Posts related to the Brittain Fellow community, the Georgia Tech community, the community of Atlanta beyond Georgia Tech, and the community of academia. Covers service, committee work, and the community impact of the Brittain Fellowship Program.
To cap off my introductory week with my new 1102 students I decided to do a field trip. The general trajectory of my first week was a sort of “show not tell” conceptual introduction to the course (with the incredibly important yet always boring syllabus day in the middle). In… Continue reading
Where can you see a film protesting lint, a new vision of Monet’s beloved Giverny, a self-portrait made up of thousands of tiny images and words, a concrete poem that turns Zadie Smith’s White Teeth into an enormous pair of lips, and the ferocious grace of local skydivers? MOMA? The Tate Modern? The Musée D’Orsay? Look no further than the Ferst Center for the Arts, just around the corner from Skiles. And the artists? No, they aren’t here in residence from other institutions; they are our students and they rock.
How many times have we been blown away by our students’ creativity and talent when we ask them to do work that pushes the boundaries of traditional first-year composition assignments? Each year, more than 4,000 Georgia Tech students enroll in our English 1101 and 1102 courses. Many of them create artistic pieces that not only satisfy the written, oral, visual, electronic, and nonverbal components of communication, but far surpass our expectations of a given assignment. Continue reading
Almost 600 students from 32 different majors had walked through the doors of and used the services of the new Communication Center, by the end of the Fall 2011 semester. To put it mildly, it has been a hectic, but heady, semester at the CommLab! For the five Brittain Fellows… Continue reading
First-Year Brittain Fellow Michelle DiMeo was one of five guests invited to give a 1-hour lecture at a Robert Boyle seminar at the Edward Worth Library, Dublin. This one-day seminar commemorated the 300th anniversary of the foundation of the School of Chemistry at Trinity College Dublin and celebrated that 2011… Continue reading
Second year Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow Diane Jakacki has been invited to sit on the advisory boards for the Records of Early English Drama (REED) and the Devonshire MS Project. In both capacities she will advise on the projects’ transition from print to digital research platforms and publication paradigms. Jakacki has… Continue reading
A World Englishes Tertulia will be held on Wednesday, November 30, 2011 between 4 and 5 pm in Clough Commons Suite 447. The workshop will address various methods of providing effective feedback to students in our contemporary multilingual and multicultural classrooms. In particular, we will focus on the multiple perspectives reflected in student… Continue reading
The final project for my ENGL1102 course “London City Comedy” is a collaborative digital edition of Tarlton’s Jests, a 17th century collection of anecdotes about the Elizabethan clown Richard Tarlton. The assignment consists of five parts: Continue reading
Michael Tondre presented a paper entitled “‘A Nat’ral Born Friend’: Friendship, Filiation, and Group Selection in Dombey and Son” at the North American Victorian Studies Association conference in Nashville, TN. The paper traces the complex interconnections between Charles Darwin’s theories about non-reproductive sexuality and representations of the bachelor and spinster… Continue reading
The Georgia Tech Pride Alliance and the Writing and Communication Program have joined the community, corporate, and collegiate movement across the country by co-producing a Georgia Tech It Gets Better video. It Gets Better is a national movement to reduce bullying and suicides among LGBTQ youth. The video was produced and directed by Jesse Stommel, Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow and Julie Champion, Student and President of Georgia Tech Pride Alliance, with a musical score by Matt Morris.
Stommel and Champion were inspired to work on this project after seeing the wonderful video produced recently at NC State. Like the NC State video, the Georgia Tech It Gets Better video features personal interviews in recognizable campus locations with nearly 50 students, faculty, staff, administration, and alumni of varying sexualities and backgrounds. Continue reading
Second-year Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Andy Frazee’s first book of poetry, The Body, The Rooms, ranked #17 on Small Press Distribution’s (SPD) poetry bestseller list for October. Founded in 1969, SPD is currently the only distributor in the country dedicated exclusively to independently published literature, serving over 400 small and… Continue reading
John Harkey, a first-year Brittain Fellow in Georgia Tech’s Writing and Communication Program, recently collaborated with artist and filmmaker Micah Stansell, whose work “The Water and the Blood” is currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia (MOCA GA). Drawing equally from his own and from others’ writings,… Continue reading
Brittain Fellows Doris Bremm (second-year), Lauren Curtright (second-year), and Sarah Eden Schiff (first-year) will present at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association conference in Atlanta this weekend, November 4-6. The theme for this year’s conference is “The Power of Poetry in the Modern World.” Former Brittain Fellow and Associate Director… Continue reading
Rebecca Burnett, the Director of Writing and Communication at Georgia Tech, and Brittain Fellows Jesse Stommel, Lauren Curtright, Melanie Kohnen, and Roger Whitson applied for the award, which will be presented at the NCTE Annual Convention in Chicago (November 2011). The team will also receive a check for $2000 given on behalf… Continue reading
Second-year Brittain Fellow Andy Frazee read from his poetry as part of the Carr Reading Series at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on Wednesday, October 19. In addition, Frazee was asked to present his work in the Introduction to Creative Writing class co-taught by poetry professor Michael Madonick and… Continue reading
The Writing and Communication Program’s Research Colloquium, originally scheduled for Thursday at 11 AM, has been resecheduled for this Thursday, Oct 27 from 11-12 in Skiles 002. Michelle Gibbons will present on “The Speech Examplar in the Multimodal Classroom”, which discusses using “I have a Dream” and other MLK speeches… Continue reading
An interview with poet and second-year Brittain Fellow Andy Frazee has been published online at the literary site HTMLGIANT (http://htmlgiant.com/author-spotlight/an-interview-with-andy-frazee/). In the interview conducted by poet Stephen Lewis, Frazee discusses his recent book of poetry, The Body, The Rooms (Subito Press, 2011), poetry and poetics, and small-press publishing. Continue reading
One of the pleasures of being a teacher is seeing the often surprisingly varied, original work that students produce—particularly on projects that may seem challenging to us (“Will they grasp the assignment’s complexities? Is this too much to ask of freshmen?”), and to them (“How will I get this done?!”). Often in LCC courses, we ask our students to “Think Big,” and encourage them to do so with assignments that are creative, challenging, and broadly conceived (that is, we don’t spoon-feed them a specific essay topic or conventional, straightforward assignment outline). Continue reading
From teleconferencing to YouTube videos, project posters to green-screen presentations, slide design to report writing, the new Communication Center is designed to help Georgia Tech students develop professional competence in 21st century communication. The center has been designed as a leading-edge model for communication education. It uses conventional technology in unconventional ways.
“This is a creative space,” explains Karen Head, who is Director of the Communication Center. “Yes, we are coaching students in processes and strategies and techniques, but we are also providing the space and equipment needed to practice.” Continue reading
We have scheduled two bootcamps for Fall 2011. The subject of the first is “Electronic Publishing” and will cover the following: 1) Accessing your personal/professional server space on the LCC web server; 2) Developing your LCC web profile (template web pages for your bio, course information, blog links, etc.); 3)… Continue reading
Communication Center: Our Space We designed Georgia Tech’s Communication Center to be a leading-edge model for communication education. From its design in the Communication Center Task Force Report in 2007, the Communication Center has presented a strong vision: It not only includes CommLab (with multiple kinds of tutoring and practice… Continue reading
Another new Britt! I’m excited to be here at Georgia Tech this fall, and looking forward to working with the group of students I have this semester. As promised, they are a great bunch (although we’re still in the honeymoon phase pre-grading!) Prior to arriving here I taught writing… Continue reading
