As I wrap up another summer rhetoric course, I'm sitting here with that bittersweet feeling that comes at the end of every term—exhausted but energized, ready for a break but already missing the weekly conversations that pushed my own thinking in surprising directions. This was my fourth time teaching "the Black Mirror course," but my … Continue reading Another Summer Through Black Mirror
Conferences on My Mind Yesterday, I opened my mailbox to find the latest issue of Composition Studies, featuring a special forum on academic conferences. As I flipped through the pages, reading perspectives from conference organizers across writing studies about the past and future of our field's gatherings, I realized that conferences have been occupying an … Continue reading On Community, Care, and Academic Gatherings
Happy 2015! May this new year sparkles a renewed spirit in all your personal and professional endeavors. Since classes here at the U don't start until the 20th of January, I am having the time of my life just reading and writing this winter break (spending most of my time at a Starbucks that's located a … Continue reading Language, Words, Writing: TED Talks for Your Writing Courses
It's that time of the year when professors and instructors squeeze their brains and put together their hopefully-comprehensible course syllabi for respective classes. As I enter my fourth semester of teaching a freshman-writing course, I realize there's a constant urge to put more and more into my syllabus: maybe I should tell my students not … Continue reading The Rhetoric and Design of Course Syllabus
This morning, I woke up to a heated discussion on the WPA (Writing Program Administration) listserv around Rebecca Schuman's latest article, "The End of the College Essay," on Slate. Essentially, Schuman thinks instructors hate grading college papers just as much as how their students hate writing those papers: So you know what else is a … Continue reading To Write or Not to Write: Should We Get Rid of College Essays?
Jason Tham, Ph.D. 