I am going to be out-of-town working for a few days so I’ve scheduled some posts for the week that we think you should read, in case you missed ’em when they were here before. I’ll be back online Friday.
The folk at Savage Minds (one of our favorites) are doing a spring Writer’s Workshop series over on their blog and we wanted to let you know about it here, because we love writers and we love reading here at ethnography.com.
“Slow Reading“ is about the art of writing and its relationship to reading, itself something Lambek describes as a “lost art” (I concur!). I’ve been a lifelong reader, former literacy tutor, bookstore clerk, and soc prof I see what he means when he says that reading is “limited to that privileged small percent at the top end of the bimodal distribution.” And we want everyone to read, especially students (we all know this is why they tend to write poorly). Lambek also mentions Marilynne Robinson, one of my favorite writers and one of the greats. But will students read her, will they read a whole book?
My husband Larry and I had coffee with my co-editor Tony and his wife Dagmar yesterday and we talked about this very thing. How do you get students to read? Will they read a whole book? I said ‘yes’ but there was healthy skepticism among us, students may not like to read but who does these days? What do you think? Have any tricks up your sleeve that you’d like to share? Give Lambek’s piece a read and tell us what you know and what you think in the comments.
Julie Garza-Withers, former award-winning community college Sociology instructor who’s currently using Sociology to organize and research for racial justice in rural northern California. She was a facilitator in the film “If These Halls Could Talk” with Director Lee Mun Wah, and has published at Working Class Studies, and elsewhere.
Julie has a particular interest in class and classism as a form of social stratification, and the role of cussing and anti-intellectualism in stratifying society. A fan of cussing herself, she says she only “Cusses when necessary,” which is often. She considers herself a working class academic because she is a first generation college grad who grew up in rural southern California where her options post-high school included getting married or working at Del Taco and selling tacos to fast food customers until she got married.
Julie has an M.A. from California State University, Chico, where she studied how social class and gender impact work-place conflict between women. She lives in rural northern California with her husband Larry where they enjoy the forest, their dogs, and gardening.
You can follow Julie on twitter where she posts as WorkingClassTeacher, and also check out Julie’s anti-racism work at Rural SURJ of NorCal-Showing Up for Racial Justice. Currently an inactive author, awaiting a poke with a sharp stick.