Program for Writing and Rhetoric

Swastika Counter Project launches

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 21:19:27 +0000

Swastika Counter Project launches Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/24/2024 - 15:19

Bradley Worrell

Public advocacy website envisioned by ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ associate professor Laurie Gries tracks swastikas across the U.S. and offers resources to counter those hate-filled incidents

In the months leading up to Donald Trump’s election in 2016, Laurie Gries, director of the University of Colorado Boulder Program for Writing and Rhetoric and associate professor of English, became increasingly concerned about almost-daily news reports of swastikas—sometimes accompanied by hate-filled messages—showing up in public spaces across the country.

“This was the same time when various sources were reporting rising incidents of hate and bias in the United States, when Donald Trump and his racist and divisive rhetoric was just coming into political power, and when white nationalist organizations seemed to be coming out of the woodwork,” she says.

Laurie Gries, director of the University of Colorado Boulder Program for Writing and Rhetoric and associate professor of English, became increasingly concerned about almost-daily news reports of swastikas—sometimes accompanied by hate-filled messages—showing up in public spaces across the country.

Determined to address the issue of the swastikas head on, Gries began working on a project with a team of interdisciplinary scholars with expertise in visual communication, critical geography and social justice education. Their aim was to identify how and where swastikas were placed, who they targeted, what messages they conveyed and how communities responded. The coordinated results of that five-year effort—which document 1,340 swastika incidents in total—recently went live on The Swastika Counter Project website.

Recently, Gries spoke with Colorado College of Arts and Sciences Magazine about the Swastika Counter Project. Her answers were lightly edited for style and condensed for space limitations.

Question: How did the swastika project come together and why did you decide you needed to address this issue?

Gries: When Trump first came onto the political scene, I started hearing about increased incidents of hate and violence, and as a visual rhetoric scholar, I began noticing more and more reports of swastikas showing up on the streets of the United States.

On the day that Trump was elected, I woke up deeply concerned and asked, ‘What if I tracked these swastikas? What if I took the digital research method called iconographic tracking that I worked for 10 years to develop and applied it to this particular case? What might we discover?’

I didn’t really start tracking swastikas on that day; I just made the commitment because I had long wanted to use my scholarship for public humanities research. I guess, then, one might say that Trump was the motivator, but really it was fear. At the time, a lot of people—the FBI, the Southern Poverty Law Center, journalists and scholars—were attributing a rise in antisemitism and violence to his rhetoric. It was my fear that if that’s the case, those incidents were surely only going to be amplified as he rose to power.

I don’t have any comparative data (i.e., data on swastika incidents) prior to Trump’s arrival on the political scene to confirm whether that’s true or not, so I’m very careful to say that the data we collected can’t really be used as evidence for that claim, but in our data, we certainly can see that there are a lot of associations that people are making between swastikas and Donald Trump and white nationalism.

Question: Was no one else tracking and compiling these incidents in which swastikas were being placed at houses of worship, schools and other sites?

Gries: Actually, there are quite a few projects that have tracked antisemitism, and even swastikas, but they have been constrained in various ways. Some sites only track antisemitism that happen on college campuses. Some track antisemitic events that happened all over the world. Then there are sites like ProPublica, whose tracking projects were limited to a particular year. So, I wanted to create a project that would transcend some those constraints.

Question: What are some of the top findings of your research as it relates to swastika placement, any language accompanying the swastikas, maybe any surprises your research uncovered?

Data analysis by The Swastika Counter Project found at least 1,300 documented incidents of swastikas in the United States between Jan. 1, 2016, and Jan. 20, 2021.

Gries: I think it’s important to note that the swastika incidents we discovered occurred in all 48 contiguous states and in the District of Columbia, so this is a national problem. Of course, they were showing up more in cities with large populations, which is to be expected. But we were surprised that according to our data, swastika incidents most often surfaced in schools, and almost equally in K-12 and higher education settings. We thought swastikas might mostly show up on the exterior of religious institutions, and particularly Jewish religious institutions, but that wasn’t the case.

We also were surprised to discover so many swastikas surfacing in private spaces. Of course, a lot of swastikas were spray painted on the exterior of buildings in urban spaces. But our data discloses how swastikas were often drawn on people’s cars, on their homes, on the dorm doors of students, and in some cases, on the interior walls of people’s homes that had been broken into and, in one case, lit on fire.

I think the other most surprising finding was just the horrific language that was showing up alongside swastikas—from racist and homophobic appeals to white nationalism to implicit threats of surveillance and violence to direct threats of genocide. And also that such threats were directed at not only Jewish community members; a lot of Black American, Latinx, LGBTQ-plus community members and immigrants were also commonly targeted. It was just overwhelming—the multi-directional hate and very graphic violence.

Question: How did Colorado compare to other parts of the country when it came to swastika incidents?

Gries: For Colorado, there were 30 reported incidents in our data set. So, I would say it’s not uncommon in Colorado for these swastikas incidents to occur, and I’ve had a lot of people tell me about swastikas they witnessed that aren’t even in our data set.

We know, for instance, that Colorado State University in Fort Collins has had so many swastika incidents that they recently created an antisemitism task force. One of our (Swastika Counter Project) advisory board members is actually heading up that task force because antisemitism on that campus has become such a serious problem.

In contrast to the incidents of public swastikas that The Swastika Counter Project tracks, some cities worldwide have also seen anti-swastika graffiti. (Photo: Cogiati/Wikimedia Commons)

Question: Beyond tracking incidents of swastika placement around the country, what other kinds of information can be found on the Swastika Counter Project website?

Gries: Part of our challenge was figuring out how to present the data in ways that would be useful for a variety of community stakeholders—people who are dealing with swastika incidents in their communities, such as school administrators, teachers and parents, the local police force, and local and national politicians. We wanted to create a swastika tracking project that has a strong civic component to it, which I think makes this project a bit unique. So, we created an interactive map that can be filtered in different ways; data visualizations that can be easily downloaded; and educational resources and lesson plans for teachers at various levels. We also generated two different reports, one of which describes and analyzes how different communities have responded to swastika incidents, so that stakeholders can read those accounts and learn from them. That’s especially important, because in our research we found that the various stakeholders often worked in isolation in responding to swastika incidents.

Question: The Swastika ‘Counter’ Project—is it fair to say the name is a play on words?

Gries: Yes—it’s a double entendre. The goal is to both count and counter the contemporary proliferation of swastika incidents in the United States. And in that sense, the Swastika Counter Project is very much a scholarly activist project.

When we first began tracking swastika incidents, we planned to simply report our data and let the evidence speak for itself. And to a great extent, the data still does do that. Our findings report, for instance, is largely descriptive. But the longer we worked on the project and discovered the gross horror of violence that was ensuing, the more we felt compelled to also take more concerted action by building out the educational component of the website. So today, I don’t pretend that the data advocacy website isn’t motivated by my own desire to try to address some very real, pressing problems and to use my scholarship to try to create a more just world. This is very much a project where I’m wearing my activism on my sleeve.

Question: What kind of assistance did you have when it came to tracking and compiling data, creating visual representations, developing a website, etc.?

Gries: The central work of tracking, coding, and analyzing was done by myself and Kelly Wheeler (assistant professor at Curry College), but we soon realized we needed more help. I reached out to Morteza Karimzadeh in the geography department here at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, and he and his former student, Jason Miller, ended up doing all the amazing work with the mapping part of the project.

Residents of Eugene, Oregon, responded against swastikas found in a city neighborhood in 2017. (Photo: SBG Photo)

I am also really proud that we received a lot of help from various students at and beyond CU. For instance, an undergraduate computer science major at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, worked on the data visualizations with us, while graduate students from that same institution helped to create some of the lesson plans. Here at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, a team of undergraduate students enrolled in a technical communication and design class in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric did a user-centered study for us to help develop a website that would be easy to navigate and comprehend for a public audience. And then another group of tech comm students helped us figure out how to invite community participation through features under the Contribute tab of the website. In this sense, the Swastika Counter Project is really exemplary of the immense value that data humanities and public humanities education can have for both undergraduate and graduate students. I am really excited about that.

Question: People who commit several years of their life to a project will often call it a labor of love. Is that how you would describe this project?

Gries: For me, I don’t think it was about love so much as it was about committing to do social justice work and really trying to walk the walk. I mean, as you might imagine, it was not fun to track so many incidents of hate and violence around the country. …

It’s also just been a beast in terms of labor. I tell people that this project was probably more intense work than my first 350-page monograph because I had to teach myself so many new skills, not only in terms of research, but also guiding and managing team projects, doing data advocacy, and developing web content skills. I am so glad I did this project, but for the last eight years, it’s just been very intense.

Question: If former President Trump is elected to a second term in November, do you think you would take up this project again?

Gries: I’m really, really torn. Part of me wants to try to secure some national funding and put together a larger team. If I did, I would also want to research (swastika incidents during) the Biden administration, and then start tracking in the present time, too, because I think that longitudinal study would help us address certain questions that we weren’t able to address in this project.

On the other hand, I started this project in early 2017, and it became a large part of my life. My husband would tell me that on days I was doing the researching and the coding that I was affectively different. I was angry. I was upset. I was impatient.

I honestly don’t know if I want to put myself through that again on a personal level. I truly believe that more arts and humanities faculty need to be doing this kind of work, as I think we can bring an important perspective to data-driven research that addresses pressing socio-cultural problems. And maybe if I had the funding and could put together a large enough team where I didn’t have to bear so much of the burden I would consider it, but right now I just don’t know.

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Public advocacy website envisioned by ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ associate professor Laurie Gries tracks swastikas across the U.S. and offers resources to counter those hate-filled incidents.

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Project aims to help students harness data for the greater good

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 22:53:26 +0000

Project aims to help students harness data for the greater good Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/10/2022 - 16:53

Bradley Worrell

CU Next Award grant will fund initiatives to teach ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ students to use data to address pressing issues related to climate change in Colorado

While University of Colorado Boulder students have long been exposed to the technical aspects of data science, using data for advocacy purposes has not been a formal part of this instruction.

However, thanks to a $300,000 CU Next Award grant received in May, the Data Advocacy for All project will soon provide students with the opportunity to learn how to ethically and effectively use data to raise public awareness and drive social change, according to Laurie Gries, associate professor of writing, rhetoric, and communication.

“I am absolutely delighted that the university thought that a project grounded in data justice and data literacy was important enough that they are willing to put quite a bit of money behind it,” says Gries, who spearheaded the grant application process for the CU Next Award, which was created in 2021 to bridge the gap for individual faculty seeking additional resources to innovate courses and programs.

At the top of the page: A flooded Highway 34 in Big Thompson Canyon (Dennis Pierce). Above: Laurie Gries spearheaded the grant application process for the CU Next Award.

In this case, the CU Next Award provides funding for the establishment of educational modules designed to assist students as they define relevant data, assemble data, evaluate data, map data, publish data and persuade with data—with a particular focus on that last item, Gries says. This data will then be used to explore how climate change is affecting vulnerable Colorado communities.

“We wanted to choose a social issue that was of pressing significance to Colorado,” Gries explains. “We also chose that issue because we have a lot of climate scientists here on campus who are working on that issue.”

As part of the grant, students at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ and CU Denver will collaborate on a data-advocacy website about climate hazards in Colorado. The content students produce in the courses will take many forms, including text, videos, audio recordings and graphics, all of which will be accessible on a public, University Libraries’ site called CU Scholar.

“We’re going to make the website as interactive as possible,” Gries says. “For instance, to help identify climate risks, we will create geographic maps with filters so people can see how it (climate change) is impacting their communities. We will also create stories from data using audio and video elements.”

Gries says the eight educational modules she and her team are developing for the project will help teachers incorporate them into myriad classes, such as writing and rhetoric, political science, history or data science. And thanks to minimal computing software and open-source tools, Gries says students won’t need special computer-coding skills, and no course prerequisites will be required.

Data Advocacy for All will immediately contribute curricula to multimedia composition and technical communication courses that count toward an English writing, rhetoric and technology major at CU Denver and a new writing and public engagement minor at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ.

The project’s eight modules will be taught in the fall 2023, spring 2024 and fall 2024 by Nathan Pieplow in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ and John Tinnell in English at CU Denver. Gries says a diverse advisory board that includes faculty, scientists and community stakeholders will evaluate the modules and could offer helpful suggestions.

Assuming the project lives up to its expectations, Gries says it could be possible to win funding from the Mellon Foundation or other grant sources to provide continued funding beyond 2024.

She says the idea for the project was inspired partly by her own experiences with data advocacy. She is working with a team to create a public-facing website called The Swastika Counter, which offers reliable data about the rise of swastikas on the streets of America and in social media during the Trump administration.

We really want to think about data from a rhetorical, ethical perspective, so that students understand that data is power. We want students to be able to harness that power so that they can advocate in ways that actually have potential to bring about the social change that they are fighting for.

“As I was embarking on this project, I started to think about what a curriculum would look like that actually trains students to identify pressing social matters, to learn how to work with data from the ground up in terms of collecting, organizing, interpreting, communicating, persuading and visualizing” Gries says.

“I was really interested in asking: What would a curriculum look like to prepare students to do this work?”

Other considerations included a desire by fellow grant team members to create a more interdisciplinary curriculum, with a particular focus on data humanities—which is defined as the intersection of the humanities and data science.

��ý�Ļ��Ʒ team members include David Glimp of English, Nathan Pieplow of PWR and Virginia Iglesias of Earth Lab, while CU Denver colleagues include John Tinnell of English and Cameran Blevins of history. Team members from University Libraries and the Center for Research Data and Digital Scholarship (CRDDS) are Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara, Aditya Ranganath and Thea Lindquist.

Yet another factor was conversations with CU colleagues in the CRDDS and in information science about the need for coursework that can help students communicate with data effectively and persuasively, according to Gries.

“I think the one phase of data-advocacy education that often gets shortchanged is communicating and persuading with data,” she says. “We really want to think about data from a rhetorical, ethical perspective, so that students understand that data is power. We want students to be able to harness that power so that they can advocate in ways that actually have potential to bring about the social change that they are fighting for.”

CU Next Award grant will fund initiatives to teach ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ students to use data to address pressing issues related to climate change in Colorado.

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New seminar series explores the nexus of art and activism

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 16:05:16 +0000

New seminar series explores the nexus of art and activism Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/12/2022 - 10:05

Activism and Engaged Humanities Event Series will last throughout the year, with the first presentation on Sept. 21

From musical performances and poetry to speeches and printmaking, the Art, Activism, and Engaged Humanities series highlights how artistic achievements and performances synergize art and activism.

The series seeks to inspire and encourage participation both in and outside the University of Colorado Boulder community in the engaged humanities, a cross-disciplinary effort to make the humanities more accessible to the public.

“Too often in the humanities, we fail to make visible why and how our research and teaching matter to public life,” says Laurie Gries, an associate professor in writing and rhetoric and communication at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ and one of the series’ organizers.

Starting late September and lasting through spring, the series will host a range of performances, talks, workshops and community collaborations. These events will bring together students, faculty, staff and local Boulder community members to see, hear and experience various forms of art and allow them to join discussions about community involvement, activism and social issues.

Participants will discover how “to talk about pressing social matters and explore how art, in a broad sense, can work toward social justice in powerful publicly engaged ways,” says Gries.

Events included in the series are as follows:

A two day event on hip hop and social justice

The Politics of Race, Rap and Incarceration: A Conversation with Mark Katz and Mariah Parker aka Linqua Franqa

Date and Time: Sept. 21, 3:30 – 5 p.m.

Location: Center for British and Irish Studies room, Norlin Library, M549

This event is being organized by the Center for Humanities & the Arts and American Music Research Center.

A Musical Performance with Linqua Franqa

Date and Time: Sept. 22, 7 p.m.

Location: The Dairy Arts Center, Gordan Gamm Theatre

This concert (followed by Q&A) is being organized by The American Music Research Center and The WRITE Lab/Program for Writing and Rhetoric. Tickets are free, but registration is required. Please click on this link and click on "Tickets" and fill out all necessary information.

A Workshop with Mariah Parker on Artmaking, Activism and Political Engagement

Date and Time: Sept. 22, 11 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

Location: UMC Room 247

For this event, organized by the WRITE Lab/Program for Writing and Rhetoric, Mariah Parker will speak about the process of becoming politically engaged through the art-making process.

Workshop max: 40 participants. Workshop registration required.

A panel and workshop on fighting for reproductive rights and justice

Virtual Panel of Community Organizers, Lawyers, Scholars, Activists

Date and Time: Oct. 27, 3:30 – 5 p.m.,

Location: Zoom (Registration Required)

Moderator: Samira Mehta (assistant professor, Jewish studies and women and gender studies)

Participating organizations, scholars and community members: Alexis Moncada (outreach coordinator of COLOR: Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights), Arianna Morales (policy manager of New Era Colorado), Dr. Warren Hern (Boulder Abortion Clinic), Jennifer Hendricks (professor of law) and Chenthu Jayton (executive director of Equity Labs).

Workshop with New Era Colorado on Reproductive Rights Advocacy and Organizing in Storytelling

Date and Time: Oct. 27, 5:30 - 6:30 p.m.

Location: Hellems 241

Facilitators: Aaron Lombardi and Kate Kelly, New Era Colorado

This interactive workshop will dive into the history of organizing in Colorado and the role storytelling has played within the reproductive-rights movement. Participants will explore different mediums of storytelling for advocacy and discuss tools and/or resources to become an advocate in one’s community.

Workshop registration required. Workshop is limited to 30 participants. Organizers will email you to confirm registration and communicate any necessary instructions.

2022 Kwanzaa Celebration

Date and Time: Dec. 1, 2022, times TBD

Location: TBD

Kwanzaa is a week-long holiday from Dec. 26 through Jan. 1 that celebrates the African diaspora, family and community contributions. To celebrate Kwanzaa and to demonstrate its potential for the engaged humanities, the Center for African and African American Studies is hosting a two-part event. Using the seven principles of the Ngozu Saba, a speakers event will feature presentations and performances from students and faculty in ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ community related to research, entrepreneurship and activism. Directly following the event will be a karamu, or feast with traditional foods found in the Black community, which is an essential cultural practice of the holiday.

Printmaking as Activism

The CU Art Museum is hosting a two-day event in February, opening with a lecture by a printmaker or artist whose practice works toward social justice, followed by Q&A and discussion. On the second day of the event, the museum will lead a hands-on workshop on poster making and activism with opportunities for students to participate in art making. The invited artist will be selected from the museum’s current exhibition, Lasting Impressions. Potential artists are Delita Martin, Alison Saar, Rose B. Simpson, Dyani White Hawk and William Villalongo.

More than Words—A Digital Performance Installment

This virtual installment will explore the theme "More than words." Curated by Donna Mejia (associate professor, theatre and dance and Inaugural Chancellor's Scholar in Residence at the Renee Crown Wellness Institute), this program will feature visual and performing artists who use multiple formats of communication, incorporating or expanding beyond words in their activism and public works. This presentation will explore what is conveyed, transmitted and exchanged through art when words may not be enough, or can be augmented by nonverbal intelligence with the same precision as the written word.

Audience members will be invited to engage and open to duende (Spanish): the experience of being moved deeply or activated by the expressive arts.

Note: This event may be followed up by an experiential dance workshop.

Speaking Out against Gun Violence

Edna Lizbeth Chavez is a social justice activist, supporter of immigrant rights, and a survivor of gun violence. In 2018, she headlined and delivered a powerful speech at the March for our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. Chavez has lost many loved ones to gun violence and has become a leading gun control advocate and student voter registration organizer.

For this event, Chavez will give a talk, followed by a workshop for students on Using Voice for Social Justice.

This event is sponsored by the WRITE Lab/Program for Writing and Rhetoric, the English department and the College of Arts and Sciences’ Office for Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

The event series is hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences' Office of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, the WRITE Lab within the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, the Department of English, the Division of Student Affairs, the School of Music, the CU Art Museum, the Department of Ethnic Studies, the Center for Arts and Humanities and The Center for African and African American Studies.

Activism and Engaged Humanities Event Series will last throughout the year, with the first presentation on Sept. 21.

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Grant to develop humanities, data-science courses

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 19:03:14 +0000

Grant to develop humanities, data-science courses Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/13/2022 - 13:03

Interdisciplinary, cross-college team at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ wins National Endowment for the Humanities Award

An interdisciplinary team from two colleges and the libraries at the University of Colorado Boulder has won a $150,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the organization announced today.

The project, called “Integrating Humanities and Data Science Education,” aims to provide an example of how the humanities can help equip 21st century learners with the intellectual resources they will need to inhabit a world being remade by data.

The winning team that has won a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities includes: top row, from left, Jane Garrity, Eric Vance, Rachael Deagman-Simonetta and David Glimp; bottom row, from left, Vilja Hulden, Henry Lovejoy, Brett Melbourne and Nathan Pieplow.

They’ll do this by designing eight courses that promote experiential learning, as well as opportunities to foster engagement with humanistic questions in the context of a quantitative inquiry. Additionally, they’ll work with ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ’s Center for Teaching and Learning to cultivate local and national conversations about best practices for teaching data science and the humanities.

The winning team includes faculty from the College of Media, Communications & Information (CMCI) and from the Center for Research Data & Digital Scholarship (CRDDS), which is a collaboration between the libraries and Research Computing. Additionally, the team includes faculty affiliated with the ASSETT (Arts & Sciences Support of Education Through Technology) Innovation Incubator.

The winning team includes Project Director Jane Garrity (English), Project Co-Director Robin Burke (CMCI lead), Project Co-Director (STEM lead) Eric Vance (applied math), and co-PIs Rachael Deagman-Simonetta (English), Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara (CRDDS), David Glimp (English), Vilja Hulden (history), Thea Lindquist (CRDDS), Henry Lovejoy (history), Brett Melbourne (ecology and evolutionary biology) and Nathan Pieplow (Program for Writing & Rhetoric).

This work builds off a previous grant, which created the introductory course Interdisciplinary Data Science for All (AHUM 1825), launched by Garrity, Vance, Glimp, Hulden, Melbourne and Pieplow in 2021. This course allowed students to learn how to analyze not just numbers, but also their human contexts and consequences; how to prevent intentional or unintentional misuse of data science; and how to communicate the findings of data analysis effectively.

That set of competencies is called “data acumen.”

The course provided majors in science, technology, engineering and math with qualitative reasoning skills that are traditionally taught in the humanities; future humanities majors with an on-ramp to further study of data science in courses developed via the newly funded NEH grant; and all students with critical, statistical and computational skills they can apply in future courses and in the workforce.

Interdisciplinary, cross-college team at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ wins National Endowment for the Humanities Award.

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Students make rhyme and reason of the Periodic Table

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 18:01:39 +0000

Students make rhyme and reason of the Periodic Table Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/27/2018 - 11:01

Sarah Schleifer

In ‘Poetic Table of the Elements,’ students of Danny Long combine art and science, old and new

Who could refrain, that had a periodic poem to write, and in that poem, courage to make an element known (apologies to Shakespeare).

From bottom left to right, Sara Nebreda Perez, Michael Gonzales, Gabe Raymondi, Julia Seko, Susan Guinn-Chipman and Arsen Bassenov work to typeset student poems by hand as part of Danny Long's class. At the top of the page, a poem is typeset; the text is backwards so that it will print correctly. Photos by Sarah Schleifer.

Students of Danny Long’s Radical Science Writing class (WRTG 3030) have the poem to write and the courage to make it happen, and the final project will be displayed on a giant Poetic Table of the Elements later this year in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Norlin Library.

Long’s students are getting a hands-on lesson in attention to detail with their latest project in which they compose, typeset and hand-print 118 poems for the elements of the Periodic Table.

The goal of the poem itself is to “teach a little kernel of information” about each element, whether that be the etymology of its name, discovery or function. “My students write about so many different things and yet never have we even talked about the periodic table as a form of writing, as a way of communicating science,” Long explains, citing it as an “untapped resource.”

With the help of Gregory Robl and Susan Guinn-Chipman of the Special Collections, Archives, and Preservation Department and Julia Seko of Scholarly Resource Development, students learned to handset and print the type using techniques that encourage “mindfulness,” as one of Long's students, Sara Nebreda Perez, observed.

“So much of what we do on campus anymore is intangible, and so maybe there’s something about just getting to sit down and create things by hand,” Long says of this project, which requires the slow and deliberate setting of tiny metal letters—upside down and backwards—into “furniture” that holds it in place to be printed.

These poem cards will be mounted onto a 5 ½-foot-tall x 10-foot-wide Poetic Table of the Elements and displayed at the University Libraries with the help of Andrew Violet of the Administration Department, with additional copies going to Special Collections and the staff and students involved. There are also plans to sell one copy to another institution through Vamp and Tramp booksellers.

Examples of student poems:

Ruthenium—44
By Ryan Henley
The Russian-named number 44,
A metal found in platinum ore.
Found sparsely in the Ural range,
I cost a hefty hunk of change.

Tin—50
By DiemMy Nguyen
Mix me with copper, you’ll surely get bronze.
Those so-called tin cans? Well, they are all cons.
I cry when I’m bent, but I am still strong.
Coat metals with me, and they will last long.

Manganese—25
By Jason DesVeaux
Alone I am weak,
but with others I shine:
To bodies, bones, and metals
I am divine.

Long, an instructor in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, says he likes incorporating creative projects into his science-writing class and that students also respond well to his self-proclaimed “radical” syllabus. Past projects of his include children’s books to teach first graders math and science.

Robl, who helps students set their type and print their poems, calls this project, which mixes science writing, poetry and traditional typesetting, “pretty radical on many levels for instruction for undergraduates” and, also, “just too cool.”

Long says some unexpected benefits of this project were the in-depth discussions he had with his students about grammar and punctuation. Talking about everything from the rhetorical effects of different punctuation to sentence structure while “focusing in on a really small piece of writing” was a productive way to look analytically at these mechanisms and “get a lot of punch out of it.”

He calls the Poetic Table assignment a good metaphor for the “radical” course name. The term “radical” is “often used to describe something that’s extreme, but it also comes from the Latin word meaning ‘root,’” Long says. In addition to describing something new and unusual, he notes, it also describes something old.

He agrees that it’s an apt way of looking at his class, which examines “the history of scientific communication and plays around with old forms of communication in slightly new ways.” The Poetic Table combines an old example of scientific communication that’s been developing over several centuries with a contemporary poetic twist.

“It’s been fun listening to the students explain to me why they wrote what they wrote.” Long quips that “usually it goes over my head because I’m not a scientist,” but says the amount of research and effort the students put into their poems is “encouraging and inspiring.”

Danny Long’s students are getting a hands-on lesson in attention to detail as they compose, typeset and hand-print 118 poems for the elements of the Periodic Table.

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New interdisciplinary writing certificate launches this fall

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Oct 2018 19:13:48 +0000

New interdisciplinary writing certificate launches this fall Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/16/2018 - 13:13

��ý�Ļ��Ʒ students from across disciplines on campus can hone their writing skills—something most employers have been calling for in recent years—through the newly launched Interdisciplinary Certificate in Writing.

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Thinking globally, eating locally

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 22:37:17 +0000

Thinking globally, eating locally Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 12/02/2016 - 15:37

Clay Bonnyman Evans

$24K grant supports ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ students, faculty food-literacy project

For decades in the post-World War II era, it’s fair to say that the diet of most Americans became less and less local. With innovations ranging from the interstate highway system to affordable home refrigeration and freezing systems, it simply became easier to eat food that came from a state — or even a country — far, far away.

But in the past decade, thanks to an overwhelming scientific consensus that global temperatures are rising, largely due to increased anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere, “eating local” has come to be seen a way for average citizens to make a difference.

Veronica House

But when students in Veronica House’s “Food and Culture” writing course went around Boulder County to interview consumers, restaurateurs and farmers, they quickly discovered that “local” doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone.

“Some consumers think they are supporting ethical considerations such as worker or animal welfare, or a low carbon footprint,” says House, associate director for service learning and outreach and founder and chair of the Conference on Community Writing in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ.

With that — and the 21^st-century social-media environment — in mind, the students crafted a pithy marketing message to get conversations started: “Local: It’s about more than miles.”

And now, thanks to a $24,000 ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Outreach Award, House, her students, and two other faculty members, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Peter Newton and Phaedra C. Pezzullo, associate professor of communications and director of Boulder Talks!, will reach even farther into the community to increase “food literacy.”

“I can’t tell you the number of times I hear, even from foodies, ‘I can’t go to Sprouts or the farmers’ market because I can’t afford it. And I think, ‘Well, you can afford your data plan, your lattes, all these other things in life, a house with twice the square footage you need to live. It’s not that we can’t afford it. It’s that as a culture, we don’t prioritize food.’”

“Dig In! to Local Food” is a collaboration with The Shed: Boulder County Foodshed, a working board that seeks to educate the public about and encourage increased growth and consumption of local food. The Shed also tries to better understand the complexities and challenges faced by local farmers, discrepancies in what is meant by “local food,” why some residents can’t afford locally grown food, and why some people aren’t interested in eating local.

The project will feature an art contest for high-school students, workshops for the public, interviews with local farmers and creation of a map of local farms, organic farms and community-supported agriculture projects for the Boulder Farmer’s Market.

“Nineteen of 24 small-scale organic farms that opened in the last five years in Boulder County went under,” says House, founder of the award-winning Writing Initiative for Service and Engagement in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric. “Peter Newton’s students will conduct interviews with farmers who have made it, and who haven’t, to help government officials develop policies — what makes it difficult for them to farm?”

On the underside of that furrow is a parallel problem: Why is it difficult for so many people — including many students — to afford locally grown food?

Brian Coppom, executive director of the Boulder County Farmers’ Markets, believes part of the answer is that many people simply do not place much value on food.

At center, Micah Parkin, 350colorado executive director and The Shed board member, runs a canning and preservation workshops supported through the Dig In! grant. This session was held in the greenhouse (built by Parkin) at Columbine Elementary School. Photo by Veronica House.

“I can’t tell you the number of times I hear, even from foodies, ‘I can’t go to Sprouts or the farmers’ market because I can’t afford it,” he says. “And I think, ‘Well, you can afford your data plan, your lattes, all these other things in life, a house with twice the square footage you need to live. It’s not that we can’t afford it. It’s that as a culture, we don’t prioritize food.”

House says the project will not just dig into such vexations, but will also point the way toward solutions.

“We acknowledge that local, healthy, organic food is often expensive. We are going to target people with workshops who might not be able to afford it and help figure out cost-effective ways to grow and can and preserve their own food,” she says.

It strikes many local-food advocates as strange, if not downright perverse, that an apple can cost more than a fast-food hamburger. House notes that large agribusiness concerns have powerful lobbies that can influence legislators to provide subsidies and that large-scale agriculture is typically mechanized and makes heavy use of chemicals.

“It’s expensive to farm on a small scale and organically because you have people doing the production, picking weeds and harvesting. You don’t have a huge pesticide sprayer,” she says. “But there are externalized costs to cheap food, including environmental destruction and public-health problems.”

Dig In! will not just benefit farmers and consumers, but also students.

“So often in classroom discussions, students can get away with positing unrealistic ideas. So it’s fantastic to see them going much deeper and hearing from someone in the community about the complexities of a problem,” she says.

Coppom, who serves with House on The Shed board, is thrilled at the collaborative approach of Dig In!

“So often universities, with the research and publications they do, are almost like exporters that don’t have ties with the community,” he says. “This is students and faculty at the university engaging in their own community. … And it actually brings the subject of food to an elevated status of being subject to intellectual discussion and inquiry.”

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Kids weave tales of snakes and eagles and bears

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 16:43:41 +0000

Kids weave tales of snakes and eagles and bears Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/20/2016 - 10:43

Clint Talbott

Students in CU-Boulder science-writing class write science-themed books for first graders, who now return the favor

Two first graders walk into a class. They open a science book they wrote together. They read it to college students, who clap and ask questions.

This is no joke. It’s a joint effort of a writing class at the University of Colorado Boulder and a first-grade class at Bear Creek Elementary School.

More on that later. But first, back to the story. It concerns a grizzly bear and a polar bear, both famished after a harsh winter, both eyeing a “luscious elk.”

The first-grade girl ticks off the grizzly’s diet, size and top speed—35 mph. The boy narrates a parallel tale about the polar bear—25 mph, if you’re curious. The tension peaks as both animals lunge at the hapless elk.

The grizzly runs faster, so it wins. The fate of the polar bear is left to the readers’ imagination.

Daniel Long

Daniel Long calls this a “great example of community-based writing.” He should know. Long, who earned his MA in English literature at CU-Boulder, teaches “Writing on Science and Society” for the university’s Program for Writing and Rhetoric.

A few years ago, one of his students, Allyson Adams, asked to write a science-themed children’s book for her final project. Her book is called Our Love Was Born from Burning Stars, and it offers a scientific, as opposed to religious or mythological, account of the universe’s origins.

During the next two semesters, more and more students asked to write children’s books, Long recalls. “So I said to myself, ‘Why not ask all of them to write children’s books?’”

As long as you’re writing children’s books, you might as well share them with actual children. Long did this via Stephanie Briggs, a first-grade teacher at Boulder’s Bear Creek Elementary School.

Long’s students read their books to Briggs’ first graders last spring, and the kids asked if they could write their own books. After two more classes made the same request, “Mrs. Briggs and I said to ourselves, ‘Why not let them?’”

This spring, the first graders at Bear Creek Elementary wrote and illustrated their own books. Their assignment: to tell a story based on imaginary contests between two animals—and the assignment was appropriately called “Who Would Win?” The matchups included a mako shark vs. a great white shark, badger vs. wolverine, cheetah vs. leopard and great horned owl vs. golden eagle.

A page from The Lost Wolf and the Sleepy Moon, by CU-Boulder students Will Golding, Chris LeSueur, Hanadi Salamah and Perry Soderstrom. Click on picture for larger image.

Framing the assignment as a wild competition prodded the first graders to learn about the animals in their stories. Thereby hangs both a tale and a bit of science.

Who Would Win is a popular series of children’s books written by Jerry Pallotta and illustrated by Rob Bolster. Briggs asked teams of first graders to research two animals on specific characteristics using library books and child-friendly websites.

The first graders incorporated writing strategies they learned during the year: using vivid details, interesting word choices, sound effects and similes, Briggs notes. And the kids enjoyed it.

“They were thrilled to share their efforts with Danny Long’s students, who inspired them to use science concepts to create engaging stories,” Briggs says.

Long’s CU-Boulder students, meanwhile, have also been writing, illustrating and binding children’s books that tell engaging stories with a subtext of science, sometimes conveyed through anthropomorphic characters.

I love the assignment for a number of reasons: it’s multimodal, it demands critical and creative thinking, it teaches students how to engage in deliberative dialogue, is stresses audience awareness, it discourages wordiness.”

To illustrate the hydrologic cycle, for instance, Long’s students chronicled the journey of Reggie, the raindrop. Highlighting anatomy, students told the story of a human heart who’s feeling blue because only the brain came to the heart’s birthday party. (The brain helps the bone, tooth and stomach overcome their weaknesses and join the celebration.)

There’s Halley, the lonely comet who finds solace as she soars by the solar system’s planets, each with its own character. And there’s The Lost Wolf and The Sleepy Moon, which follows a little wolf as he howls at a moon that changes shape during a month—thus highlighting the lunar cycle.

A section of a fold-out book titled Halley (One lonely comet visits her friends), by CU-Boulder students Lucy Wilkinson, Christina Clementz, Girish Narayanswamy and Eric Brown. Click on picture for larger image.

The groups of students who wrote and illustrated these books include the following: David DeHerrera, Brock Bylovas and Nicci Hines created Reggie. Nate Coyle, Lu Cester, Evan Lockard and Sachi Wong wrote the anatomy story. Lucy Wilkinson, Christina Clementz, Girish Narayanswamy and Eric Brown wrote and illustrated Halley. And Will Golding, Chris LeSueur, Hanadi Salamah and Perry Soderstrom created Lost Wolf.

Long is particularly pleased that his science-writing students have observed something many writers never see: a real impact. He puts it this way:

“It’s the latest of my attempts to disassemble the walls enclosing the science-writing curriculum. I want my students to look their influence in the eye, to see that their writing matters: it teaches, it awes, it inspires.”

Long’s course aims to help students practice techniques for communicating analytically and persuasively, to further develop their creative and critical-thinking skills, and to consider how their fields relate to other fields and to the civic arena.

Besides those skills, the course also imparts bookbinding methods. This is thanks to CU-Boulder’s Department of Special Collections and Archives. “The librarians there have played a vital role in teaching my students bookbinding methods,” Long says. “Halley, for example, wouldn’t exist without SCA’s book-arts instruction.”

In an essay published last summer, Long discussed his fondness for the children’s-book exercise. “I love the assignment for a number of reasons: it’s multimodal, it demands critical and creative thinking, it teaches students how to engage in deliberative dialogue, is stresses audience awareness, it discourages wordiness,” he wrote.

“And above all, it’s fun! Really flippin’ fun!”

Clint Talbott is director of communications and external relations for the College of Arts and Sciences and editor of the College of Arts and Sciences Magazine.

Two first graders walk into a class. They open a science book they wrote together. They read it aloud to college students, who clap and ask questions. This is no joke. It’s a joint effort of a science-writing class at CU-Boulder and a first-grade class at Bear Creek Elementary School.

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