Pictured above: [...]
During the past few months of 2026, our lecturers have been busy innovating in the classroom, giving talks and performances, leading workshops, and getting published. Read on below for a sampling of some of the great work they've been doing.
Harriett Jernigan provides this update on her activities over the last couple of months: "I had the opportunity to participate in the Stanford Storytelling Project's 'Story Pharmacy,' which should go to podcast by the end of the academic year. In addition to story coaching, I also told a story at the Black Voices show on campus on February 27th. The show, coordinated by Dawn Fraser with the support of Megan Calfas, is presented by Ideas Out Loud and the Stanford Storytelling Project, 'aiming to promote the voices and stories of the Black community at Stanford.' I told a story about meeting Maya Angelou, and how my father redeemed one of my most embarrassing moments [from the PWR Newsletter editors - you should ask her to tell you the story sometime - it's a great one!] . . . . In addition, I spent the first half of the quarter running a kind of storytelling marathon. We first had the inaugural show for season 3 of First Person at the end of January. I then performed at The Marsh Theater in Berkeley in the same week. I then performed at two more venues in February, performing a total of 4 different stories in 4 weeks. It was a lot of fun!"
Beyond her adventures in story-telling, Harriett also just had an article published as part of a book project she's been part of for the last two years, The Need to Rename Tech. Harriett's chapter, "Watching the Well Run Dry: Digital Settler Colonialism," focuses on comparing Big Water to Big Data.
Finally, Harriett's also been busy this quarter supporting our NCR seniors, "It's been wonderful seeing the NCR students prepare their final portfolios for the Spring Showcase! The portfolios are so creative, and totally reflect the values and ethos of NCR. I look forward to the showcase."
In the fall quarter, two PWR 1 courses—Jennifer Johnson’s "Linguistic Diversity and Language Change" and Lindsey Felt’s "#NoBodyIsDisposable: The Rhetoric of Disability"—came together for a collaborative virtual visit with writer and scholar Rachel Kolb (former Hume writing tutor and Boothe Prize winner), who is currently on tour for her new memoir, Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice (Ecco, 2025). Rachel’s broad collection of work examines communication, language, and disability as central components of human experience. As part of their Rhetorical Analysis assignment, students read two of her multimodal essays prior to the visit and developed questions for a Q&A, creating an opportunity to connect course concepts to her work and explore how writers develop voice in academic and public-facing writing. Rachel also responded to questions about her own revision processes, pulling back the curtain on how professional writers value/approach writing as craft/process.
Kevin Moore shared the following: "On January 15, I gave a workshop for the new science communication workshop series FoCUS (Forum for Communicating and Understanding Science) at the Stanford School of Medicine. The talk was titled 'Crafting Effective Metaphors for Biomedical Science Communication.' In February, my article "Rehistoricizing Trigger Warnings amid the Post-9/11 US Security State” was published in the collection, Trigger Warnings: Teaching through Trauma (Lever Press, Eds. Ian Barnard, Ryan Ashley Caldwell, Jada Patchigondla, Aneil Rallin, Morgan Read-Davidson, Ethan Trejo, and Kristi M Wilson)."
Kath Rothschild reports: "This year's CCCCs was full of conversations about generative, AI and various classroom approaches to dealing with it! From curiosity to banning, there were all kinds of approaches and no shortage of opinions. Most interesting were conversations around second language learners, Grammarly, and the line between generative and helpful AI. Adam Banks, Lisa Swan, and myself were all present from Stanford University PWR Program, sharing ideas and adding their voices to the broader conversation around culture, AI, and writing." She adds - "I presented on writing knowledge transfer and improvisation in a writing and speaking classroom, and got everyone up, moving, and doing improv in my session-- even at 4 PM!"
Lisa Swan writes, "Tes Schaeffer and I recently published our reading research, 'Mining Reading: A Theory of Reading for Conversation' in Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition and Culture. In the article, we draw on readerly purpose and agency to propose “mining reading," describe our classroom pedagogy, and share findings from student reflections. The inspiration for our research came out of our long conversations about teaching the TiC and Research Proposal, specifically trying to apply a reflective reading approach across PWR’s entire assignment sequence. We’re excited to share the work and hope it supports other instructors in our program and the field."
Roberta Wolfson's book, Refiguring Race and Risk: Counternarratives of Care in the US Security State (OSU Press, 2024), was shortlisted for the inaugural 2023-2024 MELUS Book Prize. This biennial award recognizes an excellent academic monograph published within a two-year period that aligns with the mission of MELUS (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States) and is primarily focused on multiple ethnicities, comparative ethnicities, or mixed identities in texts of the United States or of the U.S. and the Americas. In addition, Roberta presented at two conferences this winter quarter: "First, I shared about my advanced course on ethnofuturist rhetorics at the virtual National Advancement of Writing Symposium on January 30. Second, I shared about my ongoing research for a second book project at the Critical Mixed Race Studies Association conference at UCLA, which took place from February 19-21."
