12 April 2021

Dear Everyone:   If you were able to attend Professor Todd Craig’s super generous and engaging lecture on Friday, you’ll maybe have been googling the music he referred to – from James Brown’s Funky Drummer to Rapsody’s Eve among so many other citations – as you were listening to how language and study and teaching and life come together through the particular scholarly and pedagogical approach he theorizes as “DJ rhetoric.” It was for me as for many of you, I know, the end of an exhausting week, and I’m so very grateful for the vitality of the work he shared, as well as the conversation that ensued with those in attendance. Thanks also and as ever to Nancy Silverman for managing the Friday Forums and the appointment searches we’ve been conducting.  If you have feedback on Professor Craig’s lecture, please share here.  

Our next lecture by a prospective appointment/colleague in rhetoric and composition, Professor Missy Watson, will be Friday, 30 April – please keep an eye out for details and registration link for that – sure also to be inspiring!  

Professor Craig’s talk reminded me that just about a year ago, I’d asked you to share the music you were listening to as pandemic lockdown got underway. That resulted in this playlist. Let’s do it again! What’re you listening to now? What’s moving you – literally, getting you moving, keeping you going, keeping you company, making you laugh and weep and sing loudly, well or badly? In this moment, when uncertainty and potential and optimism and fear and exhaustion, always exhaustion, are reigning and unruly characteristics, what’s moving you?  Please use this form to share!  And think of it as the contribution to the playlist we’ll use for the first gathering we have in person, whenever that is?!   

This Friday, 4p, please plan on joining us for a lecture by Professor Victoria Rosner, which distinctly resonates with the present!  Titled “How Germs (or the fear of them) Spawned Modernism,” the full description and registration link may be found here.  Special thanks to Nancy K. Miller for organizing this upcoming Forum!  

Looking so forward to dancing with you all! Kandice