teaching Archive

The Cost of the Academic Job: A Personal Narrative

A few years ago, a small university invited me on an MLA interview for a tenure-track assistant professor position teaching publishing and creative writing. The hiring committee assumed I would be attending the conference and so told me when and where to be.

Round-Down: Poetry? There’s an App for That

Author: | Categories: Round-Up No comments
As students and teachers alike head back to school this month, the Academy of American Poets is offering an email service designed to better integrate poetry into the classroom. Based on the popular Poem-A-Day series, where a previously unpublished poem is shared via email to subscribers, Teach This Poem launches

Harold Bloom’s Song of Self

Author: | Categories: Reading, Writing No comments
Here’s the story of my first and only encounter with Harold Bloom. It was the first week of a new semester, my last semester of graduate school, and I was waiting in a stuffy seminar room packed with sharply dressed undergraduates. The luckiest students had secured seats around the grand

Is Chicana/o Literature Dead? (A: No, not really): A Teacher’s Ramblings

Author: | Categories: Reading No comments
It used to be that I didn’t know what Chicana/o literature was. Sometimes I still think I don’t, which is embarrassing because I teach classes on Chicana/o lit. The dictionary definition is easy—it’s been studied, chronicled, crystalized–and I can easily think of my heroes: Helena Maria Viramontes, Dagoberto Gilb,

Writing Lessons: Ann Swindell

Author: | Categories: Uncategorized No comments
In our Writing Lessons series, writers and writing students will discuss lessons learned, epiphanies about craft, and the challenges of studying writing. This week, we hear from Ann Swindell, a graduate of the MFA program at Seattle Pacific University, and a visiting instructor of English at Wheaton College. You