American Literature, American Learning
February 17, 2016 6:30-8:30
Course Website
Syllabus

Themed Readings: Education as Empowerment, Education as Social Control: Two Competing Theories of Education Focus on Gender and Colonialism

• Women’s Education
  • Rush, Benjamin. Thoughts Upon Female Education, 1787 in Fraser The School in the United States: A Documentary History. 24-28.
  • Rowson, Susanna. Charlotte Temple. New York: Oxford UP, 1986. 26 -33.
• Hsu, Hua. “The Year of the Imaginary Student.” The New Yorker. December 31, 2015.
• Mike Wesch, “A Vision of Students Today”
• Native American Children
  • “Virginia Statues on the Education of Indian Children Held Hostage, from the Virginia Statutes at Large” in Fraser, The School in the United States: A Documentary History, 1656.
  • Zitkala-Sa [Gertrude Bonnin], American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings. New York: Penguin, 2003.
• Sousanis, Nick. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. 1-18, 86 – 97.
• Guinier, Lani. The Tyranny of Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in America. Boston: Beacon, vii-11.
• Davidson, Cathy. “Why Start with Pedagogy? 4 Good Reasons, 4 Good Solutions.” org

Plus blogs by Michael and Zeb and comments by all classmates on these two blogs.

Business:

6:30-6:40

• Announce next The University Worth Fighting For Event: “Measuring What Counts: Credentials or Learning” March 2, 2016 at 1pm in room C197 of the Graduate Center
  “Measuring What Counts: Credentials or Learning?” will take up the critical questions of how we measure “success” in the academy and beyond. We are thrilled to host special guests including Anya Kamanetz, author of The Test and lead education reporter at NPR; Bret Eynon, Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning, LaGuardia Community College; and Leah Gilliam, Vice President of Girls Who Code and former Director of Mozilla’s Hive NYC Learning Network. Please join us.
  • HASTAC online discussion forthcoming
• Announce readings for next week, Dr. Jade Davis will lead us in conversation about instructional and technology design syllabus (on Feb 24; assigned readings posted on CBOX) to the midterm assignment to create a syllabus for the second half of the class.
  • Individual syllabi for midterm must be posted by noon Feb 29.
  • Everyone reads and makes one comment on everyone else’s syllabus.
  • March 2: in class design sprint where students build one syllabus for remainder of the course. Organize yourself in teams; each team is responsible for one class session. Collectively design remainder of the course, including something from all of the individual syllabi proposed, shaping the remainder of the course including readings, final project (s), field trips if you wish. (You can post a rough outline by the end of class time and individual teams can work on their week later.)
• Librarians are happy to do a 20 min Zotero workshop (students will be asked to create an account ahead of time and come prepared with questions, though they will also do a comprehensive tutorial)
• Additional announcements …? Events of interest? Questions?

6:40-7:00 Introduce Rachel Oppenheimer: Undergraduate Peer Mentoring

7:00   Discussion of readings

• Think Pair Share: What are three things from the different readings that you most want to talk about?
• Projects discussed
  • Mike Wesch, “Falling Up: Interactive Empathy Game Trailer” produced by students at Kansas State University who spent a semester learning about anthropology while living in Meadowlark Hills Retirement Community. View here.
  • “Mapping the Futures of Higher Education”: a graduate seminar led by Cathy N. Davidson and Bill Kelly but designed and taught (also!) by graduate students in the course. View here.
  • Remix the Dissertation – when you want to be creative and enact transformation, how do you navigate institutional obstacles? View here.

7:30-8:30   Students work on Class Constitution

• Sample class constitutions
• American Literature, American Learning constitution