How fitting that today is International Literacy Day, as we tease this Saturday’s podcast episode, “Teaching and Writing to Transgress: Behind the Scenes of Academic Editing.” This episode speaks to Ivory Tower Boiler Room’s own Public Humanities mission which is to provide accessible literary and artistic content to the public. There is also plenty to catch and hold your attention if you are any kind of teacher (or learner).
Andrew goes solo for this week’s interview with the editors of a special issue of the open access journal Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. Earlier this year they published a special pedagogy issue entitled “Teaching to Transgress,” which included Andrew’s article “Talking Back to Walt Whitman.” This was a bit of a milestone for Andrew–his first peer-reviewed publication. If you want a summary of the articles (and ideas) in the special issue, you can find the introduction here.
Here are a few moments that will definitely grab your attention:
- With COVID 19 having changed everything we know about classrooms, about teaching, and about life, the journal issue really is a product of being present in this moment, and is a monument to the time in which it was published. Our guests talk about the idea of education as the practice of freedom and the classroom as a place of radical possibility–which may seem strange in these straitened times, so prepare to be surprised.
- Academic journal editing can be somewhat like herding cats, but you’ll hear how collaborative it was to edit “Teaching to Transgress.”
- Have your notebook ready to add bell hooks to your “must read” list; it was hooks’ idea of transgressive pedagogy that inspired the editors’ approach.
While the journal featured here is focused on 19th-century literature, the lessons are truly universal, and the conversation fascinating, easy to listen to and totally driven by people who are passionate about teaching, learning, and collaborating. Until Saturday…
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