Dr. Chris Anson

Over the course of the next few months the CRDM blog will periodically feature a Q + A with one of our outstanding faculty members. We take classes with them and work with them on scholarly projects, but now we’d like to learn more about what else they’re doing. We’ve talked with David Rieder, Jessica Jameson, Matt May, David Berube, Susan Katz, Maria Pramaggiore, Susan Miller-Cochran, Robert Schrag, Carolyn R. Miller, Brad Mehlenbacher, R. Michael Young, Jason Swarts, Adriana de Souza e Silva, Elizabeth Craig, Andrew Binder, and Victoria Gallagher, and we recently caught up with University Distinguished Professor Chris Anson, English and CRDM faculty member:

What are you reading?

Recently and at present:

–The Huff Post

–Academic books and articles too numerous to list

–Losing It (very funny)

–Tomatoland (very shocking)

–Unequal Democracy (scary)

–Zeitoun (hard to stop reading)

What classes are you teaching?

ENG 455, Literacy in the U.S. This course also has a service-learning component in which the students tutor kids in very poor areas of Raleigh for a couple of hours a week.

What are you writing about?

Dr. Anson actually does not study this kind of WAC.

–Working on a case study of transfer of discourse knowledge across contexts (or lack thereof)–supporting “strong” theories of negative transfer.

–Continuing to work on the program for the Conference on College Composition and Communication in St. Louis in March.

–Doing final revisions on an article on international writing program administration, with Tiane Donahue.

–Doing final revisions on an article on the role of faculty writing in WAC/CAC programs, for a collection edited by Eodice and Geller.

–Doing final revisions on an invited essay for College Composition and Communication (a special issue on methodology) focusing on the use of eye trackers in literacy research.

–Final drafting of an article for the Journal of Higher Education on the data from the last two years of our NSSE project (National Survey of Student Engagement), in which we persuaded NSSE to add 27 questions about writing to their national survey.

What are you listening to?

At present:

NOT Jewel

–Tool, but I wish they’d produce the new album (it’s been 5 years). In a noisy venue last year, when I jokingly said I wished the DJ would play some Tool, Wendi Sierra thought I said “Jewell.” Jewell??!!

–The new Black Keys CD, El Camino

–Rediscovering John Mayall’s The Turning Point (ancient history, but so good)

–CDs of my niece’s jazz band in Chicago (Zing)

–Johnny Winter Blues Band, esp. Second Winter

–The short-lived but mega-talented Blind Faith (only one album)

What are you watching?

Recently or at present:

–Midnight in Paris

–The Descendants

–The Artist

–The Iron Lady

–The new Planet of the Apes (loved the first ones)

–Stewart and Colbert, M-Th, for all my political news

–Anything with Gordon Ramsey (mostly Hell’s Kitchen)

About these ads