We Need to Talk About Ellipses

"Colonial discourse takes over as it takes cover." -David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire An ellipsis, like grief, calls attention to the presence of an absence. It can can do so in a couple of different ways. It can help a sentence trail off suggestively, opening the reader's mind to thoughts unexpressed or still to … Continue reading We Need to Talk About Ellipses →

Some Thoughts on Group Conferences

So anyway, I decided to try something new this semester: small group conferences. Why? Well, with over a hundred students, single meetings are unworkable, even if I were detail-oriented, which I’m not. Also, I’m learning that conferences can be stressful for students, especially those with social anxiety, and asking them to come to my office … Continue reading Some Thoughts on Group Conferences →

My Adventure with “The New Jim Crow”

The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander's 2010 racial critique of mass incarceration, is back in the news, thanks to a New York Times article on the surprising decision by North Carolina prisons to remove it from a banned books list. I had an adventure with that book, myself. A few years ago, I offered to … Continue reading My Adventure with “The New Jim Crow” →

Garbage Out, Garbage In

The syllabus for ENG101 "[r]equires students to produce a minimum of 20 pages of writing." With six sections, and a rough average of 20 students per section, that amounts to a minimum of 2400 pages per semester. My Penguin Classics edition of Moby Dick is only 625, not including the "Explanatory Notes." Now I'm getting … Continue reading Garbage Out, Garbage In →