A Material Culture Approach to Academic Writing

by | Aug 30, 2021

In this article, I reflect on ways that my folklore-studies approach to the college writing classroom enables Virginia Commonwealth University’s diverse student population, and especially historically marginalized groups, to create and appreciate cultural texts....

Stumbling into Folklore

by | Aug 30, 2021

Featuring student work and reflections from Camryn Johnson, Haley Priest, Kennedy Johnson, Paxton Ballard, Madelyn LeDoux, Sierra Fox, and Anna Grace Franques Undergraduates in our Introduction to Public Speaking course share special objects and tell stories from...

Make the Anvil Theirs

by | Aug 30, 2021

If you said poetry doesn’t matter, you would be wrong. Poems praise, preserve languages, name injustices, mock tyrants, and give voice. At this moment, we live surrounded by powerful short poetic forms doing just this kind of work: protest signs (“Science not...

From Fried Chicken to Fascination with Home

by | Aug 30, 2021

The students did not know what to write in response to the prompt for “home.” Should I describe my house in New York or Colombia? …Bangladesh? …Nepal? When my co-teacher and I designed this prompt to teach New York City students at P.S. 69 in Queens the...

Hearing Between the Words

by | Aug 30, 2021

In the manner of the Denaakk’e-Koyukon Dene-Athabascan riddling tradition, we first ask your permission to join us in riddling.   Nę tse kurutłtsara. I am going to propose riddles to you.   Taking your continued reading of this article as agreement, we...