Martin Luther King event at SHU.
Redefining the Dream: Justice, Faith and the Call to Change Within
Just reminding myself that these moments do and will exist. I’ve evaluated every student submission in my queue.
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I Set A Trap To Catch Students Cheating With AI. The Result Was Deflating
My classes are generally small enough that I have time to get to know each student’s writing. When a student who confuses “bias” and “biased” in a hand-written response later that day sends me an email later that day that uses “whom” and “betwixt,” I notice. I can’t prove a student is abusing AI, but…
Maybe it wasn’t a sensible idea to hold 5 hours of student consultations on the day midterm grades were due, but I really enjoyed it.
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Folger Shakespeare Library on “The Fate of Ophelia”
On my ride into work yesterday, my mother mentioned “That popular singer has a song about a Shakespeare character.” I had seen social media posts about Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia,” but hadn’t investigated yet. I watched the video right before teaching my “Shakespeare in Context” class, and I felt kind of overwhelmed. I…
Folger Shakespeare Library on “The Fate of Ophelia”
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Where are Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, etc. in your “American Literature” syllabus?
The following comment appeared recently on one of my YouTube lectures, “Historical Context for American Literature.” American???? So where are: CANADA, MEXICO, GUATEMALA, CUBA, COSTA RICA, BRAZIL, CHILE ARGENTINA, PERÚ, COLOMBIA, PANAMÁ, URUGUAY, PARAGUAY, EL SALVADOR, HONDURAS, VENEZUELA… ETC ETC ETC. STOP SAYING THE UNITED STATES IS AMERICA! Here’s how I responded: Geography and names…
Have you been “workslopped” by a bot?
If you have ever experienced this, you might recall the feeling of confusion after opening such a document, followed by frustration—Wait, what is this exactly?—before you begin to wonder if the sender simply used AI to generate large blocks of text instead of thinking it through. If this sounds familiar, you have been workslopped. —Harvard Business Review
Peer Review Paranoia: The system is built on trust between scholars. AI is undermining that.
From an essay that includes a reflection on discovering AI-fabricated quotes while peer-reviewing a scholarly essay for potential publication. (Academics don’t get paid for the labor of pre-reading scholarly drafts for potential review. An author who uses AI is squandering the resources of human peer-reviewers.) Humanistic study once promised — and for many, still delivers…
Students Are Using ChatGPT to Write Their Personal Essays Now: AI can replicate the shape of a narrative, but not the struggle that makes it meaningful
Students say they appreciate AI’s ability to organize ideas and improve flow, but many also recognize that what comes out often feels “robotic,” emotionally flat, or uncanny in tone. Still, convenience almost always wins. Reflection is hard, and AI makes things easy. I don’t fault students for wanting help. Writing about your life, especially the…
York Plays 2025: Five cameras, adding up to ~100 hours of footage.
Five cameras, adding up to ~100 hours of footage. I’m almost at the halfway point of editing 35 short videos from the 2025 York Plays, presented in Toronto by a troupe of hundreds of performers in June. The event was a textually faithful but theatrically creative staging of some 50 plays that were performed as…
Touch Me Now: York Plays 2025
A cast of hundreds participated in a public medieval re-enactment dramatizing the Christian story from Creation through Final Judgement at the University of Toronto a few weeks ago. I attended as the event videographer. I had at least three cameras running at all times — sometimes five — while a roving camera also caught the…
How to be a Medieval Spectator (Intro to Toronto York Plays 2025)
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York Corpus Christi Pageant, Toronto, June 7
I’ll be in Toronto next week to observe and document a full production of the York Corpus Christi Cycle. The event, which took place annually for hundreds of years in the streets of the medieval city of York, dramatizes the Christian salvation story from the creation of the universe to the final judgement. The plays,…
Why Even Try if You Have A.I.? Now that machines can think for us, we have to choose whether to be the passengers or pilots of our lives.
We’re drawn to activities that invite us to grow, by trying and trying again, because we want to evolve as people. Life is mostly repetitive—wake, eat, work, sleep, repeat—and each day can feel like an unsatisfying circle. But repetition with variation broadens us. It makes our circular days into spiralling journeys. “The spiral is a…
Spring 2025 Final Grades Submitted!
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Had a great time with AmLit students at the August Wilson block party
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Notes on Teaching August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle
I first taught Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle during an intensive 3-week online course during the 2020-21 winter break, during the Time of Covid. The nature of that course was such that I could only reasonably require students to read 6 of Wilson’s 10 plays; I think I required everyone to read 4, and then split the…
Midterm Grades Spring 2025: Posted!
I planned ahead pretty well this term. I like the pace in all my classes.
MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes your credibility
After marking a set of bibliography exercises, I created this graphic to focus on the kinds of citation errors I found in submissions that students clearly aren’t proofreading. I’m amazed that students don’t correct the capitalization errors (often caused by the keywords the student was searching for) or when they don’t notice that entries repeat…