The masterful short story author Flannery O'Connor once gave a lecture at Wesleyan College. Afterwards, during a question and answer session, O'Connor recalls that one of the young teachers there...an earnest type, started asking the questions. “Miss O’Connor,” he said, “why was the Misfit’s hat black?” I said most countrymen in Georgia wore black hats.…
Category: Teachers & Teaching
Slim Shady…Shakespeare?…Tuning up the Bard
. I just finished teaching Twelfth Night to my college freshmen and sophomores. I wanted to find a way to have them connect with the play in a way that might be enjoyable and spark their creativity. What I settled on was music. If there is anything late teens and early twenty-somethings can agree on,…
But If You Act Now! Teaching Persuasion in the Classroom
Teaching English Composition can be...tedious... at times, for both the professor and the student. No matter what book you use in your courses, teaching the same techniques every semester can become dull. A couple of terms back, I decided to try something new. For their persuasive essay, I have students compose their own infomercial and…
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Explaining the Kindle to Dickens
Recently, Rachel Walsh, an illustration student at the Cardiff School of Art and Design, was given the following project: "Explain something modern/internet based to someone who lived and died before 1900." Cardiff chose the Kindle and to explain it to Charles Dickens. She took forty books Dickens either wrote, were among his noted favorites, and…
The Library of Congress’s “National Jukebox”
Last month, the Library of Congress made available, free of charge, its catalog of historic recordings of early music, dating from 1901 to 1925. The new "National Jukebox" contains some 10,000 recordings which have been digitized for the first time and were made available to the LOC by Sony Music Entertainment. Sony owns the rights…
Rolling in the Big Bucks! (Just Kidding) A Snapshot of Academic Salaries
Over the past several months, there has been much talk about how teachers make a heck of a lot of money. I read and listened to several of these reports as I waited for the water to boil for my ramen noodles. This week, the Chronicle of Higher Education released data showing the average salaries…
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Well, Good Luck With That: No Jobs in Humanities
Last week, the Modern Language Association (MLA) held their annual convention in Los Angeles, California. Some 8,000 professors, graduate students, and others in the humanities field were in attendance. They shared papers, listened to lectures, and awaited word from the organization's executive director, Rosemary Feal, about the state of the job market for those involved…
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