Teaching STEM Students Communication through the Lens of Science Fiction

Science Fiction’s Potential in the Communications-Classroom As an instructor who teaches introductory English communication courses (ENGL 1101 and 1102) at the Georgia Institute of Technology, a leading institution in the fields of engineering and computer science, I was confronted by the challenge of engaging STEM majors in the communication course… Continue reading

Technically Pop: “Normal People and Ireland in Film and TV”

This week, Molly Slavin, Eric Lewis, and Corey Goergen discuss depictions of Ireland in two 2020 properties: the film Wild Mountain Thyme and the television adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People. We discuss why so many Irish-set fictions seem like period pieces and what, exactly, a “balletic millennial bedtime” is. Then, we… Continue reading

Technically Pop, “Disney+”

Elizabeth Olsen (as Wanda Maximoff) and Paul Bettany (as Vision) sit together, smile, and pose for the camera. The photograph is in black and white, to mimic the style of 1950s sitcoms.

This week, Alex Edwards, Eric Lewis, Josh Cohen, and Corey Goergen talk WandaVision, the second season of The Mandalorian, and Disney+. What do we want from televised depictions of our favorite properties? How will Disney’s early success with these shows change the television and film landscape? Why is Kat Dennings the best?… Continue reading

Technically Pop, “Bridgerton”

The cast of Bridgerton pose in full costume against a background of a lavish, carefully maintained garden.

Technically Pop is back at the tail end of the semester with a 4-episode miniseries! For our premiere episode, Eric Lewis and Corey Goergen welcome special guest Courtney Hoffman, a Brittain Fellow and the Assistant Director of Writing and Communication. Together, we talk the ‘ton–Bridgerton, that is. Released on Christmas day,… Continue reading

Feminist Computational Poetics and Experimental User Interface Design: An Interview with a Computer Science Junior Design Team, Part II

Introduction   The Infinite Woman is an interactive poetry platform that computationally performs contemporary poetic techniques of remix and erasure. As a feminist critique and artistic intervention, it remixes excerpts from Edison Marshall’s novel The Infinite Woman (1950) and Simone de Beauvoir’s book The Second Sex (1949). An n-gram algorithm… Continue reading

Nine Questions on Identity, Multimodality, and Poetry with Caroline Dowell-Esquivel

This article is supported by a 2020 Poetry@Tech Pedagogy Grant. In my introductory writing and communication course “On Becoming a Writer,” students read Alexander Chee’s 2018 essay “The Autobiography of My Novel.” The central concept of the essay is what Chee calls a “prosthetic voice.” Unable to write the autobiographical… Continue reading

Technically Pop, “Holiday Evergreen Extravaganza”

It’s grading season, but at Technically Pop, we are already dreaming of winter break. Join us as we explore holiday content from Charles Dickens to Mariah Carey. Alexandra Edwards ponders the role of Phil Spector, convicted murderer, in shaping the sounds of Christmas; Josh Cohen reads of Love, Actually as… Continue reading

What Do You See?—Making Podcasts About Visual Art

Making podcasts about visual art presents a challenging multimodal question: How can a podcast, an entirely oral medium, account for all of the complexity, subtly, and abstraction in a painting or sculpture, an entirely visual medium? Producing a podcast about a single piece of visual art—this was my students’ task—would… Continue reading

The Office Hour: MetaPod

In this episode of the Office Hour, Tobias Wilson-Bates and Jonathan Shelley discuss their experiences of integrating podcasting inside and outside of the classroom. Has the revolutionary energy of podcasts dissipated with the influx of corporate projects like Mark Zuckerberg’s Tech & Society Podcast? Or do they still serve unique… Continue reading

The Office Hour, “Building Stuff”

Students in first-year writing courses at Georgia Tech are sometimes asked to build things. Based on the comic strip that currently hangs in the WCP interns’ office, those students react to these assignments with a mixture of bemusement, annoyance, and–eventually–acceptance. But in this episode of The Office Hour, we hear… Continue reading

The Office Hour, “Fixing the Academic Conference”

Is the academic conference an important place for sharing and developing knowledge or an increasingly boring relic of a bygone era? Given the cost of attending, the increasingly precarious market for academic jobs, and the psychic toll graduate school takes on early scholars, these questions are more important than ever. In… Continue reading

Flash Readings, Episode 6: “Colson Whitehead Will Break You, Too”

In Flash Reading 6, Brittain Fellow Matt Dischinger analyzes a scene from the South Carolina chapter of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead’s prize-winning novel set in the antebellum United States. In this scene, the protagonist, named Cora, gives the “evil eye” to a former charge, Maisie, who doesn’t recognize her in costume as a… Continue reading

The Office Hour, Chapter 26: “The Big Machines That Are Coming To Take Our Jobs”

In this episode, we talk to Brittain Fellow, TECHStyle co-editor, and frequent Office Hour guest Anna Ioanes in order to dispel some myths about online and hybrid teaching. Are EdTech companies like Khan Academy and Minerva Schools gunning for our jobs? And what about MOOCs like the University of Pennsylvania’s ModPo? We discuss current scholarship and debates on… Continue reading

The Office Hour, Chapter 25: “Alt-Ac”

In The Office Hour‘s 25th episode, Dr. Ruthie Yow––former Brittain Fellow (2015-17), current Service Learning and Partnerships Specialist for Serve Learn Sustain at Georgia Tech, regular TECHStyle guest, and author of Students of the Dream: Resegregation in a Southern City, just out from Harvard University Press––returns to the podcast to talk to Andrew and… Continue reading

Flash Readings, Episode 5: “The Moment John Roberts’s Words Cease to Matter”

In Flash Reading 5, former Brittain Fellow Ruthie Yow (2015-17) takes Chief Justice John Roberts to task for his majority opinion in the landmark Supreme Court case of 2007, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. According to Yow, the Court’s decision indexes “the impoverished state of integration strategies” in public… Continue reading

The Office Hour, Chapter 24: “Realpolitik”

In this episode, Toby draws on the knowledge (and German-language skills) of former Brittain Fellow Ian Afflerbach (2016-17), currently Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of North Georgia, to discuss the concept of “realpolitik.” Does it have any relevance to the current political situation, as media commentators tend to… Continue reading

The Office Hour, Chapter 23: “Crisis!”

In this episode, Toby draws on his professorial pedigree and Nick on his experience in the creative writing world in an attempt to find the source of the current crisis in the humanities. Have the humanities always been in crisis? Is there any other way? Our hosts do their best… Continue reading

The Office Hour, Chapter 22: “The Culture Wars”

For the first episode of our second season, Toby, Andrew, and our new co-host Nick Sturm discuss the “culture wars,” a hot button term that has been making its way back into the media and into our classes. Recorded prior to the death of Georgia Tech student Scout Schultz, we… Continue reading

Flash Readings, Episode 4: “When I Talk to Siri”

Neon Varsity Diner sign with Flash Readings logo

In the fourth Flash Reading, Brittain Fellow Halcyon Lawrence talks about why her Samsung phone won’t take her where she wants to go. This time she wants to find legendary Atlanta diner The Varsity, but Galaxy “has no specific answers” for her. Lawrence, who specializes in speech intelligibility and accent bias in… Continue reading

The Office Hour, Chapter 21: “Britt History III (The Past)”

Part three of our series on the history of the Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellowship (the finale of The Office Hour‘s first season), finds Toby and I talking to Lisa Yaszek, Professor and outgoing Associate Chair of the School of Literature, Media, and Communication; co-editor of Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women… Continue reading

The Office Hour, Chapter 20: “Britt History II (The Present)”

In this episode, the second of a three-part series on the history of the Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellowship, Toby and I talk to former Brittain Fellow and current Associate Director of the Writing and Communication Program, Andy Frazee, about where the fellowship is now, where it’s going, and where… Continue reading