Teachin' Books

Jun 06 2023
Teachin' Books Podcast artwork

A podcast all about the ways people teach, learn, and work with literature -- aaaand all sorts of other cultural bits and bobs, like video games, theatrical performances, Dungeons and Dragons, and more! Host Jessica McDonald talks about teachin' books in undergraduate classrooms, and she interviews folks to learn more about what cool work is happening in other other teaching and learning contexts.

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2.11 Teaching Reality TV / Below Deck: Mediterranean

Jun 06 2023 36 mins  
On the agenda today is true masterpiece of reality television, Below Deck: Mediterranean! Specifically: Season 6 Episode 16, "Sleepless in Croatia," which I've happily taught a few times now in my first-year cultural studies courses. Topics today include: surveying the realities of the superyachting industry, teaching emotional and affective labour, and cringing hard

2.10 Time for Rest

May 23 2023 30 mins  
Heeeey y'all: Teachin' Books is back to production after a longer-than-expected hiatus, and today I'm talkin' about REST. More specifically: how an enforced rest-by-injury shaped my teaching practices in the last six months, including newly grappling with the "pace" of sound teaching and confronting the ableist dimensions of teaching and learning. I al

2.9 Kate Beaton's Ducks

Mar 15 2022 28 mins  
Today's episode involves our first ever comic on Teachin' Books! I'm excited to share with you how I teach Kate Beaton's webcomic Ducks, which you should definitely read right now, if you haven't already.Topics of the episode include: confronting environmental and social justice through literature, i.e. through visual and textual analysis; teaching within a

2.8 Interview with Namrata Mitra / Teaching Postcolonial Literatures

Feb 22 2022 69 mins  
On today's episode, I'm chattin' with the fabulous Namrata Mitra, who is an Associate Professor at Iona College in the Department of English. Her research areas are feminist philosophy, queer theory, and postcolonial studies. We talk about Namrata's Postcolonial Literatures courses, and we discuss a wide range of teaching-related topics, such as: how students&ap

2.7 Changin' Times

Feb 01 2022 28 mins  
Wow, things have chaaaanged and are still a-changin'! Teachin' and learnin' things, that is. On this first solo episode of 2022, I talk about how I've come face-to-face, in the last few weeks of full-time teaching, with how teaching and learning has changed in the year and a half+ that I was away from teaching for my full-time postdoctoral fellowship. Topics inc

2.6 Interview with Brent Ryan Bellamy, Moritz Ingwersen, and Rachel Webb Jekanowski / Teaching about Oil through Arts, Film, and Literature

Jan 11 2022 68 mins  
In this first episode of 2022 (!!!), I'm delighted to be joined by Brent Ryan Bellamy, Moritz Ingwersen, and Rachel Webb Jekanowski, co-instructors of a course on "North American Petrocultures," taught collaboratively and online through TU Dresden in Germany. The core of this episode: How do you talk about oil in a Humanities classroom? What can studying arts and lit

Holiday special! - Feeling My Way through Walmart

Dec 21 2021 46 mins  
This year's Holiday Special episode (whoop whoooop!) is an audio essay I produced for the Future Horizons summer project series. The series was organized by the fabulous Sarah Roger and Paul Barrett, and my essay was produced with generous support and feedback from Myra Bloom.The audio essay is "Feeling My Way through Walmart," and it spans my experiences from growin

2.5 Interview with Karrie Auger and Nancy Van Styvendale / Inspired Minds: All Nations Creative Writing Program and Gregory Scofield's "Heart Food"

Dec 07 2021 56 mins  
I'm so pleased to share today's interview with you, featuring Karrie Auger and Nancy Van Styvendale, all about the Inspired Minds: All Nations Creative Writing Program, which is facilitated in prisons in Saskatchewan and Alberta.In addition to talking about how they've approached Gregory Scofield's poem "Heart Food" in Inspired Minds classes, Karrie an

2.4 Interview with Shana MacDonald / Feminist Think Tank and Instagram Research, Activism, and Education

Nov 16 2021 58 mins  
Today's episode is all about the ways we teach, learn, and work with... Instagraaaaaaaaam! I'm so excited to share with you this conversation I had with Shana MacDonald, who is an Associate Professor in Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo and the current President of the Film Studies Association of Canada.On today's episode, Shana talks about her funded,

2.3 Emily Dickinson's "A narrow Fellow in the Grass"

Nov 02 2021 31 mins  
If you enjoy thinking, learning, and hearing about the nuts and bolts of classroom practice, this one's for you! In today's episode, I talk about three methods / exercises / approaches I've used to teach Emily Dickinson's poem "A narrow Fellow in the Grass." And I get downright detailed, y'all: close-reading, concept-mapping, riddle poems, assembl