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MnWE News
Late-Fall Issue:
CFP, AI Costs, OER, & Joy Harjo
November-December 2023
In this
issue:
-
SEND A PROPOSAL TO
MnWE.ORG
FOR THE APRIL 12-13 CONFERENCE!
-
AI Costs:
AI’S SLURP ENERGY LIKE SMALL COUNTRIES.
3. OER: NO-COST ONLINE EDUCATIONAL
RESOURCES—WHY, HOW, WHERE
4. Book Review: JOY HARJO’S POET
WARRIOR: A MEMOIR
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5. Equity/Diversity Literary Resources
(in each issue)
6. Free Teaching/Learning
E-Newsletters
(in each issue)
7. About MnWE
(in each issue)
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1. SEND A PROPOSAL TO
MnWE.ORG FOR THE APRIL 12-13
CONFERENCE!
The MnWE Committee now is accepting proposals for MnWE 2024 at Normandale
College in the southwest quadrant of the Twin Cities metro area: go to
www.MnWE.org. The annual, two-day conference this year focuses on “New
Visions for College Writing.” With changes from the pandemic, the advent
of AI, and other political and social issues, we live in a world leading
to new teaching paradigms. Send us your thoughtful, brief proposal on our
theme or any other subject related to college writing and English,
tutoring, or related issues, and we’ll be glad to accept your
presentation. The MnWE Committee accepts the great majority of proposals.
The MnWE Conference is notable for emphasizing discussion in
a kind, respectful, pedagogy- and sharing-oriented atmosphere that
participants often discover is the equal of regional or even smaller
national conferences. This year’s conference promises to be lively and
well attended. Normandale is Minnesota’s largest community college. We
will be situated in its beautiful Garden Room for a plenary and lunch each
day with registration and modern breakout rooms nearby. All sessions will
be held simultaneously in the rooms and on Zoom, so you may join us and/or
present either way.
Most attendees come from universities and colleges in
Minnesota, but we also gladly welcome those from other states and nations.
Presenters range from experienced professors to first-time adjuncts,
graduate students, high school faculty, and undergraduate English majors.
MnWE is an especially caring, gentle, and intelligent site for first-time
presenters and for graduate students who would like practice in presenting
before going out into the real world for jobs of all kinds. The conference
also is a dynamic opportunity to learn the latest in person about new
pedagogies—and old ones with new applications—in Minnesota and the nation.
Join us April 12-13 for a relaxing and exciting experience
with your colleagues. Go to
www.MnWE.org to start your proposal.
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2.
AI Costs:
AI’S SLURP ENERGY LIKE SMALL COUNTRIES.
AI programs could,
by 2027, use as much yearly electricity as smaller countries such as
Argentina, the Netherlands, and Sweden, according to data scientist Alex
de Vries in the peer-reviewed journal Joule. His “moderate”
assessment was reported by Delger Erdenesanaa in an Oct. 10 New York
Times article.
AI uses specialized
computers that De Vries refers to as “power-hungry beasts” because they
need so much energy. Whole new computer farms are being built to serve AI
interests. The overall estimated amount by 2027 still will be small
compared to all use: about one-half of one percent. However, even bigger
power drains are happening already because of searches, data storage, and
cryptocurrency creation. “In 2022, data centers that power all computers,
including Amazon’s cloud and Google’s search engine, used about 1% to1.3%
of the world’s electricity,” not including cryptocurrency, which used
about 0.4%, says De Vries. He estimates that Google’s search engines
alone, if switched entirely to AI (a distinct possibility), could use as
much energy per year as Ireland. With many companies using AI, and its
popularity increasing in years to come, ir may cause significant global
warming.
Much depends on whether AI companies and adopters like Google and
Amazon decide to choose green-powered sources over gas, oil, and coal.
“But that’s a tough sell,” says Erdenesanaa, “when companies are racing to
improve their AI models as quickly as possible.”
Where do faculty and students come into this? As with any
resource, good vs. frivolous use may be important. This may include
training students in when AI is truly useful and when it is mostly a waste
of time.
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NYTimes:AI-could-soon-need-as-much-electricity-as-an-entire-country
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3.
OER: NO-COST ONLINE
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES—WHY, HOW, & WHERE
By Kelly Donahue and Randi Madisen
Open Educational Resources (OER) are
learning materials that are public domain or licensed to allow free use,
remixing, and redistribution. Faculty often think of OER as an entire
textbook that they use the same way they would use a publisher’s print
textbook in a class. However, open resources allow much more flexibility.
Often the best approach is to use the course modules in the Learning
Management System (LMS) to arrange multiple resources, with one or two
modules for each course goal.
Courses designed with OER often link students to multiple
sites. For example, faculty may use library resources like films,
articles, or even whole e-books for some course content. Other course work
may link students to readings from websites like Gutenberg Project for
past-copyright novels, professional sites like MLA to teach citation, or
how-to explanations from online writing labs to review paragraph
structure.
Open resources are licensed under Creative Commons to
allow adaptation and remixing, so they can be creatively reused, adapted,
and made-to-order to fit the requirements of local learners like aligning
to the Minnesota State transfer curriculum or diversifying the voices
represented. Resources can also be remixed. For example, faculty can use
the best chapter from this resource, an article from that resource, and a
video from a third resource. Faculty have the subject knowledge to either
adapt existing resources or even create new ones.
No-cost OER benefit students by saving them money and
increasing text accessibility. Classes using OER allow students access to
course materials on the first day of classes, regardless of their ability
to pay. And OER improve course grades and lower fail rates more for Pell
recipients and historically underserved populations.[i]
Most college LMS sites and all library databases incorporate accessibility
software that reads content aloud to students. Some colleges’ LMS sites
even have software that translates written material into multiple
languages for students to increase your course accessibility for all
students.
Use the resources below and your institution’s library
resources to leave the constraints of a conventional textbook behind. Your
students will benefit from anything you can do to reduce their costs.
OER for First-Year Comp and Lit Students and Beyond
- Button, Aly, et al.
Writing in College, Open SUNY Textbooks, 19 Jan. 2016. Focuses
on the reason students write
- Glynn, Alexandra, et al.
You, Writing!: A Guide to College Composition. Minnesota
State Opendora. Explores the writing process in a logical order:
finding audience, purpose, and topics; developing a thesis and paragraphs
that support it; writing a first draft; and revising, editing, and
proofreading
- Jewell, R.
CollegeWriting.org, A College Composition and Writing Textbook.
Basic, first-year and advanced comp and disciplinary writing. Most
chapters have student examples at three levels of difficulty.
- Kashyap, Athena, and Erika Dyquisto.
Writing, Reading, and College Success: A First-Year Composition Course for
All Learners. Humanities LibreTexts, 12 June 2020. Includes
additional materials that support developmental or English language
learners with college success skills, reading, and writing
- Literacy4DS. “Active
Reading.” YouTube, 28 Nov. 2012. Short video to help students
understand if their reading is active or passive, then review strategies
to promote critical reading
-
Purdue Online Writing Lab. All essential elements of writing
with links to specific readings or exercises.
- Stedman, Kyle D. “Annoying
Ways People Use Sources.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing,
Volume 1, ed. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. WAC Clearinghouse. Helps
comp students explore common source-use errors by comparing it to poor
driving. The entire book also is free and aimed at higher-level FYC.
OER Designed for Writing about Literature Students
- Bennett, Tanya Long. “Writing and Literature: Composition as
Inquiry, Learning, Thinking, and Communication.”
GALILEO Open Learning Materials.
Shows students how to read and analyze texts, then write about what
they learned
- Jewell, R.
“Response to Literature.” Step-by-step lessons on five typical methods
of writing to and about literature, with clear instructions and student
examples
- Ringo, Heather and Kashyap, Athena. “Writing and Critical
Thinking Through Literature.” City College San Francisco through ASCCC
Open Educational Resources Initiative.”
Humanities LibreTexts, 13 Nov. 2021. A broad landing page
connecting to multiple literature-based writing texts
Other Places to find OER
-
Mason EER Metafinder. Simultaneously search 16 OER repositories.
OASIS. From SUNY Geneseo, Openly Available Sources Integrated Search
(OASIS). It is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open
content easier. Try OER by subject label to find materials for a
particular discipline.
- Opendora -
Opendora. From Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, a
repository to access, load, and share open educational resources.
-
UMN Open Text Library. From the University of Minnesota. Find
open-source textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be
freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books have been reviewed by
faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their
quality.
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[1]
Colvard, Nicholas, et. al. “The Impact of Open Educational Resources on
Various Student Success Metrics.” International Journal of Teaching and
Learning in Higher Education, 2018, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 262-276.
http://www.isetl.org/ijtlhe/articleView.cfm?id=3386.
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Kelly Donahue and Randi Madisen are faculty members at Century College in
White Bear Lake, Minnesota, Kelly in English and Randi as a Librarian.
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4. Book Review: JOY HARJO’S POET WARRIOR: A MEMOIR.
W.W. Norton, 2021
Review by Steve Wiley
Joy Harjo, born into the Muscogee tribe,
has made art, music, and poetry since childhood. She recently complete
three terms as the U.S. Poet Laureate.
Her original, prolific output has
won her many awards: a Yale Bollingen, PEN/Voelcker, American Book,
Guggen-heim, National Women’s Hall of Fame, National Book Critics Circle
Lifetime Achievement, eight honorary doctorates, a nomination for a
Lambda, and dozens more. She is a graduate of the University of Iowa’s
famed MFA Program.
My aim here is to explore her most recent
memoir, Poet Warrior, its recursive density, and the lyrical beauty
of its language and design. It mixes memoir with poems, dreams, and songs,
with each telling becoming another layer of her deepening spiritual and
artistic journey.
We encounter people and places Joy has known, a
network that grows with her. Her charismatic father, from an oil-rich
Creek family, and her beautiful mother fall in love and marry young. A
cook and waitress who keeps a “spotless” kitchen, she loves talking with
her friends. But his infidelity, alcoholism, and verbal and physical
violence with her and Joy worsen, ending when he leaves for good. Without
his airplane mechanic salary but four children to raise, her mother’s
health erodes. Her second husband is white and provides economic
stability, but he mercilessly oppresses his wife and the stepchildren he
loathes. A brutal predator, he beats Joy with his belt, toys with her teen
sexual vulnerability, and terrifies her. Joy seeks relief and connection
with alcohol and sex, without solace. Her enervated mother submits,
powerless and exhausted. When he dies, she’s institutionalized by the
state and put on Thorazine for decades.
Joy’s close connection with the Old Ones, her
council of ancestors, helps her not only survive all this pain but become
increasingly aware of herself, other people, and nature (snakes, rivers,
trees) as all being alive and related. The Old Ones live on the other side
and visit her in mind, bidden or unbidden, always at need. They name her
Girl Warrior in childhood and, throughout her life, show her the endlessly
elaborate, vibrant connectedness of the whole living world. The girl
intuits this easily. At puberty, she receives a song from the Old Ones:
“The Life of Beauty” traces her from incarnation; to “tendrils of fire
longing,” sexual and spiritual, in adolescence; to a retrospective on
adversities she will overcome and connections that will strengthen; to the
future when “she left this story behind her.”
And after she turns fourteen, the
Old Ones name her Poet Warrior. She now can survive her stepfather; she
even credits him with compelling her to strengthen her imagination to live
without fear.
Poet Warrior
introduces several dozen other influences on
Harjo’s creative life, some famous, some obscure, all of whom she is
grateful for. Among them: Santa Fe’s American Indian Art Institute opens
her full artistic breadth in high school and for decades afterward; Leslie
Silko, Simon Ortiz, Galway Kinnell, and Walt Whitman influence her poetry;
the Lascaux cave painters, Marc Chagall, and Native artists inform her
art; African, African American, and Native jazz musicians are the impetus
behind teaching herself sax in her late thirties and forming two jazz
bands (one still touring). And Joy has had countless teaching and
performing gigs.
At nearly thirty, the Old Ones
tell her she has a choice to commit to the path of poetry. She’s been
publishing poetry since 1975 and writing it longer, but overwhelmed by
years of being a single mother, she refuses the call and tries to escape
her responsibilities. After seven aimless years in denial, Joy returns to
her family in time to see her daughter’s daughter arrive. The Old Ones
welcome her back, but her daughter disappears, and her tender genius
boyfriend develops schizophrenia and dies, homeless, in a hit-and-run.
Both adversities
and successes have made Joy Harjo strong. “Everyone is a teacher” to her,
and she honors some of the mentors who have helped her resist “the
multicorporate glut.” She corresponds with Meridel le Sueur from her
college days until Meridel’s death in 2011, encouraged by her persistence
against adversity. Scott Momaday’s poems show Joy anew how to craft. Audre
Lorde’s live readings engage the power of speech to connect intimately
with the listener and confirm that the personal and political are
connected. Lorde says that mother, lover, and poet are all warrior roles.
Hawaii, the Amazon’s pink dolphins and rainforest, and the reviving effect
of a gift of pure coca leaves—all of them taught her.
Her mother is an especially powerful teacher.
Free of Thorazine and the mental hospital, she comes home to die. Joy’s
care becomes “midwifing [her] through to her next life.” She and her
sister and her niece are with her mother at the end. Joy writes a poem
envisioning washing her mother’s body, sadly poignant because she is not
there to do it. Now, happily married and living on the Creek reservation,
Joy looks forward to seeing her friends and family on the other side and
joining the Old Ones. In her final vision, she holds her fifth great
granddaughter, sings a song into her for ancestral strength, and walks her
into her time to deliver her to this world. The recursive movement here
comes full circle to the first pages of Poet Warrior.
Most students likely will find her story hard to stop
reading. The topics are dramatic and easily set up for discussions and
responses on multiple levels—artistic, political, social, historical.
Harjo is an American literary treasure, and this book is but one more in a
string of her “Memory Sack[s]” of people, beings, and forces of nature
that she immortalizes in her several forms of art.
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NPR Review
Harvard Review
Wikipedia on Joy Harjo
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5.
Diversity Books:
What might you or your students enjoy reading and researching?
Asian-American:
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Black:
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Indigenous/Native American:
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Latinx:
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LGBTQ:
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Graphic Novels Offering Diversity:
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Past
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7.
About
MnWE: Previous
Issues, Joining, Who We Are,
Writing a Book Review or
Article, Grad Credit, Unsubscribing (in
each issue)
More Online-Teaching Resources:
See
www.mnweconference.com/resources.html.
Our Newsletters: For new and old issues, visit
MnWE News.
Forwarding/Joining:
Please forward this email to other
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jeweLØØ1
at umn
dot edu.
We always enjoy signing up new list members.
Who
are
we?
“MnWE” is “Minnesota Writing and English,” a listserv of over 2000 (the
“English Discipline Listserv), and an all-volunteer organization started
in 2007. MnWE offers an annual, two-day, spring conference attended by
100-200 faculty and students. Our main coordinating committee, which meets
about ten times per year, is composed entirely of unpaid college,
university, high school, and other professional and graduate student
English/writing volunteers.
Who is MnWE’s audience? All activities are by and for college,
university, and college-in-the-high-schools English and
writing
faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and related academic and
literary scholars, tutors, publishers, authors,
and others in the Upper Midwest and
beyond. Our purpose is to bring together these
communities in Minnesota and in the parts of bordering states and
provinces within driving distance of Minnesota.
Where are we?
Please visit us online at
MnWE.org.
Our geographical center is Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Over 2000 faculty, graduate students,
tutors, and related administrators receive our emails, and forwards
go to an additional hundreds of colleagues and students.
Those on our listserv receive this
newsletter six times per year, along with additional conference
announcements and occasional helpful information.
Our listserv members come from state universities, public and private
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the public universities of Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South
Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, and other schools and locations in the
United States, Canada, and overseas.
Conference:
At our annual, two-day conferences,
our daily panel of plenary speakers highlights
pedagogical concerns by scholars and writers of national excellence from
local and regional schools and professional organizations. In our twenty
or more breakouts in several time periods each day, discussants come from
universities, colleges, high schools from the Upper Midwest, the U.S., and
sometimes from other countries. All are welcome.
Book Reviews and Articles:
Write a book review or article for us! We publish a review in most issues
and are reaching out to find more article authors..
A typical (though not required) book-review pattern for 400-600
words is an interesting introduction (creative, interrogative, anecdotal,
controversial, or ?); one section each describing the book, its arguments/
implications, and your own evaluations; and a brief conclusion. Also
helpful (but not required) are statements of awards, links to related
sites for the book, and its possible use for teaching.
For articles, anything goes if you first work it out with the
editor. Your article/essay then is edited gently and minimally for length
(400-600 w. preferred) and reader appeal with your final revision and
approval before publication.
Graduate Credit:
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University for attending
a
MnWE Conference day and writing a related research paper (up to three
such credits may be earned). For
questions about this course–“Eng 656: MnWE Practicum”–please contact
lisa
dot lucas at smsu dot edu
or see
www.smsu.edu/academics/programs/english/?id=11637.
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Questions:
We invite you to email the editor or a
coordinator on the MnWE Committee listed below. You also are always
invited to attend any of our ten or more
MnWE Committee meetings per year. To join the listserv, email Richard at
jeweLØØ1
at umn
dot edu.
If you’d like to join the committee for our online Zoom meetings or simply
attend a few meetings to observe, please
ask Richard to add you to the Committee list for
dates and times of meetings. In addition, you always are invited to offer
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Copyright:
This newsletter is written primarily by MnWE
News editor Richard Jewell without copyright so that anyone may quote,
paraphrase, or forward any or all parts freely, unless otherwise noted.
Articles written by others are credited, and those articles are
copyrighted. We do ask that you give
credit to the MnWE News and/or
www.MnWE.org;
and when you use material that has been quoted or paraphrased in this
newsletter from another source, please be sure to give proper credit to the
original source.
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Richard Jewell, Editor
MnWE News
Pronouns: He, him, they, them
(Why
it matters)
Minnesota Writing & English
www.MnWE.org
MnWE Coordination:
Julie Daniels, Program Editor, Century College
Mary Ellen Daniloff-Merrill, SMSU Advisor, Southwest Minn. State Univ.
Judith Dorn, 2023 Site Coordinator, Saint Cloud State University
Abi Duly, H.S. Faculty Advisor, New London-Spicer Schools
Gene Gazelka, Web Docs Coordinator, North Hennepin Community Coll.
Ed Hahn, Web and Registration Coordinator, North Hennepin Coll.
Ryuto Hashimoto, Undergr. Connection Coord., Mn. State U.-Mankato
Danielle Hinrichs, Program/Conf. Coordinator, Metropolitan State Univ.
Richard Jewell, Co-founder & Gen. Coord., Inver Hills Coll. (Emeritus)
Yanmei Jiang, 2023 Plenary Coordinator, Century College
Carla-Elaine Johnson, 2023 Plenary Coordinator, Saint Paul College
Eric Mein, 2024 Site Host Coordinator, Normandale College
Gordon Pueschner, Secretary & Conf. Floor Manager, Century College
Jonathan Reeves, Century College
Donald Ross, Co-founder, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities (Emeritus)
Larry Sklaney, Conference & Cost Center Coordinator, Century College
MnWE Journal
Coeditors:
David Beard, University of Minnesota-Duluth,
dbeard at d.umn.edu
Yanmei Jiang, Century College
John Schlueter, Saint Paul College
danielle.hinrichs at metrostate.edu
- (651) 999-5960
jeweL001 at umn.edu
(zero zero one) - (612) 870-7024
larry.sklaney at century.edu
- (612) 735-4954
MnWE
.org
Minnesota Writing & English
A Consortium of Colleges & Universities
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Format updated 5 Oct. 2022
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