(pictured above: Norah Fahim at her presentation for the Teaching with AI Community Share-out)
Throughout Spring quarter, PWR lecturers complemented their work in the classroom with their own ongoing projects, research, presentations, and other inspirational activities. Read on to learn more about what's been keeping our lecturers busy beyond their teaching this quarter.
Nissa Cannon's former PWR 2 student, Zola Ortiz, received the John Milton Oskison writing award from the Native American Cultural Center for a piece she adapted from her PWR 2 project in Nissa's "Rhetoric of Archival Exploration" course.
Laura Joyce Davis led and moderated a panel at the 2025 Association of Writers and Writing Program Convention in Los Angeles, CA. "Podcast Guesting: How to Get Booked & Be a Great Guest," featured Laura, documentarian Jia Rizvi, writer and podcaster Annemarie Kelly-Harbaugh, and PWR lecturer Harriett Jernigan to talk about the various skills both interviewers and interviewees need to succeed in making great podcasts and audio stories. Harriett Jernigan writes, "Laura did a fabulous job and we had a wonderful time interacting with audience members." (Pictured, from left to right: Annemarie Kelly-Harbaugh, Harriett Jernigan, Jia Rizvi, and Laura Joyce Davis) In addition, this spring Laura got a book deal with the University of Chicago Press and signed with an agent at CAA who will represent Laura's current book project as well as future ones (including fiction and podcasts).
Norah Fahim has been very busy for the last few months. At the start of May, Norah presented at one of CTL's Teaching with AI Community Share-out events. She shared her pedagogical approach of using Critical Discourse Analysis with students to better complicate the results produced by GenAI tools, whether text-based or image-based (read more about Norah and other PWR lecturers' recent conversations about Generative AI here). This presentation was based on materials from her Advanced PWR Class, Writing and Representing Ourselves in the time of GenAI.
Then, in May, Norah presented at the Computers and Writing Conference in Athens, GA a session titled Countering the Narrative: Writing & Representing Ourselves in the Time of GenAI (Using a CDA approach). Also in May, Norah was a presenter in a panel titled “Critical Thinking in the Age of AI: Reading, Writing, and Rewriting in Classrooms and Research” which included a number of speakers form a range of different departments. In this panel, speakers contemplated the impact of GenAI on the nature of students' relationship with writing, research and critical thinking, and proposed some pedagogical solutions. This panel was sponsored by Stanford’s Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages.
Meg Formato's review of Einstein's Tutor: The story of Emmy Noether and the Invention of Modern Physics was published in American Scientist.
In addition, Meg Formato and Jennifer Johnson were invited by their students, Winson Cheng and Thomas Yim respectively, to attend the Terman Engineering Award ceremony as “the professor who has had the greatest impact on my academic experience at Stanford.” The award is presented to the top students in each year’s undergraduate senior engineering class.
Harriett Jernigan writes, "I participated on a panel on April 11th, 2025. 'Stanford-AI Futures: Building Safe and Responsible Generative AI,' was organized and moderated by Stanford alum Candace Jones, Principal Technical Program Manager for AeGIS at Microsoft. The Black Community Services Center, represented by Marie Tano, hosted the event. I joined Dr. Sanmi Koyejo. (Assistant Professor and Stanford Trustworthy AI Research Lab Lead) and Dr. Faye-Marie Vassel (Stanford HAI Research Fellow) to discuss how generative AI could benefit marginalized folk and Black people specifically and ways in which we might achieve those goals. It was a very informative and lively event. I also enjoyed an interview with journalist and audio storyteller Clare Wiley, a regular contributor to Vice, the Guardian, and NPR, to name a few outlets. We talked about First Person and what audio engineers and podcasters can learn from the principles of live storytelling. I also mentioned PWR and NCR." You can find the interview on Wiley's newsletter 'Audio Storytelling.'"
In addition, Harriett is shortlisted for the "Moment of Comedy Gold" category of the 2025 International Women's Podcast Awards. The story (which features Stanford co-term Aru Nair) was published on State of the Human after it was recorded at First Person Story. You can listen to it here.
Hayden Kantor writes, "I visited two classes as a guest lecturer over Zoom. The first one was at Boston University. The second one was at the University of Utah, where I invited by former PWR lecturer Samah Elbelazi!"
Emily Polk recently published "Telling the Bees" in Emergence Magazine. The essay is also available in audio—narrated by the author!
The California News Publishers Association named Peter Tokofsky a finalist in three categories for its 2024 California Journalism Awards: editorial comment, food writing, and sports features. The columns that earned this recognition appeared on coastsidenews.com, the local news website for the San Mateo County Coast that Peter edits. They include stories on a retired Half Moon Bay High School principal helping coach the junior varsity football team; a chef who helped inspire the Asian fusion cooking trend finding peace in her coastside kitchen; and commentary on the controversy over the San Mateo County Sheriff. Winners will be announced later this month.
