The Passing of Michael Kammen

Randall Stephens

Michael Kammen

It is with heavy hearts that historians, former students, and others are reporting on the death of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen.  He leaves an enormous legacy as an inspiring teacher, mentor, and scholar.

H. Roger Segelken of the Cornell Chronicle writes that Kammen focused "his scholarship at first on the colonial period of American history."  He then "broadened his scope to include legal, cultural and social issues of American history in the 19th and 20th centuries." Kammen's Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (1991), says Segelken, "helped to create the field of memory studies."  (See a short biography of Kammen here.)

Indeed, Kammen won high praise as a writer. In a New York Times review of Mystic Chords of Memory Thomas Fleming conceded that "not everyone will agree with all his conclusions, but they are presented with superlative style laced with refreshing wit and a refusal to tolerate the occasional fools and scoundrels who populate this patriot's game." (Thomas Fleming, "The Past Is What Catches Up With Us," New York Times, January 12, 1992, BR11.)

Wikipedia in the Classroom

Elliot Brandow

Wikipedia is ubiquitous. It's at the top of your Google results, of course. And since 2012 it's in the right-hand sidebar of your Google results, dubbed the Knowledge Graph, as well. With this year's Apple iOS7 upgrade, when you ask Siri factual questions, those are Wikipedia entries you'll be offered in response. Even some library systems, like Serials Solutions' new Summon 2.0, can include Wikipedia entries alongside your list of books and articles.

It's also our dirty little secret. We know that students use it, but faculty use it, librarians use it, we all use it. Why? We like it for the same reasons that we've always liked encyclopedias: it's fast access to basic information on a topic you know nothing about. It gives you an overview in language written for a novice, offers you key terms that are helpful when you proceed with your search to more scholarly resources, and it increasingly cites some of that scholarly material right there in the references and external links sections. But it's the unmatched breadth and currency that makes Wikipedia invaluable: entries on wide-ranging--often esoteric or technical--topics, and near instantaneous updates in direct response to news and world events.

Models for Writing

Randall Stephens

When I teach writing I use a short piece by William Zinsser from the American Scholar: "Writing English as a Second Language" (Winter 2010). Yes, my students are native speakers.  Regardless, this essay is spot on for college students. (I've blogged about it before here.)

A WPA poster from 1937. Courtesy
of the Library of Congress.

Zinsser offers up a host of great tips:

Cut horrible, long Latin-origin words: "communicated, conversion, reconciliation, enhancements, verification."  When these are used/overused they lead to stilted or stuffy prose.

Use good, short, simple nouns: "infinitely old Anglo-Saxon nouns that express the fundamentals of everyday life: house, home, child, chair, bread, milk, sea, sky, earth, field, grass, road."

"I have four principles of writing good English. They are Clarity, Simplicity, Brevity, and Humanity."

"So remember: Simple is good. Writing is not something you have to embroider with fancy stitches to make yourself look smart."

Undegrads and grad students need to hear that advice over and over again.

The College Writing Problem: Stop the Presses for Journalism and English Majors

Philip White

In the course of the Atlantic’s recent series, The Writing Revolution, contributors have explored how to inspire struggling students, discussed the need to go beyond curriculum requirements, and delved into the disparity between how American society treats its high school athletes and their star student classmates.

Each of these pieces has merit, and yet as I read them, I was inspired to move beyond what works and what doesn’t for K-12 writing instruction and jump ahead to the problems of writing in higher education. 

In his fine essay, Arthur Applebee writes that in 2011, 40 to 41 percent of public school students at grades 8 and 12 were assigned less than a page of writing homework per week, and that 80 percent of these assignments didn’t involve composition.

You may think and hope that this dearth of practical writing is overcome once students pack their bags for college and that our higher education institutions have challenging syllabi that prepare able students to write the next great American novel, become the new David McCullough, or, heck, just eke out a living as a poet or freelance journalist.  But, in many cases, such an assumption is ill founded.