Many of our instructors having been keeping busy beyond the classroom so far in 2020. See some highlights below.
Samah Elbelazi writes: "I presented part of my dissertation about Libyan women rhetoric pre- and post Arab Spring. My paper titled "- Exploring Libyan Women’s Rhetoric through Poetic Ethnography as a Research Method" discusses the use of poetic ethnography as an ethnographic research method. This presentation examines the lived experiences of twelve Libyan Muslim women from 1940 to 2018 by using poetic ethnography as a research method. The research was conducted through three stages: 1) data collection, 2) poem creation, and 3) member check for accuracy and validity. The results display ethnographic poems generated from the women’s narrative and suggest using poetic ethnography as a method of inquiry to understand the lived experiences and to facilitate the voice of the silenced. The findings of the study reported four significant themes that explore women’s life during King Idris’s, Gaddafi, Arab Spring, and post Arab Spring. Poetic ethnography in this research is not only used as a means of representation but as a research method/tool that adds to the existing body of ethnographic and qualitative research. After this presentation, I received an invitation to present this work in a graduate research class at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, by Dr. Jean-Pierre Bongila." She had also planned to attend CCCC20 to present two papers (one-co-authored with Dr. Hanan Saadi from UTSA), and receive the Scholars for the Dream Award 2020; in addition, she was scheduled to present "The Rhetoric of Healing: Poetry Writing as a Healing Practice" at AERA 2020 in San Francisco, CA.
Lindsey Felt had the following to report: "My 2019-2020 curatorial residency at SOMArts, which I co-curated with Vanessa Chang (a Stanford alumna), culminated in my exhibition, 'Recoding CripTech.' The show explored technology as a resource to be harnessed and hacked in service of ethical and wider social visibility for disability culture. The show ran at SOMArts from January 23 - February 25, and was a great success. We were reviewed by Art in America and KQED Arts!"
Jennifer Johnson co-authored a paper “Translating Culture in Global Times: Dialogues” (with Hua, Kramsch, Gramling, House, Wei & Park) for a special issue of Applied Linguistics published in February, 2020. As a “dialogues” or “texts in conversation” piece, the authors, also contributors to the special issue, were asked to read each other’s articles and reflect on special issue themes: the ethical and political dimensions of cultural translation, cultural difference vs. diversity and the possibilities of translanguaging perspectives. Link: https://doi-org.stanford.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/applin/amz021
Jennifer also presented a paper at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Seattle, WA in January, 2020. The paper was titled, “Unimodal assumptions underpinning “monolingual bias”: What we can learn from the multilingual and multimodal narratives of deaf learners”. Her paper was part of the panel, with scholars from disability studies, applied linguistics and literature, “Embodying Difference: Disrupting Disability in Language and Literature”.
On January 22, 2020, Zandra Jordan delivered the Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration keynote address at Stanford. The video is available on YouTube.
Kevin Moore had two updates: In November, he attended the PAMLA conference in San Diego, where he was invited to give a talk as part of a panel called "Teaching Writing as a Site of Resistance." The titled based on his PWR 1 class, Trust, Rhetoric, and Writing. In addition, he was invited last year to contribute a chapter to a forthcoming collection titled Ralph Ellison in Context (Ed. Paul Devlin, Cambridge UP). The title of his chapter is "Wrestling with the Far Right: Ellison's Representations of Fascism." He finished the essay in fall, and it was accepted by the editor in January. It will be published later this year or early next year. This is part of a longstanding involvement with Ellison's work and his author society.
Emily Polk and her co-author Sibyl Diver recently published their article, "Situating the Scientist: Creating Inclusive Science Communication through Equity Framing and Environmental Justice." The article appeared in Frontiers in Communication. The article draws on her experience with Sibyl in teaching her Advanced PWR course, PWR 194EP, "Introduction to Environmental Justice: Perspectives on Race, Class, Gender, and Race."
Kathleen Tarr gave a talk at TEDx Oakland called, "Living As So Many Of Us: A Journey Across Races" in which she talked about what we can learn from a polymath with shifting demographics about inclusion, diversity, and equity. She also won the silver medals in the 500m and 250m SW division in the Beasts from the East: Indoor Paddling Regatta.
