Books Read In 2014

  1. Breathing Machine, A Memoir of Computers by Leigh Alexander
  2. Clipping Through: One Mad Week In Video Games by Leigh Alexander
  3. And Eternity by Piers Anthony
  4. vN by Madeline Ashby
  5. The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
  6. The Boss by Abigail Barnette
  7. Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell
  8. Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles and Speeches, 1998-2003 by Roberto Bolano
  9. Fetish Sex: A Complete Guide to Sexual Fetishes by Violet Blue
  10. Borges On Writing by Jorge Luis Borges
  11. It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens by danah boyd
  12. The High Druid's Blade: The Defenders of Shannara by Terry Brooks
  13. Witch Wraith: The Dark Legacy of Shannara by Terry Brooks
  14. If On A Winter's Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino
  15. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
  16. The Divine Comedy by Dante
  17. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
  18. This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
  19. How To Read A Poem by Terry Eagleton
  20. A Case Of Hysteria by Sigmund Freud
  21. The Fear Of An Illusion by Sigmund Freud
  22. No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald
  23. Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry by Clinton Heylin
  24. Never Let Me Go by Kazou Ishiguro
  25. Devilish by Maureen Johnson
  26. Critique Of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
  27. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil
  28. Collected Sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay
  29. Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss
  30. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
  31. The Trial And Death Of Socrates by Plato
  32. Rouge Code by Mark Russinovich
  33. Trojan Horse by Mark Russinovich
  34. Zero Day by Mark Russinovich
  35. Dimension Of Miracles by Robert Sheckley
  36. Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser
  37. Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson
  38. Influx by Daniel Suarez
  39. Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves by Jill Walker Rettberg
  40. The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet by Neil Degrasse Tyson
  41. Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries by Neil Degrasse Tyson
  42. Conversations With Kurt Vonnegut by Kurt Vonnegut
  43. Palm Sunday by Kurt Vonnegut
  44. Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal by Melanie Warner
  45. A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft
  46. Come To Our Show: Punk Show Flyers From DC To Down Under

The 20% Project

One of the successful projects I had my students do this year was what I referred to as the "20% Project." Modelled after what Google does with their employees, I had students work on a long term project for the entire semester. We would take six or seven (roughly 20%) of the course as time to work on the project n class. I gave student generic options like building timelines, creating audiobooks, editing Wikipedia pages, and other projects like it. Some students took on other project ideas and really embraced the open ended nature of the assignment. Many worked in groups, but handfuls worked alone. A few in each class chose to do more extended, research based, papers.

A group did a timeline on the origins of hell during Dante's lifetime.

Another group did a timeline of portrayals of Irene Adler over the years.

A group created a Wikipedia page for film-maker Janus Metz Pederson.

At the end of the semester, I required students to write brief reflective essays about the experience of creating their project. Many wrote very thoughtful essays that really proved to me what a great idea this is for literature courses. There is only a certain amount of papers you can write before it is numbing and boring. As one of my favorite students often says, when am I going to write a paper on my job? However, you might need to create a digital project at some point or at least need the skills learned from doing one in some way or form. With that said, here are some of my students comments about doing their projects:

  • "I learned more about this subject doing this timeline than I ever would writing a paper"
  • "This was the best assignment I have ever done. Why don't more teachers do assignments like this?"
  • "I appreciated a professor trusting us with our own thoughts and ideas instead of telling us what to do."

Another student wrote that their project helped them deal with abuse issues from their past.Their project focused on how women are gendered and the assumptions made about their docility and "nature," which related to experiences she had tried to escape and overcome in her own life.

There were naysayers to these projects on my campus. Some asked "why not just write a paper about that?" I think the above comments show what a short sighted attitude that is. We are educators to not only teach the craft of writing, but prepare students for the vaunted "real world" people often point to when students do something negative. To prepare them properly for the post academic world, they need a lot more skills than writing a proper introduction to a paper. That will not get you a job.

This semester my Women's Literature course will be creating bibliographies for the writers we are reading this semester.

Divine Comedy

Divine Comedy

There are some beautiful paintings of The Divine Comedy here.