Apr 8 – Engaging iBrains – Togetherness in Difference Series

12:30 - 1:30 pm - Moseley 215

You are invited to participate in an upcoming teaching development workshop led by Linguist and Gender and Language researcher, Dr. Victoria Bergvall. The workshop will be held on Friday, April 8 from 12:30 to 1:30 pm in Mosley 215,

Dr. Bergvall is currently Associate Professor of Linguistics at Michigan Technological University and is the past president of IGALA (International Gender and Language Association). She has published articles in a variety of venues and edited collections in Gender and Language research. Bergvall co-edited the book (along with Janet Bing, and Alice F. Freed) Rethinking Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice, which challenges the dichotomy of female and male use of language. The essays address the political and social consequences of popular beliefs about women’s language’ and ‘men’s language’ and proposes new ways of looking at language and gender.

Dr. Bergvall will use a workshop format to apply her current research to the classroom. The workshop, entitled “O Brave New Minds: Engaging iBrains in Critical Media Literacy Practices,” will consider ways that our students seem increasingly in thrall to ever-changing new media technologies. Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, warns that these technologies are rewiring young brains, creating students unwilling or unable to read deeply and think wisely.

How can we educators reach out to students who are multi-tasking, media-surfing, and tweeting, and lead them to swim in the deeper waters of critical reading and analysis?

Join us as we consider how to increase media literacy through critical discourse analysis. By creating and analyzing diverse texts (e.g., headlines, 6-word summaries, paragraphs), we will contrast how headlines can lure yet lie, compel or obfuscate, and when and how to create and comprehend nuanced arguments.

This event is part of the Togetherness in Difference Lecture Series and is funded through a College of Arts and Sciences Fund for Excellence grant and through the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning.

If you would like to attend the April 8 teaching development session in Mosley 215, please reply to mtrim@elon.edu with your RSVP by Thursday March 31.

 

Public Lecture also planned for May 7

On May 7, at 7pm in Whitley Auditorium, Dr. Bergvall will present a public lecture entitled “But words will never hurt me?’: Critiquing media messages about sex, gender, & brain differences”. The lecture will be based on her current research on medical rhetoric and brain scan interpretations as they relate to sex differences.