You can also browse our Seminar Series brochure, including a convenient calendar of all seminar dates.
When ready, start the sign-up process here!
integrating the beatles into language, literature and history
9:00 a.m.-noon
Friday, Oct. 4, 2024
Karen Duchaj, Linguistics Department
k-duchaj@neiu.edu
Using the example of the Beatles and their language use, attendees of this workshop will engage in hands-on activities to explore new ways of using pop culture singing/lyrics to make English, language arts, and modern cultural history concepts more relevant to students, engaging the students’ curiosity mixed with learning through discovery. Dialects, in particular, will be explored as a means to further student interest in social relationships, social judgments, and identities. Attendees of this seminar will benefit by having another tool with which to engage students in poetry, dialect variation, and cultural history by presenting dialects and poetry via modern pop-culture.
epistemic injustices in the classroom
9:00 a.m.-noon
Friday, Oct. 11, 2024
Stacey Goguen, Philosophy Department
s-goguen@neiu.edu
In teaching, we want to empower our students as learners. An important part of learning new things is using what we already know: our epistemic agency. This is our capacity for (and comfort with) investigating questions, making claims, casting doubts, and forming judgements about the world around us. In this seminar, we’ll examine how unjust stereotypes and biases can interfere with epistemic agency in the classroom, creating “epistemic injustices.” Participants will have the opportunity to learn about epistemic injustices from the overt to the subtle. They’ll also be able to reflect on philosophical issues of identity, authority, testimony, the goals of education, and what fairness in the classroom looks like. The takeaway will be knowledge to help you spot epistemic injustices in education, some tactics for dealing with the ones within your control, and some questions to help you think more about agency and education.
teaching intersectionality through the figure of Malintzín
9:00 a.m.-noon
Friday, Oct. 18, 2024
E. Mar Garcia, English Department
e-garcia20@neiu.edu
Malintzín, or Malinalli or Marina, is a Nahua historical figure known by many names and known for, among other things, serving as a translator for Hernan Cortés during the conquest of Mexico. This seminar offers a historical overview of her life then quickly turns to examining her representation across various literary works from different periods and cultures, with an eye towards using the examination of her and her representation as a way of teaching and modeling intersectionality in the classroom. From the song “La Llorona” by the well-known Mexican rock band Caifanes, to Chicana writer Lucha Corpi’s influential series “The Marina Poems,” to Sandra Cisneros’ short story “Woman Hollering Creek,” along with countless mythological and even horror movie depictions, the figure of Malintzín has been variously made to reveal her own life story and to comment on the racial/gender/colonial issues of the place and time in which writing about her takes place. We will look at several examples of her appearance in literature to develop a multifaceted approach to understanding her that serves both Chicanx and non-Chicanx student populations.
persona non grata: embracing persona in the classroom
9:00 a.m.-noon
Friday, Nov. 1, 2024
Larry Dean, English/Creative Writing Department
l-dean@neiu.edu
According to the Academy of American Poets, “A persona poem is a poem in which the poet speaks through an assumed voice.” Also likened (and sometimes referred) to as dramatic monologues, persona poems may share certain characteristics with that theatrical device, but in other respects they are quite different, especially functioning as a standalone literary work. In this seminar, we will read and discuss a variety of persona poems, from their beginnings to present day, considering what makes them ‘tick.’ Participants will discover ways in which to engage students in their creation, connecting composition to the research process, enhancing close reading skills, inhabiting the bodies and/or minds of individuals other than themselves, challenging preconceived notions, and encouraging empathy. We’ll also examine the key elements of poems, such as line, stanza, and space, learning how each contributes to a poem’s overall effect above and beyond its language, grammar, and syntactical choices.
composition, feedback and identity:
teachers as writers and responders
9:00 a.m.-noon
Friday, Nov. 8, 2024
Tim Duggan, Teacher Education Department
t-duggan@neiu.edu
Teaching writing in middle and high school can be relentless, simply due to the number of students we serve and their various individual needs. Writing instruction research indicates that students would benefit from more writing practice in school, but who has time to read the work of 150 students week after week? Research also shows that students benefit from individualized feedback on their writing, but again, who has the capacity to give patient and consistent feedback to all students at the appropriate developmental level? And how can teachers nurture and develop their own writing identities as they guide their students? This workshop engages participants in generating innovative and educationally sound solutions to the dilemmas of writing practice and writing identity in school.
Mock spanish vs. spanglish in the classroom: what's the difference and why does it matter?
9:00 a.m.-noon
Friday, Jan. 31, 2025
Denise Cloonan Cortez de Andersen, Department of World Languages and Cultures
d-cloonan@neiu.edu
Code-switching, the practice of alternating between two or more languages or varieties of language in conversation, is one type of linguistic phenomena that is characteristic of languages in contact, but context and tone play significant roles in whether it is perceived as derogatory or not. Mock Spanish (derogatory) and Spanglish (not derogatory) are both contact language phenomena and it can be challenging to determine the difference. In this seminar, we will look at examples of both and discuss ways to encourage creative expression in Spanish in the classroom without being offensive to others.
*CANCELLED*
early literatures of latinx migration: teaching history to inform the present
9:00 a.m.-noon
CANCELLED
E. Mar Garcia, English Department
e-garcia20@neiu.edu
This workshop will provide materials written by incarcerated and other authors who are examining the problems of mass incarceration in the U.S. There are films, documentaries, articles, scholarly books, and fiction that can help students of all ages examine "law and order" in America and consider how incarceration is linked to race, slavery, poverty, mental health, gender, and sexuality, among other things. We will discuss how to help students understand how much of an anomaly our prison system is in the history of the world and alternatives that exist both within and outside of the U.S. We will consider the sometimes conflicting discourses of victims' rights and the rights of the incarcerated as well as the ways education, inside and outside of prisons, can intervene in cycles of violence and despair. While the number of people incarcerated in Illinois and the country has slightly decreased over the past five years, it is likely that many students in our classes have loved ones who have been locked up or have had some interaction with the legal system themselves. Pulling this topic out of the darkness and thinking about alternatives through writing and fiction can help all of us imagine a better, less violent future.
believing in literature:
articulating the value and purpose of literary study for students and ourselves
9:00 a.m.-noon
Friday, Feb. 14, 2025
Timothy Libretti, English Department & Acting Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences
t-libretti@neiu.edu
At the onset of “literature” (itself a contested category) becoming a serious subject of study in schools and universities, the purpose was to inculcate students in the great tradition, teaching them the masterworks of world literature and national literary traditions with the aim of humanizing and enculturating them. And over time different schools of literary theory and criticism defined literature and the purpose of studying it differently. Today, at least one purpose organizing the literature curriculum is the imperative for cultural representation. These competing purposes, often at work in less than coherent ways, manifest themselves, to some extent, in battles over text selection. This seminar is designed to offer a time to pause and reflect on why we teach literature and what we hope our students take from our classes so that we can provide our students with this metacognitive approach to literary study so they understand the skills they’re developing. We will walk through a telescoped history of the origins of literary study in the academy from the 1920s forward, reflecting on the changing purposes of the literature classroom with an eye toward helping you define or confirm your role and helping you articulate this purpose for students.
The possibilities of Digital Humanities in the Classroom
9:00 a.m.-noon
Friday, Feb. 14, 2025
Tim Scherman, English Department
t-scherman@neiu.edu
The opportunities and challenges of AI have many of us wondering what happened to what we used to call the Digital Humanities (DH) — a host of engaging approaches to literature and culture emerging in the 21st century (and earlier) that we were just getting around to tackling when the AI revolution hit. Let’s slow down for a few hours and discuss what tools and purposes we still might have from “early” DH (2009?) to help our students engage literature using digital tools that make “cheating” completely beside the point..
The protest poster and risograph printing
9:00 a.m.-noon
Friday, Feb. 28, 2025
Lauren Meranda, Art + Design
l-meranda@neiu.edu
This hands-on workshop will focus on the history of the protest poster over the centuries (yes, centuries!) and will allow participants to become familiar with Risograph printing. After an introduction to the relationship of the protest poster to social justice and political (to name a few) movements, participants will be able to shape a clear and impactful visual narrative and create a multi-color, multi-layer Risograph poster with the theme and message of their choice. Poster production materials will be provided.
To "AI" or not to "AI:"
using ai to boost creativity and writing proficiency in the classroom
9:00 a.m.-noon
Friday, March 7, 2025
Lisa Hollis-Sawyer, Psychology Department
l-hollissawyer@neiu.edu
The workshop will focus on how AI technology, in its many forms and applications, can be an effective tool in course design to help boost students' creativity in integrating ideas from a course and apply AI technology to help formulate strategies to develop projects and draft papers. Case studies will be presented and discussed regarding "pitfalls" to avoid in using AI and the "potential" for AI in designing course-related assignments and in-class activities. The workshop will focus on utilizing AI technology to brainstorm ideas related to course content and explore how AI can be used in ways that have not been used before in instructional design. Examples of how AI technology can be used will be presented, and there will be a group discussion about teachers' perceptions of AI usage with students. Next, participants will be paired up to design an AI-related class activity that will be conducted during the actual workshop. Pairs will present their ideas for the AI-supported class activity to the other participants. Finally, there will be a concluding discussion about using AI in the classroom and an exercise regarding how the policies of using AI technology (the "dos" and "don'ts") in the classroom can be incorporated into course syllabi.
Shakespeare, "othello" and race
9:00 a.m.-noon
Friday, April 11, 2025
Bradley Greenburg, English Department
b-greenburg@neiu.edu
In this seminar I’ll argue that Shakespeare’s "Othello" is a play that reflects the racism of his period, and reflects on it. "Othello" is a work that demonstrates a sophisticated awareness of racial categories, racial bigotry, and racial politics. Written and first performed in the first few years of the 17th century, the play is keen to offer stereotypes as well as deconstructing them. In our time together we’ll explore the conception of race in early modern Europe, how "Othello" fits into it, and how the play (arguably) turns these ideological constructions back on themselves.
