It is to Flunk

I was grading a stack of student assignments — specifically, feedback on readings, which I make them do on the theory that it helps them prepare for discussions of the texts — when I ran across a particularly saddening passage in response to “The Multiculture,” an essay about Torontonian multiculturalism, which I’ll only paraphrase here:
If [...]

Not Quite Foucault, But…

I’m grading final exams from my Media English course — where, unlike what the title might suggest, we didn’t just use media to boost English. Instead, we looked at issues ranging from copyright, User Created Content (or User Generated Content) online, censorship in media, the power of one medium to supplant another, the politics of [...]

On Roh’s Death, Steve Reich, and the Tao of Imagining Sisyphus Happy

I’ve been saddened by what happened recently in regard to ex-President Roh’s suicide. Not the suicide itself, or all of the political wrangling related to it.I’m saddened because I fear suicides will worsen here, for the next while.
Korea has a serious suicide problem. It’s the number one killer of people in their twenties, as many [...]

I’m'na Teach Yo Ass, and Yeah, You Welcome…

Friday last week was Teacher’s Day, but the day always takes me by surprise. Actually, it would have taken me by surprise anyway — my students sprung the biggest ambush on Thursday.
We were in my office, setting up for a video shoot for that class of mine that’s making a mockumentary about an English cult [...]

Muddlings Both Helpful and Not-So-Helpful

First, the not-so-helpful:
It’s amazing what happens when someone really, really thinks that, say, “traditional” means “good.” For example (and yes, this is a paraphrase):
After reading the essay, I think that we can’t say Japanese radio in Korea was good for Korea. Yes, it allowed us to create a popular music of our own, at a [...]

Ada Lovelace Day

Argh! I missed it–unsurprising, since I’ve been deluged with work and email, and since I also spent more than an hour after a long string of classes today, helping some students figure out how to find  an angle for their article for the magazine we’re working on. (So if I haven’t replied to an email, [...]

Media, Power, and Technology: The Themes of My Media English Course

So, I was thinking about what to do with the real intro lecture to my Media class, last week. (Yes, it was week three of the semester, but as one student put it to me the other day, “We don’t think of the first week of school as the first week of classes. You know [...]

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