The CUNY Academic Commons is pleased to announce the Spring 2017 CAC Faculty Fellows. Selected from more than two dozen applicants, this group of faculty will teach undergraduate courses on the Commons during the upcoming semester with dedicated support, and will share reflections on the process with the team that will be used to make the Commons a more hospitable and effective teaching and learning space.
Leah Anderst, Queensborough Community College
ENGL 242: Documentary Film
Leah Anderst is Assistant Professor of English at Queensborough Community College, CUNY, where she coordinates an Accelerated Learning Program and teaches writing, literature, and film studies. Her work has appeared in a/b: Auto/biography Studies, Narrative, Orbis Litterarum, Senses of Cinema, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, and Quarterly Review of Film and Video. She is the editor of the essay collection, The Films of Eric Rohmer (Palgrave, 2014), and she is co-guest editing an upcoming special issue of the Basic Writing e-Journal focused on acceleration in basic writing pedagogy.
About her course on the Commons, she writes: “My primary goals for integrating the CUNY Academic Commons into my course are to provide my students with a platform on which to extend our in-class dialogue about our content and to expose my students, community college students who may feel less connection to their school, to CUNY as a wider university system and community. I hope that the Commons will allow my students to expand their thinking about where and with whom their education can happen.”
Jennifer Corby, Kingsborough Community College
POL 51: Introduction to American Government
Jennifer Corby is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Kingsborough Community College. Her research centers on the relationship between time and politics, and is primarily concerned with analyzing how social, political, and economic forces shape our ideas about the past, present, and future, and how these ideas in turn shape our political subjectivities.
Jennifer teaches classes both in American Government and Political Theory, and her primary objective in both is to help students relate to the world of political ideas through their own experiences. Jennifer hopes that Commons can help facilitate this goal in many ways, but one that she is most excited by is a public-facing website dedicated the “What’s Your Problem?” assignment–a semester long research project that culminates in letter students mail to public officials.
Prithi Kanakamedala, Bronx Community College
HIS 317: African-American History
Prithi Kanakamedala is an Assistant Professor of History at Bronx Community College. Her research interests include the Black Atlantic, race and citizenship in the early republic, and the material culture of New York City with a digital humanities focus. As a public historian she has worked for Place Matters, Brooklyn Historical Society, Weeksville Heritage Center, and Irondale Ensemble Project. Prithi holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex and is originally from Liverpool, England.
The Commons will support her HIS 37 African American History at BCC this Spring. Students will use the Commons as a course site and as a space for engaging in in-class, low-stakes writing assignments on tablets provided by the department. By using the Commons platform, Prithi hopes students will get a glimpse into place-based historical work, oral histories, public history practice and digital archives.
Andrea (Andie) Silva, York College
ENG 298: Technologies of Reading
Andie Silva is an Assistant Professor of English at York College (CUNY) in Jamaica, Queens, where she teaches British literature, digital humanities, and composition. Dr. Silva’s research is located at the intersection of early modern and modern editorial practices, with a particular interest in cultural responses to new technologies and the development of popular culture. Her interests include history of the book, digital humanities, and digital pedagogy.
Dr. Silva hopes to use the Academic Commons platform to teach students about the importance of building an online persona, the challenges and benefits of public writing, and the role of social media in contemporary scholarship. Her course, “Technologies of Reading,” will introduce students to Digital Humanities methodologies and (hopefully) build transferable skills students can apply in future courses and beyond.
Janette Tilley, Lehman College
MSH 334: Music Since 1945
Janette Tilley is Associate Professor of Music at Lehman College and the Graduate Center where she has been teaching music history since 2004. She is an enthusiastic, if pragmatic, adopter of digital tools and encourages critical, even skeptical, thinking about their effects on access, preservation, and the nature of research. Her main research area is sacred music of early modern Germany, especially issues related to gender and pious expression. She will be using the CUNY Academic Commons for her course, “Music Since 1945”.
About her course on the Commons, she writes: “my goal with this course, in working with a community of digital educators, is to develop digital writing skills on a platform that students are likely to encounter as professionals, foster critical listening and thinking skills and, combined with research skills, put them to use in a public forum that demonstrates a deep engagement with contemporary music. My course explores music in the post war period and I want my students to experience new music as a vibrant culture that is worth exploring live, and to learn to engage in critical public discourse about new art.”
Congratulations to these five faculty fellows. The CUNY Academic Commons team and the broader community look forward to watching your courses develop and hearing more about them!
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