Despite the many, many challenges that we face today, from COVID-19 to racial injustice, I cannot shake a feeling of optimism-rooted in my love of Science Fiction–that we can collectively overcome. While we might be in a dark place right now, I insist on looking up and seeing a patch of brightly lit sky. It is in that spirit that I look forward to more teaching and learning opportunities in the future.
Recently, I have refocused my teaching on needed writing classes, including ENG2575, Technical Writing and ENG2570, Writing in the Workplace, and classes connected specifically to my training, namely ENG2420, Science Fiction.
While I have paused my teaching in the Professional and Technical Writing program, I hope to teach its courses again in the future, including the Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) syllabus that I developed for ENG2700, Introduction to Professional and Technical Writing and past courses that I have only had an opportunity to teach once: ENG2720, Writing with New Media and ENG3760, Digital Storytelling. If and when I teach the latter two classes again, I plan to revise their syllabi to be OER or ZTC-based to reduce out-of-pocket costs to students while providing students with high quality instructional material that supports their learning success.
I plan to develop syllabi for other classes based on my research interests that I have not yet taught. These include ENG1161, Language and Thinking; ENG2201, American Literature II; ENG2400, Films from Literature; ENG2404, The Literature of Illness and Care; and ENG3407, Gothic Literature and Visual Culture.
Also, I have plans for significantly reworked syllabi for ENG2420, Science Fiction that would offer students a timely and needed topics-driven survey of the genre: one would be a Women’s History of Science Fiction syllabus focused on women writers and women’s representation in the genre, and one would be a Race and Science Fiction syllabus focused on writers of color and their representation in the genre.
I will continue to contribute Interdisciplinary-designated class guest lectures when my time and energy permit. Those that I have developed for PHYS2443ID, Modern Physics and HIS, 3209ID, History of Technology can be reused. I would like to create lectures for Architecture, Design, Mathematics, Biology, and Sociology classes to further demonstrate Science Fiction’s interdisciplinarity and to invite more students to look to the genre for ideas and inspiration in the work that they do.
I will support the other great teaching taking place at City Tech through sharing my approaches on my blog, through workshops, and presentations at the annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium. I plan to participate in OpenLab’s upcoming Open Pedagogy Workshops, too.
I invite us all to look upward and imagine what we might achieve in the days ahead.
