Fall is always a whirlwind of activity; everyone is busy both inside and outside the classroom. Read on for news from our lecturer community!
Some instructor announcements:
The following lecturers are celebrating anniversaries this year for teaching with our program:
- Eldon Pei - 5-year anniversary
- Hayden Kantor - 5-year anniversary
- Becky Richardson - 10-year anniversary
- Kathleen Tarr - 10-year anniversary
- Emily Polk - 10-year anniversary
Wish them congratulations when you see them. We're all grateful for everything they've contributed over the years.
Additional colleagues for the upcoming quarter(s)
We're excited that PWR lecturer emerita, Ann Watters, will teaching her PWR 2 for us this winter. We're also pleased to welcome back Christian Nagler, who will be teaching with us for winter and spring. In addition, we have a new colleague -- Agnes Hong -- who will be joining us for the next two quarters as well. Agnes comes to PWR having taught composition and critical thinking at San Francisco State University. She holds a J.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Law and an M.A. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from San Francisco State University. Her goals are to empower students with skills of effective and persuasive communication essential to navigating the complexities of academia and the professional world beyond. Her winter PWR course is "Rhetorics of Money and Happiness."
What our lecturers have been up to
Nissa Ren Cannon organized a seminar on "Boring Modernism: Infrastructure, Institutions, and the Everyday" for the Modernist Studies Association's annual conference in Brooklyn in October. She also presented on her work on literature and material culture at a symposium on "Literature as Imaginary Archive" held (virtually) at Northumbria University.
Harriett Jernigan writes: "I attended the German Studies Association annual conference in Montreal at the beginning of October. I presented on two panels: weaving DEI into foreign-language pedagogy, and an examination of feminist humor in Germany and Austria. I also participated in a live storytelling fundraiser for Radium Runway, a new performing arts space in Alameda. I enjoyed sharing the stage with some of the Bay Area's best live storytellers and had a wonderful evening."
Jennifer Johnson's Spring 2023 student Azure Zhou was the winner of Stanford's Eric Roberts Prize for Best Paper on Ethics & Technology. Azure's winning paper was her PWR 2 paper titled, "Queer Bias in Natural Language Processing: Towards More Expansive Frameworks of Gender and Sexuality in NLP Bias Research". In addition, Jennifer's Winter 2023 PWR 2 student, Thomas Yim, was a finalist for the same prize. Thomas' PWR 2 paper was titled "Technology’s Dual Role in Language Marginalization and Revitalization." Both papers were written for the PWR 2 course, "The Rhetoric of Language, Identity and Power" and will appear in the next edition of GRACE.
Kevin Moore's review of the essay collection Global Ralph Ellison, Eds. Marc Conner and Tessa Roynon, will appear in the forthcoming Fall 2023 issue of African American Review.
Stephanie Reist had a piece, "Reckoning with Whiteness in Brazil," published in Black Perspectives, the blog of the African American Intellectual History Society, in their forum on Race in Latin America, edited by Reigan Gillam. She has also started covering concerts she attends for local public radio station KALW.
Roberta Wolfson writes, "This fall I taught a new advanced course, PWR/CSRE 91RW: Ethnofuturist Rhetorics: Imagining the Future of Race. We were delighted to be joined by two guest speakers! The first speaker was Dr. Walidah Imarisha, an Afrofuturist writer/researcher and co-editor of an anthology of social justice-oriented speculative fiction called 'Octavia's Brood.' A former PWR lecturer, Walidah is now an Assistant Professor in Black Studies at Oregon State University, so she joined us via Zoom to talk about her research and writings. The second speaker was Rev. Dr. Sakena De Young-Scaggs, the Senior Associate Dean for Religious and Spiritual Life and Pastor of Memorial Church here at Stanford, who completed her Ph.D. on how Afrofuturism can be used as a framework for creating liminal spaces of Black joy. She joined us in person to present on her important research and lead the students in a lively conversation. Many thanks to Christine and Harriett for helping to connect me with these speakers and make these awesome guest visits happen!" To read more about Roberta's class, read her complete interview with Dr. Gabrielle Moyer about her experience teaching this Advanced PWR course.
