The second semester is heating up

... quite literally! January in the desert is probably the most beautiful weather that anyone could ever ask for. Warm and sunny during the day, cool and dry at night. That weather made the transition to a new semester a bit easier. Now mid-February is starting to bring some mid-70s to 80s days!

Visiting the Sedona Desert

This semester I am taking three classes, plus a one credit practicum, and teaching two ENG 102 classes. I am pretty busy, but I am enjoying the work I am doing. Here are a few highlights:

Last semester I interviewed Dr. Jacqueline Wernimont, who is a new faculty member at ASU. I enjoyed sitting down and talking with her, and then the interview was published in Accents on English fall 2014/winter 2015 department newsletter. Read the interview to see what we talked about!

As I talked about before, I was featured in a series of video vignettes for Visualizing Teaching in Action. Steven Hopkins completed the second video vignette earlier this semester. I am especially excited about the subject matter of this video because assessing multimodal work is something that is difficult but very important. I am excited to see where this work will go.

I attended two conferences this semester: I served as a volunteer and panel chair at the Southwest English Symposium (SWES) hosted here at ASU, and I just returned from presenting at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA) conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

SWES was a busy weekend, but I really enjoyed working the registration desk, hearing Dr. James Gee talk about the future of the university (although it wasn't a bright picture!), participating in the attendee banquet, and chairing a popular culture pedagogy panel. I am also very much looking forward to next year's SWES conference. The call for papers is asking presenters to think about objects and commodities. Please check out our website to find more/ updated information for SWES 2016!

The entryway to SWES 2015

SWPACA was a fun, busy weekend in Albuquerque. I heard there were about 800 people in attendance, and there were lots of great panels to choose from to attend. One of my favorite panels that I attended was focused on teaching with a food theme in composition classrooms. The presenters gave a lot of great ideas, and then the conversation after the presentations was enlightening and inspiring.

I presented on a panel called "Food and Culture: From Fried Dough to Chili Queens" and I gave a presentation entitled "Identity, Culture, and Border Crossing: The Language of Baklava & Popular Literacy." Check out the presentation abstract or feel free to ask if you would like more information about this presentation! I was awarded the 2015 Heldrich-Dvorak Travel Fellowship based on this abstract, which was very appreciated and exciting. It was a great weekend in Albuquerque, and I'm ready to jump back into teaching and attending my own classes.

The Heldrich-Dvork Travel Fellowship Award