By Jessica McDonald
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
The podcast currently has 37 episodes available.
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 at the talent show the guests forcibly instruct the crew to put on. Come talk tv with me!
Follow Teachin' Books on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod or get in touch at [email protected]. I'd love to hear from you about this or any other episode in the back catalogue!
Please do share the podcast with someone who might like it, and rate and review in your podcasting app. Reviews especially help get the word out about the pod!
The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.
**The transcript for this episode, once available , will be here.**
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 also share a bit about my Labour, Justice, and the Cultural Lives of Working People class, including a labour inventory exercise that I'm thinking about turning into a... rest inventory?!
Hit play on the episode to hear more, then get in touch with me to tell me your thoughts and practices around ~rest~ in teaching and learning!
Follow Teachin' Books on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod or get in touch at [email protected]. I'd love to hear from you about this or any other episode in the back catalogue!
And it would be so lovely if you shared the podcast with someone you think might like it, and rate and review in your podcasting app. Reviews especially help get the word out about the pod!
The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.
**The transcript for this episode, once available , will be here.**
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 and around public narratives about Fort McMurray; reading text alongside paratext; and celebrating the effectiveness of a discussion forum prompt that was actually successful (!!). Listen in and tell me what you think!
If you're interested in getting your hands on a Teachin' Books tidbits zine as part of my ongoing fundraiser to ensure I can keep providing honoraria for students and precariously or under-employed folks who come chat on the podcast, e-transfer to [email protected] or paypal.me/jambermcd or just drop me a line wherever you can find me :) The zines are pay-what-you-can, and I'll need your mailing address to get the zine to you.
The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.
Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at [email protected]. Please share the pod with someone you think might like it, and rate and review if you have the option to in your podcasting app! :)
**The transcript for this episode, once available , will be here.**
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' material conditions shape their learning, and in turn should shape our teaching; uncertainty as pedagogical method and practice, plus its possibilities and limitations; learning outcomes/objectives and the questions they raise; the matter of WHAT vs HOW we read in a postcolonial lit context; and more!
If you're interested in getting your hands on a Teachin' Books tidbits zine as part of my ongoing fundraiser to ensure I can keep providing honoraria for students and precariously or under-employed folks who come chat on the podcast, e-transfer to [email protected] or paypal.me/jambermcd or just drop me a line wherever you can find me :) The zines are pay-what-you-can, and I'll need your mailing address to get the zine to you.
The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.
Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at [email protected]. Please share the pod with someone you think might like it, and rate and review if you have the option to in your podcasting app! :)
**The transcript for this episode, once available , will be here.**
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 include: uncertainty and flexibility; questioning attendance and participation practices; deciding not to assign any late deductions (extensions only!); negotiating synchronous vs. asynchronous teaching; coming back to teaching as a podcaster; and more! Listen in and tell me what your experiences with teaching in 2022 have been :)
If you're interested in getting your hands on a Teachin' Books tidbits zine as part of my ongoing fundraiser to ensure I can keep providing honoraria for students and precariously or under-employed folks who come chat on the podcast, e-transfer to [email protected] or paypal.me/jambermcd or just drop me a line wherever you can find me :) The zines are pay-what-you-can, and I'll need your mailing address to get the zine to you.
The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.
Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at [email protected]. Please share the pod with someone you think might like it!
**The transcript for this episode, once available , will be here.**
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 literature teach us about oil, energy, and environmental justice? How can we imagine different futures through the skills and creative capacities we build in Humanities classrooms? Hit play to find out more!
The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.
Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at [email protected].
**The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.*
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 growing up in a Walmart, to my time working in retail, navigating the company in present day, and researching Walmart and other chain stores and sites of retail and travel. The audio essay features clips from an interview with my mom (hi mom!) and stories from my family and childhood, which I thought made it an especially appropriate piece to share with you during this holiday season. <3 I hope you enjoy!
Thank you, Sarah and Paul, for giving me the go-ahead to share this essay on Teachin' Books! And to everyone who may be listening in real time: I hope you have a restful holiday season and can find some moments of joy at the end of another difficult year.
If you're interested in getting your hands on a Teachin' Books tidbits zine as part of my ongoing fundraiser to ensure I can keep providing honoraria for students and precariously or under-employed folks who come chat on the podcast, e-transfer to [email protected] or paypal.me/jambermcd or just drop me a line wherever you can find me :) The zines are pay-what-you-can, and I'll need your mailing address to get the zine to you.
The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.
Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at [email protected]. Please share the pod with someone you think might like it!
**The transcript for this episode, once available on the Teachin' Books site, will be here, but you can also find the transcript on the original audio essay page here.**
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 and Nancy get into: relationship as the core of Inspired Minds and their facilitation of creative writing classes; the material conditions of prison programming; the Inspired Minds philosophy, which includes welcoming diversions, informal chat, and laughter; responding to texts through the senses, licking tables (!!), and more. Listen above or on most podcasting apps!
If you're interested in getting your hands on a Teachin' Books tidbits zine as part of my ongoing fundraiser to ensure I can keep providing honoraria for students and precariously or under-employed folks who come chat on the podcast, e-transfer to [email protected] or paypal.me/jambermcd or just drop me a line wherever you can find me :) The zines are pay-what-you-can, and I'll need your mailing address to get the zine to you.
The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.
Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at [email protected]. Please share the pod with those you think might like it!
*Today's episode art comes to you from the inside of my makeshift podcast-recording blanket fort. Welcome!
**The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**
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, collaborative, interdisciplinary research-creation project Feminist Think Tank, @aesthetic.resistance on Instagram, and we get into: turning Instagram into an activist tool; collaborative editing, learning, and peer-to-peer mentorship models; teaching with/and social media; securing funding for awesome feminist research-creation projects like Shana's; centring rest and care for ourselves and each other as a core part of research and teaching projects; and so much more. Listen and enjoy!
If you didn't hear my announcement from previous episodes: We have MERCH! If you're interested in getting your hands on a Teachin' Books tidbits zine as part of my ongoing fundraiser to ensure I can keep providing honoraria for students and precariously or under-employed folks who come chat on the podcast, e-transfer to [email protected] or paypal.me/jambermcd or just drop me a line wherever you can find me :) The zines are pay-what-you-can, and I'll need your mailing address to get the zine to you.
The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.
Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at [email protected].
It's super helpful to me if you share the pod with a friend, rate it, review it, tell your folks tell your family tell your neighbours your cats and anyone who will listen!
**The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**
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, assembling textual evidence, and practicing poem annotation. And: hear my breadmaker bangin' up a storm in the background -- whoops!
Listen in and let me know how *you* teach, or read, this poem. I'm curious to know!
If you didn't hear my announcement from the last episode: We have MERCH! If you're interested in getting your hands on a Teachin' Books tidbits zine as part of my ongoing fundraiser to ensure I can keep providing honoraria for students and precariously or under-employed folks who come chat on the podcast, e-transfer to [email protected] or paypal.me/jambermcd or just drop me a line wherever you can find me :) The zines are pay-what-you-can, and I'll need your mailing address to get the zine to you.
The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.
Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at [email protected]. In this kick-off to Season Two, I'd so appreciate if you'd share the pod with a friend, rate it, review it, tell your folks tell your family tell your neighbours and anyone who will listen!
**The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**
The podcast currently has 37 episodes available.