure, that’s great; but I also hope that they respond with a healthy dose of caution about the bruises that come from getting into that barrel headed for a very long fall. Difference can be fun; it can also hurt.
And over we go.
Photo by Vicente Veras on Unsplash
Need a break from grading? Want to talk shop with your colleagues?
Join us on Monday, April 2, at 3:30-5pm in the Grucci Room for refreshment, conversation, and collegiality.
The more faculty, the better the event. It’s important not only to get to know our fellow teaching faculty, but also to share and benefit from our collective experience, best practices, successes, and resources.
If you have a particularly successful strategy you’d like to share, please bring it along! But no preparation is required for this event.
Fresh fruit and tea provided by The Non-Tenure Line Faculty Advisory Committee (NTLFAC)—formerly the LAC. The committee has also invited representatives from across campus to share information about other resources to support our teaching.
We hope to see you there!
Jan Babcock
Heather Holleman, co-chair
Alison Jaenicke, co-chair
Paul Kellermann
Rachael Wiley, secretary
By Erica Fleming
As an instructor of Business Writing, I face a daunting task at the beginning of every semester: how can I get my students to “buy in” to the importance of my class content? Can I convince them that my class is worthy of its designation as a General Education Requirement? And most importantly, how can I tailor my class to make it relevant to the way writing is performed in today’s business world? Anyone who regularly teaches Smeal students understands the necessity of addressing these issues in the Business Writing classroom.
These questions led me to reconsider the teaching approaches I use in this particular class. At the Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) Symposium last March (2017), I attended a presentation by faculty who had participated in the BlendLT (Learning Transformation) program: a series of workshops to help faculty apply a “blended” (a.k.a hybrid) structure to their courses. This idea of a blended classroom fascinated me, and I immediately began to imagine ways that I could implement some of these techniques into my Business Writing classroom.
A blended course is one in which some percentage of a residential class – anywhere between 25%-75% of the course content – is taken out of the classroom and performed online instead. This idea initially terrified me, as I had not previously felt confident when teaching online classes.
However, I recognized benefits of this approach that were uniquely suited to my Business Writing students: my class is meant to prepare them for the writing they will inevitably do in the business world. A large percentage of the writing, reviewing, and collaborating they will do professionally is currently done online; companies may require online training; they may be asked to review the work of their peers (everything from 360 degree performance reviews to team-based projects to a co-worker asking for an opinion on a current project); they may even work entirely remotely with domestic or international offices (via video- or tele-conference, or even simply working from home and communicating via phone, email, or text).
As a result of these trends in the business world, I wanted to find a way to structure my class to mimic the modern workplace. This would force my students to work more independently than they are used to in a residential college classroom, but also allow them the freedom to work at their own pace while still meeting deadlines.
After speaking with Gregg Rogers and Bob Burkholder about the workshop and its possibilities, I applied to the BlendLT program and was ultimately accepted. I attended six workshops (two in person, four as video conferences via Zoom) with the team at TLT. During those workshops I learned about the techniques, pedagogy, and research involved in creating a blended class environment. I took the rest of the summer to completely overhaul my course for fall, with a lot of help from an instructional designer in the College of the Liberal Arts (Jessie Driver was a dream to work with, and if you ever have the opportunity to collaborate with someone in the Office of Digital Pedagogy and Scholarship, jump at the chance!).
I decided to change about a third of my class to online content. This meant that for one out of the three classes in a M-W-F schedule, we didn’t actually meet in the classroom. Instead, students were required to work independently on 50 minutes of previously in-class work. I spent much of my summer researching: learning how to take some of my in-class material and not only make it function online, but also be more effective for my students in the online format. My new online content included online lecture videos (filmed prior to the start of the semester – I filmed 16 short videos), online peer review, and other various types of online group work and discussion forums.
The response from my students was almost entirely positive, as evidenced by great feedback on mid- and end-of-semester surveys as well as the highest SRTE’s I have ever received. Students loved the added flexibility of the online coursework, but also mentioned that they enjoyed the in-class time more because we focused entirely on class discussion and active learning rather than passive lectures or working individually on peer reviews.
I also noticed considerably more in-depth and thoughtful peer review comments when the stress of providing feedback face-to-face was removed. Students commented on surveys that they felt less rushed to complete the peer reviews, and that they could be more honest about their suggestions in this online format.
However, this process was not without its challenges. My instructions had to be completely understandable and transparent for online class days, and when they weren’t clear (which happened twice over the course of the semester), I spent a ton of time answering questions via email and finding ways to revise those assignments. In addition, reading through and grading the online peer reviews was far more work than I anticipated.
As I continue to revise and refine my blended course this spring, I have reorganized my schedule so that the online day falls at the same time every week. This avoids confusion concerning the in-class day, and provides some structure and stability that was missing last semester. I revisited all of my assignments and online instructions to ensure clarity and concision, and also incorporated some of the constructive feedback I received from students.
Adapting my course material to a blended format was an incredibly rewarding process. It was (and continues to be) a lot of work, but has been worth it due to both the positive reactions from my students as well as evidence of their improved engagement and performance. This year, the College of the Liberal Arts decided to create their own BlendDLA (Digital Liberal Arts) workshops during Maymester 2018, and I am helping to design and facilitate this new project. In addition, I will be presenting on both my course and adapting a blended format for courses across the university at the TLT Symposium on March 17.
What started as a vague notion to increase the applicability of my course turned into an incredible opportunity for professional development. This blended format allows me to do what I love in the classroom while incorporating proven strategies from online classes. As I continue to work on my class, I look forward to discovering new ways to help my students become better writers in their fields.
The Central PA Theatre and Dance Festival, presented by Tempest Productions, will sponsor a playwriting competition as part of the Festival’s inaugural year. Writers of all ages and experience levels are invited to submit their previously unproduced, original works for consideration. The winning entries will receive certificates and be performed as readings during the Festival, June 22-24 2018.
The event includes categories for both One Acts and Short Plays.
One-Act Category entries should have a performance time of no less than 30 minutes and no more than 45 minutes. Short Play Category entries should have a performance time of no less than two, and no more than 10 minutes. Plays must be submitted by April 15, 2018. Complete submission requirements, including formatting, are available online at https://centralpatheatre.com/playwriting-festival/
The Central PA Theatre & Dance Festival is a new festival organized by Tempest Productions. Held June 22-24, 2018 at various locations throughout downtown State College, the event will feature over 20 companies performing and producing, as well as workshops, readings, a cosplay competition and more. The event is made possible in part by funding from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and a marketing grant from the Center County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. Up-to-date information on the festival, participating companies, sponsors and schedule is available at www.centralpatheatre.com, or by calling 1.866.248.5091
Overheard in the hallways:
“Nina, where did you just come from?”
“My 602 in Business Writing.”
“Wait–haven’t you taken that already?”
“Oh yes, about three times.”
“Then…why?”
“Because I like to spend time with my people.”
By Judith McKelvey
In the Jan 2018 edition of Scientific American, Michael Shermer writies “For the Love of Science: Combating science denial with science pleasure.” This sounds sexier than it is. But I really like the results he pulls from two studies done by Asheley Landrum that show how situational skepticism can be, for both Democrats and Republicans. For example, in a 2017 study (“Science Curiosity and Political Information Processing,” published in Advances in Political Psychology), Landrum concludes unsurprisingly that folks on the liberal side of things tend to refuse to read science that might detract even a little from the climate change claim, while strong conservatives refuse to read “climate-concerned” scientific publications. What is uplifting, however, is that she found that on all ends of the spectrum, people who were highly curious, who had “an appetite to be surprised by scientific information,” could hear facts even when they didn’t support their baseline beliefs. I share this with my students and make it our mantra in the social sciences: read and listen with an appetite for surprise.
Meanwhile, in the Jan-Feb 2018 Harvard Business Review, the entire edition is devoted to the concept of business culture. I’m using the whole thing in the new course on grant writing, because awareness of corporate and foundation culture is key to matching missions in the proposal process. But it also works for all classes where there’s a job application element, where we train students to use the rhetoric of persuasion, and strategies for proving their “fit” in order to get hired. In my neurodiversity-themed class, we are using the HBR’s in-depth definitions of culture to better understand what it means to be outside a culture that is pervasive and largely invisible to those who fit into it; and what it means to change it.
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
More PD Opportunities:
Also thanks to Rachael Wiley for sending in the following PD opportunity link:
Now circulating on the CTE website: https://dus.psu.edu/
By Judith McKelvey
Assistant Teaching Professor
In the early 1990’s I began writing the first chapter of my dissertation (still going?) on the persistence of the Pygmalion myth paradigm in women’s fiction. I wanted to see how novelists put their female protagonists into silenced, subservient, paralyzed situations relative to their male keepers—and how they get their female characters out of it. Invariably, I found creative agency was the authorial key to breaking out characters trapped in the old paradigm. Women became the sculptor-subject instead of posing as object for the male artist, and that change in perspective gave them the agency they needed. But the process in so many of these stories wasn’t beautiful; often, it was bloody and monstrous.
So I’ve been thinking about the Weinstein side of things for a long time. What I love about literature is how it reminds us of the threads of continuity between our moment and way back when. Mary Shelley, for example, saw the object-subject dynamic in patriarchy everywhere around her in the 19th century, and would consider old news the Weinstein principle we seem so recently surprised to wake up to, just as many are only recently “woke” to the concept that we still need to announce Black Lives Matter. In my mind, it’s Shelley’s awareness of the link between patriarchal oppression and slavery that explains why she chose to have Dr. Frankenstein build a monstrous man out of pieced-together body parts instead of casting her monster in the form of the most comprehensive of all symbols of objectification: the female slave. The author recognized as a given the all-justifying, all-obscuring imperative of hetero male desire, so by casting her monster as male, she gave male readers a gender mirror to relate to rather than fuck. In other words, if, as I believe, Shelley hoped to inspire certain male readers to imagine the slave’s dilemma of being a living creature without clear agency and alive for the sole purpose of serving the master-creator, then she would need to bypass their tendency to fantasize about made-to-order females. But Shelley’s story nevertheless also offered a rhizomal feminist message in its echo of the Pygmalion myth storyline.
Shelley’s subtitle for her novel–The Modern Prometheus–refers to Ovid’s myth from Metamorphoses about the noble disrupter guy who hubristically steals fire from the gods and then is brutally punished for his great sacrifice. The subtitle pushes our focus onto the male perspective: poor Prometheus, getting his daily dose of liver torment; poor Doctor F., whose creature turns on him instead of thanking him. But I think Shelley’s underground inspiration was with the ancient storyline that most closely parallels her master-creator/object-brought-to-life plot–that is, the tale of Pygmalion and his magical sculpture. This is the story of a fabulously talented sculptor frustrated with having to satisfy his sexual urges with imperfect female bodies in the real world; so he creates with his own hands the perfect female form in marble—and then whines to the gods that a man of his stature should be accorded favors that go beyond the laws of mere mortals. The sculptor wanted his handmade creation to be granted life. The Pyg argument in ancient and contemporary times goes something like this: a powerful and/or talented/and/or rich male should be granted wishes in line with his almost-divine status; thus, this perfectly sculpted female form should be made available to him in the flesh, to use at will. The issue of active consent or rights of any kind on the part of the “beloved” is moot, as inert and silenced as the stitched body parts on Dr. F’s table and the marble of Pyg’s sculpture—as irrelevant, in fact, as the whole women who happened to be attached to Trump’s grabbed pussies.
What matters in this ancient Pyg myth is male desire, which is the unquestioned prerogative we are still living with, folks, in the same way that institutional racism is still with us despite our best dreaming. Weinstein’s serial sexual assaults succeeded because of the implied cultural premise that men with power must get what they want, and that’s just the way it is. Pygmalion’s rhetorical argument to the gods as relayed by Ovid uses a parallel premise: that a man of exquisite talent should by rights be able to fuck perfection. Hand-maid.
Really, that’s his argument. Don’t take my word for it–grab yourself a copy of Metamorphoses and read it for yourself.
And then read on to discover the ultimate irony: that Pygmalion gets his wish granted in a way that would fit right into contemporary Hanes pantyhose commercials, the ones where women compete with and betray other women for the prize of male attention. In the Pyg myth, it is the female goddess Aphrodite who takes pity on the poor priapic guy and turns the made-to-order marble into a living Galatea, the master-creator’s slave. Like the mad men of Hanes campaigns, Aphrodite concedes to the premise that a Big Man should own the best of everything, and that a good goddess should use whatever power she has to make sure of it. And so it is that female executives look the other way while female secretaries book the hotel rooms and female housekeepers clean up the aftermath—when they aren’t being raped as stand-ins.
Just as with Shelley’s patchwork monster lying prone on Frankenstein’s table, Ovid’s myth tells of life granted to an inanimate object—but no word about the granting of intrinsic agency. Or human rights. Galatea’s awakening is described from the Pyg’s point of view only: he recounts in purple prose how perfectly beautiful his work is when her veins begin throbbing with blood visible through the alabaster translucency of her white skin; and then there are tears of joy as the great man gets busy. Yes, Ovid offers a true happy ending in cheap massage parlor parlance—but only from the perspective of the client-master. Nowhere do you find a follow-up from the perspective of the marble object brought to life to serve the desires of the master. Presumably, horribly, by the time her eyes have adjusted to the light, Galatea is staring up at the nose-hairs of a middle-aged sculptor getting his just reward for being so excellently talented.
Imagining that disempowered, disoriented viewpoint is what Mary Shelley scares us with. She allows her trapped monster to move beyond Ovid’s silent sex slave portrayal; she gives the patchwork human a chance to express his confusion about his isolation as a recognizable other, and his rage at having to take the consequences of unethical choices made by Dr. Big Important Scientist in the name of progress. Her 1818 masterpiece pushes the subject-object story beyond the ancient boundaries. It is about the dangers of playing with fire, yes, but also about the brutality of depriving humans of whole-body agency; and it still kicks ass in 2017. But the story of breaking free from subject-object oppression isn’t quite over. Shelley’s Frankenstein demonstrates that treating a living being as one’s owned creature doesn’t end well in the 19th century fictional version. History shows us that slavery and women legally defined as their husband’s property are practices more monstrous in real life than in fiction. And the present day proves again that the metamorphosis from awareness to law, and then from law into actual equality is slow. Very slow. Deliberately Slow.
As for this Weinstein-Pyg moment, it remains to be seen who will suffer pangs of guilt and what innocent bystanders will be destroyed and whether revenge will be wreaked in the 21st century edition of Frankenstein. What I fervently wish for right now (in case an intersectional goddess is taking wishes today) is a loud, persistent follow-up to the gasps of horror coming from all of us somehow freshly shocked by Galatea’s dilemma and the monster’s isolated rage, wondering all over again or for the first time: what did they want upon awakening? Did she have any say from inside her magically perfect body? Did either one know how to even imagine the words “No” or “Don’t shoot”? Did she feel free enough to speak? If an enslaved woman talks and there’s only her master-creator listening, is there a sound?
I love that so many of us are feeling empowered to say “Me, too” and “Black Lives Matter.” But I also hope we go beyond the Weinstein moment and listen to everyone and anyone trapped, groped, shut down and shot up by a projected version of what someone else I don’t care how great thought we were worth. I hope we learn to keep asking: what about you? And you? And you? What does it feel like from inside your story? What does it look like? What do you dream about so as to move into being your own protagonist in your own story, to being whole instead of a hole-y receptacle for dicks and bullets? Tell me. I’m listening. The story doesn’t end with Ovid’s blithe myth, or Shelley’s destroyed monster, or Trump.
It begins now, with us, as storyteller and subject. Let’s tell it.
Featured image by:
Colorado State University has a lively, festive approach to their serious concerns about treatment of adjuncts. Check out the links below from their website. If the subject interests you, CSU Head of Rhetoric and Composition Sue Doe has written several intense scholarly papers on the issue, including one piece that advocates the use of theater to convey the adjunct dilemma.
https://www.campusequity2017.com/