December 12, 2023 • 48 mins
Joining us for this episode is Natalie Madruga, Instructor in writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida.
Natalie’s research interests include eulogistic rhetoric, public memory and memorialization, critical race theory, cultural rhetorics, and writing pedagogy, with a pedagogical philosophy centered on a foundation in testimonio. Natalie was published in 2023 in Writers:Craft and Context with the article “ What it’s like to lose Papi: A counterstory on Grief''. Natalie was chosen for HSI Faculty Fellowship through the Office for Hispanic Serving Institution Initiatives for the 23-24 academic year, working with the Title 5 POTENCIAL grant to design and implement the faculty development component of Project POTENCIAL.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:07):
Greetings and welcome to D.W..
Are discussions on writing and rhetorica space for informal conversations
around research and practice in the fieldat the university level.
A place inclusive for curious novices,blossoming scholars and seasoned academics
to consider and sharetheir inquiries, experiences and passions
surrounding writing and rhetoric.
(00:29):
We are your hosts, ProfessorsMeeghan Faluconer and Nikolas
Gardiakoswith the University of Central Florida.
Thank you for joining us.
Now let's get this conversation started.
Joining us today is Nathalie Maduka,
instructor in writing in Rhetoric hereat the University of Central Florida.
(00:52):
Natalie's research interestsinclude eulogist, tech rhetoric,
public memoryand memorialization, critical race theory,
cultural rhetoric and writing pedagogy
with a pedagogical philosophycentered on a foundation and testimonial.
Natalie was published in 2023 in
writers,craft and context with the article
(01:13):
What It's Like to Lose PoppyA Counter Story on Grief.
Recently, Natalie was chosen for HCIFaculty Fellowship through the Office
for Hispanic Serving InstitutionInitiatives for the 2324 academic year.
Working on the Title five potential grantto design and implement
the faculty developmentcomponent of project Potential.
(01:36):
Thank you for joining us today, Natalie.
Thank you for having me.
I feel like if you weren't us,you would have a hard time
understandingsome of what I just said. This is.
So let's start with that.
Can you give usa little bit of information
on your roleand the role of project potential?
Yes. So Project Potential is part of
(01:57):
quite a few
initiatives right now from the HispanicServing Institutions Office.
So Project Potential is concerned
with kind of four key goalswithin the University.
The one that I am the most connectedto is increasing faculty professional
development, as well as increasingthe student sense of belonging.
(02:19):
So the idea is like by including
that faculty,that professional development
component,that will then kind of lead into that.
The increased sense of belonging.
So ProjectPotential has a couple of areas in that.
And then in addition, they also haveanother grant called Project and Ephemera,
(02:39):
and that is specifically for,I believe, the nursing school,
and they're actually workingwith the writing center
for something likethat, if I'm not mistaken.
I wishI knew a little bit more about that.
I talked to
Debbie Weaver about it recently,but it was kind of slipped my mind.
But yes, so all of it is
(02:59):
kind of centered towards continuing to
work on
the idea of serving this
in terms ofand kind of emphasizing the serving
in Hispanic serving institutions.
So I might end up kind of going backand forth
between thisand some of your other areas of interest.
(03:20):
The idea of a testimonial approachto your pedagogy
stems, I would think, from a connection
to the ideasthat the HCI initiative is trying to,
I don't know, worktowards a greater understanding
of for both faculty and students,it seems.
So can you talk a little bitabout what that approach is
(03:43):
specificallythe testimonial approach? Sure.
So I initially came acrossthe testimonial approach
in like the very beginning of grad school
when I was kind of doing a projectand one of my first classes
that I took, which was actually a classon critical race theory with Dr.
Jamila Karim and
(04:03):
the testimonial approach is
kind of more so connected
to like the intersection of like
classroom experience, lived experience,
like somatic response to learning.
(04:23):
And I would say it's more like it'skind of like an everyday practice
and it takes like a little bitof like that vulnerability, I would say.
But it definitely kind of relieson the idea that, like,
you know, students are coming in with
no quite a large contributionto the classroom
(04:43):
from their from theirlike lived experiences.
And from there like kind of like previousknowledge, as you know, specifically
my case, like as writers, readers,meaning makers, communicators,
and using that as like a starting point,
they kind of move towards
like all of the other things that youwould kind of talk about and teach about.
(05:03):
So I'm curious,do you remember what some of your maybe
initial ideas wereor maybe things that you did in
Dr. Karim's class
that you think were maybe the beginningsof you sort of thinking, oh, this,
this might be something that I wantto sort of put my my focus into or,
(05:25):
you know, my interest in to,you know, maybe sort of, you know,
looking back things that sort of,you know, led you to this being, you know,
a part of your,you know, pedagogical outlook, your your,
you know, your scholarly outlookand things like that.
Do you recall when you were first learningabout this, you were like, oh, this,
you know, this this is something thatthat I think could work for me.
(05:50):
Like, what were thosekind of initial ideas like for you?
Yeah.
So I would say thatthe one that really kind of appealed to me
was there was this one particular article,
and it was about a class that
was more so the
collaborative between like the studentsand the instructors.
It was and it was surroundedaround the concept of
(06:10):
like the auto historia,which is actually the framing
that I use for the course portfoliosand the and the 11 or two.
So theythis was something that they actually
the studentsand the instructors worked on it together.
But the essentially the idea wasthat they were to take
kind of like specific societal structuresand investigate them in the course
(06:31):
and as they investigated them,investigated them, create content together
about their experienceswithin those structures.
So like the collaborative component
of their course,I thought was really interesting.
And the fact that they were kind of like
working on this investigation togetherwas also something that I really liked.
(06:52):
I want to say
it's been a while since I've looked back
at that article,but I think it's Judith Flores.
Carmona is the
instructor
or, you know, professor of that course.
I could be mixing that upthat I'm impressed with that pull, though.
I mean,
(07:12):
that's a deep cut.
Yeah, you're really right.
I did well. Oh, my God.
I'm so excited at so many timesthat I like.
I can't even like it's. Yeah, it.
It weaves itself through all of that.
I think I cited inalmost every single assignment I did so.
But yeah, so that initial finding
of their experiences putting that coursetogether was really interesting to me.
(07:34):
And the reason that I actually ended upfinding it was because
I was looking into
scholarship within
your field that kind of investigated, likeHispanic serving institution experiences
on the East Coast, because a lot of thatresearch is kind of tailored
or present in like the Southwest,which I think is really useful.
(07:55):
I'm I'm you know, I think it's wonderfulthat they have all of that information.
But you know,Latino experiences aren't a monolith.
So I was kind of looking to seeif there were other
pieces of information out there like that.
And that was the only article
in that, you know, very
introductionto being a researcher experience.
(08:19):
You know,
I probably didn't have all of the skillsI needed to really do that investigation,
but that one article was the onewhere, like there was
there was a presenceof like a more diverse body of students.
I guess I think that it already pairsvery well
with the approach that we as a departmenttake towards composition in.
(08:43):
And I, I know I've said this before,
it's almost like part of our jobis deprogramming students
to the idea that writing is so separatefrom themselves
and giving them the agency to haveownership in the things that they write
and that it's not just something thatexists, you know, outside of themselves,
(09:04):
but it actually doesstem much more internally
than they've probably ever experiencedbefore. Mm hmm.
So I love that
that thereis a word that I didn't even know existed
and a whole pedagogical approachto what I just thought was good practice
based on what we have learned otherwisein our composition program.
(09:25):
So I'm interested in the idea, though,
of like this writerly identityand how it evolves.
And, you know, the idea of testimonial.
And I apologize for my pronunciation.
No, I just heard it
that it informs
your like your embodied experiencesas well as what you're
trying to communicate to your studentsin that approach.
(09:49):
Yeah, I would say that
one of the things that I've alwaysreally focused on is that like,
you know, people hear that phraseand like people hear
any type of like pedagogical phraseand it's like, oh, like what?
How does that exist?
Like,that is such an abstract concept to me.
But honestly, like,it really is like an every day.
It's just like anevery day practice, you know?
(10:10):
And I like to stress that
I think that vulnerabilityis a really big part of it.
And that's something that I've only like,even though I've been trying to do this
for a long time, only have really recentlystarted to incorporate
in my in my classes,you know, because I feel like it's
so hard to, like, attemptto be yourself in front of students.
(10:30):
And I was like, Well,if I want to have these types
of conversations,like I kind of just have to go for it.
So just the other day,
on Wednesday, my students were looking at
some readingsand they were looking at a project
in stylistabout note taking and code meshing.
And one of my students was like,Oh, like, do you do you code match?
(10:50):
And I was like,Oh, of course, like all the time.
So then we started
having conversations about thatand then like two other students chimed in
and they were talking abouthow they were continuing to learn Spanish.
And then we startedtalking about Duolingo, and I was like,
Yeah, you know, the Duolingo Guilt tourwill follow you.
And one of my students was like,Yeah, I have a Duolingo widget.
And like, the longerI go without, you know,
(11:14):
doing my daily Duolingoactivities, the widget starts to melt.
And it was just like, you know,So we were kind of just sharing
these little ins and outs of our lifeand like how the interest
in language
kind of like brought us all togetherwithin that conversation.
And then, you know,so the my student who asked that question
about whether or not I could mesh
(11:37):
has referencedlike in previous conversations
that they do not speak another language.
So they kind of you know,they had some questions for me about that.
And I kind of started talkingabout those experiences
of like navigating, you know,multiple languages at the same time.
Previously,before that, we were talking a little bit
about like different types of literacies.
So I had brought up like my interestin video games and like more specifically
(12:00):
my interest in Pokemon when I was like
I first startedwhen I was like seven or eight years old.
But one of the reasonsthat I was so fascinated by it was
because that was alsohow I learned to read English.
So I was like kind of doingboth of those at the same time.
So even though I mentioned it in the frontof the class, like without that context,
like when I was kind of prompted,we did have conversations around that too.
(12:22):
And how like, you know, those everydaychildhood activities often really often
is, you know,they're formative for everybody,
but they're especiallyformative for multilingual,
multilingual folks who
are maybe experiencing languagein one area
and then different variations of languageand another.
You mentioned that vulnerability.
And I have recently had a coupleof occasions to consider that myself.
(12:45):
I think we forget how unnerving it can be
for themto both share their writing with us.
But also when they'reespecially when they're creating
writing and new genresthat are previously unknown to them.
But also, you know, peerreview is a big part of my class.
And I had a student a couple of weeks agowho is a non-native speaker,
(13:07):
who is very distressed about the idea
of having to give peer review feedbackbecause they felt that they weren't
enough of an expertto do that with any real authority.
And that wasthey were questioning their own like role.
And I, I said to them, you know,you're a reader just like everybody else.
You are a reader.
What you have to say is validand as a point of view, as valid, valid.
(13:29):
I would never put you up for somethingthat would make you feel like
you did not have the authority to do itor the ability to do it.
I would never put you in that position,
but I know myself when I have to ask peersto read something that I have written
even all these years later,
I equate it to the feelingof like showing up in a bathing suit
for the first timein front of a group of strangers.
So true, because you just you're it's so
(13:53):
I don't know an
unnerving is not quite itbut you feel very vulnerable
and it's I think important as instructorsthat we don't lose
sight of that vulnerabilityand we don't forget
because of our frequencythat it's not new for them
every single semesterand a position that puts them in.
Yeah, Yeah.
And I think what's interestingin the composition classes is that,
(14:14):
you know, we're we're asking studentsto look at things in new ways.
We're asking them to do new things.
But then, you know,
we try and create environmentsin the class or in the classroom
settings, you know, wherever that whateverkind of modality that might be
perhaps where, you know, they feelopen enough to like, try things out.
And I think that's really,you know, the key when it comes to,
(14:38):
you know, when I think about,you know, students and working with
students is like,what can I do to create an environment
where, you know, they're okaybeing a little vulnerable
or they're okay with trying something new,or they're even okay with saying that
they're they're uncomfortable with,you know, this this new thing or whatever.
And I think that's really likewhat can be really, really special.
(15:01):
Like in the compositionclasses are these kinds of things.
And I wanted to ask Natalie,
you know, what is itlike when you are talking with students
to help them realize that they can go from
sharing their observations and experiencesabout literacy, language
and things like thatand then sort of actually turn that
(15:22):
into a work like a work of researchor whatever like that.
That's one thing, again, that I thinkis special about 1102 composition, too,
is that, you know, a lot of students don'teven they feel so separate from from,
you know, academic researchor that kind of research
that it's not for themor it's not their world or whatever.
(15:42):
But like when you can sort ofshow them that way
in, um, what is that been like for you
and that experience with studentsand how does that kind of typically go?
So this is,
this is an interesting questionbecause this like literally
in this semester, I have changeda lot of things about how I teach.
(16:03):
11 02i love this. Yeah, tell us more.
Okay, So my answer to that is stay tunedbecause I don't know yet,
but I had never really been
the type of person to focus
1102 on a specific concept.
But I am really struckby the concept of literacy.
So I divided the class into six weeks,five weeks and four weeks,
(16:28):
the first six weeksbeing secondary research
about literacy and writing studies,the next five weeks being applying that
to primary research, the last four weeksbeing reflecting on the portfolio
or reflecting for the portfolio,but instead of kind of rather
starting the class with like,
(16:48):
hey, like this is going to be a thingthat you're going to do the whole time
and it's going to have a beginningand an end
and and welcome to like M Rad World,and this is how this works
and all of those types of things.
And you have to figure outwhat you want to do right now.
I actually kind of separated that.
So in the first six weeks
I was like, Hey,we're going to write a literature review.
It's like this part of this entire typical
(17:10):
research essay, and now we're kind ofgetting into the primary research part.
So like, I'm kind of helping themsee the things that they could look at and
the things that they are interested in.
And then in a couple of weeks, I'mgoing to kind of be like, okay, well,
now that you you've
looked a little bit into something,whether it was a part of your life or not,
(17:31):
what what might other people like?
What might other people say about that?
Like what might other peoplethat we've read about say about that? So
we'll see what happens.
I I've been trying to like usesome examples of my own, so,
yeah, I'm I'm excited.
So I'm just curious,do you keep then the literature review
(17:53):
a little bit broaderand have it in regards to
writings on
or research on writing in general?
Like,
you know, if it was about discoursecommunities or genres, like just
general reading as to that approachand then have them do a literature
review of that and then find their subjectand kind of bring it in later, or
how do you do that?
(18:14):
So I would say it actually has moreof a structure than it did before.
So in the first week I have them readabout like multi literacies.
It's kind of like that. Like,
you know, like concept
or giving, like something likethat is an abstraction,
like an identifier, like giving,like a name to a concept, essentially.
(18:34):
And then in the second week, I have kindof two routes that they could take.
So there's an article about likerhetorical attunement that talks about
multilingual writers, and then there'san article about literacy broker ship,
and the Literacy workshop article is onethat's particularly special to me
because I did not really realizewhat that was or understand what it was
(18:55):
and not realizethat I was a literacy broker and still am
untilI was like introduced to that concept.
So even though I do
give them the choice, like personally,there's one that I hope they choose, but
I think that they both get like, you know,both of the articles give something to
(19:15):
the students aboutthat academic conversation on literacy.
Like, I think that they'reI think that they're both wonderful.
I just have a personal connectionto one of them a little more.
And then from thereI actually have them read
an article from Stylist that is a project
on literacy, specifically
literacyin aviation inscriptions take flight.
I might be missinga preposition in there, but
(19:38):
and I like to use that one as so inthat first article,
that was kind of like a conceptyou write about.
Maybe there wasn't reallya specific example.
Now we're looking at a stylized projectthat is a specific example of that thing.
And then their fourth articleis an article of their choice,
and it has to all it needs to be
is that it has to be connectedto literacy in some way.
(20:00):
Not even asking for a friend,but for myself.
Can you explain a little bit moreabout the concept of literacy brokers?
Oh, sure.
So the idea ofliteracy brokers are kind of
I see it mostly related to
young adult children and
(20:22):
like multilingual
parents who might struggle with like that
direct translation of all of the likebureaucracy that comes with
all of the things you have to doin the United States per se.
There is definitely a more kind of avenuesabout literacy.
Booker Shipp You know, there are folks who
they talk a little bit about in in termsof like volunteer aspects.
(20:44):
But essentially the ideais that a literacy broker is a person
that is in between another person
and a specific action consequence or task.
And like their work in the middle of that
affects that action, consequence or task.
So the example that I used when I talkedabout it with some of my students is
(21:07):
when I was in middle school.
I have like a veryI have very formative memories
of helping my mom studyfor her citizenship test.
And that's like an example of literacybroker ship that really sticks out to me.
So I and so Amy Tan
talks about it a fair bit in mother tongue
and having to do thatto act on her mother's behalf.
(21:27):
She uses the example of likehaving to call a stockbroker
and then,you know, the stock brokers shock
when she and hermom show up like a week later
and the voice on the phone is not at allwho he thought it was.
It was, you know, the child acting on hermom's behalf.
Yeah,
I didn't realize that was the the phrasefor it, though, so that's good to know.
Thank you.
Yeah,thank you. I picked that up from, um.
(21:48):
I don't.
I don't want to mess up the first name.
My last name is me Hoot,but she wrote an article
for literacy and CompositionStudies about literacy broker ship.
And it's actually really interestingbecause
this is a really interesting timebetween, like,
my course and like, the fellowship.
You know, folks,whenever you're trying to do something
that like, is helping like splitlike minority students,
(22:10):
people are always like, well,what about X, Y, Z?
What about all these other people?
What about all these other students?
So, well, literacy broker ship.
I think it's something that'sreally common in the Latino community.
Her article is actuallyabout Romanian immigrants.
Mm hmm.
Um, and I, you know,I think that the concept is really helpful
(22:31):
to understandall, you know, aspects of that experience.
Um, but it's not even like in the article,it's not even spotlighting
that specific community.
Um, so yeah, I was actually going
to ask to circle backto Project Potential for a moment.
One of the
outcomes that you're working on is greaterstudent success and retention.
(22:53):
Am I correct my paraphrasingthat appropriately?
It is one of the goals of the grant.
I'm more connected to the studentlike sense of belonging.
So I know that it's at the start.
And I don't mean to make you thespokesperson for this particular grant,
but what does that translate toin actionable
type of thingsthat you staff is looking to do?
(23:15):
That's a good question.
Finally, I have one good question.
You saw that happen.
You have so many you write this down,you have so many good questions.
I mean, like let's be real sometimes.
I think that's a good questionwhen I don't know
how to answer the question,that's a fair rebuttal. Yeah.
Yeah. Um,
I, I think I have my own kind of personalvisions about what that looks like.
And I think for
(23:36):
me, it's just, you know, oftentimes
for like, underrepresented
students, the idea is like, oh, like Ithis is not an experience.
Like, like going through collegeis not an experience I see myself in
or have seen versions of myself in.
And essentially like dismantlingthat conception.
(23:58):
That is what I think
would be like a success for me.
Like if I had to, if I had to likekind of pinpoint like what what would
what would be a result that would show youthat you did the thing?
I think that's what I wouldthat's what I would look for.
I think I'll be interesting to seealso as the program
kind of matures, I'm not going to saydevelopment matures because it's very new.
(24:20):
It just started this semester, Correct.
Project potentialhas wrapped up in year one, but there are
fellowship like the inaugural facultyfellows started in in August.
Okay, So I think it'sinteresting to see what other
not to
overuse the word pedagogical,but other other areas of interest
are going to bring to the table,because I think it'd be only fair
(24:42):
to say that you're goingto come into the experience informed by
what best practices you have seenas an instructor in your own classrooms.
So I wonder how that's going to translateacross different disciplines
and what people are going to bringto the experience that way.
Yeah, it's it's interesting because
those are kind of some of the questionsthat I'm already starting to see.
(25:04):
I would say one of the biggest places ofconversation with that is that, you know,
I as the faculty fellow and like kind ofworking through those conversations,
I'm very aware of the fact that like
I teach
like a good amount of students,but I teach small classes.
So oftentimes the question I get is like,how is this applicable in a class
that's not 25 people?
How is this applicable in a classthat's like 120 people?
(25:26):
So that's been kind of an interesting
point of conversationthat I'm learning a little bit more about.
And how big is your cohort approximately?
Do you own like how many peopleare working in this particular area
with you in terms of the faculty cohort?
So the faculty cohort
is currently accepting applicationssoon, in fact, on October 15th.
(25:49):
So I will have that number in the future.
Okay.
But I'm very excitedto see if there, you know,
what folks are interestedin in terms of that.
So we'll see how interesting the.
Oh, sorry. No, go ahead.
I guess to kind of give you some sortof an answer to that last summer
(26:10):
in the Faculty Summer Institute,I believe there were maybe like
25 to 30
faculty members in the inaugural HSAtrack of the summer Institute.
So interesting.
Yeah.
My question, which is going to be,you know, have conversations or,
you know, maybe plans for activitiesor materials or,
(26:31):
you know, what will come of thisthis program.
Has it been more aboutlike what can be integrated into classes
or is it more about
what happens outside of classeswith with students?
Um, you know, life and experiencehere at UCF or is it both?
I would say it's, it's both for sure.
(26:54):
I kind of run on the mentality that
I think
we as faculty get the most out of
trying something
before we,you know, put it out to our students.
So my idea is essentially to kind of try
a sort of pedagogical approach with
(27:14):
the folks in the cohort,like see how we learn from it
and then see how it can be transferredor translated into our courses.
That's both exhilarating and thrilling.
Oh, because while while I could workwith a group of other professionals,
you know how
that actually translates into necessarilya classroom could be entirely unexpected
from how it translatedinto a group of similarly,
(27:37):
you know,
seasoned academics.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
So, and I don't know,I like to try new things and the closer
I feel, I feel like maybethat's the shared across the board.
But I think we're always looking for waysto do it better.
And sometimes that means throwingeverything out and starting from scratch
like you were talking aboutwith your 1102.
(27:59):
I did, yeah.
And that's but it also makes it fun,Like it brings the fun back.
It doesn't make it rote.
And then you're not bored by the content.
Yeah, and that's kind of how I knew.
I knew that something need to changebecause there was like, there was like
a start to a semesterwhere like, a colleague was like,
it's like Groundhog Day.
You know, like waking up every day.
(28:19):
Like, what are we going to see?
Who's going to be in our classes?What are they going to be like?
You know, what room are they going to bein is going to be hot.
Is the technology not going to work?
You know,and I, I like I felt that so deeply.
And then I was like,well, wait a second. Like,
this is Groundhog Day because of me.
(28:41):
Like, I have, you know, like I
you know, like we've said before,like we start with the outcomes
and we end with the outcomes.
And whatever happens in betweenis what happens in between.
So I was like, Well, let me change upwhat happens in between and see
what happens.
Yeah, I love that too,because fall freshmen are so fun.
(29:03):
They're so excited to be hereand they're not jaded by the experience.
They don't think they know everythingjust yet,
or at least not as bad as they willin the spring.
And I.
I forget every year and then I'm remindedand I'm always pleased,
like how fun it is to be in a classroomwith freshmen in the fall.
And and that, like, helps Reid Viguerie
(29:24):
reinvigorate, rejuvenate,get whatever word I need for that
to get excited about what we're teaching
and seeing it make an impact to themis is a lot of fun.
But I agree that it
you can get stuckin some of the same ideas and readings.
I changed up a lot of my readings
for 1101 this semesterfor the same reason I was like,
I've been doing these other onesfor too long and I don't even know
(29:45):
if they're effective anymoreor they're just effective
because I'm saying they are.
So let's, let's, let's shake it upand try something different.
That's awesome. It is fun.
I want to switch gearsa little bit and talk
about your piece,what it's like to lose Poppy.
And I wanted to ask, you know,
obviously, we can see that the you know,
(30:06):
the writerly identity,you know, the personal stories in there.
One of the things that struck me about itthat I liked so much about it was
just it's sort of how it
when I was reading it,it was like a fresh original form,
you know, like it wasit didn't read like a lot of,
you know,
journal articles that I've read recentlyor that my students are finding now
(30:29):
and they're like research projectsand stuff like that.
So I wanted to ask a little bit about likewhat was the process like to
think aboutor maybe for you, like reimagine
the way you write something or maybe,you know, you've been experimenting
with these kinds of different formsand deliveries for a while now.
I was just curious, like,how does it sort of come to be, you know,
(30:51):
a read like that, which I thought was justyeah, it just hit me as really,
really
not like much else that I've read,which was really amazing.
So I wonder if you could talk to usa little bit about that.
Oh, well, thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
I think one of the reasons
why it it not only did not
fit into that type of like genre,but it really couldn't
(31:13):
is because like the four kindof moments in there were very ephemeral.
You know, when I wrote about them, it was
that it was like in
in such a kind of likevery specific writing situation
that attempting to like,retrofit them for an academic
article was just not going to communicatethe thing it needed to communicate.
(31:36):
And I'm always I'malways looking to push back against that.
So honestly, it was kind of like a like
multiple benefits
situation therewith getting to kind of put
some resistance there,but also keep that as
vulnerable as it initially was
when I first wrote them.
(31:58):
But yeah, I that'sone of my favorite things about it is that
it's like not quite an academic article,but it's not quite other things either.
Know there is a grounding there
though, in in theoryand other authors and things like that.
But it's,
but it's sort ofI don't know, it's just it's just to me
thread in really interesting me throughoutyou know and not again
(32:22):
it wasn't to me it wasn't like
I don't know I guess maybe predictable
is not the right word, but it wasn'tthat it wasn't like familiar.
And so that,that I thought was pretty exciting.
So I wonder if there were like were thereother iterations of the
of the structure and organization of thatthat you considered?
And like, I'm just I'm just superinterested in the process
(32:43):
of how something comes out that cool.
Oh, thank you.
So it'sreally interesting that you say that.
So the original original kind of placewhere that project came from
was actually from my Rhetorical traditionsclass that I took with Dr.
Stephanie Wheeler.
And it was originally a deconstructedread.
(33:06):
I'm using,
I guess, sort of one to use
using like theoretical tools from
I don't know how to pronounce this firstname, so I'm just going to say Derrida.
Okay, we'll go back inand fill in all these citations later and
put in the first.
I'll put in the first names.Now the names are in the show.
(33:26):
I think it's appropriateto just say Derrida.
You don't have to worryabout the first name.
You're his last name is enough.Yeah, that's true.
You know, if you can't recognize itby the last name,
if you recognize him bythe hair. But we don't know
him. But yeah, so I really
tried to kind of like, you know, it was,it was part of the course.
And I wanted
to, you know, attempt to make that, like,fit in some way, shape or form.
(33:48):
Like,I wanted to try to use those those tools.
And I think what ended up happening for meand why it changed so much was that
I didn't really know like where
like the core of my research interestswere rhetorically at that point.
And then I started to read morefrom like the U.
(34:10):
Logistic rhetoric approaches.
And that was the first timethat like something that original
from rhetorical theory made sense to me.
So I like I tried in terms of like
understanding, you know, a truly,really understanding like,
you know,
Aristotle and Plato and like,you know, insert other person here.
(34:32):
But I couldn't really make the connectionto like modern things.
And then I read one of the first,like funeral orations from Democracies,
and I was like,Oh yeah, that makes sense to me.
And because of that, I was like, you know,this was such an innate understand
of this concept.
Like, I'm going to have tocompletely re-authorize this whole thing.
So a lot of thatunfolding is where that came from.
(34:55):
So it like not only, well,the like content and like
I guess feeling of thoselike vulnerability
moments in the text remainedwhat they were and remained like.
The emotions I was talking about,the argument portion
was something I had to completelykind of re theorize so and correct me
(35:17):
if I'm misinterpreting this,but you're almost mirroring
the with the way that you constructed it.
You're mirroring the same
like philosophical thingthat you're arguing against
or that has shapedthe hierarchy of of grief and eulogy like.
So I was I read your pieceand you talked about was it Diana?
(35:39):
I don't know the name of the Greek personthat you're talking about.
Oh, Damascus is surmises.
That was the part about eulogies
and like soldiersand the purpose right behind.
So the idea that there's a hierarchyof what can be
publicly acknowledgedwhen it comes to eulogy
and so you're almost mirroring similarly
(35:59):
like your own story is also representingthe thing
that that is fighting back againstand that idea of where hierarchy
falls in in the place of eulogyand mourning and grief and everything.
That's it is
it is an interesting way to push backagainst those genre conventions and mirror
with your own narrative what the like the
the theoretical framework that you're alsodiscussing in the piece itself.
(36:23):
Yeah.
And it's something that like I you know,I think a lot about in terms of like
it's like it's
such a macro understanding of,
of death that has such a like impactful
effect on like interpersonal experiences.
And that's the thing that really gets meabout that is that like, you know, like
(36:48):
how would we treat griefif this hierarchy didn't exist?
How would we treat grief?
How would we treat violenceif the people dying
didn't matter based on where they stood,you know,
economically, socially, racially,you know, able bodied, etc., etc..
You know,
(37:09):
those are the kinds of thingsI think about a lot.
I since I utilize a lot oflike my personal experiences,
that is kind of an area that I you know,I really focused on that in the article.
But the thing thatreally brought me to that
interest and you'll just like rhetoricis the connection
between like you were just like rhetoric,critical race theory and violence.
Can you talk a little bit more about that?
(37:31):
Yeah.
So my first
kind of really like being struck bysomething like that was when I started
to learn more about the missingand murdered indigenous women epidemic.
So I did a project about thatwhen I took Dr.
Sonia Adams Arellano's
Gendered rhetoric class, and I looked at
(37:54):
what was publicly availableand in terms of documents
from tribal nations and documents from
like land in New Mexico,kind of where those lands may be intersect
or overflow or probably even,you know, one on top of the other.
I don't know much about
how those lines workto really like fully comment on it,
(38:15):
but it was really interestingto see how focused,
you know,their community was on this problem
and how the people who like were nextdoor to them simply weren't.
And then the thing that really got me
was that for
indigenous people, murder is the,
(38:36):
I believe, secondleading cause of death for them,
which is just like unthinkable.
Yes, yes.
Yeah.
You know, and we just we just walk aroundlike, like that's a fact.
And like, nobody's I don't think nobody'sdoing about it, but like,
you know, it'snot the lead story on cable news.
(38:56):
Yeah. Seven, right? Yeah. Mm hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
So that was definitely kind oflike the start of that.
But okay,
when you think about some of these, um,
you know, ideasthat you had for, for your own piece, um,
do you have any that,that are sort of like, you know,
(39:18):
coming up for you that,that you were interested in exploring or,
you know, um,maybe not the next sort of step,
but the next sort of like ideathat's, that's, you know, brewing for,
for something that you might wantto sort of, um, write about or explore.
I yeah, I think, I think, I
think of all of those thingsall of the time, you know,
(39:41):
not to put you on the spot here for like,
you know, having to do thisand the future plans are on the record.
Yes, yes.
No, but, you know, it's so funnythat you mentioned that
because I just like I see that in so manydifferent, you know, areas of my life.
Sometimes I see that every day, you know,
like, I think about, um,
so my friends and I, every week we,we watch a movie on Wednesdays.
(40:03):
We have like a friendmovie night on Wednesdays, and
we all have contributedto a list of the movies.
And then a friend of mine,
they created like a digital wheel,and we spin the wheel.
It's called the Wheel of Watch.
So for October, we specificallyhave a spooky wheel of watch.
So we they you know, they spunthe spooky Wheel of Watch.
(40:24):
And the first moviewas the original Candyman from 1992.
Oh, yeah. I remember when that came out.
Now, not familiar.
Yeah, I was afraid to look in the bathroommirror for a month.
Oh, I bet. Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and it was interesting,
you know, and it was like a funwatch together with friends and whatnot.
And so, like, you know,
(40:46):
and I, I guess like to give like,the full back story on this.
I've always kind of,sort of had like an interest in true crime
because my father was a criminalprosecutor and I also think that that's
where like that intersectionof like understanding, like
the ignoring of violence comes into playwas because, like,
it was something that really was
just throughout my entire lifewith his experiences as an attorney.
(41:11):
Since I have
that like interest,I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts,
I guess you'd say, Well, yeah,that's what people call it.
I don't know why I said, I guess you'd sayit's just, I guess the idea of naming
a podcast on a podcast just feels like,That's fine, we're okay.
Yeah, okay, There's plenty for everybody.
I guess we'll give shout out second.
(41:31):
But yeah, there was an episodethat talked about the story of
Ruthie Mae McCoy, which is the murderthat the Candyman is actually based on.
Oh, and it's a story about a black woman
living in like a public housing
building in Chicago. And.
Greetings and welcome to D.W..
Are discussions on writing and rhetorica space for informal conversations
around research and practice in the fieldat the university level.
A place inclusive for curious novices,blossoming scholars and seasoned academics
to consider and sharetheir inquiries, experiences and passions
surrounding writing and rhetoric.
(00:29):
We are your hosts, ProfessorsMeeghan Faluconer and Nikolas
Gardiakoswith the University of Central Florida.
Thank you for joining us.
Now let's get this conversation started.
Joining us today is Nathalie Maduka,
instructor in writing in Rhetoric hereat the University of Central Florida.
(00:52):
Natalie's research interestsinclude eulogist, tech rhetoric,
public memoryand memorialization, critical race theory,
cultural rhetoric and writing pedagogy
with a pedagogical philosophycentered on a foundation and testimonial.
Natalie was published in 2023 in
writers,craft and context with the article
(01:13):
What It's Like to Lose PoppyA Counter Story on Grief.
Recently, Natalie was chosen for HCIFaculty Fellowship through the Office
for Hispanic Serving InstitutionInitiatives for the 2324 academic year.
Working on the Title five potential grantto design and implement
the faculty developmentcomponent of project Potential.
(01:36):
Thank you for joining us today, Natalie.
Thank you for having me.
I feel like if you weren't us,you would have a hard time
understandingsome of what I just said. This is.
So let's start with that.
Can you give usa little bit of information
on your roleand the role of project potential?
Yes. So Project Potential is part of
(01:57):
quite a few
initiatives right now from the HispanicServing Institutions Office.
So Project Potential is concerned
with kind of four key goalswithin the University.
The one that I am the most connectedto is increasing faculty professional
development, as well as increasingthe student sense of belonging.
(02:19):
So the idea is like by including
that faculty,that professional development
component,that will then kind of lead into that.
The increased sense of belonging.
So ProjectPotential has a couple of areas in that.
And then in addition, they also haveanother grant called Project and Ephemera,
(02:39):
and that is specifically for,I believe, the nursing school,
and they're actually workingwith the writing center
for something likethat, if I'm not mistaken.
I wishI knew a little bit more about that.
I talked to
Debbie Weaver about it recently,but it was kind of slipped my mind.
But yes, so all of it is
(02:59):
kind of centered towards continuing to
work on
the idea of serving this
in terms ofand kind of emphasizing the serving
in Hispanic serving institutions.
So I might end up kind of going backand forth
between thisand some of your other areas of interest.
(03:20):
The idea of a testimonial approachto your pedagogy
stems, I would think, from a connection
to the ideasthat the HCI initiative is trying to,
I don't know, worktowards a greater understanding
of for both faculty and students,it seems.
So can you talk a little bitabout what that approach is
(03:43):
specificallythe testimonial approach? Sure.
So I initially came acrossthe testimonial approach
in like the very beginning of grad school
when I was kind of doing a projectand one of my first classes
that I took, which was actually a classon critical race theory with Dr.
Jamila Karim and
(04:03):
the testimonial approach is
kind of more so connected
to like the intersection of like
classroom experience, lived experience,
like somatic response to learning.
(04:23):
And I would say it's more like it'skind of like an everyday practice
and it takes like a little bitof like that vulnerability, I would say.
But it definitely kind of relieson the idea that, like,
you know, students are coming in with
no quite a large contributionto the classroom
(04:43):
from their from theirlike lived experiences.
And from there like kind of like previousknowledge, as you know, specifically
my case, like as writers, readers,meaning makers, communicators,
and using that as like a starting point,
they kind of move towards
like all of the other things that youwould kind of talk about and teach about.
(05:03):
So I'm curious,do you remember what some of your maybe
initial ideas wereor maybe things that you did in
Dr. Karim's class
that you think were maybe the beginningsof you sort of thinking, oh, this,
this might be something that I wantto sort of put my my focus into or,
(05:25):
you know, my interest in to,you know, maybe sort of, you know,
looking back things that sort of,you know, led you to this being, you know,
a part of your,you know, pedagogical outlook, your your,
you know, your scholarly outlookand things like that.
Do you recall when you were first learningabout this, you were like, oh, this,
you know, this this is something thatthat I think could work for me.
(05:50):
Like, what were thosekind of initial ideas like for you?
Yeah.
So I would say thatthe one that really kind of appealed to me
was there was this one particular article,
and it was about a class that
was more so the
collaborative between like the studentsand the instructors.
It was and it was surroundedaround the concept of
(06:10):
like the auto historia,which is actually the framing
that I use for the course portfoliosand the and the 11 or two.
So theythis was something that they actually
the studentsand the instructors worked on it together.
But the essentially the idea wasthat they were to take
kind of like specific societal structuresand investigate them in the course
(06:31):
and as they investigated them,investigated them, create content together
about their experienceswithin those structures.
So like the collaborative component
of their course,I thought was really interesting.
And the fact that they were kind of like
working on this investigation togetherwas also something that I really liked.
(06:52):
I want to say
it's been a while since I've looked back
at that article,but I think it's Judith Flores.
Carmona is the
instructor
or, you know, professor of that course.
I could be mixing that upthat I'm impressed with that pull, though.
I mean,
(07:12):
that's a deep cut.
Yeah, you're really right.
I did well. Oh, my God.
I'm so excited at so many timesthat I like.
I can't even like it's. Yeah, it.
It weaves itself through all of that.
I think I cited inalmost every single assignment I did so.
But yeah, so that initial finding
of their experiences putting that coursetogether was really interesting to me.
(07:34):
And the reason that I actually ended upfinding it was because
I was looking into
scholarship within
your field that kind of investigated, likeHispanic serving institution experiences
on the East Coast, because a lot of thatresearch is kind of tailored
or present in like the Southwest,which I think is really useful.
(07:55):
I'm I'm you know, I think it's wonderfulthat they have all of that information.
But you know,Latino experiences aren't a monolith.
So I was kind of looking to seeif there were other
pieces of information out there like that.
And that was the only article
in that, you know, very
introductionto being a researcher experience.
(08:19):
You know,
I probably didn't have all of the skillsI needed to really do that investigation,
but that one article was the onewhere, like there was
there was a presenceof like a more diverse body of students.
I guess I think that it already pairsvery well
with the approach that we as a departmenttake towards composition in.
(08:43):
And I, I know I've said this before,
it's almost like part of our jobis deprogramming students
to the idea that writing is so separatefrom themselves
and giving them the agency to haveownership in the things that they write
and that it's not just something thatexists, you know, outside of themselves,
(09:04):
but it actually doesstem much more internally
than they've probably ever experiencedbefore. Mm hmm.
So I love that
that thereis a word that I didn't even know existed
and a whole pedagogical approachto what I just thought was good practice
based on what we have learned otherwisein our composition program.
(09:25):
So I'm interested in the idea, though,
of like this writerly identityand how it evolves.
And, you know, the idea of testimonial.
And I apologize for my pronunciation.
No, I just heard it
that it informs
your like your embodied experiencesas well as what you're
trying to communicate to your studentsin that approach.
(09:49):
Yeah, I would say that
one of the things that I've alwaysreally focused on is that like,
you know, people hear that phraseand like people hear
any type of like pedagogical phraseand it's like, oh, like what?
How does that exist?
Like,that is such an abstract concept to me.
But honestly, like,it really is like an every day.
It's just like anevery day practice, you know?
(10:10):
And I like to stress that
I think that vulnerabilityis a really big part of it.
And that's something that I've only like,even though I've been trying to do this
for a long time, only have really recentlystarted to incorporate
in my in my classes,you know, because I feel like it's
so hard to, like, attemptto be yourself in front of students.
(10:30):
And I was like, Well,if I want to have these types
of conversations,like I kind of just have to go for it.
So just the other day,
on Wednesday, my students were looking at
some readingsand they were looking at a project
in stylistabout note taking and code meshing.
And one of my students was like,Oh, like, do you do you code match?
(10:50):
And I was like,Oh, of course, like all the time.
So then we started
having conversations about thatand then like two other students chimed in
and they were talking abouthow they were continuing to learn Spanish.
And then we startedtalking about Duolingo, and I was like,
Yeah, you know, the Duolingo Guilt tourwill follow you.
And one of my students was like,Yeah, I have a Duolingo widget.
And like, the longerI go without, you know,
(11:14):
doing my daily Duolingoactivities, the widget starts to melt.
And it was just like, you know,So we were kind of just sharing
these little ins and outs of our lifeand like how the interest
in language
kind of like brought us all togetherwithin that conversation.
And then, you know,so the my student who asked that question
about whether or not I could mesh
(11:37):
has referencedlike in previous conversations
that they do not speak another language.
So they kind of you know,they had some questions for me about that.
And I kind of started talkingabout those experiences
of like navigating, you know,multiple languages at the same time.
Previously,before that, we were talking a little bit
about like different types of literacies.
So I had brought up like my interestin video games and like more specifically
(12:00):
my interest in Pokemon when I was like
I first startedwhen I was like seven or eight years old.
But one of the reasonsthat I was so fascinated by it was
because that was alsohow I learned to read English.
So I was like kind of doingboth of those at the same time.
So even though I mentioned it in the frontof the class, like without that context,
like when I was kind of prompted,we did have conversations around that too.
(12:22):
And how like, you know, those everydaychildhood activities often really often
is, you know,they're formative for everybody,
but they're especiallyformative for multilingual,
multilingual folks who
are maybe experiencing languagein one area
and then different variations of languageand another.
You mentioned that vulnerability.
And I have recently had a coupleof occasions to consider that myself.
(12:45):
I think we forget how unnerving it can be
for themto both share their writing with us.
But also when they'reespecially when they're creating
writing and new genresthat are previously unknown to them.
But also, you know, peerreview is a big part of my class.
And I had a student a couple of weeks agowho is a non-native speaker,
(13:07):
who is very distressed about the idea
of having to give peer review feedbackbecause they felt that they weren't
enough of an expertto do that with any real authority.
And that wasthey were questioning their own like role.
And I, I said to them, you know,you're a reader just like everybody else.
You are a reader.
What you have to say is validand as a point of view, as valid, valid.
(13:29):
I would never put you up for somethingthat would make you feel like
you did not have the authority to do itor the ability to do it.
I would never put you in that position,
but I know myself when I have to ask peersto read something that I have written
even all these years later,
I equate it to the feelingof like showing up in a bathing suit
for the first timein front of a group of strangers.
So true, because you just you're it's so
(13:53):
I don't know an
unnerving is not quite itbut you feel very vulnerable
and it's I think important as instructorsthat we don't lose
sight of that vulnerabilityand we don't forget
because of our frequencythat it's not new for them
every single semesterand a position that puts them in.
Yeah, Yeah.
And I think what's interestingin the composition classes is that,
(14:14):
you know, we're we're asking studentsto look at things in new ways.
We're asking them to do new things.
But then, you know,
we try and create environmentsin the class or in the classroom
settings, you know, wherever that whateverkind of modality that might be
perhaps where, you know, they feelopen enough to like, try things out.
And I think that's really,you know, the key when it comes to,
(14:38):
you know, when I think about,you know, students and working with
students is like,what can I do to create an environment
where, you know, they're okaybeing a little vulnerable
or they're okay with trying something new,or they're even okay with saying that
they're they're uncomfortable with,you know, this this new thing or whatever.
And I think that's really likewhat can be really, really special.
(15:01):
Like in the compositionclasses are these kinds of things.
And I wanted to ask Natalie,
you know, what is itlike when you are talking with students
to help them realize that they can go from
sharing their observations and experiencesabout literacy, language
and things like thatand then sort of actually turn that
(15:22):
into a work like a work of researchor whatever like that.
That's one thing, again, that I thinkis special about 1102 composition, too,
is that, you know, a lot of students don'teven they feel so separate from from,
you know, academic researchor that kind of research
that it's not for themor it's not their world or whatever.
(15:42):
But like when you can sort ofshow them that way
in, um, what is that been like for you
and that experience with studentsand how does that kind of typically go?
So this is,
this is an interesting questionbecause this like literally
in this semester, I have changeda lot of things about how I teach.
(16:03):
11 02i love this. Yeah, tell us more.
Okay, So my answer to that is stay tunedbecause I don't know yet,
but I had never really been
the type of person to focus
1102 on a specific concept.
But I am really struckby the concept of literacy.
So I divided the class into six weeks,five weeks and four weeks,
(16:28):
the first six weeksbeing secondary research
about literacy and writing studies,the next five weeks being applying that
to primary research, the last four weeksbeing reflecting on the portfolio
or reflecting for the portfolio,but instead of kind of rather
starting the class with like,
(16:48):
hey, like this is going to be a thingthat you're going to do the whole time
and it's going to have a beginningand an end
and and welcome to like M Rad World,and this is how this works
and all of those types of things.
And you have to figure outwhat you want to do right now.
I actually kind of separated that.
So in the first six weeks
I was like, Hey,we're going to write a literature review.
It's like this part of this entire typical
(17:10):
research essay, and now we're kind ofgetting into the primary research part.
So like, I'm kind of helping themsee the things that they could look at and
the things that they are interested in.
And then in a couple of weeks, I'mgoing to kind of be like, okay, well,
now that you you've
looked a little bit into something,whether it was a part of your life or not,
(17:31):
what what might other people like?
What might other people say about that?
Like what might other peoplethat we've read about say about that? So
we'll see what happens.
I I've been trying to like usesome examples of my own, so,
yeah, I'm I'm excited.
So I'm just curious,do you keep then the literature review
(17:53):
a little bit broaderand have it in regards to
writings on
or research on writing in general?
Like,
you know, if it was about discoursecommunities or genres, like just
general reading as to that approachand then have them do a literature
review of that and then find their subjectand kind of bring it in later, or
how do you do that?
(18:14):
So I would say it actually has moreof a structure than it did before.
So in the first week I have them readabout like multi literacies.
It's kind of like that. Like,
you know, like concept
or giving, like something likethat is an abstraction,
like an identifier, like giving,like a name to a concept, essentially.
(18:34):
And then in the second week, I have kindof two routes that they could take.
So there's an article about likerhetorical attunement that talks about
multilingual writers, and then there'san article about literacy broker ship,
and the Literacy workshop article is onethat's particularly special to me
because I did not really realizewhat that was or understand what it was
(18:55):
and not realizethat I was a literacy broker and still am
untilI was like introduced to that concept.
So even though I do
give them the choice, like personally,there's one that I hope they choose, but
I think that they both get like, you know,both of the articles give something to
(19:15):
the students aboutthat academic conversation on literacy.
Like, I think that they'reI think that they're both wonderful.
I just have a personal connectionto one of them a little more.
And then from thereI actually have them read
an article from Stylist that is a project
on literacy, specifically
literacyin aviation inscriptions take flight.
I might be missinga preposition in there, but
(19:38):
and I like to use that one as so inthat first article,
that was kind of like a conceptyou write about.
Maybe there wasn't reallya specific example.
Now we're looking at a stylized projectthat is a specific example of that thing.
And then their fourth articleis an article of their choice,
and it has to all it needs to be
is that it has to be connectedto literacy in some way.
(20:00):
Not even asking for a friend,but for myself.
Can you explain a little bit moreabout the concept of literacy brokers?
Oh, sure.
So the idea ofliteracy brokers are kind of
I see it mostly related to
young adult children and
(20:22):
like multilingual
parents who might struggle with like that
direct translation of all of the likebureaucracy that comes with
all of the things you have to doin the United States per se.
There is definitely a more kind of avenuesabout literacy.
Booker Shipp You know, there are folks who
they talk a little bit about in in termsof like volunteer aspects.
(20:44):
But essentially the ideais that a literacy broker is a person
that is in between another person
and a specific action consequence or task.
And like their work in the middle of that
affects that action, consequence or task.
So the example that I used when I talkedabout it with some of my students is
(21:07):
when I was in middle school.
I have like a veryI have very formative memories
of helping my mom studyfor her citizenship test.
And that's like an example of literacybroker ship that really sticks out to me.
So I and so Amy Tan
talks about it a fair bit in mother tongue
and having to do thatto act on her mother's behalf.
(21:27):
She uses the example of likehaving to call a stockbroker
and then,you know, the stock brokers shock
when she and hermom show up like a week later
and the voice on the phone is not at allwho he thought it was.
It was, you know, the child acting on hermom's behalf.
Yeah,
I didn't realize that was the the phrasefor it, though, so that's good to know.
Thank you.
Yeah,thank you. I picked that up from, um.
(21:48):
I don't.
I don't want to mess up the first name.
My last name is me Hoot,but she wrote an article
for literacy and CompositionStudies about literacy broker ship.
And it's actually really interestingbecause
this is a really interesting timebetween, like,
my course and like, the fellowship.
You know, folks,whenever you're trying to do something
that like, is helping like splitlike minority students,
(22:10):
people are always like, well,what about X, Y, Z?
What about all these other people?
What about all these other students?
So, well, literacy broker ship.
I think it's something that'sreally common in the Latino community.
Her article is actuallyabout Romanian immigrants.
Mm hmm.
Um, and I, you know,I think that the concept is really helpful
(22:31):
to understandall, you know, aspects of that experience.
Um, but it's not even like in the article,it's not even spotlighting
that specific community.
Um, so yeah, I was actually going
to ask to circle backto Project Potential for a moment.
One of the
outcomes that you're working on is greaterstudent success and retention.
(22:53):
Am I correct my paraphrasingthat appropriately?
It is one of the goals of the grant.
I'm more connected to the studentlike sense of belonging.
So I know that it's at the start.
And I don't mean to make you thespokesperson for this particular grant,
but what does that translate toin actionable
type of thingsthat you staff is looking to do?
(23:15):
That's a good question.
Finally, I have one good question.
You saw that happen.
You have so many you write this down,you have so many good questions.
I mean, like let's be real sometimes.
I think that's a good questionwhen I don't know
how to answer the question,that's a fair rebuttal. Yeah.
Yeah. Um,
I, I think I have my own kind of personalvisions about what that looks like.
And I think for
(23:36):
me, it's just, you know, oftentimes
for like, underrepresented
students, the idea is like, oh, like Ithis is not an experience.
Like, like going through collegeis not an experience I see myself in
or have seen versions of myself in.
And essentially like dismantlingthat conception.
(23:58):
That is what I think
would be like a success for me.
Like if I had to, if I had to likekind of pinpoint like what what would
what would be a result that would show youthat you did the thing?
I think that's what I wouldthat's what I would look for.
I think I'll be interesting to seealso as the program
kind of matures, I'm not going to saydevelopment matures because it's very new.
(24:20):
It just started this semester, Correct.
Project potentialhas wrapped up in year one, but there are
fellowship like the inaugural facultyfellows started in in August.
Okay, So I think it'sinteresting to see what other
not to
overuse the word pedagogical,but other other areas of interest
are going to bring to the table,because I think it'd be only fair
(24:42):
to say that you're goingto come into the experience informed by
what best practices you have seenas an instructor in your own classrooms.
So I wonder how that's going to translateacross different disciplines
and what people are going to bringto the experience that way.
Yeah, it's it's interesting because
those are kind of some of the questionsthat I'm already starting to see.
(25:04):
I would say one of the biggest places ofconversation with that is that, you know,
I as the faculty fellow and like kind ofworking through those conversations,
I'm very aware of the fact that like
I teach
like a good amount of students,but I teach small classes.
So oftentimes the question I get is like,how is this applicable in a class
that's not 25 people?
How is this applicable in a classthat's like 120 people?
(25:26):
So that's been kind of an interesting
point of conversationthat I'm learning a little bit more about.
And how big is your cohort approximately?
Do you own like how many peopleare working in this particular area
with you in terms of the faculty cohort?
So the faculty cohort
is currently accepting applicationssoon, in fact, on October 15th.
(25:49):
So I will have that number in the future.
Okay.
But I'm very excitedto see if there, you know,
what folks are interestedin in terms of that.
So we'll see how interesting the.
Oh, sorry. No, go ahead.
I guess to kind of give you some sortof an answer to that last summer
(26:10):
in the Faculty Summer Institute,I believe there were maybe like
25 to 30
faculty members in the inaugural HSAtrack of the summer Institute.
So interesting.
Yeah.
My question, which is going to be,you know, have conversations or,
you know, maybe plans for activitiesor materials or,
(26:31):
you know, what will come of thisthis program.
Has it been more aboutlike what can be integrated into classes
or is it more about
what happens outside of classeswith with students?
Um, you know, life and experiencehere at UCF or is it both?
I would say it's, it's both for sure.
(26:54):
I kind of run on the mentality that
I think
we as faculty get the most out of
trying something
before we,you know, put it out to our students.
So my idea is essentially to kind of try
a sort of pedagogical approach with
(27:14):
the folks in the cohort,like see how we learn from it
and then see how it can be transferredor translated into our courses.
That's both exhilarating and thrilling.
Oh, because while while I could workwith a group of other professionals,
you know how
that actually translates into necessarilya classroom could be entirely unexpected
from how it translatedinto a group of similarly,
(27:37):
you know,
seasoned academics.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
So, and I don't know,I like to try new things and the closer
I feel, I feel like maybethat's the shared across the board.
But I think we're always looking for waysto do it better.
And sometimes that means throwingeverything out and starting from scratch
like you were talking aboutwith your 1102.
(27:59):
I did, yeah.
And that's but it also makes it fun,Like it brings the fun back.
It doesn't make it rote.
And then you're not bored by the content.
Yeah, and that's kind of how I knew.
I knew that something need to changebecause there was like, there was like
a start to a semesterwhere like, a colleague was like,
it's like Groundhog Day.
You know, like waking up every day.
(28:19):
Like, what are we going to see?
Who's going to be in our classes?What are they going to be like?
You know, what room are they going to bein is going to be hot.
Is the technology not going to work?
You know,and I, I like I felt that so deeply.
And then I was like,well, wait a second. Like,
this is Groundhog Day because of me.
(28:41):
Like, I have, you know, like I
you know, like we've said before,like we start with the outcomes
and we end with the outcomes.
And whatever happens in betweenis what happens in between.
So I was like, Well, let me change upwhat happens in between and see
what happens.
Yeah, I love that too,because fall freshmen are so fun.
(29:03):
They're so excited to be hereand they're not jaded by the experience.
They don't think they know everythingjust yet,
or at least not as bad as they willin the spring.
And I.
I forget every year and then I'm remindedand I'm always pleased,
like how fun it is to be in a classroomwith freshmen in the fall.
And and that, like, helps Reid Viguerie
(29:24):
reinvigorate, rejuvenate,get whatever word I need for that
to get excited about what we're teaching
and seeing it make an impact to themis is a lot of fun.
But I agree that it
you can get stuckin some of the same ideas and readings.
I changed up a lot of my readings
for 1101 this semesterfor the same reason I was like,
I've been doing these other onesfor too long and I don't even know
(29:45):
if they're effective anymoreor they're just effective
because I'm saying they are.
So let's, let's, let's shake it upand try something different.
That's awesome. It is fun.
I want to switch gearsa little bit and talk
about your piece,what it's like to lose Poppy.
And I wanted to ask, you know,
obviously, we can see that the you know,
(30:06):
the writerly identity,you know, the personal stories in there.
One of the things that struck me about itthat I liked so much about it was
just it's sort of how it
when I was reading it,it was like a fresh original form,
you know, like it wasit didn't read like a lot of,
you know,
journal articles that I've read recentlyor that my students are finding now
(30:29):
and they're like research projectsand stuff like that.
So I wanted to ask a little bit about likewhat was the process like to
think aboutor maybe for you, like reimagine
the way you write something or maybe,you know, you've been experimenting
with these kinds of different formsand deliveries for a while now.
I was just curious, like,how does it sort of come to be, you know,
(30:51):
a read like that, which I thought was justyeah, it just hit me as really,
really
not like much else that I've read,which was really amazing.
So I wonder if you could talk to usa little bit about that.
Oh, well, thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
I think one of the reasons
why it it not only did not
fit into that type of like genre,but it really couldn't
(31:13):
is because like the four kindof moments in there were very ephemeral.
You know, when I wrote about them, it was
that it was like in
in such a kind of likevery specific writing situation
that attempting to like,retrofit them for an academic
article was just not going to communicatethe thing it needed to communicate.
(31:36):
And I'm always I'malways looking to push back against that.
So honestly, it was kind of like a like
multiple benefits
situation therewith getting to kind of put
some resistance there,but also keep that as
vulnerable as it initially was
when I first wrote them.
(31:58):
But yeah, I that'sone of my favorite things about it is that
it's like not quite an academic article,but it's not quite other things either.
Know there is a grounding there
though, in in theoryand other authors and things like that.
But it's,
but it's sort ofI don't know, it's just it's just to me
thread in really interesting me throughoutyou know and not again
(32:22):
it wasn't to me it wasn't like
I don't know I guess maybe predictable
is not the right word, but it wasn'tthat it wasn't like familiar.
And so that,that I thought was pretty exciting.
So I wonder if there were like were thereother iterations of the
of the structure and organization of thatthat you considered?
And like, I'm just I'm just superinterested in the process
(32:43):
of how something comes out that cool.
Oh, thank you.
So it'sreally interesting that you say that.
So the original original kind of placewhere that project came from
was actually from my Rhetorical traditionsclass that I took with Dr.
Stephanie Wheeler.
And it was originally a deconstructedread.
(33:06):
I'm using,
I guess, sort of one to use
using like theoretical tools from
I don't know how to pronounce this firstname, so I'm just going to say Derrida.
Okay, we'll go back inand fill in all these citations later and
put in the first.
I'll put in the first names.Now the names are in the show.
(33:26):
I think it's appropriateto just say Derrida.
You don't have to worryabout the first name.
You're his last name is enough.Yeah, that's true.
You know, if you can't recognize itby the last name,
if you recognize him bythe hair. But we don't know
him. But yeah, so I really
tried to kind of like, you know, it was,it was part of the course.
And I wanted
to, you know, attempt to make that, like,fit in some way, shape or form.
(33:48):
Like,I wanted to try to use those those tools.
And I think what ended up happening for meand why it changed so much was that
I didn't really know like where
like the core of my research interestswere rhetorically at that point.
And then I started to read morefrom like the U.
(34:10):
Logistic rhetoric approaches.
And that was the first timethat like something that original
from rhetorical theory made sense to me.
So I like I tried in terms of like
understanding, you know, a truly,really understanding like,
you know,
Aristotle and Plato and like,you know, insert other person here.
(34:32):
But I couldn't really make the connectionto like modern things.
And then I read one of the first,like funeral orations from Democracies,
and I was like,Oh yeah, that makes sense to me.
And because of that, I was like, you know,this was such an innate understand
of this concept.
Like, I'm going to have tocompletely re-authorize this whole thing.
So a lot of thatunfolding is where that came from.
(34:55):
So it like not only, well,the like content and like
I guess feeling of thoselike vulnerability
moments in the text remainedwhat they were and remained like.
The emotions I was talking about,the argument portion
was something I had to completelykind of re theorize so and correct me
(35:17):
if I'm misinterpreting this,but you're almost mirroring
the with the way that you constructed it.
You're mirroring the same
like philosophical thingthat you're arguing against
or that has shapedthe hierarchy of of grief and eulogy like.
So I was I read your pieceand you talked about was it Diana?
(35:39):
I don't know the name of the Greek personthat you're talking about.
Oh, Damascus is surmises.
That was the part about eulogies
and like soldiersand the purpose right behind.
So the idea that there's a hierarchyof what can be
publicly acknowledgedwhen it comes to eulogy
and so you're almost mirroring similarly
(35:59):
like your own story is also representingthe thing
that that is fighting back againstand that idea of where hierarchy
falls in in the place of eulogyand mourning and grief and everything.
That's it is
it is an interesting way to push backagainst those genre conventions and mirror
with your own narrative what the like the
the theoretical framework that you're alsodiscussing in the piece itself.
(36:23):
Yeah.
And it's something that like I you know,I think a lot about in terms of like
it's like it's
such a macro understanding of,
of death that has such a like impactful
effect on like interpersonal experiences.
And that's the thing that really gets meabout that is that like, you know, like
(36:48):
how would we treat griefif this hierarchy didn't exist?
How would we treat grief?
How would we treat violenceif the people dying
didn't matter based on where they stood,you know,
economically, socially, racially,you know, able bodied, etc., etc..
You know,
(37:09):
those are the kinds of thingsI think about a lot.
I since I utilize a lot oflike my personal experiences,
that is kind of an area that I you know,I really focused on that in the article.
But the thing thatreally brought me to that
interest and you'll just like rhetoricis the connection
between like you were just like rhetoric,critical race theory and violence.
Can you talk a little bit more about that?
(37:31):
Yeah.
So my first
kind of really like being struck bysomething like that was when I started
to learn more about the missingand murdered indigenous women epidemic.
So I did a project about thatwhen I took Dr.
Sonia Adams Arellano's
Gendered rhetoric class, and I looked at
(37:54):
what was publicly availableand in terms of documents
from tribal nations and documents from
like land in New Mexico,kind of where those lands may be intersect
or overflow or probably even,you know, one on top of the other.
I don't know much about
how those lines workto really like fully comment on it,
(38:15):
but it was really interestingto see how focused,
you know,their community was on this problem
and how the people who like were nextdoor to them simply weren't.
And then the thing that really got me
was that for
indigenous people, murder is the,
(38:36):
I believe, secondleading cause of death for them,
which is just like unthinkable.
Yes, yes.
Yeah.
You know, and we just we just walk aroundlike, like that's a fact.
And like, nobody's I don't think nobody'sdoing about it, but like,
you know, it'snot the lead story on cable news.
(38:56):
Yeah. Seven, right? Yeah. Mm hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
So that was definitely kind oflike the start of that.
But okay,
when you think about some of these, um,
you know, ideasthat you had for, for your own piece, um,
do you have any that,that are sort of like, you know,
(39:18):
coming up for you that,that you were interested in exploring or,
you know, um,maybe not the next sort of step,
but the next sort of like ideathat's, that's, you know, brewing for,
for something that you might wantto sort of, um, write about or explore.
I yeah, I think, I think, I
think of all of those thingsall of the time, you know,
(39:41):
not to put you on the spot here for like,
you know, having to do thisand the future plans are on the record.
Yes, yes.
No, but, you know, it's so funnythat you mentioned that
because I just like I see that in so manydifferent, you know, areas of my life.
Sometimes I see that every day, you know,
like, I think about, um,
so my friends and I, every week we,we watch a movie on Wednesdays.
(40:03):
We have like a friendmovie night on Wednesdays, and
we all have contributedto a list of the movies.
And then a friend of mine,
they created like a digital wheel,and we spin the wheel.
It's called the Wheel of Watch.
So for October, we specificallyhave a spooky wheel of watch.
So we they you know, they spunthe spooky Wheel of Watch.
(40:24):
And the first moviewas the original Candyman from 1992.
Oh, yeah. I remember when that came out.
Now, not familiar.
Yeah, I was afraid to look in the bathroommirror for a month.
Oh, I bet. Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and it was interesting,
you know, and it was like a funwatch together with friends and whatnot.
And so, like, you know,
(40:46):
and I, I guess like to give like,the full back story on this.
I've always kind of,sort of had like an interest in true crime
because my father was a criminalprosecutor and I also think that that's
where like that intersectionof like understanding, like
the ignoring of violence comes into playwas because, like,
it was something that really was
just throughout my entire lifewith his experiences as an attorney.
(41:11):
Since I have
that like interest,I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts,
I guess you'd say, Well, yeah,that's what people call it.
I don't know why I said, I guess you'd sayit's just, I guess the idea of naming
a podcast on a podcast just feels like,That's fine, we're okay.
Yeah, okay, There's plenty for everybody.
I guess we'll give shout out second.
(41:31):
But yeah, there was an episodethat talked about the story of
Ruthie Mae McCoy, which is the murderthat the Candyman is actually based on.
Oh, and it's a story about a black woman
living in like a public housing
building in Chicago. And.
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