IWR Forum is a forum in which Institute faculty and teaching partners contemplate publicly the issues surrounding teaching writing and speech that occupy their minds and energies. We publish the forum with the hope that our faculty will be encouraged to contribute their own thoughts to future editions.
Readings on Writing
by Laura Braunstein, English Language and Literature Librarian
English Language and Literature Librarian Laura Braunstein reviews books on the teaching of writing from the Dartmouth College Library’s collections. In this column, Laura reviews Stephen Tabachnick’s Teaching the Graphic Novel (MLA 2009), observing that “The hybrid form of the graphic novel encourages the development of the cognitive skills needed to thrive in a world that demands multiple forms of understanding. Visual narratives should not only have a place in writing courses, but, like video and multimedia assignments, should become part of the fabric of our pedagogy.” (Download PDF here)
From the Writing Desk to the Laboratory Bench
by Kacy Gordon, Dartmouth Class of 2006
Kacy Gordon (Dartmouth Class of 2006) is former Head Writing Assistant for the Student Center for Research, Writing, and Information Technology (formerly The Composition Center). Gordon is now a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago, in the department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, working in the field of evolution of development. In this reflection, Kacy illustrates how her training as a tutor and writing assistant here at Dartmouth has informed her work in Biology. (Download PDF here)
Controversy and Creationism: A Look at the Institute for Creation Research’s Museum of Creation and Earth History
by Julie Homchick, Lecturer in Speech
Increasingly, teachers of composition and rhetoric are expanding the kinds of texts that they use in their classrooms to include paintings, photographs, films, performances—and place. In this article, Julie Homchick demonstrates how, in her scholarship, she performs rhetorical analysis on the “place” of creationist museums—an analysis that enables her to better understand what the museum is arguing and how its rhetorical appeals are crafted for a public audience. (Download PDF here)
Slowing It Down in the Classroom: Technology and Imagination
by William Nichols, Visiting Professor of Writing
As students come to our classrooms accustomed to multi-tasking with television, iPods, cell phones, computers, and their many variations, it’s tempting to teach to the intellectual restlessness that has been called “hyper attention.” Strategies for doing that include “Google jockeys” and “back-channeling.” But this essay makes the case that we should help students discover the value of focused contemplation, which has been called “deep attention.” Acknowledging the importance of the new technologies, “Slowing It Down in the Classroom” is an argument for fostering acts of imagination that test mediated information and interpretation against direct experience. It is an argument for the discriminating use of our new electronic technologies and for the importance of imagination. (Download PDF here)
