Thank you for another lovely afternoon-into-evening, spent celebrating the power of writing. Here we are in these last few days of October. I especially enjoyed this week’s walk to the gym as the evening set in, the letter writing circle exercise, and the autumnal feeling of shared reflection. I also enjoyed the sweets. The end of October brings distinct seasonal feelings, along with the potential rise in our glucose levels. 😂

Our field trip to the University Archives

Please remember that we are meeting at 5:15pm next week at the Liberty Hall Academic Center. (We will not be gathering at our usual room in CAS). If you enter the front of the LHAC building, please turn left, and you will see the University Archives space right ahead on the left side. We will gather with Erin Alghandoor, the Kean University Archivist, for a engaging and interactive workshop designed for us to learn more about the depth and breath of this University resource. **Please keep in mind that some of your future research interests might be sparked or seeded in this special collection of materials. Also, please remember to complete the survey before our visit. This survey was forwarded to you via email, so please search your recent email from me. See you at LHAC at 5:15pm next Thursday (Nov. 5).

Class slides:

Writing & Community

Thank you Alyssa for your creative and playful approach to our reading of bell hooks’ chapter 10 from Teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. Hooks invites us to think about teaching not simply as the transmission of knowledge, but as the creation of a learning community grounded in mutual participation, trust, intellectual openness, and a willingness to be transformed. She invites us to rethink and redress the traditional hierarchy between teacher and student, while asking us to imagine the classroom as a shared space of intellectual and personal possibility. And I think Alyssa drew that potential out beautifully in her design our time together. Her way of selecting central ideas and concepts, and then inviting us to playfully co-create poetic meditations of these key concepts, was a layered and demonstrative way to make hooks’ writings come to life.

The thing about this reading is that hooks insists that community is not something we simply declare, but rather, it is something we intentionally build through our everyday pedagogical practices. And we have been doing each week. Step by step we have been building connections and trust, and you have added to the flavor of that mix, with your own participatory and co-creative additions. ☺️👍

I hope that the main take away your will remember from this reading (and our embodied and playful consideration of it thanks to Alyssa) is that liberatory teaching and learning is a practice, not a just political position or a carefully curated collection of texts. I think it is safe to say that at this stage on the eve of Halloween, “Writing Theory & Practice” class feels like more than just another class, but indeed, it feels like a community. Thank you Alyssa for making that apparent in the way you approached your presentation design, and to all of you, for participating and contributing to this ideal in your own unique ways.

Your to-do list:

For the next class please read Nathaly’s selections which are about Writing, Creativity, and the Technologies of Making: ​

• Cultivating creative attention:​

Popova, M (2014, December 2). Lynda Barry’s Illustrated Field Guide to Keeping a Visual Diary and Cultivating a Capacity for Creative Observation [Blog post: Brainpickings] Retrieved from https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/02/lynda-barry-syllabus-book/.​

• Creativity in the age of generative AI:​

Mei, Peidong, Deborah N. Brewis, Fortune Nwaiwu, Deshan Sumanathilaka, Fernando Alva-Manchego, and Joanna Demaree-Cotton (2025). “If ChatGPT Can Do It, Where Is My Creativity? Generative AI Boosts Performance but Diminishes Experience in Creative Writing.” Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans, 4, 100140.​

Blog #9 Due before 11/5 – Blog reflection on Nathaly’s selected readings​

Happy Halloween everyone!

Please stay safe, and have some fun. ❤️

And also, don’t forget to dial those clocks back an hour. And rest.