Rumpus Original Fiction: Poor People Disappear
Nothing is not right. There is no indication there has ever been a house.
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Posts Tagged: students
Writing Through: You Are No Longer in Trouble by Nicole Stellon O’Donnell
There are no line breaks here because there are no breaks here.
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Days Since Last Workplace Injury
It feels like a luxury to have just enough.
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Trudging Down Death Road
Reveal yourself. Reveal yourself. You cannot be dead. Reveal yourself.
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The Thread: Look What You Made Me Do
Can a person with some agency ever claim victimization, or are agency and victimhood a binary?
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The Last Poem I Loved: The Waste Land
It is March, almost April, and the year feels like a spool of days spliced out of order, leaping treacherously from sun to ice to sun to rain to snow.
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The Causality Runs Both Ways: A Conversation with Joshua Clover
Joshua Clover discusses his book Riot.Strike.Riot, mediating between individual agency and structural determination, and finding hope in student action.
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How to Workshop N-Words
I am not willing to let go of one of the only things that truly belong to my people and me. It’s a very exclusive, very tumultuous kind of privilege.
...more#SuicideGirls: Why I Teach Sylvia Plath
But let’s not forget: feminism is, at least in part, about choice, and portions of life are play, not politics. Play and relationships and creativity and whatever we want.
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On the Front Lines
When you pick up a pen instead of a rifle, you’re fighting an entirely different battle. This is my duty. This is my patriotism.
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Finding Shelter
A hurricane is coming. Rita is in the Gulf of Mexico and is approaching Houston at a slow but steady pace of nine miles an hour. I don’t have many, or any, illusions that God and Jesus will see us through.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: The Hammock
Birth, death. We live in the middle. “What’s it like?” Lee asks. “Is it a door, and goodbye on either side?” Just like the stars, one day we all collapse, our mass and light and energy exploding into nothingness.
...moreCrybaby College Students and Their Bogus Trophies
I’m a small blue dot living in a blood-red corner of a red state, so I’ve grown accustomed to hearing right wing talking points. I don’t like them, but they surface as regularly in my southwest Florida town as white egrets on the highway and dolphins in the Gulf. Talking points at the grocery store, […]
...moreDear President-elect Trump
This evening, after returning home from my job as an English instructor in St. Paul, Minnesota, I locked my keys in my car. I believe the reason for this mistake pertained to my haggard and undone emotions. From my vantage point, your campaign included numerous emotional-appeal techniques. Over the last year, I’ve heard a lot of […]
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Bodies in Space: Teaching after Trauma
Turning onto my street and looking south I feel the ground drop beneath me every time—I turn the corner and the sidewalk falls. I feel invisible then, as if I’ve vaporized.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: State Facts for the New Age
“I’m a shock absorber for tragedy,” I say, not really knowing what I mean. “Maybe I should just move to Hawaii. I hear that’s a happy place to live.”
...morePuzzling over Plagiarism
With the recent presidential election utilizing such unapologetic plagiarism, one wonders just what goes on in the minds of anyone who so confidently uses others’ words as their own. Marina Budhos meditates on this issue as she details the shocking moment of discovering that one of her own writing students had committed plagiarism.
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The Small Face of Equity
I was twenty-four and I knew everything. I knew about justice; I knew about respect. I knew everyone in the world had it in them.
...moreStudent and Teacher, Man and God
At the Paris Review, H.S. Cross analyzes Ernest Raymond’s 1922 novel, Tell England. He explores the unique and charged relationships between a schoolteacher, Radley, and his students, Ray and Doe. The boys have an unexpected and, at least initially, seemingly erotic reverence for their teacher, which, Cross concludes, reflects the confusing and sacrificial relationship between man and […]
...moreLearning From the Worst
The representation of writing students in film is an interesting one, as Leah Schnelbach explores for Electric Literature. There exists a trend in which writing students are shown to be young and innocent, learning from inadequate teachers. Schnelbach attempts to explain why this trend exists, and wonders if it can be changed: …the public image of […]
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: On Madness and Mad Men
In my eight years as a Mad Men fan, the series has repeatedly prompted me to reflect on parenting.
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The Rumpus Interview with Susan Shapiro
Susan Shapiro discusses her latest novel, What’s Never Said, her Instant Gratification Takes Too Long teaching method, and new anti-dating rules between faculty and students at universities such as Harvard and Yale.
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A Dark Room That Is Completely Wind
“I want to become more independent, but stepping outside and knowing that if I cross the street at the wrong time I could get hit by a bus, well, that’s intense,” she said.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: O Martyr My Martyr!
In most communities, teachers are compensated so poorly and afforded so little respect that in many cases the primary compensation is martyrdom.
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The Rumpus Book Club Interviews Alissa Nutting
Alissa Nutting discusses issues of gender and consent, and her novel Tampa, which depicts in relentless detail a female teacher sexually preying upon young male students.
...moreBad News for English Majors
Last week, we blogged about how, contrary to popular opinion, English majors are, in fact, employable. But, argues Verlyn Klinkenborg, the misperception that the humanities are impractical career-wise is actually hurting the field, making it less practical in every way. He says of his students, for whom reading and writing have been consistently deemphasized and […]
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