While reading James Lang’s newest guidebook for college teachers, I shared one of the ideas with my English 1 students: “Attention is a gift that students and professors give to each other.” I asked them how their teachers cultivate and sustain their attention. I got an earful – and their … Read More
Author: Kate Stover
“Antiracist ideas argue that racist policies are the cause of racial inequities.”
It is easier to blame people for making mistakes than it is to consider the role that policies play in determining outcomes. Ibram X. Kendi writes, “Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy” (28). For example, when my book club discussed of … Read More
“Instructional vitality is an essential part of satisfying and rewarding careers in academe.”
“At the end of my suffering there was a door.”
It’s best to eat chocolate, I think, when reading the strong poetry of Louise Glück, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature this week. She goes for the jugular. Glück is known for her clarity and her interest in the abandoned, the punished and the betrayed. To be successful – … Read More
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…who best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if fails, at least fails while daring greatly…”
After reading two biographies of Theodore Roosevelt this summer, I was interested in the author of a book that pays homage to him by drawing on his famous 1910 speech for its title and opening chapter. I’ve come to the conclusion that if he were alive today, Teddy Roosevelt and … Read More
“The course of history is unpredictable, as irregular as the weather, as errant as affection, nations rising and falling by whim and chance, battered by violence, corrupted by greed . . .”
“. . . seized by tyrants, raided by rogues, addled by demagogues.” What a wonderful opening sentence! I’m eager to make my way through this 900+ page history of America. At this moment – in the first hours of autumn, in the heat of a presidential election, in a torrent … Read More
“Accept your students with compassion while also holding to the evidence-based truth about race and racism.”
Controlling the tone of difficult conversations is never easy. And yet, it’s especially critical when helping students gain new perspectives on race. Cyndi Kernahan cites research that shows that making students feel blamed or guilty only leads to backlash, not learning or attitude change (5). Rather than being confrontational, … Read More
“It’s one thing to know a lot and to have experienced a lot, but it’s quite another to know how you feel about what you’ve observed and lived.”
We can’t assume that all novelists who create likable characters are likable themselves, but I imagine that Richard Russo is. In this collection of essays, he is warm, funny, and self-deprecating – traits that characterize many of the people in his novels. For example, he tells us about the classmate … Read More
“You have been cast into a race in which the wind is always at your face and the hounds are always at your heels.”
When this book was published five years ago, Toni Morrison famously predicted that Coates will fill the intellectual void created when James Baldwin died. Now, seeing this book back on bestseller lists made me wonder what Coates thinks of Baldwin’s legacy. In a May 2020 interview, he said that … Read More
“Beware the danger of what I call Feminism Lite.”
“Feminism Lite” is the idea of conditional female equality, where men believe they are superior but should be expected to “treat women well.” It can be disguised as real feminism when men behave in an equitable way – but believe it’s optional and provisional. You hear it in phrases … Read More
“Wasn’t memory, that bully and oppressor, supposed to become soft and spongy?”
“What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me.”
To say that Tara Westover’s dad demanded complete obedience to his rules and doctrine would be an understatement. When one of his children disobeyed, he assumed it could be due to one thing only: the work of the devil. He is a person most of us would dismiss … Read More
“And I know that I must go on doing this dance on hot bricks till I die.”
The brilliant novelist Virginia Woolf used this metaphor to describe her ongoing struggle with mental health in her diary on March 1, 1937, which was 42 years after her first nervous breakdown and four years before she drowned herself. What is most astonishing to me is how she was able … Read More
“The power of the mighty industrial overlords of the country had increased with giant strides, while the method of controlling them . . . remained archaic . . .”
Presidents Roosevelt and Taft – both Republicans – worked “as stewards of the public welfare” to check the power of huge corporations by supporting anti-trust legislation. These two men were both willing to argue with members of their own party about the role of government in controlling companies that abused … Read More
“This was when I was sailing close to the shore of my life. That boat capsized, thank my lucky stars…”
Poet Marjorie Saiser continues “…and since then I’ve been bobbing in the deep, splashing, coughing, water in my throat at times, learning to swim.” What would you pick for a title of a poem about that describes a wedding day and then the fact that everything changed when the “boat … Read More