9. Restyling Academic Discourse w/ Laura Lisabeth

In our ninth episode, we talk to Dr. Laura Lisabeth about developing critical pedagogy in a digital space, using social media for academic writing, getting mad at standardized English, and empowering our students to utilize different discourses.

NB: this episode was recorded on April 28. In the first few minutes, we discuss some pandemic-related issues, including hospitals and deaths. If you want to skip that part, jump to 6:12.

(Finally, if you’re wondering what happens around the 54-minute mark, take a look at the screenshot above.)

Laura is a Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stony Brook University where she teaches undergraduate academic writing and professional writing, and a graduate writing seminar. Her research is a historiography that focuses on Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. She looks at the ways the book has participated in and often driven a culture of pundit-sourced White linguistic style in education, constructed through twentieth century literacies that still resonate in the teaching of writing, including the detached parodic style of E.B. White and the early New Yorker, the universalizing narratives of The Book-of-the-Month Club, the monocultural, monolinguistic prescriptions of the National Defense Education Act and the commercial interests of the educational publishing industry. These historically entrenched dispositions toward literacy fail to recognize the range of cultural knowledges and languages that arrive in our classrooms, keeping Strunk and White style a perennial text on syllabi. Her most recent publication can be found in the Anti-Oppressive Composition issue of Radical Teacher (fall 2019): “White Fears of Dispossession: Dreyer’s English, The Elements of Style, and the Racial Mapping of English Discourse.”

You can follow Laura on Twitter @lauralhny.

Texts Mentioned in the Episode

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

“These aspirational, middlebrow pieces of 20th literacy [like The Elements of Style] that are still with us are very much connected to systemic racism, the white supremacy of academic language and academic discourse.” @lauralhny

“I want students to be a little bit mad…I try to encourage students to think about injustice and inequity and how language is a part of that.” @lauralhny

“Some of the most successful classes that I’ve had are the ones where I was able to have the Instagram essay be the final assignment…Social media is great academic writing.” @lauralhny

“The problem is that it’s trying to mimic a real classroom, and it’s not. How can we do this better? How can we take advantage of the affordances [of online learning]?” @lauralhny

Please be aware that, because we recorded via Zoom, there are occasional audio hiccups. Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @writingremixpod.

8. Writing Bad w/ Alejandro Escudé

Episode 8 runs the gamut! We talk to award-winning poet and teacher Alejandro Escudé about learning from your idols (and meditating with Gary Snyder!), finding inspiration in urban environments and current events, transitioning to remote and hybrid forms of learning, taking risks in your work, being mindful of audience and context in a digital world, and giving yourself permission to write badly.

Texts Mentioned in the Episode

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

“Whether the poem is good or not, I send it.” -Alejandro Escudé

“Nothing is real right now.” -Alejandro Escudé

“It’s up to poets to say, ‘We’re not letting you off the hook.'” -Alejandro Escudé

“My personality online is a lamb. I save all of my wolf stuff for my writing.” -Alejandro Escudé

Please be aware that, because we recorded via Zoom, there are occasional audio hiccups. Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @writingremixpod.

7. Erasing [ ] w/ Erik Fuhrer

In our seventh episode we talk to poet, artist, and educator Erik Fuhrer about erasure poetry and collage, the embodied nature of writing, and ethically incorporating other authors and texts into our work.

You can learn more about Erik on his website and follow him on Twitter @ErikFuhrer.

Texts Mentioned in the Episode

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

“There is something I think to be said about…paying attention to your body when it comes time to write…Finding the rhythm.”

Erik Fuhrer

“I’m interested in the ways that, especially in erasure but in any kind of poem, intention and randomness overlap or intersect.”

Erik Fuhrer

“The world is sliding its back toward Bethlehem, and we are the rough beast, and the falcon is the reason we are still looking.”

Erik Fuhrer

Please be aware that, because we recorded via Zoom, there are occasional audio issues. Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @writingremixpod.

6. Redefining Productivity w/ O Tomas Bell

We resume our series on living, teaching, and creating during COVID-19 with words of wisdom from the brilliant O Tomas Bell. In this episode, we talk about redefining productivity, reframing our creative process, and finding inspiration in our current circumstances to make positive changes in our lives.

Tomas is a Certified Life, Communication and Wellness Coach offering “you focused” coaching services as well as creative focused coaching. A creative himself, Tomas actively balances his coaching career with his entertainment career by providing audio, music, and voice-over services. You can find Tomas on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Please be aware that, because we recorded via Zoom, there are occasional audio issues. Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @writingremixpod.

“I think the part that people often forget in terms of their own productivity is their emotional connection to that activity…Being productive now is not about the product. It’s about the process…We could make this a complete negative. Or we can reframe and explore and discover the positives.”

O Tomas Bell

“I’m not a big fan of beating yourself up. I am a big fan of learning the lesson…It’s about making a conscious choice to do things differently in the future.”

O Tomas Bell

“You can be isolated physically, but you do not have to be isolated socially…Don’t let your physical isolation disconnect you from the world.”

O Tomas Bell

5. Changing the Conversation w/ Mandy Hobmeier

We’re taking a break from the current moment to return to a conversation we recorded before the pandemic.

In this episode, we talk to Fulbright Scholar Dr. Mandy Hobmeier about engaging in research that inspires us, changing the conversation around multilingual writing, and finding fulfillment in mentoring and volunteer work.

Texts/ Links

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

“[Our research] has to feel authentic to us. I couldn’t engage with the research just because I felt like I had to. I needed it to feel actually inspired.”

Mandy Hobmeier

“This was always the biggest concern…How do we respond to grammar-based issues? Everybody’s always concerned with that the most, and I was more interested in changing the conversation around that.”

Mandy Hobmeier

“Now we’re getting to a point where there’s so much nuance to language identity…It’s much more diversified than we’re even aware of. So there’s so much opportunity for a multi-faceted approach to the writing that we’re doing, but a lot of the approaches we’re taking are limiting that.”

Mandy Hobmeier

Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @writingremixpod

4. Healing through Language w/ Aimee Herman

Episode 4 continues our special series on teaching and writing during COVID-19. In this episode we talk to novelist, poet, and professor Aimee Herman about coping with anxiety during this particularly stressful time, caring for our students and ourselves, and finding solace in language. You can learn more about Aimee here.

Please be aware that, because we recorded via Zoom, there are some slight audio issues, especially at the beginning of the episode.

Texts mentioned in the episode

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

“[Online teaching] feels like this weird movie; you know, we’ve got our headphones on like we’re playing a video game together, and that game’s called Learning.”

Aimee Herman

“This is a hard time for teachers…Little do [students] know that them being there is what’s keeping me going…I think for us as teachers we need to be as patient as we can be right now, mindful that not everybody’s circumstance is the same.”

Aimee Herman

“Language always has an important role in day-to-day life, whether we’re going through a pandemic like this or we’re not. Words are one way in which we can create bridges toward each other and create these alphabetical band-aids to make us feel as though, okay I can get through this hour, I can get through this day…Language is going to save us, in every way.”

Aimee Herman
Serious podcasting in progress

Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @writingremixpod.

3. Writing During a Pandemic w/ Danielle Lee

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming (aka the episodes we recorded before COVID-19) to bring you a special series about writing and teaching during a global pandemic.

Our first guest for this series is Dr. Danielle Lee, Visiting Assistant Professor of English at SUNY Old Westbury. In this episode, we talk to Danielle about teaching online, processing trauma through art, and documenting the narratives that emerge during a crisis. You can follow Danielle on Twitter @dlitephul.

Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @writingremixpod.

Links

“Moments like this are when we get some of our best writing, at its most authentic and raw.”

Danielle Lee

“As an archivist, I see these narratives, these social media posts, these blog entries, things on YouTube–these are our modern archival documents.”

Danielle Lee

“We have to remember that as writers, as appreciators of literature, we study literature for its representation of the human condition. And we have to remember our humanity most of all, above everything else…We can be physically isolated, but we don’t have be creatively isolated. Share. Reach out. Create.”

Danielle Lee

2. Engaging Community w/ Ben Pack & Emily Artiano

In our second episode, we talk to Professors Emily Artiano and Ben Pack about working with community partners, deconstructing hierarchies in the classroom, and experiencing things alongside their students. You can learn more about Emily here and Ben here.

Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @writingremixpod.

People and Texts Mentioned in this Episode

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

“[Rewriting the prompt to be more inclusive] seems to have had a really great effect on the way that students feel like they can write about their differences at USC. One thing I know I’m going to be much better about in the future is not gearing the class toward an assumption about what students would consider different.“

Emily Artiano

“We move through the world in so many different ways and so many different spaces, and so if the class can begin to open up and dissect the information that’s being privileged so we get more diverse voices then I think that actually does a lot for [students’] critical thinking skills…It shows them how they can pull ideas from anywhere.”

Ben Pack

“I think that there is value to students seeing you experience something with them.”

Emily Artiano

“My favorite moments as a teacher now absolutely happen outside the classroom.”

Ben Pack

1. Stepping into the Self w/ Stephanie Renée Payne

In our first episode, we talk to Professor Stephanie Renée Payne about transgressing boundaries, modeling vulnerability, and helping students find their voice.

You can read more about Stephanie here.

Texts mentioned in the episode

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts (coming soon!), Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @writingremixpod.

“It’s not really about the mechanics of writing; that’s the easy part. It’s about opening up a space for students to feel safe to say how they feel.”

Stephanie Renée Payne

“There’s reciprocity in this process. You are learning your students. They’re teaching you who they are, and it’s shaping your pedagogy.”

Stephanie Renée Payne

“There are aspects of our vocation that are sacred. Our work is not merely to share information but to share the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students.”

bell hooks