Professional Raconteur: The racket of Professing

Top COMM 103 Student Tweets (So Far) of Fall 2011 (NSFW)

2011-09-17T22:54:00.000-07:00

Ironic that although some tweets aren't safe for work, I've read them and counted them as part of my work as a university professor teaching communication and media literacy to mostly first-year students.

Using Student Tweets to Illustrate Media Literacy Concepts
I've had a debate with some teacher friends on facebook as to whether I should take students to task for their tweets. I find it useful to use some examples of questionable tweets in class as a way of teaching media literacy. It helps me illustrate: 1) there's not such thing as "privacy" or "anonymity" on the web; 2) you need to mindful of multiple audiences with social media messages; and 3) you must be mindful of possible unintended messages when using social media.

Now, I never call out specific students, and I don't intend to put them "on blast," as the students like to say (and get no shortage of laughs hearing me say it in class). I should note that I make it clear on our BlackBoard site as well as on the syllabus that there is a class Twitter account. In most cases I use publicly accessible tweets (i.e., tweets that aren't locked and only available for followers, and tweets that can be found through a simple term search on twitter). In other cases, I use the tweets of students who chose to follow our COMM 103 class, thereby giving me access to their tweets. I use their tweets in class lectures in an attempt to teach students to be more mindful of the messages they send out into the amorphous universe of electronic media.

Why Not? Blurring Classroom Boundaries for Better or Worse
So, what's the debate? Well, some friends say that I shouldn't hold students accountable for what they say on twitter because, although I have a twitter account for class and many students choose to follow me, it's not really classroom communication. I disagree. The classroom is wherever students and teachers interact. Now, that may be an unfairly broad definition which may prompt the questions, "So, if you see a student at Target should you expect them to act like a student (e.g., respectful, polite)? And in turn, should you be expected to answer their questions about class at said Target store?"

These are good questions. And although social media has certainly blurred the boundaries of in-class and out-of-class, is it fair for me to (re)define those boundaries in a way convenient for me? I don't have an easy answer.

So, my response to tweets isn't necessarily one of chastising but usually silence (and somehow referencing it in class) or measured responses. Below are some examples.

Example One: Why do I need this class?
I talk in class about why, although some communication concepts may seem common sense, it's important to think about these concepts to be mindful of our communication habits and in which contexts those habits might or might not be appropriate.

Somehow, though, the concept of mindfulness didn't seem to resonate with this student:

These tweets are publicly accessible and easily found with a Twitter search of "communicate"

I didn't respond to these specific tweets, though I did to another one about one of our quizzes (I again found it through a search). Although this student didn't go back and delete these posts above (some do with their more "saucy" tweets), this student did respond to me. Hopefully, the interaction generated via Twitter will lodge itself in this student's thinking about media use.

Example Two: I don't need this class; in fact, I hate this class
The tweets below were decidedly more vitriolic:

These are publicly accessible with a simple search of COMM103

Here's how I responded:

I'm not sure if this student still checks this Twitter account. But my response is typical of how I handle such things. I find this approach usually does work with students who might initially seem like they hate the class but are, in actually, just worried, nervous, or otherwise concerned with their class performance. Which leads me to the next example:

Example Three: I sound like I hate this class, but I'm actually just a little overwhelmed
Sometimes, I think students spew some tweets that don't actually mean what they might sound like to a teacher. Case in point, the below exchange, which began with a measured response to an "I hate this class" tweet (like my example above):

These are publicly accessible with a simple search of COMM103

Unlike the above example, though, this student responded to me. And not in the way I expected:

The bottom tweet is the first one in the series

So, I responded in kind:

And this exchange had a (sort of) happy ending. Perhaps the best a teacher could hope for in this asynchronous social media exchange.

Example Four: I actually like this class
There are many positive tweets as well. Below is one:

Obviously, the #COMM103 hashtag, which I encourage students to use, makes this publicly accessible tweet easy to find

To these I usually respond, "Glad you're enjoying it" or something like that, taking a chance that the tweet isn't ironic in its use of multiple exclamation points.

What's It All For? The Future of Social Media in My Classroom
My use of the class Twitter account is a work in progress. But I think its utility and possibly lie in more than just communicating class information to students or answering questions (out of class or, as some instructor now use it, in class with a moderated live feed). Its use, and teachers' framing of its use, is rooted in the concepts of media literacy. We must be vigilant in illustrating to students the ways intention, audience, and tone play complex roles in social media.

Top Ten Graduate Teacher Mistakes: Number 9

2011-08-11T11:32:00.000-07:00

This is a continuation of the "Top Ten" list I started several months ago. I realize now it was a pretty ambitious goal for me. I should have made it a Top Five list. At any rate, as promised, here's number nine:

Number Nine: Asking Too Many Questions
Some of my graduate student teachers may be reading this thinking, "Is he talking about me?" Well, yes, but not in a bad way. I'm talking about myself as well, I suppose. As I prep for my Fall classes, I'm faced with making assignments new again. And while I can plan things out, starting with learning outcomes and following through to some kind of assessment, there's no way I can really tell if something's going to work.

The more experience a teacher has, the better she can anticipate what questions and difficulties students might have. But she can never really know how a new lesson plan will turn out. Sometimes we have great stuff we think the students will love, and they don't. Other times, we might go in and wing it only to have things go great. When this happens I sometimes walk out of class thinking, "It's too bad I won't be able to replicate that dynamic every time, because that was great."

I encourage asking questions, and believe me, some graduate student teachers take this to heart and ask all sorts of things I honestly had never thought of before. While I can answer some--or most, I hope, some questions teachers have are better left unanswered. "Will this work?" I don't know. Maybe. Consider so-and-so and give it a try. "Is this activity a good idea?" Unless you're talking explicitly about sex or admonishing students about a particular religious point of view, you're probably safe. Give it a try. And so on.

The short answer: I don't know. The longer answer involves a communication theory, as most of my longer answers do: specifically, sense-making. Karl Weick, who forwarded said theory, is famous for a saying, which I'll paraphrase here: How do I know what I want to say until I see what I said? Setting aside for a moment the ableist language in that colloquialism (it privileges speaking and hearing as the primary knowledge-gaining senses), I like it and think it applies here. I realize this doesn't really hold water if we're accountable for students' test scores and such. But even within such constraints, in fact, some say only within constraints, creativity and problem-solving coalesce in the art that is teaching.

Bursting the Bubble, Knocking Down Silos, and Other Metaphors We Live By

2011-07-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

A while ago I came across this provocative interview with Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, who's so adamant that school no longer teaches us what we need to know to succeed in the "real world," that he gives money to schools' best and brightest to leave school and start a business. Such a move implies that colleges aren't teaching students what they need to learn in order to succeed "out there."

I consider this now well-trodden metaphor of the "bubble." The dotcom bubble burst a while ago. The housing bubble just recently burst. When thinking about this metaphor, a few aspects of a bubble come to mind. First, a bubble obviously isn't sustainable. It floats in the air without the ability to avoid something that might break it. The thin membrane filled with air is bound to either land then burst, or pop in midair. But watching a bubble can be mesmerizing and peaceful, a seemingly undisturbed journey that ends suddenly (if one can't see what pops up in the bubble's path). The bubble can't last forever.

Have we, as Thiel argues, become so mesmerized with the seemingly undisturbed "journey" of higher education? Hardly. Some of us have gotten pretty good at spotting things in our way and have begun to adapt.

In the midst of considering this, I came across this news story regarding an open letter from the University of Texas-Austin Student Body President, Natalie Butler. She accompanied some UT regents on a trip to Arizona State University, my alma mater, about which I've written before. The trip was apparently an effort to learn how to increase UT's online learning program. The letter, however, warns the regents about becoming like ASU, who practices a "use-inspired" research, rather than the "intellectually-inspired" research practiced at UT-Austin.

While I admire this Tempe native's dedication to rigorous study, I take umbrage with this dichotomy of use-inspired versus intellectually-inspired research. All communication research should solve problems. Period. Granted, to some people, some of the problems we're tackling in higher education and communication research may seem needlessly esoteric or theoretical. That's to be expected. But whether we're building on theory or out in the streets with protesters, we're solving problems. Unfortunately, we often think of certain types of problems as being the domain of a particular discipline. We've built these silos around ourselves and claim ownership over problems, issues, approaches, etc. I think part of what Ms. Butler is witnessing is a move away from these silos.

ASU President Michael Crow's move what toward he calls a "New American University" has been accompanied by, at times, seismic shifts in the symbolic identities scholars craft for themselves. This includes changing the names of departments whose presence on the university campus has been a mainstay for perhaps as long as higher education has existed in its current, more-or-less, publicly accessible form. For example, ASU no longer has an Anthropology department (or school); instead it has a School of Human Evolution and Social Change. No longer is there a Political Science department; there is, however, a School of Politics and Global Studies.

For all the flak ASU President Michael Crow has gotten, I appreciate his move toward issue- or problem-oriented research. I also understand and appreciate the resistance toward such a move. For those unfamiliar with academia, talk of solving "real-world" problems often includes applying for grants--external funding from philanthropic, private and public not-for-profit agencies.

What's wrong with that? Getting money for your research is a good thing, you might say. Yes, but. The "but" is that often these granting institutions and the grant application evaluators expect reports that quantify results. Many in the communication discipline don't use a quantitative approach to gathering and analyzing data. This leaves some of us forced to employ methodologies we're either not familiar with or disagree with on an epistemological level. Sure, this thinking might be akin to the silo metaphor I invoked earlier, but I can empathize with these folks. The communication field is broad and deep, and those more humanistic researchers who qualitatively analyze texts of all kinds may not identify a place for them in this "problem-solving" approach.

Some have managed to cross this divide in interesting and uncompromising ways. I've been taught well by these folks and strive to incorporate it into my own research. Selling out? Compromising? Tacitly accepting the devaluing of humanities and reifying the place of the almighty dollar in academic research? I suppose some might say that's where this line of thinking leads. But I prefer to view it optimistically as an opportunity to begin chipping away at these calcified silo walls.

Why I prefer rejection from academic journals to rejection from literary journals

2011-06-04T14:56:00.000-07:00

I entered but didn't win (or even place) in NPR's third round of Three Minute Fiction contest, for which a contestant sends in an up-to-600 word fiction piece based on a prompt. The entries are first given a green light by students in the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Those pieces are then sent up the ladder to the guest judge, who presumably selects the winner as well as the honorable mentions and runners-up. At least, I think that's how it works. Despite the official rules on the website, the whole process is pretty vague.

At any rate, no big deal. I've had my writing rejected before, from both academic journals and literary journals. And NPR's contests usually have thousands of entries, so it's kind of a crap shoot. Most of my time now is spent submitting to academic journals, but my recent experience got me thinking about my "other life" submitting to literary journals.

Here's why I prefer rejection from academic journals: you get a reason. Even if you don't agree with the decision or you believe the reviewers' and editor's reasoning is flawed, at least you get feedback.

It would take too much space to recount the reasons given to me for rejections on submissions to academic journals. But I can cite by memory, verbatim, some of the handwritten feedback from literary journals--and handwritten comments are prized, as it's most often a form letter one receives. Here are some of those comments: "Good stuff, wasn't right for this issue. Please send more." "I like this, just didn't have room for this issue." "This one almost made it in."

You may be reading this thinking, "What? That tells me nothing" (particularly if you submit regularly to academic journals). Or, if you're familiar with literary journals, "Yeah, that sounds about right." Either way, you get the point.

First, let's consider an idea that that's probably common sense to many who submit to academic journals. If an editor did really like something, he could accept that piece for a future issue, right? Well, not in the realm of literary journals. If an editor is awash in submissions, accepting everything she liked would mean filling two years' worth of issues in three months--assuming there were actually that may worthy submissions.

There are many, many outlets for creative writers nowadays, from small press print journals to online journals. This is due in large part to the many, many MFA programs that now exist. Low-residency programs, established "old school" programs, new programs, etc.; all these graduates have to publish somewhere, right? So, they and their colleagues sometimes start journals to make this happen. I've argued this point before, though I'm certainly not the first to make this observation.

So, yes, editors are no doubt sifting though piles of submissions, thousands of e-mail attachments, and probably have little time to make substantive comments, provided they're adept at making such comments and have actually been trained to "read" as opposed to just write--let's not forget that the MFA is essentially a terminal degree in craft, not theory or pedagogy (although many argue that to write well you must be able to read well). So, aspiring poets and fiction writers who may count on editors' comments to help them better develop a piece of writing will likely never receive such feedback. Unless they enroll in an MFA program, which perpetuates the cycle of which I write above.

Which brings me to my second point. What exactly constitutes a "worthy" submission? That seems to be, in many cases, as vague as the editor's notes to me I've summarized above. Considering the number of submissions most journals receive, I'm sure it's nearly impossible to provide substantive feedback to those who submit.

"Why not ask reviewers to be on an editorial board?" you may ask. Academic journals do this. I serve on the editorial board of Text and Performance Quarterly. I've had the pleasure of reading, reviewing, and commenting on many submissions and have learned a lot from the process (hopefully the authors have as well). Some literary journals have editorial boards that resemble academic journals. I was an Editorial Assistant for Sulfur when pursuing my M.A. in English Language and Literature. The editor, Clayton Eshleman, assembled an editorial board and consulted them when he wanted another take on a submission or received something he thought fell outside his realm of expertise.

However, most literary journals don't use an editorial board (or, at least, don't use several reviewers for one genre), and certainly not to the extent that academic journals do. The ones affiliated with universities sometimes have graduate students sift through reviews early in the submission stage as does NPR's Three Minute Fiction contest. While they may have good intentions, these reviewers may not have the expertise nor experience to effectively comment, judge, or evaluate submissions.

While I hesitate to call this process "unethical," the lack of many safeguards that are in place for academic journals can sometimes lead to nepotism in the literary world. Many literary contests have now instituted what is colloquially known as "the Jorie Graham" rule, which stipulates that contest judges must be identified in contest guidelines. A scandal some years back involved the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet anonymously judging a contest and awarding the prize to her romantic partner (and now husband and colleague at Harvard).

This hasn't stopped other scandals from happening. A more recent scandal involves the editor of a poetry series who allegedly paid to have his own book included (not vetted, not reviewed? one wonders) in the same series.

Now, I admit it's a leap in reasoning to argue that the current state of literary submissions and publishing contributes to the alleged scandals mentioned above. I'm not saying one causes the other, rather that both are qualities of the literary publishing world that, to my mind, make the academic publishing world preferable.

We academics are no doubt familiar with the old adage that no one reads our stuff. I think we should be glad that at least reviewers have read it before it makes it print.

Update

Just read Anis Shivani's interesting piece on why poetry book contests should be abolished. A worthwhile read if you're interested in the above topic.

Five Reasons Teachers Should Use Social Media

2011-05-26T16:04:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about my use of social media in my classes. I've used facebook and twitter for classes for a couple of years, with mixed results Having just presented at SDSU's One Day in May series of talks and workshops about teaching and writing, I've been thinking more and more about what my use of social media has accomplished so far and what I might expect it to accomplish in the future.

The (sort of) good and (sort of) bad
I've caught students cheating by reading their facebook wall. Students can't write about themselves in journal entries or class discussion posts ("I have nothing to write about," "I don't feel comfortable writing about..." X--or Y or Z) but seem to have no qualms about a totally public (as long as you yourself have an account facebook wall) conversations about all manner of topics.

Other positive aspects? Connecting with students (yes, I friend some of them), increasing immediacy between myself and students, and learning all the hip lingo the kids use nowadays. I would use some of said slang phrases here, but--much like a foreign language--I've forgotten it all because I don't use it in conversations.

These experiences have resulted in many of what us teachers call "teachable moments," which is code for: a) how we recover when things don't quite go according to plan; b) how we fake it when things gets really screwed up; or c) what we do when we don't know what the heck is going on but figure there's got to be something worth learning here.

Downsides? I think about the notion of surveillance and how my catching cheaters, while technically not illegal or perhaps even unethical, still conjures up notions of Big Brother watching over the public and private lives of students.

I also think about how applications like Foursquare, in which users "check in" to businesses and locations to accumulate points and free stuff, promote a gaming and consumption model of education. Yes, people use foursquare for teaching, primarily for scavenger hunt-type activities, among other things. This includes my alma mater Arizona State University, who is part of a case study of Foursquare for Universities

All considered, I think there's a lot of potential with social media in (and out) of the classroom. But teachers have begin using it in order to understand how it can be used. So, here are five reasons why teachers should use social media:

Five Reasons Teachers Should Use Social Media
1. You can finally justify the many hours spent playing Bejeweled and Words With Friends

2. You now get to deduct points from students who bother you with facebook farmville requests.

3. Letting your students see your foursquare check-in at Macy’s over the weekend helps them remember to compliment your wardrobe on Monday.

4. Calling your students on twitter “followers” instead of “students” makes you feel like a cult leader, compensating for crappy teacher pay.

5. Haven’t you always wanted to see pictures of your students doing a beer bong?

Top Ten Graduate Student Teacher Mistakes: Number 10

2011-05-04T17:52:00.000-07:00

As I wrap up another year of serving as Basic Course Director for our school, I'm reflecting on the progress of our graduate student teachers. They do some amazing things, make me look good, and--to my bemusement--attribute their teaching success to me when it sometimes appears to me if I've had little to do with how good they've become.

I think I only really, truly, began to get the hang of teaching in about my sixth year. I've been teaching college and university classes for about 18 years, and only now do I begin to feel like I might have some sort of advice to offer those just beginning to teach. Of course, I've been doing for this several years but have relied heavily on what others have said. Like any good scholar, I've begun to internalize those things, synthesize them, and take credit for them.

So, here is the first in a series of installments on some mistakes I've not witnessed graduate student teachers commit, and mistakes of which I myself am guilty (and how could I effectively teach them if I didn't first experience them?). I've resisted doing the typical scholarly thing and use parentheses, as in "Top Ten (Graduate Student) Teacher Mistakes." But hopefully you get the idea.

These are in no particular order, although I think the lower-stake mistakes are generally near the bottom.

Number Ten: No Lesson Plan
I used to think lesson plans were for elementary school teachers. College professors didn't need them, right? After all, they were teaching their specialty. They were afforded academic freedom, which meant talking about what they deemed relevant and appropriate. Students, basking in the glow of professors' knowledge, would write things down and ask questions, allowing the teacher to re-direct where necessary. Right?

Thankfully, I didn't actually put these ideas, accumulated from years of bad movies about college life, into practice. But I was shocked when I got into the college classroom and found it difficult to fill the hour or so talking about what I was already supposed to know. Teaching my first college class as a first-year M.A. student was terrifying, and I had done theatre and competitive speech and debate my whole life. I believe I spent the first 10 minutes or so reading from the book and hoping students would react to it. No lesson plan. I wasn't taught about lesson plans in my orientation, wasn't taught Bloom's taxonomy, learning objectives or outcomes, assessment...nothing.

So, one of the things I stress to my graduate student teachers is to create lesson plans. To not just think about what they want to say, but literally write out a lesson plan, beginning with learning outcomes and ending with assessment strategies (qualitative, e.g. discussions, and/or quantitative) that pair with a particular learning outcome. I ask them to also include the time each section might take and, if appropriate, the learning styles to which they might be appealing (I know some people have issues with the whole "learning styles" approach, but that's another subject for another post--for that matter, so is assessment).

I realize this sounds both simple and simplistic. But I'm always surprised, especially in the second semester onward, how many GTAs take the "been there, done that" approach and just go into class thinking, "I'm going to do this activity and it's going to be really cool." Okay, you've got the activity. So what? What's the purpose? How are you going to know whether the activity made any difference?

Now, I find myself doing this in my lectures: just going in and talking. Of course, I know what I want to say and what I have to cover, but I find myself glossing over learning outcomes as well.

As I write this, I can hear some of my colleagues advising teachers to stay flexible and not plan everything out, as some of the best teaching and learning moments emerge organically. And I agree. But I'm not sure beginning teachers can go there just yet. So, I advise creating lesson plans but maintain a flexible mind just in case.

One of the things I like about teaching is that I'm constantly learning. I'm learning as I write these, and as I present them to our graduate student teachers. And I encourage them not to take these as edicts, but as guidelines that will prompt a thoughtful and reflexive consideration of the classroom and of their teaching.

Next up, Number Nine: Asking Too Many Questions

Looking Forward to the Past: Digital Grieving, Rembering my Brother

2011-04-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

My younger brother, Mark, died in a hiking accident in Long Canyon, Sedona, AZ, 10 years ago next month. I wasn't with him when he fell 45 feet from a cliff face onto his head. But I've never met the man who was. I've talked to him on the phone. He told me about his struggle to pull my brother back up by his belt, his panicked yell to an echoing canyon as he felt his grip slipping, his scramble down the mountain to try and resuscitate Mark. But I've never looked him in the eye, shook his hand, or hugged him.

When I cleaned out my brother’s apartment, I found artifacts from a life I barely recognized. Finding this man will help me find my brother. This is my journey to find him, to find both of them, and rediscover the life I had with my only sibling.

Me and Mark at a party in high school
Photo: Gary Kliczinski

After 10 years, I'm not sure what bothers me more: that I didn't hug Mark as he rode away from my apartment on his bike, taking for granted that I'd see him again soon, or that I seem to be losing traces of him in my life. I've got photos, memories, and conversations with family members. But even though he died in 2001, before twitter, facebook, and the deluge of personal web pages, I find myself Googling his name. Maybe I'm expecting to come across someone in cyberspace remembering him via blog, like I am now. Maybe I want some evidence that his life spread out and touched more just the small group of people who knew him.

Maybe. I've since realized this process is a kind of digital grieving. I know I'm not going to find much, if anything at all. His friends and mine have posted some old photos. But I keep searching, because I understand it's the searching that's important, the deferment of finding something that keeps me going, because if I can keep searching, the possibility that I might find something new about his life is always present. Of course, my searching is also my mourning. I don't think I'll ever stop mourning, though my grief has dissipated. I don't know how Mark's friend feels. I can't imagine how he deals with it, but I'd like to find out.

How does this relate to teaching?
Although I teach and publish ethnographic and performative writing on topics like grief, health, gender, and family communication, which certainly includes this project, I'll be shifting digital platforms and continue to keep this one primarily about life in the academy. It's an arbitrary distinction, but one I'm making for the time being.

As for my search for the last person to see my brother alive, you can read about my ongoing journey here.

Classrooms as Uncomfortable Spaces: Mark Twain and the "N- Word"

2011-03-28T21:02:00.000-07:00

When you've read a lot of teaching philosophies and talked enough about teaching, you begin to realize that creating a "safe space" for students is part and parcel of many teachers' pedagogical approach. This usually means that these teachers strive to create an atmosphere in their classrooms that encourages students to speak their mind, not judge or insult others, and not use discriminatory language.

However, "safe" is not synonymous with "comfortable." I think learning should be uncomfortable. Students should be led into unfamiliar and uncertain territory. With good teaching, students brought to this "learning edge" can glean insight by viewing problems and issues in new ways. When it comes to discussing race in the classroom, however, some teachers opt for a "better safe than sorry" pedagogy, treading lightly for fear of offending others. I'm guilty of this, too.

And so, last Sunday I watched with interest the 60 Minutes segment on New South books' revised edition of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, which changes the n- word with "slave."

I agree with Bradley's argument that Huckleberry Finn without the n- word isn't really Huckleberry Finn at all. I also agree with his assertion that, to a certain extent, if students are comfortable talking about race then they're not really talking about race. Where can we draw the line so we don't sacrifice learning for the sake of comfort?

As I ask this question, I'm reminded of The Daily Show's "Senior Black Correspondent" Larry Wilmore's take on this controversy:

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However, discomfort for the sake of discomfort isn't the way to go either, as Michael Scott illustrated:

So, where does this leave us?
Obviously, it's easy to split the difference between two extremes, but I think the difference between these two bits is that The Daily Show segment acknowledges the structural components of racism, while manager Michael Scott locates racism at the individual level. In short, Michael Scott thinks racism can be eradicated by changing individual values and attitudes; Larry Wilmore humorously indicts the linguistic structures themselves ("slave" is a "occupation"). While individual attitudes are important to consider, it's socio-economic conditions like urban flight, school districting, incarceration levels, state and federal law, and media portrayals that enable racism to continue. Language is also something to consider, and of primary importance to a teacher of communication.

The problem with changing the language in Huckleberry Finn is that doing so seems to attend to individual attitudes without addressing the structural conditions of racism. While an extended discussion of the above conditions is probably out of the purview of a high school literature class, discussing the power of words can be a useful exercise, one that is short-circuited by replacing making the aforementioned switcheroo.

Teaching public speaking has made me realize that many kids throw around words like "gay" and "retarded" with little thought about how and why they can use those terms in certain ways and others can't. Talking about the word in question, whether a teacher says it or simply defers to the "n -word" phrasing, allows students to consider how some groups have access to certain words and their meanings and others don't; when you get right down to it, there are comparatively few insults someone can hurl at a heterosexual white male. If we consider women, people of color, and gays and lesbians, we realize that in a name-calling contest, the straight white male will never run out of ammunition. This is a simplistic example, to be sure, but it illustrates the linguistic structures of racism.

Discomfort, for me (a straight, white male), comes from realizing I'm implicated in this system in ways I don't like and didn't choose. But once I begin to understand this, I can not only choose my words more mindfully (which is more than just saying, "racism is bad"), but I have a more comprehensive view of the sorts of dialogue that need to be initiated. Changing one word because we're uncomfortable with it doesn't teach us much of anything, except how to avoid talking about it.

Arizona State University, Communication(s) Majors, and Prime Time Television

2011-03-06T21:25:00.000-08:00

A joke on tonight's episode of The Simpsons about Arizona State University graduates got me thinking about all the other recent jokes about ASU I've seen. I don't know which writer(s) for The Simpsons went to Arizona State University (or maybe its rival University of Arizona!) and/or were Communication majors, but The Simpsons--more so than any other show I can think of--seems to slip in humorous references to the ASU and to communication majors. I've collected a couple of gems below and thrown in a few others from different shows.

In the first, Dr. Hibbert tries to console an injured college football player about life after football:

In the next clip, Ned Flanders mistakes Homer's "insider art" piece (which floods the town of Springfield) for the rapture, then, well, you'll see:

Not to be outdone, the brilliant show 30 Rock recently featured a jab at ASU:

Finally, although not prime time television, Saturday Night Live made with the funny at the expense of ASU for refusing to award President Obama an honorary degree when he spoke at commencement:

As the saying goes, "There's no such thing as bad publicity," although I'm sure many teachers and administrators would prefer to ignore its ranking as a party school. Anyway, my alma mater probably has more people thinking twice about attending not because of the above clips but because of its home state's recent legislative record, like SB 1070 (regarding illegal immigration), HB 2281 (outlawing ethnic studies courses), and HB 2562 (which would nullify the 14th amendment to the United States constitution, denying birthright citizenship to children and moving the state--in the minds of some--one step closer to seceding from the US altogether).

Nonetheless, I still recommend the university and the Ph.D. program in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication to many of our SDSU students. I have great memories of its outstanding faculty and facilities. And I enjoy a chuckle or two, laughing with the other ASU graduates.

Grey Collars: The "Mechanics" of Teachings

2010-11-24T19:09:00.000-08:00

Full disclosure: This isn't an entry about how to teach (hence the ironic quotes around the word "mechanics"). I like to tell the graduate student teachers that I train and supervise that teaching is like yoga. With yoga, if one thinks she's mastered a pose, she's not really doing yoga. Same with teaching. If she thinks she's mastered it and there's nothing to left to learn, she's not really teaching because, to me at least, teaching always includes learning.

Another simile occurred to me today while I was changing the air filter in our car. I initially thought, "No problem." I must have been thinking of a previous car I owned, in which the air filter was a simple, flat style wedge that slipped in and out of a similarly-styled cradle accessible under the hood. Two clips and you're done. However, I opened the hood and realized we have a cone-style filter, which requires more than simply popping a couple of clips. As it turned out, this replacement involved disconnecting tubes from housings and muscling other things out of the way.

Whenever I work on cars, our house, or do any sort of work with my hands, I often think of my Dad. He was a "do-it-yourselfer." He was also a car aficionado, "wrench head," whatever you want to call it, from his teenage years on--always souping up cars and doing repairs himself. When he got hurt and ended up in a wheelchair, I was the one actually doing the repairs on things he couldn't reach. Replacing this air filter, wriggling the housing from its nest of bolts, wires, and tubes, I found myself thinking, "Hmmm. How is working on a car like teaching?" I thought there were several similarities: taking care to assess the situation and your end goal, the approaches to get to that goal, paying attention to detail, problem-solving, etc.

Granted, one could probably liken teaching to just about any endeavor. But my reasons for these comparisons are more important than the comparisons themselves.You see, I was never really interested in the same things as My Dad; I was into literature, writing, and theatre. Laying on my back under our van, assembling parts and pieces that may as well have been from an alien spaceship for all I knew about them, I'd often try to find similarities between his interests and mine: Playwriting is like building an addition to a garage (which my brother and I actually did, in part, assisting a carpenter friend). Writing a story is like shingling a roof (did that, too). Writing a song is like replacing an alternator (yep). I came up with these comparisons to feel closer to him, and I realize I made these comparisons to help convince myself that my leisure pursuits were just as important, just as meaningful, and just as taxing as his.

We were a middle-class family, but all the manual labor I did growing up made me think of ourselves differently. My Dad, although a brake engineer at Ford Motor Company, seemed to me decidedly blue-collar. Growing up, I considered myself from a blue collar family. Thinking about teaching in a more blue-collar way helps me feel closer to him, and alleviates the inexplicable guilt I sometimes feel for doing a job that doesn't require me to use many of the skills he taught me. But teaching does require one to get her hands dirty, to roll up his sleeves and really do some taxing work. I have no misconceptions about that. I suppose my only misconception is that my Dad, were he alive, would somehow see what I do as less valuable than those tasks he and I shared.

In-Class Versus Online Teaching: A (Dis)Embodied Enterprise

2010-10-16T13:06:00.000-07:00

I train and supervise the graduate student teachers in our department who teach the basic course (a hybrid of theory/overview and public speaking). I love the job; it's wonderful to see them grow as teachers, to gain reflexivity in their curricular concerns, and move on to teach other classes.

But one of the most difficult things for me is articulating what it is I know about teaching. I've been teaching at the university level for approximately 17 years, yet I have trouble distilling that experience into any sort of overarching list of guidelines, do's and don'ts, or rules. Sure, I can provide advice on specific situations, both real and hypothetical. And we have year-long training meetings, a lot of which consist of me fielding questions regarding classroom management, grading, handling difficult students, etc.

But, I'm not sure I even "know" anything about teaching. Rather, my difficulty in articulating what I know is due to where I know it: the body, my body. Simply, teaching is an embodied experience. That statement will not shock many of my colleagues, especially those in Performance Studies. There have been countless articles and books written at this intersection of embodied performance and teaching, so I'm not forging new ground here either.

But this embodied approach to teaching and learning is increasingly coming under fire (and ire) from administrators and those supporting a consumer-based model of education. I don't use the term "consumer" with too much derision, as I understand the practical value of such positioning. Adjunct teachers, especially, may benefit from a pay-per-student model of education, perhaps best served through online education. The adjunct teacher featured in this story earned upwards of $120,000. That's full professor money at some universities.

While I have taught online classes and recognize the good and bad of the "democatization" of the teaching enterprise--or, perhaps, the move toward a more capitalistic, customer-driven model of education--one thing was always missing: the embodied experience of teaching. I realize that online teaching may complicate or problematize the notion of embodiment rather than simply negate or erase embodiment. I do know, though, that what I "know" about teaching resides in my body, in the ways I feel and remember feeling in the classroom. And however I may articulate that knowledge, it takes other bodies in the classroom as well.

When research and teaching isn't enough

2010-07-10T14:31:00.000-07:00

Getting tenure this past Spring has got me re-evaluating my role of as a professor (Associate Professor, to be more precise). I'm sure everyone who gets tenure goes through a similar process. But this and other events have also prompted me to re-evaluate what it means to be a professor more broadly.

As the higher education system comes under fire, including tenure, tenure-jobs become scarcer, and budget cuts in many states threaten the very foundation of higher education, a lot of teachers have realized they have to look out for themselves as much as for their students.

This chain of thinking is not new and didn't originate with me. Our organizational communication textbooks have consistently discussed the "new social contract" between companies and workers that has resulted in a diminished sense of loyalty on both sides, portable 401/403 k/b etc. plans, and regular attendance at self-help classes, self-improvement seminars, and graduate schools. Certainly, academics aren't exempted from this and may have been some of the first to capitalize on this. After all, what are research agendas, pubs, and grants if not vital parts of a CV one can market to other universities for better pay?

So, I'm sitting on the couch thinking about all this, and my colleague and former office mate appears on television. He's one of the newest house guests on the CBS reality show Big Brother. This person, in addition to being a great writer and super smart, is also adept at self-branding. Again, I'm not the first to make the connection between personal branding and the academy, but I worry (even though I've embraced it to a certain extent).

Maybe I worry because I don't think I'm that good at it. I remember the difficulty I had in "branding" myself in my personal statement as part of my tenure files. Having to articulate and argue a particular research agenda, arc, and coherent body of work was difficult. Not because it wasn't there, or because I hadn't been trained to think that way by my great advisers, but it because it required me to think of myself as something more than a summation of my publications. And it was precisely this "summary thinking" that had prompted me to keep churning out articles.

Now I worry because I don't have much experience translating my ideas to a broader audience, something I think will become vital in the personal branding academics are and will continue to be required to do. Radio and television appearances, social media updates and plugs: all will become increasingly important. Does this mean the watering down of genuine (i.e., complex, problematic, heuristic) ideas? Does it mean a change in what we think of as ideas traditionally in the domain of academics? Both?

Fortunately, many academics are already blazing trails here. From podcast reviews of articles to blogs to more blogs to alternative forms of online scholarship. While not all even roughly fit into this notion of personal branding, they all illustrate the potential to move to more diverse, wider audiences, a necessary consideration in personal branding and marketing.

So, when is research and teaching (and service) not enough? Soon, if not already.

Top 10 Plagiarism Scandals of All Time | Online Classes.org: Find the Right Online Class Match

2009-10-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

Ah, so this is where the students learn it's okay to plagiarize...

Top 10 Plagiarism Scandals of All Time | Online Classes.org: Find the Right Online Class Match

Work-Life-Furlough Balance

2009-09-04T17:00:00.000-07:00

It finally happened. After months of speculation swirling like a hurricane off the coast, California State University Employees (faculty and staff) are on a furlough system. Other state workers have been furloughed for months before this, and getting IOUs on top on that. I think the IOU days are just about over. But my furlough days are just starting.

I'm sitting on the couch, laptop open, The People's Court is on television (glad I don't have to experience daytime TV too often, though there is something soothing about the easy conflict resolution portrayed on the show). And I'm thinking about how silly it is to expect someone like a professor, who doesn't normally work 9-5 hours, to reduce his or her workload simply by not coming into the office. Many of the academics I know write at home, on the weekends, and during off-hours anyway.

I'm resisting the urge to do any work, thinking that I may actually have to do some work today to stay caught up, and wondering whether writing articles counts as work. If the question is, "Would I write anyway?" the answer is yes. Do I get paid to do it as part of my workload? Yes. So, is it work? Is it enjoyable play? Yes on both counts. It's a wonderful part of my job that these two strands are intertwined. Even my writing this entry could count as a pre-writing for possible articles: work-life balance, organizational identification, emotion labor... I could go on. But am I allowed to?

And so, I've come to the point at which the furlough system breaks down, no longer makes sense, though I'm sure all my academic friends have already come to a similar conclusion.

I turn the channel from the People's Court to a Tool Academy marathon on VH1. On this show boyfriends who cheat on their girlfriends, verbally abuse them, and don't respect them (hence, the "tools") are tricked into coming to a school where they will supposedly learn better relationship and life skills or be booted out of the school and possibly their romantic relationships. I study the communication of gender and masculinity. This show could make a potentially interesting artifact of analysis. Uh oh. Am I suddenly working again? Should I change the channel?

The Department of Compartmentalization

2009-04-17T10:04:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I think I've been successful at--and enjoyed--my teaching career so far is my ability to compartmentalize. While the best teachers are lauded for being inspirational, emotional and exciting in their delivery style, ingenious in their activities, and dedicated and demanding in their grading, I wonder if successful teachers are successful because they've also developed the ability to effectively compartmentalize.

What does this mean? That good teachers leave their emotions and personal lives at the door? Partly, I suppose. Though all the emotion labor research I've read tells me this is ultimately harmful. So, I'm sure there are downsides.

My wife and I put our beloved Black Lab, Val, to sleep last month. I was scheduled to hold office hours that day and to teach a graduate seminar that night. I canceled both. But I went in the next day to teach my 10 am lecture. I was sort of walking around in a daze, though it did help me to be at work doing something. I realized that I honed my ability to take these worries and leave them at the door. I was able to engage students, concentrate on the material, and deliver the material in what I hope was a lively manner.

I again return to my question: does being a good teacher mean, in part, that we must compartmentalize? I know many would disagree, especially when so many teaching moments can be found in the lives we (teachers and students) live outside the classroom. But sometimes I wonder in what ways teachers' abilities to set aside our personal lives fosters effective teaching practices...

Stories as Teaching Tools

2009-03-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since my last post. I've been busy with writing and teaching. In the first case, I've gotten caught up in the revise and resubmit cycle as I submit articles for publication. Same with teaching: prepping, grading, etc. In both of these cases, it's easy to lose track of the stories I'm trying to tell. All of which prompts me to consider the role of stories in my teaching.

For my morning classes, I come into the lecture hall at the tail end of a History professor's basic course. And I listen, caught up in the stories he tells to teach the class about English expansion and Napoleon's conquest, about the development of raw materials like gold and salt as precious commodities, about ethnic strife. And I think about what I teach: theories and concepts broken down into bits and pieces, partly because of who I'm teaching (first-year students), but also, I think, because of the subject matter.

I know that many communication scholars, especially qualitative communication scholars (like H.L. Goodall and others), claim that scholarly articles and theories are themselves narratives, stories. So, what are the stories in a basic communication course?

I'm sure they're there. But because the basic communication course (which often focuses on public speaking) is chunked up into discrete skills (language use, gestures, researching, using citations, supporting arguments, volume, rate, pitch, etc.) for the purpose of teaching students both "life skills" and skills that will be useful to them for the rest of their college careers, the format resists stories and a "big picture" approach. And believe me, I've tried time and again to stress the latter. But without much life experience, it's difficult, I think, for students to appreciate the big picture.

So, the question for me becomes not only what stories do I tell, but how do I tell them? It's a shame that many of the basic studies-general education classes we ask students to take resist the story form, as that's what students are most used to (in songs, movies, television shows). My task, then, is to figure out the stories embedded in common communication experiences and attempt to tell them. But whose stories? Mine? Some students could surely relate, but there's a generation gap that may be difficult to cross. Theirs? I can't speak for them. I continue to look for the stories to tell.

Making the grade, assessing our grading

2008-12-29T20:49:00.000-08:00

I know there are smarter people than me who have written about both of these subjects, but as the semester winds down I can't resist revisiting in a more colloquial way the two topics that are (likely not) near and dear to most teachers' hearts.

It is the point in the semester when students begin asking about their grades, points, can they be "bumped" up since they're so close to the next highest grade, there was an illness they forgot to bring a note in for, they over slept the final exam period, etc. I know these are valid concerns for students, and I was certainly the sort of student who was hyper-concerned with his grades. So, I can give forgive them the barrage of e-mails here. And I don't blame students for often missing the big picture of whether and what they actually learned in class (this is the assessment part). However, the grades-assessment dynamic is something that's easy to lose sight of for teachers as well as students (if students even think about assessment).

I'm not saying grades and assessment have to be dichotomous; it just all too often seems like they are. Students are concerned with grades. Teachers are concerned with assessment. Students don't care about assessment unless it's tied into their grades. After some students engage in what is commonly called "grade grubbing," many teachers just want to chuck the whole grading system out the office window.

I admit, grading is my least favorite teaching duty. I also admit that assessment is one of my favorite. I think this is because I enjoy the myriad possibilities of assessment. In addition to exams, I use reflective writing, presentations, discussions, and short performances. Of course, I have to assign grades (in my case, points) to each of these activities so students will take them seriously. And I suppose that's a common way grading and assessing are folded into each other.

What I'm more concerned with is where these folds rip and grading and assessment appear if not incommensurable then two patches from a different quilt. As I'm sure many teachers and students can attest, getting a good grade doesn't always mean that one has learned something. And, certainly, one can learn something valuable and not achieve the desired grade.

I'm not necessarily offering answers; most teachers will tell you there are no easy ones. And then they'll digress into a highfalutin discussion about it: "isn't interesting that...," "the pedagogical tensions..." Which is what I suppose I'm doing right now. But teaching is a learning process, so I constantly have to ask myself: Am I making the grade on assessment for my classes?

Students cheating: What to do?

2008-11-13T13:50:00.000-08:00

I have my own ways of preventing plagiarism on scholarly papers, most notably using turnitin.com and relying on the vigilance of the graduate teaching associates in our School. I'm also very careful, perhaps overly cautious, about student privacy as per the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). For example, I have on more than one occasion refused to tell parents who contact me how their child is doing in my class. Of course, dealing with "helicopter" parents is another subject altogether. Needless to say, these parents were none too happy that I was not forthcoming with the performance of their children in my class.

But when I read this article about a professor going "vigilante" on students he caught cheating, I had to take a step back and wonder how best we can prevent cheating and plagiarism rather than trying to catch students in a "gotcha" sort of way.

One of the ways I do this to make the turnitin.com match reports that tell me how high a match is to other papers and articles in the database (numbering in the millions) available to the students themselves. What I've found, and this is especially useful for graduate students, is that doing this helps students understand the importance of paraphrasing. First, there's less a chance that they will plagiarize if they have it in their minds from the outset to mostly paraphrase. Second, since a high match only indicates a match to existing text and not outright plagiarism, a closer look reveals how much the student is quoting.

This last part is important for graduate students, as I try to communicate to them that they shouldn't let other scholars speak for them; they shouldn't quote unless the original language is poetic, unique, and otherwise something they couldn't themselves put in a different but equally explanatory way. So, a student sees the match report and gets a first-hand look at how often he or she is quoting. A high match in this case may not mean plagiarism, but it does mean that the student's scholarly writing skills need work in terms of synthesizing ideas and paraphrasing others' ideas.

One certainly fallible way I do my part to prevent and educate students about cheating. I'm not saying the professor in the article linked above eschewed this attitude. It just got me thinking.

Flashback to a simpler time...my old website!

2008-09-18T15:31:00.000-07:00

Just had a strange experience. I went searching for an old hypertext performance I had put together for a graduate class at Arizona State University. It's a personal narrative that plays with voice and the temporal nature of storytelling by using hypertext to lead the reader to (seemingly) unrelated websites that may (or may not) contribute to the story being told. Most of the pages linked from my original page cannot be found, and I didn't bother to update them, but you can experience it here.

The strange part, besides reading what I wrote years ago (which has since been published in a different version), was that this narrative was linked to an old website I created as a Ph.D. student. It listed similar (but ultimately different) research interests and foci for teaching. The descriptions were more complicated yet stunningly simple in their assertions. I've changed them to link to my current page, but before I did I marveled not only at my own assessments of my research and teaching but the fact that I had this other, outdated, piece of me floating in cyberspace. I had literally lost track of myself!

Students as facebook friends: Too much, too close?

2008-08-09T16:36:00.000-07:00

What's the harm? I innocently thought. Having a facebook group for the basic communication class I teach was a great idea (started by a student and now handed over to me and the GTAs for the class). It wasn't long before undergrads (first-year students) started adding me as a friend. Given the group we all belonged to it, I felt refusing to confirm students' friend requests would be a bit of a double-standard. Sure, I would be well within a traditional student-teacher relationship if I had refused, but it seemed a bit hypocritical to encourage them to use the technology to foster community among lecture students and then refuse to fully be a part of that community.

Needless to say, this is no longer a traditional student-teacher relationship, and refusing to confirm students' friend requests of me is not like refusing to give them my home or cell phone number. It's more like asking them to be part of a phone tree with me and then refusing to give them my phone number.

So, social networking technology like facebook (which I believe can be an effective teaching tool) has changed the student-teacher relationship. This isn't news. And others have theorized, speculated, and written about this change better than I can.

More specific for me, I now get news of their photo albums on my own facebook news feed. While none of these photos are of a...compromising nature, some come close. Some involve activities that could be illegal, and others just provide more information about the students than I'd like to know.

The students aren't to blame, although they should think about taking down some of these photos before embarking on a serious job hunt or be "found out" by potential employers doing the regular google-facebook-myspace search of applicants. No, I think it's just a matter of technology fostering unintended consequences in a more nontraditional teacher-student relationship.

Interestingly, I think the next step is to use these experiences of mine as teaching tools in the classroom, examples of the ways technology is both open and public (even when we think it's private or, at the least, harmless to our "online reputations"). I'll certainly include this little talk in my lesson plan for lectures to the basic oral communication class I teach.

So, all I can do now is grin and bear it...and not click on the pictures when the icons pop up in my news feed!

Simple Answers to Difficult Questions

2008-08-07T11:58:00.000-07:00

As Director of our basic course and supervisor of 30-40 Graduate Teaching Associates, I often have to complete online training courses about diversity, sexual harassment, ethics, etc. in the workplace. I (usually) gladly complete them, as I consider those topics important to doing my job well.

With some of the sessions, however, I can't help but be struck by the simple, black-and-white way the "correct" courses of action are portrayed. In the workplace ethics course, for example, if an employee took every "correct" course of action recommended by the program (like calling a co-worker out for using sick days inappropriately), that person would be ostracized at work, find his or her car egged in the parking lot, and generally find that others avoid him or her in the hallways.

I know these courses are meant for people in all positions, but quite a few of the situations just don't apply to being a professor. I used to be more sympathetic to criticisms of scholarly communication research that focused on life in the academy. While I do write autoethnography (not about life as a college teacher, though), and I've read some very good autoethnographies about life in the academy (see Pelias, A Methodology of the Heart, in particular), the label of "navel gazing" both stung and struck a chord with me.

After doing these online classes, though, I've realized how unique our position is in the world of work. We need more research exploring, detailing, and attempting to understand this sphere of work. Much of the Cultural Studies writing about education is a great start, but I'm thinking about more focus on us (the teachers)--If for no other reason than to be able to take online training courses more specifically tailored to our job concerns.

Summertime, and the living's...easy?

2008-07-31T11:28:00.000-07:00

I used to dislike summers. Sounds strange to some, I know. I didn't like summers because school was out. Sounds even stranger, huh? Here's my reason: all my friends were gone, scattered, life was a little less structured, and I had to get a "real" job.

When I got to college, my initial thought was, "This is where I want to spend the rest of my life!" I was done with high school and not interested in going back (I haven't even been back to any reunions). But there was still my summertime blues.

When I became a college teacher and was able to teach in the summers, I got a bit of a respite: structure, social activity, students, and all the other benefits of summer (weather, for one). Now, however, it seems I'm busier during the summer than during the regular school year. How can that be? I suppose part of it is the gear-up: syllabi, orientation schedules for the Graduate Teaching Associates, and catching up on research. I kinda want the summers back now...

Are there any original experiments in social behavior left?

2008-07-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

If the Pulitzer isn't proof of an original thinker, what is? In Communication Studies, we often value building on the work others, even going so far as to do replication studies to test the reliability of the data garnered from a particular study. This doesn't seem to be the case of this social experiment in the name of journalism.

How to "fix" a basic communication course?

2008-07-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

Well, not fix so much as refine, revise, and improve.

My colleagues and I did some work on our basic communication course this past year with a grant from San Diego State's Course Design Institute/People, Information, Communication, and Technology institute. Here's the presentation from the CDI YouTube channel. Thanks to Suzanne and the ITS/CDI crew!

I'm planning more changes for this year, though it's a bit daunting when considering the impact on the 5,000 or so students we get in the basic course every year. Imagine steering a very sensitive, 50 foot yacht--even the slightest adjustment will be felt relatively strongly by all the passengers, and given its size it may be more difficult to readjust as the trip goes on. I've never been "yachting" (in case you get any misconceptions about professors' salaries here at SDSU!), but that seems to me to be an apt metaphor.

At any rate, watch the presentation and you'll get an idea of the complexities of teaching 5,000 first-year students (probably about 96% of all first-year students at SDSU) in a large lecture/break-out format. Of particular interest to me is the use of the facebook study group, which just happened by accident this past Spring but I plan to use deliberately this Fall. The clickers to which I refer, course response systems from einstruction.com, also worked out well. I'm interested to hear from others who've used similar technology in their classes.

Liking your job too much...

2008-07-03T15:13:00.000-07:00

I love my job. It's no secret. And even though my wife, Heather, often tells me I need to spend less time at the office, here am I on yet another holiday's eve (this one is July 4th) prepping for classes and getting some writing done. The main office is closed, all my colleagues are gone, and I'm reading about the Human Relations and Human Resources approach to Organizational Communication.

I find this more than a bit ironic. The Human Resources approach signaled a shift from a management attitude that assumed people didn't really want to work and needed to be closely monitored (for example, watching employees to make sure they're not chatting online) to an attitude of: "If you make the job fulfilling, people will want to work. In fact, it's human nature for people to need to be part of something bigger than themselves, like an organization."

So, here am I, needing to be fulfilled and finding my job fulfilling. But at what cost? I suppose it's the nature of this particular academic beast to work "overtime" prepping, grading papers, writing, and all the while thinking, "At least I don't have a 9 to 5 job." But when 9 to 5 becomes 8-6 or (like this past Spring semester) 7-10, it might be time to put things in perspective and get a hobby (again, something Heather tells me I should have). Ah well, at least the hallways are quiet.

Do white people really love grammar this much?

2008-05-14T19:47:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure I buy this, although I did spend some time marking such mistakes on graduate student theses this semester. Hmmm...

What will imitation get us? Playing With Identity in Classroom Performance

2008-05-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

"For one of my class group presentations, the students created a game show. One of them was performing you being the host."

The graduate teaching associate who told me this seemed amused. And, on hearing about it, so was I. Imitation, as they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. I'm not sure that's what this student had in mind when he dressed and spoke like me, but I was game to find out.

In the large lecture this student attends, I asked him before class if he wanted to start things off in lecture...as me. Luckily, he was still had his shirt, tie, and glasses from the presentation. I turned over the mic and, without saying a word, took a seat and let him do his thing. He introduced himself as me, walked around the class reviewing different concepts we'd already talked about, and proclaiming himself a Detroit sports fan (which I do in lectures when providing examples of group cohesion: the Tigers--maybe not this year, though).

I'm happy to say he was hilarious. I'm not sure how good the imitation was, but I suspect that others would tell me this student's version of me was "spot on."

Now, here's the interesting thing. As I started the lecture for that day, I found myself painfully conscious of my own voice and gestures. Everything I did seemed to repeat what this student had just performed. "Do I really sound like this," I thought. "Does my body really move like this?"

This imitation, "mimesis" as Derrida might call it, enabled a sort of subversion of traditional teacher-student authority. By audiencing this playing with identity, the class explored ways I might not live up to the traditional classroom authority figure (of course, no one person can anyway). Considering I gave permission for this student to "play around," I'm not sure how subversive it might be considered. But it's probably one of the few ways it could be achieved in a 500-seat lecture.

What I'm more interested in is the pedagogy of this playing around. This student's performance prompted me to consider ways I may or may engage the students with my own classroom performance. It gave me an idea of how the student's might view me (albeit, a circumscribed view exaggerated for comedic effect). In short, he made me question the way I teach, which is always a good thing. I'd hate to stop learning when there's always something my students can teach me.

Ethnographically speaking...

2008-04-14T18:00:00.000-07:00

I was invited to "translate" one of my articles into a Communication Currents column. Communication Currents is the National Communication Association's version of Psychology Today, except online. The editor, currently Joann Keyton, invites people who have recently published in a NCA journal to "translate" their scholarly article into something more accessible to a person outside of the discipline, a layperson.

My piece, "Smashing Stereotypes? Communicating Disability in Wheelchair Rugby," will up for a couple of months. You can find it here.

This idea appealed to me because like so many of the communication scholars I admire, Bud Goodall, Nick Trujillo, Amira DelaGarza, and Patricia Geist-Martin, I'm interested in the ways communication scholarship can be translated into books one might find on the shelves of Borders and Barnes and Noble.

The experience was a bit difficult, though, as I'm used to speaking in this language called "academia." Disciplinary territoriality, building walls around one's department for fear of invaders and intruders claiming to study the same thing the same way, has no doubt contributed to this ossification of our lingua franca here in the academy (see, I'm doing it again: "ossification," "lingua franca," good grief!). We don't get credit for learning the other, more widely spoken language of the popular press (at least not in communication). That leaves me tongue-tied.

The Worst Arguments of 2007

2008-01-01T09:25:00.000-08:00

Doing my usual reading of Slate.com, I came across a piece on the worst arguments from the Bush administration in 2007, which I cut and pasted below (link to original). Although specious arguments from the Bush Administration will not likely surprise any student or scholar of communication, persuasion, the law, or philosophy, it's nearly impossible not to recoil in horror, shock, and puzzlement at at least a few of these items.

Legal Fictions: The Bush administration's dumbest legal arguments of the year

By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Friday, Dec. 28, 2007, at 6:32 PM ET

This time last year, I offered up a top 10 list of the most appalling civil-liberties violations by the Bush administration in 2006. The grim truth is, not much has changed. The Bush administration continues to limit our basic freedoms, conceal its own worst behavior, and insist that it does all this in order to make us more free. In that spirit, it seemed an opportune moment to commemorate the administration's worst legal justifications and arguments of the year. And so I humbly offer this new year's roundup: The Bush Administration's Top 10 Stupidest Legal Arguments of 2007.

10. The NSA's eavesdropping was limited in scope.
Not at all. Recent revelations suggest the program was launched earlier than we'd been led to believe, scooped up more information than we were led to believe, and was not at all narrowly tailored, as we'd been led to believe. Surprised? Me neither.

9. Scooter Libby's sentence was commuted because it was excessive.
Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was found guilty of perjury and obstructing justice in connection with the outing of Valerie Plame. In July, before Libby had served out a day of his prison sentence, President Bush commuted his sentence, insisting the 30-month prison sentence was "excessive." In fact, under the federal sentencing guidelines, Libby's sentence was perfectly appropriate and consistent with positions advocated by Bush's own Justice Department earlier this year.

8. The vice president's office is not a part of the executive branch.
We also learned in July that over the repeated objections of the National Archives, Vice President Dick Cheney exempted his office from Executive Order 12958, designed to safeguard classified national security information. In declining such oversight in 2004, Cheney advanced the astounding legal proposition that the Office of the Vice President is not an "entity within the executive branch" and hence is not subject to presidential executive orders. When, in January 2007, the Information Security Oversight Office asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resolve the dispute, Cheney recommended the executive order be amended to abolish the Information Security Oversight Office altogether. In a new interview with Mike Isikoff at Newsweek, the director of the ISOO stated that his fight with Cheney's office was a "contributing" factor in his decision to quit after 34 years.

7. The Guantanamo Bay detainees enjoy more legal rights than any prisoners of war in history.
This has been one of the catchiest refrains of the war on terror, right up there with the claim that the prisoners there are well-fed and cared for. The government brief in the December Supreme Court appeal on the rights of these detainees to contest their detentions proudly proclaimed that the "detainees now enjoy greater procedural protections and statutory rights to challenge their wartime detentions than any other captured enemy combatants in the history of war." That certainly sounds plausible. But as my colleague Emily Bazelon detailed here in Slate, a vast gaggle of historians, constitutional scholars, and retired military officers vehemently dispute that characterization of the legal processes afforded the detainees. The argument that Guantanamo prisoners have greater rights than they would otherwise be afforded relies on deep distortions of both fact and law.

6. Water-boarding may not be torture.
Water-boarding is torture. It's torture under the Geneva Conventions and has been treated as a war crime in the United States for decades. The answer to the question of its legality should be as simple as the answer to whether boiling prisoners in oil is legal. But in his confirmation hearings to become U.S. attorney general, Michael Mukasey could not bring himself to agree. He claimed not to have been "read into" the interrogation program and to be incapable of speculating about hypothetical techniques. He added that he did not want to place U.S. officials "in personal legal jeopardy" and that such remarks might "provide our enemies with a window into the limits or contours of any interrogation program." Even Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., seems to be catching on to what it means when senior legal advisers find themselves incapable of calling water-boarding torture.

5. Everyone who has ever spoken to the president about anything is barred from congressional testimony by executive privilege.
This little gem of an argument was cooked up by the White House last July when the Senate judiciary committee sought the testimony of former White House political director Sara Taylor, as well as that of former White House counsel Harriet Miers, in connection with the firing of nine U.S. attorneys for partisan ideological reasons. Taylor was subpoenaed in June and, according to her lawyers, she wanted to testify but was barred by White House counsel Fred Fielding's judgment that the president could compel her to assert executive privilege and forbid her testimony. As Bruce Fein argued in Slate, that dramatic over-reading of the privilege would both preclude congressional oversight of any sort and muzzle anyone who'd ever communicated with the president, regardless of their wish to talk.

4. Nine U.S. attorneys were fired by nobody, but for good reason.
Of course, the great legal story of 2007 was the unprecedented firing of nine U.S. attorneys who either declined to prosecute Democrats or were too successful in prosecuting Republicans. After months of congressional hearings, subpoenas, and investigations, the mastermind behind the plan to replace these prosecutors with "loyal Bushies" has yet to be determined. The decision is instead blamed on a "process" wherein unnamed senior department officials came to a "consensus" decision. No one is willing to name names, even though the firings were ostensibly legal, because, in the words of the president himself, these prosecutors all "serve at the pleasure of the president" and can be fired for any reason. Nevertheless, the firing of the nine U.S. attorneys—many of whom had stellar records and job reviews—remains shrouded in secrecy, although at least according to everyone who's testified, they were all fired for good reasons (which also cannot be articulated).

3. Alberto Gonzales.
I am forced to put the former attorney general into his own category only because were I to attempt to round up his best legal whoppers of the calendar year, it would overwhelm the rest of the list. As Paul Kiel over at Talking Points Memo so aptly put it earlier this year, Gonzales was and is clearly "the lying-est attorney general in recent history." Kiel went on to catalog Gonzales' six most egregious legal lies of the year, but I'll focus here on just two. First, his claim at a March press conference that he "was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on" with respect to the U.S. attorney firings. This was debunked shortly thereafter when Kyle Sampson testified that Gonzales was frequently updated throughout the process. Second, his April testimony that he had not "talked to witnesses because of the fact that I haven't wanted to interfere with this investigation and department investigations," which was promptly contradicted by Monica Goodling's testimony about his efforts to coordinate his version of the story with hers.

2. State secrets.
Again, it's virtually impossible to cite the single most egregious assertion by the Bush administration of the state-secrets privilege, because there are so many to choose from. This doctrine once barred the introduction into court of specific evidence that might compromise national security, but in the hands of the Bush administration, it has ballooned into a doctrine of blanket immunity for any conduct the administration wishes to hide. The privilege was invoked in 2007 to block testimony about its torture and extraordinary rendition program, its warrantless surveillance program, and to defend the notion of telecom immunity for colluding in government eavesdropping, among other things. No longer an evidentiary rule, the state-secrets privilege has become one of the administration's surest mechanisms for shielding its most egregious activities.

1. The United States does not torture.
First there was the 2002 torture memo. That was withdrawn. Then there was the December 2004 statement that declared torture "abhorrent." But then there was the new secret 2005 torture memo. But members of Congress were fully briefed about that. Except that they were not. There was Abu Ghraib. There were the destroyed CIA tapes. So you see, the United States does not torture. Except for when it does.

Snow Job

2007-12-24T12:29:00.000-08:00

One of the things I miss living in the West is snow. I miss the snow for the way it made me see things differently, the way it changed my perspective, if only for a moment. I know I could go up into the mountains, but it's not the same as having it come to you. The most serene and peaceful times in my life have been walking through the sleeping streets of the college town where I did my undergraduate degree, stopping in the middle of the pillowy sidewalk and listening to the snow fall the ground. It was as if the entire city were frozen, suspended in the amber from the buzzing streetlights.

In the Back Seat of Mom's LTD

2007-04-09T13:23:00.000-07:00

I've been using Rhapsody music player lately and love it. While they don't yet have all of "my" music available, I stumbled across some songs that had special meaning for me.

I'm not saying they're all good songs, but for anyone who grew up in the 70s riding in the back seat of their parents' LTD (or some other monstrous gas guzzler), you may be able to relate.

Just click on the title of this post and enjoy!

Paid to Talk

2007-03-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

Getting to paid to talk isn't always a good thing. What you have to say may not interest others, and unfortunately, most people don't get paid to listen. This is where writing comes in handy. An imagined audience is sometimes the best audience.