Dr. R. Michael Young

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, Chris Anson, Matt May, David Berube, Susan Katz, Maria Pramaggiore, Susan Miller-Cochran, Robert Schrag, Carolyn R. Miller, Brad Mehlenbacher, Jason Swarts, Adriana de Souza e Silva, Elizabeth Craig, Andrew Binder, and Victoria Gallagher, and we recently caught up with CRDM affiliated faculty member Dr. R. Michael Young, Associate Professor of Computer Science:

What are you reading?

I’m listening to the audiobook of Stephen King’s new novel 11/22/63. I’m in the middle of Inderjeet Mani’s The Imagined Moment (hardcover). I’ve been checking out Ax Cop lately.

What classes are you teaching?

 This semester I’m teaching CSC482: Advanced Game Development Projects, which is always an adventure. I’m excited to teach two cool courses in the Fall. One is CSC281, Foundations of Interactive Game Design. The other is a seminar course I’m teaching at Duke’s program on Film and Visual Studies called The Pragmatics of Computational Cinematography.

What are you writing about?

While I’ve got a number of ongoing projects on various elements of interactive narrative and games, I’m working hard to find time to start writing about automatic cinematography, especially from the perspective of a pragmatics/Gricean approach that leverages the kind of work already done in computational linguistics around natural language discourse generation.

What are you listening to?

This Week in Tech, Mac Break Weekly, You Look Nice Today, WNYC’s Radiolab, The Incomparable Podcast, KQED’s Forum.

Last three songs played on Spotify: The Way We Were, Barbra Streisand; Peace of Mind, Boston; Amish Paradise, “Weird Al” Yankovic.

What are you watching?

 Game of Thrones, House of Lies, The Killing, Adventure Time, Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Game of Thrones.

But does he like Game of Thrones? I guess we’ll never know.

Dr. Brad Mehlenbacher

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, Chris Anson, Matt May, David Berube, Susan Katz, Maria Pramaggiore, Susan Miller-Cochran, Robert Schrag, Carolyn R. Miller, R. Michael Young, Jason Swarts, Adriana de Souza e Silva, Elizabeth Craig, Andrew Binder, and Victoria Gallagher, and we recently caught up with CRDM affiliated faculty member Dr. Brad Mehlenbacher, Associate Professor, Leadership, Policy, Adult and Higher Education, College of Education:

What are you reading?

Bowling Alone Together

It always feels slightly overwhelming to me to be asked about my favorite books. In what context, for what purpose, to what end, at what point in my life? When I was nineteen, my favorite books were anything by Pynchon and Vonnegut. Books I find myself returning to regularly these days include Bereiter’s (2002) “Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age,” Lewis, Amini, and Lannon’s (2000) “A General Theory of Love,” and Jonessen’s (2001) “Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology.” Something interesting is going on between my reading of Putnam’s (2000) “Bowling Alone” and Turkle’s (2011) “Alone Together.” I collect other reading materials at
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~brad_m/cites.html
.

What classes are you teaching?

This semester I’m teaching two online courses, EAC 581: Advanced Instructional Design, and EAC 586: Techniques and Methods for Training and Development. In the future, I’m excited about teaching separate courses on communication, technology, and game design for educational contexts.

What are you writing about?

Who, me? Distracted?

Currently writing about the use of social media for engineering communication. As well, I am working on a manuscript about the relationship between modern technologies, learning, and attention/distraction. A side (research) project of mine involves reading books such as Greer’s (2011) “The Wealth of Nature” and contrasting distressing projections of America’s future in relation to energy depletion and global economic collapse against Higher Education’s visions of technical determinism and idealistic innovation. Mostly I toggle between five or six books and write down citations that either excite me or that frustrate me, for later use.

What are you listening to?

Nouvelle Vague

Several years ago I decided that one indication of getting old is that one settles on several key musicians and listens only to them. At the time, my list had reduced itself to Springsteen, U2, Sting, and R.E.M. These days I listen to anything anyone recommends I listen to, including Indie Rock (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The National, Metric), Songwriter (Bright Eyes, The Magnetic Fields, The Tragically Hip), Brit-Pop (Oasis, Coldplay, Death Cab For Cutie), Americana (Steve Earle, Cowboy Junkies, Kathleen Edwards), New Wave (Elvis Costello, David Bowie, The Pretenders), and Contemporary artists (Lana Del Ray, Kimbra, La Roux). Recent favorites include by Mumford & Sons, Linnzi Zaorski, and Nouvelle Vague. Suggest an album: tonight I listened to the soundtrack of “The Hunger Games.”

What are you watching?

Dr. Who, The Walking Dead, Sherlock, Fringe, Pulling, Battlestar Galactica, Jekyll, Stargate Universe, Archer. I have watched DVD series with my daughters since they were little: our first 140-hour series together was Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Dr. Carolyn R. Miller

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, Chris Anson, Matt May, David Berube, Susan Katz, Maria Pramaggiore, Susan Miller-Cochran, Robert Schrag, 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 Dr. Carolyn R. Miller, SAS Institute Distinguished Professor in the English Department:

What are you reading?

This year, it seems that all I read are dissertation chapters; I’m also directing and assisting with quite a few master’s projects this spring, so I’m spending a fair amount of time reading drafts of those, as well. I try to keep up with various journals (at least the tables of contents!), such as QJS, P&R, RSQ, and a few others. I still read a paper newspaper every morning (the N&O) and try to catch up with top news and opinion (Paul Krugman is a favorite) in the online NY Times in the evening. In my spare moments, I read the New Yorker (for ex, a harrowing article about the orphans of Argentina’s “dirty war”) andThe New Republic. I find it hard to keep a book going during the semester, but over winter break I read Steven Greenblatt’s The Swerve (about the 16th-c rediscovery of the prescient existentialist Roman author Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura). I’m eager to get to The Golden Mean by Canadian Annabel Lyon (a novel about the relationship between the young Alexander the Great and his teacher, Aristotle) and Garry Wills’s Rome and Rhetoric. When I travel, I love to read books about the places I’m visiting, such as, last summer, Donna Leon’s mysteries set in Venice.

What classes are you teaching?

This spring I’m teaching a special topics course on Emerging Genres, where we’re exploring how genres can be both stabilizing and dynamic and how various theorists have thought about the relationship between genre, medium, and mode. Next fall I’ll teach CRD 702 again and I’m currently thinking about what books to order and what adjustments to make since I last taught it 2 years ago. I’ve also recently taught Rhetorical Criticism and Rhetoric of Science and Technology.

What are you writing about?

The origin of genres?

I’m trying to write about emerging genres, both by looking at the process of emergence that’s going on all around us (student work helps me a lot with this!) and by looking at historical examples. In particular, I’m interested in how genres emerge into the consciousness of those for whom they are genres (if genres are social agreements, how do we reach those agreements?). One goal is to understand the appeal of  the model of biological evolution, which was applied to genres not long after Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859.

What are you listening to?

I’m not good at parallel processing, so I don’t listen while I’m reading or writing. And I gave up on pop music long ago, so I mostly listen to classical and jazz and some “world” including African, Latin, and Brazilian. Would the NC Symphony count as a “favorite band”? Anyway, they gave a compelling performance of Brahms’ First Symphony last Friday. At home I prefer chamber music and small jazz groups and soloists like Brad Mehldau, Chick Corea and Gary Burton, and local artists Steve Hobbs and Elmer Gibson. I recently stumbled on a group called Montana Skies, guitar and cello, jazz fusion. I’m an NPR junkie in the car and in the kitchen. Podcasts when I don’t catch the shows live: On the Media, This American Life, The Writer’s Almanac.

What are you watching?

Birds, in my backyard. We don’t have TV to speak of (digital rabbit ears, while we wait for fiber optic to come down our street). Thus, I remain blissfully oblivious to a lot of contemporary culture. Over winter break while visiting my brother, I watched all 7 of last year’s Downton Abbey episodes in 3 days, and I’m eager to catch up with the current season (maybe next December?). My Netflix queue includes recent films like The Social Networkand classics like Butterfield 8. I belong to the Raleigh film club Cinema, Inc., which shows both recent and classic films at the Rialto once a month; one recent film was Hitchcock’s 1936 Sabotage, one of his darkest.

 

 

 

 

Dr. Robert Schrag

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, Chris Anson, Matt May, David Berube, Susan Katz, Maria Pramaggiore, Susan Miller-Cochran, 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 Dr. Robert Schrag, CRDM faculty member and professor in the Department of Communication:

What are you reading?

My Google Reader feeds me a bunch of Science and Technology sources, Science News, The Smithsonian, PC World, Science. It feeds my interest in the hardware side of new technology and my amateur interest in string theory and theoretical physics.

I also read a lot of pubs and blogs about art – fine art, music, and yes, obviously, cooking and food.

I am addicted to mysteries and fantasy/sci-fi novels. These I hide on my Kindle.

What classes are you teaching?

My teaching focus is primarily on developing undergrad courses about, and using digital technology. I now teach more students online than in the classroom.

What are you writing about?

I am writing a textbook with Dr. Funkhouser aimed at our COM 250 course “Communication Technology” that we feel will have a wide national audience.

I write a blog for my online courses that is reprinted as a column in The Senior Correspondent:
http://www.seniorcorrespondent.com/
 (editor’s note: click on the image to the left for Dr. Schrag’s column)

What are you listening to?

I tend to listen to classical music when working. Pandora stations then fill in when I’m not – old stuff, Beatles, Bee Gees, Drifters, and Jazz by instrument. I’m particularly partial to the sax and the clarinet.

When I’m in the car I hop between NPR, the classical station and ESPN radio.

Long trips – books on CD, the mystery thing.

What are you watching?

The first few years of my teaching career I taught media analysis classes and tried to watch an episode of everything on TV while following all episodes of several shows – taught seminars on M*A*S*H and Northern Exposure.  As a result I now watch almost no TV except for old mystery series on Netflix.  I will watch TED talks on my iPad.  Movies I lean to the indie stuff that comes to the Rialto, the Colony, etc., where we can get wine with our popcorn

Dr. Susan Miller-Cochran

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, Chris Anson, Matt May, David Berube, Susan Katz, Maria Pramaggiore, 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 Dr. Susan Miller-Cochran, CRDM faculty member and director of First-Year Writing Program:

What are you reading?

I spend most of my academic reading time keeping up with CCC, College English, WPA, Computers and Composition, and Kairos. I’m really excited to read the new Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, too–it looks promising. Shipka’s Toward a Composition Made Whole is one of the most recent books I’ve read–it’s an engaging discussion of multimodality and writing instruction.

Outside of academia, I’ve been reading the Hunger Games trilogy. Yeah, I know…and I love it. The next book on my nightstand is The Paris Wife, a fictional memoir of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife. My wish list on Amazon right now includes Blood Meridian, 1Q84, Zeitoun…and Program Evaluation: Alternative Approaches and Practical Guidelines. I don’t think it’s too tough to figure out which end of the wish list I’ll start on. I love what I do professionally, but I think balance is pretty important, too.

I have small children, and one of my favorite blogs lately has been Free Range Kids,
http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/
. It’s fantastically snarky, which I always find to be a bonus.

What classes are you teaching?

Because of my administrative position, I’m not teaching any classes this spring semester. I’ll be teaching ENG 511, Composition Theory and Research, in the fall, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m revisiting some of the theories that I’ve focused on in the past and rethinking how we approach the discussion of writing theory–especially where we start the discussion.

What are you writing about?

I’m finishing up an article that examines the validity of our Directed Self Placement model in the First-Year Writing Program with Kelly Abrams, who is now in the doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin. I’m also finishing a version of an article that Dawn Shepherd and I co-authored about the bring-your-own-laptop classrooms that we’ve piloted in the First-Year Writing Program.

What are you listening to?

I’ve been listening to Pandora stations a lot lately–my favorite station is a mix of The Smiths, The Cure, The Killers, The Fray, Vampire Weekend, The Shins, U2, and Muse. My writing music of choice right now is Brandi Carlile.

What are you watching?

I know it’s cliche, but I’ve been watching episodes of Downton Abbey recently. I love Modern Family and 30 Rock, and Stacey (my husband) and I often find ourselves sucked into episodes of Intervention.

Dr. Maria Pramaggiore

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, Chris Anson, Matt May, David Berube, Susan Katz, 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 Dr. Maria Pramaggiore, CRDM faculty member and Associate Head of the English Department:

What are you reading?

I am reading a book entitled Yoga and the Hindu Tradition (1976) as well as a just-published book . The Science of Yoga, whose author has been on every talk show and radio show imaginable.  I am also reading a book manuscript on bisexual representation for a press that is planning to publish it. I am also reading a dissertation written by an NCSU Design student. When I can, I read the New Yorker and the New York Times on my iPad.

What classes are you teaching?

I will teach the Horror Film at the NCSU Prague Institute this summer and next year I will teach a graduate course in the spring.  I am debating among a graduate horror film course, my New Queer Cinema course, and my Feminist Film Theory course. Sometimes it’s hard to decide what to teach, and since I am finishing up a book, there isn’t something obvious for me to teach based on my immediate research projects.

What are you writing about?

I am writing a book on Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 film, BARRY LYNDON. I am visiting the UK in early March to interview his widow and his brother in law (who acted as his producer on many film projects); I just finished a co-authored essay on gender and reality TV that focused on “Keeping Up With The Kardashians”; I just published a piece on bisexual representation in recent film TV; and I am  developing a project with a colleague at the University of Surrey on the voice in documentary film.

What are you listening to?

My musica tastes are pretty broad: I like Marnie Stern; I just received the latest Paul McCartney cd for Valentine’s Day; and I listen to a lot of mantra music! I have an electric bass but I don’t get time to practice playing.

What are you watching?

I am a diehard Colbert and Stewart fan.  I also happen to like Fashion Police, or whatever the show is on E Network where Joan Rivers and her pals rip celebrities to shreds. I like Restaurant Impossible, where Bobby Ervin performs two day makeovers on small, family businesses. I also love cooking shows–Chopped, Cucpcake Wars, Sweet Genius– although I rarely cook, and I am terrible at it.

Dr. Susan Katz

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, Chris Anson, Matt May, David Berube, 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 Dr. Susan Katz of the English Department:

What are you reading?

I confess that most of my reading falls into one of three categories: (1) Things I read for the classes I’m teaching (mostly the undergraduate and graduate internship courses), (2) Things I read for research projects and (3) Things I read for fun–novels, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, short stories, essays. In that last category, I just finished reading “The Interpretation of Murder,” historical fiction about Freud’s visit to America in 1909.

What classes are you teaching?

Every semester I teach the undergraduate internship course, ENG350 Professional Internships. This semester I am also teaching a new course, ENG522 Writing in Nonacademic Settings, which is intended for students in any of the master’s programs in English–the MA in English, the MS in Technical Communication, or the MFA in Creative Writing. The graduate course has a “practicum” component, so all of the students are gaining some type of workplace experience depending on their degree program and career goals. I had planned to teach this course every other year, but it is proving so popular that I am likely to teach it each spring.

What are you writing about?

Over the winter break I finished a rough draft of a chapter on the role of internship programs in creating and maintaining relationships between colleges and local employers for a book on that same general topic. I’m working with Professor Jessica Jameson on a project analyzing the role of narrative in the oral discourse of nonprofit board meetings. A third project that may or may not see the light of day is a book idea–a “how to” book for undergraduates on how to get their first job after college.

What are you listening to?

Oh my, this could be a long list. I like a lot of relatively new pop/rock music–Adele, Lady Gaga, both Katy and Christina Perry, Mumford and Sons, Gavin DeGraw, Ray Lamontagne, The Script, OneRepublic–as well as “old standbys”–Rod Stewart, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Simply Red, Dire Straits, The Eagles. I was VERY impressed with the sophistication of Taylor Swift’s recent album, although I’m not typically a fan of country. Her performance at the Grammy’s was remarkable. (How uncool is it to admit I watched the Grammy’s?)

What are you watching?

Again, a really long list. We are tv show and movie junkies at our house. Current favorites: Justified, The Big Bang Theory, Castle, Southland, Raising Hope, Downton Abbey, Fringe, Blue Bloods, and the Graham Norton Show. I can never remember movie titles, so I can’t tell you what I’ve seen recently that I liked!

Dr. David Berube

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, Chris Anson, Matt May, 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 Dr. David Berube of the Communication Department:

What are you reading?

Distracted by Maggie Jackson and The Atlas of Climate Change by Dow and Downing. Reading as much as I can about EPPM (Extended Parallel Process Model) and digital attenuation of risk messages.

What classes are you teaching?

Undergrad class on Arguments and Natural Hazards and a graduate class in persuasion called Communication and Social Change.

What are you writing about?

Fear and Digital Amplification of Risk (two different projects).

What are you listening to?

Episodes of the Daily Show while at the gym and an eclectic mix of alternative music.

What are you watching?

Midsomer (yep, that is how it is spelled) Murders and Fringe. Any YouTube video that has anything to do with heuristics. 

Dr. Matt May

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, Chris Anson, 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 Dr. Matt May of the Communication Department:

What are you reading?

How many ways is Dr. May looking at this blackbird?

Let’s see…over break I read Zizek’s book entitled Violence.  I also really enjoyed Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s philosophical novel 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction.  Right now I’m about halfway through Dana Cloud’s new book We Are the Union: Democratic Unionism and Dissent at Boeing.  I’m also rereading parts of Mythologies by Roland Barthes.  I’m always catching up on past issues of Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, and Philosophy and Rhetoric.  On deck is Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty in Venus in Furs by Gilles Deleuze.  A rereading of Wallace Stevens is always in the back of my mind, fluttering around like a blackbird.  The Grundrisse looms large.  Jeremy Packer’s edited collection Secret Agents is also going to satisfy my longstanding interest in secret agents, stool-pigeons, and (company) spies.

What classes are you teaching?

This semester I have the pleasure of teaching COM/ENG 516: Rhetorical Criticism. In the future I hope to offer more courses on the “People’s History” of American Public Address, something on Marx, and perhaps even something on Spinoza. I’m also putting together some thoughts for a course entitled Media Outlaws–an idea I’ve stolen from Gil Rodman at the University of Minnesota. I am not certain, but I believe I am scheduled to teach undergrad and grad Rhetorical Theory in Fall of 2012.

What are you writing about?

Mainly I’m working on revisions of my book manuscript Hobo Orator Union: Class Composition and the Free Speech Fights of the Industrial Workers of the World. Thanks to the hard work of our chair Ken Zagacki and Dean Thomas Birkland, I recently received a grant to study the Occupy Wall Street movement in NYC. Part of what I’m working on now is integrating some of the findings of my field research into my concluding arguments about how memory of past struggles can fortify and sustain present radical movements.

What are you listening to?

I just saw Jeff Mangum (formerly of Neutral Milk Hotel) in Chapel Hill. I listen to a lot of Gnawa music when I write. Lately I’ve been jamming on my Hassan Hakmoun Pandora Station. My favorite show, by far, since I’ve lived in the triangle was Janzig (an all-girl cover band of the Misfits and Danzig) at the Pinhook. I also listened to the entirety of Madonna’s debut album after her Superbowl performance. Right at this very moment, I’m listening to Kronos Quartet doing “John’s Book of Alleged Dances.” I’m also a sucker for old labor songs. I think I’m one of the few people who actually knows all of the verses to Solidarity Forever. I dream of seeing Billy Bragg live someday. I have two copies of the IWW’s little red songbook.

What are you watching?

I have an ongoing interest in prison activism and recently finished the OZ series from HBO. My partner and I watch all kinds of films together. I rarely miss Saturday Night Live.

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)