The CEA Forum (College English Association, Texas Digital Library - TDL E-Journals)
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In Defense of Clichés: A Half-Hearted Polemic
No full textThis column considers a) how clichés are conventionally approached in the writing classroom and b) why such approaches are often misguided. At the core of this column is the idea that clichés are important tokens of community that bind speaker and audience, writer and reader. This essay does not endorse absolutely the use of clichés in student writing, but neither does it condemn it. Rather, this essay suggests that writing instructors and students alike should approach the use of clichés with more nuance and awareness of their cultural and linguistic functions
Vision and Revision: The Whys and Hows of Employing Creative Writing Pedagogy in the College Classroom
No full textCurrent research suggests that students who struggle with grammar, spelling, mechanics and other “problems of ability,” as well as students who suffer from “problems of engagement,” as well as those students who see reading and writing as a chore, can benefit from creative writing assignments and learn to enjoy reading and writing on the college level through this genre of writing. This paper explores several benefits from teaching creative writing in composition courses, and proposes that creative writing assignments be assigned to composition students as a precursor to teaching academic writing.
Several Anglophone countries worldwide have been deploying creative writing pedagogies in their English classrooms as replacements for, or supplements to, other forms of college writing with great success
Teaching All-Female and Non-Binary Shakespeare at the Performance
No full textThis essay analyzes student experiences of studying all-female and non-binary cast Shakespeare productions in the Seattle area, including upstart crow collective’s Richard III and The Fern Shakespeare Company’s Much Ado About Nothing. I draw on my teaching of the experimental work of these regional companies in an upper-level special topics course focused on all-female and non-binary Shakespeare, “Early Modern Drama on the Modern Stage,” to articulate the pedagogical value of students’ experiences of representation in live theater performances of Shakespeare. I argue for the importance of intentionally framing such inclusively-cast productions, and describe the enlivened learning that emerges from students’ creative and analytical engagements with the local voices of modern Shakespearean performance, which offer representations of their identities in live theater within their own communities. To do so, I detail students’ responses to these performances, their study of the history of women’s Shakespeare, and the classroom products—including two major collaborative projects—that document their learning at the site of performance
Performance Cruxes and Consequences: Teaching Shakespeare with Text and Performance
No full textThis article outlines a pedagogy that conceptually links the study of textual "cruxes" in Shakespearean editorial practice to moments of indeterminancy in theatrical performance in order to structure students\u27 experience of attending, interpreting, and writing about a live production of a Shakespeare play
Proceedings from the 2019 CEA Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana: Imaginative Revision Strategies in the Foundational Writing Classroom: Envisioning an Essay as a Documentary Film
No full textWith an expansive view of essay revision,this article explores the ways in which writing students can successfully draw upon documentary films as aids in the revision process. This article argues that engaging with visual media and identifying the multiple ways in which documentary films introduce their subjects, organize and present information and perspectives, provide historical context and draw upon expert sources can suggest similar approaches for essays. Documentary-enabled revision is particularly suited to the contemporary age of visual media, in which students are often immersed
Teaching Remedial English to Navajo Students: Problems with Reading
No full textI have been teaching English composition for almost 9 years at a 2-year branch campus near the Navajo reservation in New Mexico. The composition of my students is mostly Navajo with some Hispanics, Zuni, and Caucasian. Based on my observation, the majority of my students in remedial English composition classes had difficulties in reading comprehension. Several of my students had problems reading the vocabulary, and they did not understand what they read. The majority of the students did not discuss the readings during group discussions. Several of my students resisted doing library research as part of the assignment. A few students in each class did not purchase or could not afford the textbook. This made me explore the reasons behind this problem in a hope to better help my students improve their reading comprehension. Previous literature on Navajo students’ reading comprehension were limited. Based on several pieces of previous literature (e.g., Conn; Hartle-Schutte; Janzen; Miller and Johnson; Rosier and Farella; Spolsky; Vorih and Rosier; Wieczkiewicz), Navajo students’ reading levels were below the national average, which could be related to their low accessibility to literacy and poor living conditions on or near the reservation. Adequate instructions associated with Navajo culture and tradition are recommended and provided at educational institutions to provide suitable instructions to help Navajo students in reading
The Shock of Learning: Literary Pornography in the Classroom
No full textUsing as a case study the experience of teaching Jane DeLynn’s Leash (2002), a “pornosophical” novel about a sadomasochistic lesbian relationship, I argue in this essay for the pedagogical value of shock. I argue that shocking works of pornography can unsettle not only students\u27 comfortable understandings of sexuality, but also comfortable assumptions that we as teachers and critics of literature might have about our own practice. Additionally, I use my experience of teaching Leash to reflect on the teaching of pornography within the context of literary studies and on the place of written pornography in the growing academic field of pornography studies
William Blake’s Emoji: Composite Art and Composition
No full textThis article explores how college instructors can use William Blake’s unique pairing of image and text – what W.J.T. Mitchell calls “composite art” – to encourage students to think and write about the dynamic interplay of image and text in modern communications. Opening with an anecdote of teaching Songs of Innocence and of Experience in writing classes, the article first traces the similarities between Blake’s composite art and the “emojis” popular in electronic messages. Like emojis, the images in Blake’s work (especially those in the margins and those intertwined with the lettering) underline, develop, transform, and in some cases challenge the text with which they are paired. The article then examines how studying Blake’s work can help students think critically about the function of emojis. Growing numbers of people, especially college students, are increasingly using images to express ideas every day. When composition and literature classes ignore the centrality of images in much of today’s communications, they pass up an opportunity to prompt students to examine their own daily engagement in a kind of modern composite art. The final section explores strategies for incorporating image and text into classroom lessons and a series of assignments. These assignments gradually lead students into deeper considerations of the role of visual elements in communication