The CEA Forum (College English Association, Texas Digital Library - TDL E-Journals)
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Special Research Column: Empathetic Genres, Empathetic Spaces, and Mentoring: Examining Contemporary Research on First-Generation College Students in First-Year Writing
No full textThis article focuses on contemporary research on first-generation college students bringing to light pedagogical interventions that can be used in the classroom to help engage and retain these students. The pedagogical interventions focus on reflective and personal writing in the classroom, creating safe spaces, and opening up opportunities for mentorship for first-generation college students. Many interventions exist for retaining first-generation college students at the university level, such as TRIO programs, but examining ways to engage these students in the classroom is also a beneficial practice
Digital Liminality and Cross-Cultural Re-integration in the Middle East
No full textThis essay develops a theory of “digital liminality” as a way to analyze the role of technology in the classroom, and in students’ lives. It is also a report on the ESL classroom as a site of intercultural exchange between instructors and Muslim students. The role of digital media in higher ed was a question I had to confront at a Middle Eastern University, where students exhibited a strong cell phone addiction. I theorized Saudi students’ immersion in their cells as a liminal phase during a university rite of passage. Digital technology exposed them to things that would be inadmissible when they were later reintegrated into a deeply conservative society. My students wrote about living between “Western freedoms,” and a world of submission, where most of them would work and raise families. In my Freshman English courses, a temporary cell-free zone was established, enabling students to defamiliarize their use of digital technologies. Students investigated their own role as “threshold people” on the verge of a new way of life, critically examining their own digitally mediated liminality. Students then did presentations about the challenges of re-incorporation in a Saudi context. Combining ethnographic fieldwork and ESL theory and practice, I integrate excerpts from student journals, providing a personal perspective on my analysis of digital liminality, and ESL classrooms as intercultural crossroads
"I Can\u27t Relate": Refusing Identification Demands in Teaching and Learning
No full textIn literature, composition, and other areas of English Studies, relateability can be an important tool to inscribe marginalized subjects as academic citizens. However, its larger arc reproduces ethnocentric and individualistic ideologies at the national and personal levels that foreclose the true understanding of and engagement with Otherness that defines learning. What are the particular intellectual and other challenges, pleasures, and rewards of refusing the pedagogical imperative to engage and understand through identification? I conclude the article by deploying theorists of difference to ask what it means to understand difference as difference, how this understanding might be facilitated, and what the value of such an understanding might be
Cartooning as a Creative Classroom Response: Picturing Emily Dickinson and Her Poetry
No full textThis essay describes an exercise that used cartooning to engage first-year cadets at the United States Military Academy (West Point) with the poetry of Emily Dickinson. It shows how the exercise fit into the overall curriculum and supported course objectives
From Candy Crush to Catan: One Student\u27s Perspective on the Benefits of Gaming in Academia
No full textIn the spring semester of 2015, I, a fresh-faced sophomore in college, made the bold decision to take a class called, “The Rhetoric of Gaming.” Having only really played games during my childhood, this choice was perhaps a bit naïve of me. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was the definition of what some like to refer to as a “casual,” “plebe,” or even “newb,” depending upon the decade in which you spent your teen years. In fact, I was even below that. I truly had absolutely no business being in that classroom. I was a hater, actively dismissive of gaming and the surrounding culture as a whole. Not only did I feel like games were solely for entertainment, but I also thought that, even as modes of entertainment, gaming ultimately had little to no value. Even worse still, gaming, in my mind, was a boy’s club in the most detestable way imaginable. When I imagined gamers, I saw horrifying scenes of men hurling violent, sexist insults at one another over Xbox live. Even though I typically think of myself as an open-minded person, everything I knew of gaming and gamers was based completely on harmful stereotypes. Putting all this aside, when you consider that my peak gaming experience occurred when Kim Kardashian: Hollywood was released, it was abundantly clear that I had a deficit from the moment I walked into the classroom. I had absolutely no idea what to expect and no way to relate to my peers regarding gaming. When they spoke of FPSs and MMOs, I responded with WTFs and IDKs. Considering all of this, enrolling in the Gaming class was probably one of the most foolish decisions I’ve made during my academic career. However, much to my surprise, it also became one of the most rewarding ones as well
English Education and the Teaching of Literature
No full textThis article discusses ways literature is taught at the university. It describes a gap in the way English is often taught in literature programs and the way future teachers are taught to teach English to secondary students. It argues for teaching literature in ways that might be good for majors in both fields, ways that support the work valued by each sub-discipline
Wands or Quills? Lessons in Pedagogy from Harry Potter
No full textThis essay is grounded in the scholarship of teaching and learning and will focus specifically on the ways in which the Harry Potter books highlight the diversity of learning and teaching styles; privilege active experiential learning and problem solving over passive rote learning; and emphasize the benefits of collaboration over competition. Through analysis of the teaching styles and pedagogy of Professors Binns, Umbridge, Snape, Lupin, and Sprout, I illustrate that a pedagogical approach such as active learning is only successful when coupled with a supportive, non-threatening, cooperative learning environment in which critical thinking and risk-taking are encouraged and rewarded
A Reflection from the Classroom: Teaching Students to See from the Perspective of the Player
No full textThis personal reflection looks at the benefits of using performance pedagogy in the Shakespeare classroom, both in terms of a general understanding of the period and a student\u27s personal connection to the text. Though the essay acknowledges our profession\u27s ongoing dialogue in this area, it mostly seeks to look at how a student may change once she becomes aware of how an actor must split his perspective when acting: that is to say, seeing through the eyes of the character, but also seeing how the audience responds to that character. The essay includes personal anecdotes about students who act in the classroom, respond to actors in the classroom, and write about that response in journal entries