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James Scarborough
Discreet but eager, well-placed if not well-heeled, awash with syntax but void of irony, he attends to Matters Esthetica that abound in the House of Culture
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Course Takeaway
We begin to wind down our class. At the start, I didn't know what to expect. I wasn’t nervous as much as I was skeptical. I wasn’t afraid to change gears if I had to. I did wonder, though, Did my bike have more than one gear? Turns out it... Continue reading
Posted Mar 28, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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Statement of Teaching Philosophy
I have a broad arts background. Adjunct professor. Museum educator, curator, and director. Art historian and critic. Educational designer. And there's for-profit, too. Yahoo! Analyst. Tech Writer. Script Analyst. Morgan Stanley Financial Advisor. I've run a law firm. A fiduciary firm. And a public relations firm. These experiences inform the... Continue reading
Posted Mar 22, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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Critical Digital Pedagogy's Application to Hikikomori (Japanese social isolates)
Last night I watched an Al Jazeera documentary about the Japanese condition of hikikomori. It made me think of bell hooks and Terry Eagleton. Hikikomori turns adolescents and young adults into modern day hermits. Its central feature is a desire to remain confined to their home. These digital hermits spend... Continue reading
Posted Feb 23, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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"Teaching to Transgress" and "An Urgency of Teachers": The Individual and the Institutional Application of Critical Digital Pedagogy
I now see the value of first reading Teaching to Transgress before we came to An Urgency of Teachers. bell hooks’ journey is a private one (noted here). Her book reads as a memoir of her coming to theory as she made her way in the world of academia and... Continue reading
Posted Feb 22, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy, by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel
Critical pedagogy is as a philosophy and education approach slippery enough to find its way into almost every conversation. And so this book includes tangents towards digital humanities, education technology, digital writing, social justice, plagiarism and academic integrity, instructional design, and more. It is in the slipperiness of critical digital... Continue reading
Posted Feb 22, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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Inept Acting and Better Teaching: Terry Eagleton's "The Significance of Theory"
bell hooks cites Terry Eagleton’s observation that children make the best theorists. Her citation warranted a visit to Eagleton’s essay, The Significance of Theory. I like this essay for four reasons. 1. Eagleton writes that children take nothing for granted. Consider all their Why this and not that? questions. Brecht... Continue reading
Posted Feb 16, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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Terry Eagleton, The Significance of Theory
At the height of capitalist consumerism, American imperialism and the Civil Rights movement, it was becoming more and more difficult to conceal the fact that those areas of disinterested human enquiry known as academic institutions were in fact locked directly into the structures of technological dominance, military violence and ideological... Continue reading
Posted Feb 16, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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The Ecstasy and the Agony of EdTech: New Student Orientation, Fall 2020.
This past summer, I worked on the educational design of New Student Orientation. Our sudden veer to a 100% digital environment in the middle of Spring term challenged us. Remotely, we created a remote experience. It was a triumph of technology. Forced to work from home, everyone and everything came... Continue reading
Posted Feb 9, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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"Critical Pedagogy and Design," Sean Michael Morris
What lies at the heart of these literacies also forms the primary concern of critical digital pedagogy: that is, agency The agency to know, understand, and thereby be able to act upon, create, or resist one’s reality. For the student, this can mean anything from knowing how and why to... Continue reading
Posted Feb 9, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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Once Upon a Time in the Teaching of Art History
I had several expectations when I took this class. I wanted to revisit theory. I wanted to apply it to critical pedagogy. I wanted to share experiences with a like-minded community. And I wanted to revise my teaching philosophy statement. So far, the class fulfilled my expectations. I worked through... Continue reading
Posted Feb 8, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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We Don't Need Your Algorithm: A Failure of Educational Technology
Posted Feb 1, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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Rapture by Rupture: "Ecstasy: Teaching and Learning Without Limits"
At a summer arts program in Skowhegan, bell hooks reflected on her journey as a teacher. Her journey echoes and reinforces my own. She talks about her teachers. Teachers who nurtured and guided her. Who taught her how to experience joy in learning. How to conceive of the classroom as... Continue reading
Posted Jan 13, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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"Ecstasy: Teaching and Learning Without Limits"
"My models were the people who stepped outside of the conventional mind and who could actually stop my mind and completely open it up and free it, even for a moment, from a conventional, habitual way of looking at things...If you are really preparing for groundlessness, preparing for the reality... Continue reading
Posted Jan 13, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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Love in the Time of Title IX: "Eros, Eroticism, and the Pedagogical Process"
In prior posts, I discussed the stagecraft of bell hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy. The way a professor leaves the podium. Moves around the classroom. Engages students on a physical as well as an intellectual level. This takes the professor off her throne. It shows she’s not a dictator intent on domination... Continue reading
Posted Jan 12, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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A Public Dialogue Between bell hooks and Cornel West
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Posted Jan 12, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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Engaged Pedagogy as a Polyphonic Chorus: "Confronting Class in the Classroom"
I liked this chapter because it gave me words to express bell hooks’ pedagogical endgame. She embraces the democratic ideal of education for everyone. But it’s the solution - Coming to voice - that resonates with me. It encompasses everything she proposes, in this chapter and throughout the book. She... Continue reading
Posted Jan 10, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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... "where my and our voices, can stand clear of the background noise and voice our concerns as part of a larger song"
"Only by coming to terms with my own past, my own background, and seeing that in the context of the world at large, have I begun to find my true voice and to understand that, since it is my own voice, that no pre-cut niche exists for it; that part... Continue reading
Posted Jan 10, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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The Flip Side of Something Lost in Translation: "Language: Teaching New Worlds/New Words"
hooks wrote this essay inspired by Adrienne Rich’s poem, The Burning of Paper Instead of Children. Rich describes her frustration with language that can’t describe oppression. It broaches a discussion on the imperialist nature of Standard English. This is a powerful and poetic rumination. It shows how Standard English dominated... Continue reading
Posted Jan 9, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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"The Burning of Paper Instead of Children" by Adrienne Rich
I was in danger of verbalizing my moral impulses out of existence. --Daniel Berrigan, on trial in Baltimore 1. My neighbor, a scientist and art-collector, telephones me in a state of violent emotion. He tells me that my son and his, aged eleven and twelve, have on the last day... Continue reading
Posted Jan 9, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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"Building a Teaching Community: A Dialogue" (3)
I appreciate bells hooks’ monumental mission to reconceptualize engaged pedagogy. I understand what she wants to do and how she plans to do it. I wonder, though, are these ideas practical? Her colleague Ron Scapp doubts it. As he writes, the institution will exhaust us simply because there is no... Continue reading
Posted Jan 8, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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"Building a Teaching Community: A Dialogue" (2)
I suggested in a prior post that we could compare liberatory pedagogy to theatre. The comparison becomes more clear in this chapter. Professors can cross the boundaries that divide them from their students with dialogue. Dialogue drives theatre. Professors don't want to makes themselves vulnerable to their students. And vice... Continue reading
Posted Jan 8, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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"Building a Teaching Community: A Dialogue" (1)
bell hooks structures this chapter as a discussion with her colleague Ron Scapp. This structure creates a critical space. (I had wondered what that meant.) This forum enables the free and frank exchange of ideas. Her reconceptualization of engaged pedagogy resonates with me. Cultural studies must combine theory and practice.... Continue reading
Posted Jan 8, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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"...our purpose is to be ... a community of learners together"
"When I enter the classroom at the beginning of the semester the weight is on me to establish that our purpose is to be, for however brief a time, a community of learners together. It positions me as a learner". bells hooks, Building a Teaching Community, Teaching to Transgress: Education... Continue reading
Posted Jan 7, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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"All border crossings must be seen as valid and legitimate"
"When I began this collection of essays, I was particularly interested in challenging the assumption that there could be no points of connection and camaraderie between white male scholars (often seen, rightly or wrongly, as representing the embodiment of power and privilege of oppressive hierarchy) and marginalized groups (women of... Continue reading
Posted Jan 5, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained: "Feminist Scholarship: Black Scholars"
bells hooks writes that she embraced critical theory to help her make sense of her life. When she began to research feminist scholarship, though, she found a gap. Female feminist scholars described the experience of being a woman. They would reverse engineer the architecture of their lived reality. This showed... Continue reading
Posted Jan 5, 2021 at Critical Digital Pedagogy
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