HARVARD COLLEGE Writing Programwritingprogram.fas.harvard.edu/files/hcwp/files/... · Harvard College Writing Program One Bow Street, Suite 250 Cambridge, MA 02138 (617) 495-2566

Harvard College Writing Program Bulletin | Spring 2014 | page 1

Writing ProgramH A R V A R D C O L L E G E

IN THIS ISSUE:

New Websites …………………………………………………… page 2

Digital Learning Initiatives……………………………..... page 3

Support for Undergraduate Writers ……………. page 10

Harvard Writers at Work Lecture Series …….. page 12

Faculty Honors and Publications …………………. page 15

HIS PAST AUGUST, THE WRITING PROGRAM MOVED from its Victorian home at 8 Prescott to a modern, custom- designed space on the second floor of One Bow Street. Designed by architect Cathy Bell of Studio C, the Writing Program’s new space is both beautiful and functional. Preceptors must no longer meet with students for conferences out in hallways as they did in our crowded 8 Prescott building. We now have dedicated meeting rooms, with whiteboards and screens for presentations, and several waiting areas for students where they can set up their laptops or just chat.

Relocation

T• to introduce our freshmen to the craft

and practice of academic writing;

• to support the teaching of undergraduate writing by Harvard faculty and Teaching Fellows;

• to help undergraduates in all class years with their writing through a range of services, including peer- tutoring at our Writing Center, the Departmental Writing Fellows program, writing workshops, and student writing guides in the disciplines; and

• to present opportunities for Harvard students and the public, through our Harvard Writers at Work Lecture Series, to hear accomplished writers in the Harvard community discuss their works, their writing lives, and the impact of writing on the world.

The Core Missions of the Writing Program

WRITINGPROGRAM.FAS.HARVARD.EDU

http://writingprogram.fas.harvard.edu


WWW.

The Writing Program wishes

to thank our colleagues in

offices, departments, and

programs throughout the

College, the Faculty of Arts

and Sciences, and the

Division of Continuing

Education who support our

work. We are also indebted

to the Program’s donors

without whose generosity

our numerous initiatives

and services would not be

possible. The support of

Morton and Neil Sosland,

Gordon Gray, Rita E. and

Gustave M. Hauser, Ben

Sherwood, Eleanor and

Miles Shore, Susanna and

John LeBoutillier, Marshall

Berkman, Otto Fuerbringer,

Lawrence Lader, Volney

Righter, M. Richard

Robinson, and Bradford

Swett profoundly benefits

our freshmen, preceptors,

and the many upper-

classmen and instructors

throughout the College

whom the Program serves.

WITH THANKS

The Writing Program: writingprogram.fas.harvard.edu

The Harvard Writing Project: writingproject.fas.harvard.edu

The Writing Center: writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu

Exposé, our online magazine of excellent student writing:

jhcwp.com

THE WRITING PROGRAM’S ADMINISTRATIVE TEAM

Harvard College Writing Program One Bow Street, Suite 250

Cambridge, MA 02138

(617) 495-2566 • f (617) 496-6864

Thomas R. Jehn Sosland Director

Karen Heath Senior Preceptor

Jane RosenzweigDirector, Harvard

College Writing Center James Herron

Director, Harvard Writing Project

Rebecca Skolnik Program Administrator

Joseph Guay Staff Assistant

A New Web Presence

This fall, we launched new websites for each of our core divisions.

To look at our new sites, visit us here:

http://writingprogram.fas.harvard.edu

http://writingproject.fas.harvard.edu

http://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu

http://jhcwp.com


The Expos Curriculum

n April 2012, the Writing Program won a $50,000 Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT) Grant. We were one of 47 recipients from among the 250 groups that submitted letters of intent.

The HILT grant has made it possible for the Writing Program to develop a powerful online learning and teaching tool to complement our traditional instructional methods. HarvardWrites offers freshmen enrolled in the required Expository Writing 20 course an exciting opportunity to see connections between what they are learning in Expos and what Harvard professors value in academic writing.

To this end, HarvardWrites, which debuted in September 2013, presents short high-definition videos of prominent Harvard faculty from across the University discussing the funda- mental features of effective academic writing in their fields. Students are then offered the chance to apply those lessons in online exercises. The videos showcase

the writing advice of Professors Ann Blair (History), James Engell (English), Rachelle Gaudet (Life Sciences), David McCann (East Asian Studies), Steven Pinker (Psychology), Margo Seltzer (Computer Science), and Jonathan Zittrain (Law and Computer Science).

Why did we develop HarvardWrites? The research in the cognitive and learning sciences clearly indicates that students naturally struggle with directly transferring what they learn in one context to another, and that students need to be given ample support in one learning environment to prepare for learning in the next. The Writing Program continues to address the challenge of how to facilitate knowledge transfer.

HarvardWrites addresses this problem by offering our students the opportunity to learn the common vocabulary professors across the disciplines use to discuss academic writing, as well as the differences in modes of writing across these fields.

continued

HARVARDWRITES, AN INNOVATIVE DIGITAL LEARNING AND TEACHING TOOL.

IWWW.HARVARDWRITES.COM

http://harvardwrites.com


Since it is not enough just to tell students about the common and divergent features of academic writing across fields, HarvardWrites’ online exercises ask students to take an active role in applying the points they have heard the professors make in the website’s videos to new learning situations. Online exercises instruct students to use the site’s digital highlighter to annotate model student papers from various disciplines. These annotations then become the basis for in-class discussions about the analytical moves that good academic writers make in their papers.

Knowledge transfer cannot work without consistent instruction across fields and undergraduate class years. To that end, we also sought to apply the HILT Grant to the development of the HarvardWrites Instructor Toolkit, which we will launch in spring 2014. This companion site will introduce Teaching Fellows and faculty at Harvard and beyond to best practices in the teaching of undergraduate writing. Users of the Instructor Toolkit will find downloadable lesson plans and proven teaching strategies to help their students develop as writers. The concept and design for this instructor resource resulted from a fruitful collaboration in 2011-2012

between the Writing Program and the Ad Hoc Committee on Writing, composed of faculty and directors of undergraduate studies from the Division of Life Sciences, the Committee on History and Literature, and the Departments of Psychology, Sociology, and History. Together, we explored which teaching issues were essential to address and how best to present teaching advice in an online format so as to deliver substantive but not overwhelming material.

Over time, we plan to expand the resources of the site to include videos from additional faculty speaking about their composing and revising methods and academic integrity, as well more interactive tools for undergraduate writers and teachers of writing.

HarvardWrites was developed thanks to the efforts of the Harvard professors we filmed, to the work and vision of Head Preceptor and project leader Zachary Sifuentes, to the team of Writing Program senior administrators and faculty who helped shape the content, and to Bok Center Associate Director and HarvardX Creative Director Marlon Kuzmick and his crew of student videographers and editors.

The Expos Curriculum continued


AWARD-WINNING WRITING PROGRAM FACULTY MEMBERS. While indirect assessment through student evaluations is only one among several measures of the Program’s performance, our Harvard Q scores continue to be strong. Our average instructor score on the 5-point Q scale last academic year was 4.3. Instructors in the College who have received a score of 4.5 or better in the “instructor overall” category on the Harvard Q Evaluations are awarded the Harvard University Certificate of Teaching Excellence. Twenty Writing Program faculty members were recognized for their Fall 2012 Expos teaching, 19 earned the award in Spring 2013, and 20 received it this past fall.

DIVERSITY OF DISCIPLINARY EXPERTISE. The Program continues to align its discipline-based course offerings with the interests of the large number of freshmen who go on to concentrate in the social sciences and natural, physical, and applied sciences. Our Program faculty includes two cultural anthropologists, two biological anthropologists, three historians, an archaeologist, two psychologists, two political scientists, two legal scholars,

The Expos CurriculumFACULTY DEVELOPMENT. All of our Program faculty members gather each semester for professional development workshops. The sessions feature presentations by colleagues and small-group discussions about teaching practices and course materials. These regular meetings have been an important way to foster community and share ideas that improve everyone’s teaching. Our recent themes:

• FALL 2012 SESSIONS How do we best teach our Expos

students about engaging in responsible, honest use of other sources’ ideas when they write their research papers? How do we inspire ourselves as

teachers, and how do we inspire our students to try new ideas, experiment with new strategies, and approach the challenges of academic writing?

• SPRING 2013 SESSION How can we improve our

commentary on student papers? • FALL 2013 SESSION What problems in our assignment

prompts and in-class exercises can we troubleshoot?


and a biologist. To see the wide variety of courses we offer our freshmen each semester, visit our Academics webpage:

EXPOSÉ. The new issue of Exposé features student essays accompanied by pop-up annotations that were written by Writing Program faculty (James Herron, Deirdre Mask, Kelsey McNiff, Sara Newland, and Adrienne Tierney) in order to help Expos students see the critical intellectual moves of academic writing. Nearly all of our Writing Program faculty members helped to judge the hundreds of submitted essays to determine the finalists. Our publication also features student poetry and short fiction. This fall’s issue was edited by Zachary Sifuentes, Tad Davies, and Joaquin Terrones. Newly appointed Head Preceptor Matthew Levay has joined the magazine’s editorial staff.

THE WRITING TEST. In the second and third years of our new freshman writing placement test, we have continued to develop our approach to assessing the writing preparation students bring with them from secondary school. Students

take the test along with their other placement exams online over the summer before they arrive at Harvard. The test provides students a challenging set of readings and a rigorous prompt to respond to, and gives them several days to write the test—a process more analogous to writing a college paper than the two-hour exam we used to administer. By asking students to engage with a more complex essay form, the Program has gained a more nuanced view of their writing.

We have also refined our process for administering and tracking the more than 1,600 tests, streamlining the complex process by which students first take the exam and preceptors make assessments. Preceptors read and offer initial evaluations of the test. Then final reviews are made by a team of preceptors who teach Expos 10, an elective intro-ductory course on expository writing intended for students who can benefit from a semester of preparation before taking the required Expos 20 course. The Expos 10 team identifies which students might benefit from taking Expos 10 before Expos 20.

The new test has also allowed us to continue assessing the possibility of an

writingprogram.fas.harvard.edu/pages/academics

http://writingprogram.fas.harvard.edu/%20pages/academics

http://writingprogram.fas.harvard.edu/pages/academics


honors-level course, Expos 30, at some point in the future. We have identified the tests that seemed particularly strong, and a team of Writing Program faculty have collected and analyzed the Expos 20 essays from those students. The Program is now assessing the possible implications of that analysis for what we focus on in Expos 20 as well as for possible directions for a future honors course.

EXPOSITORY WRITING 10. The 2013 writing test allowed us to identify approximately 190 students to recommend for Expos 10. A team of Writing Program faculty met individually with all recommended students and advised them on their ultimate course choice. An additional 30 students came to Expos 10 advising without having been recommended, to determine if the course might be right for their level of writing preparation. By the end of fall registration, 163 students enrolled in the course; 17 of those students self-placed in the course. This is our highest number of enrolled students and the highest number of “walk-in” students in the course’s history.

The Harvard Writing ProjectLed by its director Dr. James Herron, the Harvard Writing Project (HWP) continues to expand its initiatives to support departmental faculty and Teaching Fellows in order to help them develop effective ways of assigning and responding to student writing. The HWP has consulted with dozens of courses, including an increasing number in the Program in General Education, to foster better writing instruction throughout Harvard College. The HWP collaborates with departmental faculty and TFs to produce both online and print guides not only for student writers in specific courses and concentrations but also for instructors who assign and respond to student writing. The expansion has been possible primarily because of the contributions of a num-ber of Writing Program faculty members who have served as Harvard Writing Project Faculty Associates. Our Faculty Associates are Jerusha Achterberg, Christina Becker, Erin Blevins, Tad Davies, Dwight Fee, Elizabeth Greenspan, David Hahn, Jonah


Johnson, Elissa Krakauer, Matthew Levay, Ariane Liazos, Deirdre Mask, Kelsey McNiff, Donna Mumme, Tess O’Toole, Emily Shelton, Lindsay Silver Cohen, and Adrienne Tierney.

STUDENT WRITING GUIDES. There are now 31 writing and teaching guides published by the HWP in use through-out the College. To view these guides, visit the Harvard Writing Project website at

writingproject.fas.harvard.edu

In addition to producing a number of new writing guides for students in Gen Ed courses (see below), the HWP also developed revisions of

• A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in Government

• A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in Social Studies

• A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History and Literature

GUIDES TO THE TEACHING OF WRITING. The HWP has published Writing in the Freshman Seminar Program: A Practical Guide for

Instructors, which provides concrete advice on writing instruction for faculty instructing students in the Freshman Seminar Program. The HWP also continues to roll out the HWP Brief Guide series for TFs aimed at improving writing instruction in the College. New Brief Guides devoted to peer review and designing prewriting exercises are slated for publication this coming year.

PEDAGOGY WORKSHOPS FOR TEACHING FELLOWS. Each semester the HWP offers a number of workshops to help Teaching Fellows improve their teaching of writing:

• Responding and Assignment Design Workshops. The HWP has continued its long-standing effort to improve writing instruction in the College by sponsoring 22 pedagogy workshops for Teaching Fellows in several departments each year. The workshops focus mainly on responding to student writing and assignment design.

• Bok Center Collaborations. Each year Writing Program faculty members co-facilitate the Center’s “Teaching

http://writingproject.fas.harvard.edu


Fellow Workshops on Responding to Student Writing.”

SUPPORT FOR THE PROGRAM IN GENERAL EDUCATION. The Writing Program is expanding its support for courses in the Program in General Education through our increasing involvement in Gen Ed’s Instructional Support Service Team. The HWP’s work in Gen Ed has seen several important recent developments:

• The HWP now publishes ten writing guides for students taking courses in the College’s General Education curriculum:

Guide to Writing in Societies of the World 38, Pyramid Schemes (for Professor Peter Der Manuelian)

iMovie Assignment Guide for Societies of the World 38, Pyramid Schemes

The Guide to Writing in Ethical Rea-soning 26, The Ethics of Atheism: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud (Professor Peter J. Burgard)

Writing about Music: A Guide to Writing in A & I 24, First Nights: Five Performance Premieres (Professor Thomas F. Kelly)

A Guide to Writing in A & I 33, Ancient Fictions: The Ancient Novel in Context (Professor David F. Elmer) A Guide to Writing in Ethical

Reasoning 15, “If God Does Not Exist, All is Permitted” (Professor Jay M. Harris) Grant Proposal and Oral Presentation

Guide for Science of Living Systems 19: Nutrition and Global Health (Professors Christopher P. Duggan, Wafaie W. Fawzi, and Clifford W. Lo) A Guide to Writing in Aesthetic and

Interpretive Understanding 14: Putting Modernism Together (Professor Daniel Albright) Writing in Ethical Reasoning 22:

Justice (Professor Michael J. Sandel) A Student’s Guide to Writing in

Societies of the World 24: Global Health Challenges: Complexities of Evidence-Based Policy (Professor Sue J. Goldie)

• We appointed two experienced Writing Program faculty members to focus on Gen Ed courses. Matthew Levay and David Hahn are consulting with the teaching staffs of new and revised Gen Ed courses to enhance writing instruction primarily through

✧✦


assignment design. We also plan to collaborate with teaching staffs interested in designing more effective non-traditional assignments.

Resources for Undergraduate Writers

THE HARVARD COLLEGE WRITING CENTER. The Writing Center, directed by Jane Rosenzweig, offers Harvard undergraduates help with any aspect of their writing, from specific assignments to general writing skills. The Center is staffed by trained undergraduate peer tutors who provide individual conferences at no charge to the student. In 2012-2013, the Writing Center helped 704 undergraduates in 1628 individual conferences. Tutors also assisted senior thesis writers in 11 concentrations, including Economics, Social Studies, History and Literature, History of Science, Environmental Science and Public Policy, Human Evolutionary Biology, Classics, Government, and Anthropology. The Writing Center will soon be publishing a fifth “Brief Guide to Writing in the Disciplines,” which

will provide introductory-level guidance on writing sociology papers.

Writing tutors also continued to contribute writing advice to the Writing Center blog, which can be accessed through the Writing Center website writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu. Since January 2013, the blog has been viewed more than 9,807 times by residents of 85 countries.

DEPARTMENTAL WRITING FELLOWS. The Writing Program has expanded its successful Departmental Writing Fellows (DWF) Program, directed by James Herron and Jane Rosenzweig. A joint initiative of the Writing Program’s Writing Center and the Harvard Writing Project, the DWF program appoints advanced graduate students with extensive experience teaching writing to serve as in-house tutors for students seeking help writing in their concentrations. Tutorials with DWFs complement the non-disciplinary support available at the Writing Center. The DWF program now has eight positions, having added a DWF in the Department of English to the seven positions already maintained in the

http://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu


Departments of Anthropology, History, Philosophy, Government, Sociology, and Psychology, and in the Life Sciences Program. More than 300 students used DWFs in 2012-13, booking 649 appointments.

WRITING WORKSHOPS. Under the direction of Karen Heath, the Writing Program’s Senior Preceptor, the program has expanded its annual series of fall and spring semester writing workshops open to all undergraduates.

• Research Paper Clinics. In collabora-tion with the Harvard College Library and its librarian instructors Sue Gilroy and Kathleen Sheehan, the series of clinics scheduled late in the semester offers students one-on-one help from Writing Program staff and Reference Librarians. Students who are engaged in writing a research paper can bring questions about defining a research topic, refining research approaches, exploring the Harvard Library databases, and locating and evaluating sources.

• “Writing Papers at Harvard: Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay.” This workshop offers incoming freshmen,

especially those not enrolled in Expos until spring semester, guidance on the fundamentals of writing a college paper.

• “Reading and Writing in the Sciences.” Designed and facilitated by two of our science preceptors—Elissa Krakauer and Donna Mumme—this workshop introduces freshmen and sophomores to the fundamentals of writing conventions in the sciences, as well as effective ways to read journal articles.

• “The American Academic Essay.” Karen Heath and the Writing Program ESL tutor introduce international students to the conventions of the academic essay students will encounter in the U.S., highlighting key features that distinguish it from writing students might be used to from other educational systems.

• “Sources Workshop for Internation-al Freshmen.” Karen Heath introduc-es international students to the expectations of working with sources, citation, and best practices for avoid-ing plagiarism.


WRITING AND PUBLIC SERVICE. Since 2010, the Writing Program has run its Writing and Public Service Initiative to connect interested under-graduates with public schools looking for help with writing instruction. Some highlights:

• Seventy high school students from Boston Public Schools’ Boston Latin Academy (BLA) were matched up with Harvard undergraduate volunteers for Online Writing Coaching. Our undergrads provided the BLA seniors with two rounds of feedback on their college admissions essay drafts.

• Thirteen students from East Boston High were matched up with several Harvard undergraduate volunteers for the College-Bound Mentoring Program that ran from spring through fall semesters. The volunteers facilitated orientation sessions, cultural workshops, and writing activities at Harvard’s Museum of Natural History and at Arts First, and conducted a tour of Harvard Yard in the fall. Over the summer, the volunteers worked with their East

Boston High students on two rounds of “brainstorming” response papers, and continued to provide intensive writing instruction during the past fall semester as students drafted and revised their college admissions essays.

HARVARD WRITERS AT WORK LECTURE SERIES. Launched by the Writing Program in Fall 2009, our popular series is co-sponsored by the Harvard Review, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, the Harvard Extension School’s Master’s Degree Program in Journalism, and the Harvard College Program in General Education. Harvard Writers at Work programming focuses on how writing by those at Harvard connects academic and professional work and the broader public. The events are primarily aimed at Harvard undergraduates, with a special interest in drawing in freshmen in order to inspire them at the outset of their education to see, no matter what their concentration, that writing matters and that they can create a writing life while in college and in their future careers.


OUR SPEAKERS AND EVENTS DURING THE 2012 AND 2013 SEASONS:

• Harvard Business School Professor and behavioral scientist Michael Norton on his and Elizabeth Dunn’s book Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending.

• 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and former Writing Program preceptor Paul Harding on his new novel Enon.

• Anthropologist and Writing Program preceptor Elizabeth Greenspan on her new book Battle For Ground Zero: Inside the Political Struggle To Rebuild the World Trade Center.

• Pulitzer Prize-winning author and MacArthur “Genius Award” winner Junot Diaz on the craft of fiction.

• Photographer Finbarr O’Reilly and New York Times contributor and veteran Sgt. Thomas James Brennan on “Writing on War.”

• Novelist and Harvard College alum

Louisa Hall on her debut novel The Carriage House.

• Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist Paul Salopek on “Out of Eden: The Walk,” his project to walk the pathways of the first human migration, from Ethiopia to Patagonia, and report on the major issues of our day.

• Distinguished editors Nicole Lamy, Megan O’Grady, and Jennifer B. McDonald on the art of the book review.

• Psychologist Steven Pinker on “The Sense of Style: Writing in the 21st Century.”

• Co-founder of Mother Jones Richard Parker on “Fearless Journalism: Print-ing What Someone Else Does Not Want Printed.”

• New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor on “Coming Into Her Own: Michelle Obama’s Political Transfor-mation, and How It May Help Sway an Election.”

• Editor Wendy Lesser on founding and


editing The Threepenny Review.

• Novelist and former Writing Program preceptor Tom Perrotta on his new novel The Leftovers.

• Journalist Nazila Fathi on “Writing the First Rough Draft of History: A Decade of Reporting from Inside Iran.”

• Literary journalism icon Gay Talese on “Writing Narrative Journalism.”

• Harvard Writers at Work also had the pleasure of co-sponsoring an event or-ganized by Harvard College Students for Scholars at Risk: “Tell Me a Story: A Panel Discussion on the Uses of Narrative,” with Jill Lepore, Kimberly Theidon, Birtukan Midekssa, Erika Duncan, Robert Pinsky, and Tracy Kidder, and moderated by Stephen Greenblatt.

Speaking InstructionThis past fall, Margie Zohn joined our faculty as preceptor for Expos 40, the Public Speaking Practicum for

undergraduates that is offered under the Program’s aegis. Margie also mentors the Peer Speaking Tutors, a group of undergraduates who have taken Expos 40 and work to coach their peers for any speaking situation, from interviews to formal presentations to class participation. EXPOS 40. Taught by Margie and Teaching Assistant David Carter, Expos 40 this Spring had 283 applicants for 30 spots in the course. Students deliver a series of four prepared speeches, practice interview strategies, work on impromptu speaking skills, explore techniques of persuasion and influence, practice improvisational theatre exercises to increase spontaneity, analyze rhetorical strategies (in great speeches, TED talks, and day-to-day communications), and deliver a speech at the end of the semester. Last fall, the course culminated in a “Speech to Change an Attitude” assignment. Students were required to choose and argue a thesis with which the majority of their classmates disagreed. Theses included “All drugs should be made legal,” “No one should ever drink alcohol,” “Quad living at Harvard is


superior to living by the river,” and “All unions should be abolished.” Many of Margie’s students also used the course’s various speaking assignments as a way to prepare for job interviews and senior thesis presentations.

PEER SPEAKING TUTORS. In Fall 2013, a team of five Peer Speaking Tutors delivered 52 one-on-one coaching sessions. They also served 90 students in four open-enrollment workshops and sessions designed for campus groups.

OTHER PUBLIC SPEAKING INITIATIVES: • Resources for freshmen. Margie

presented a speaking workshop at the Freshman Enrichment Program last January and has done so again this past January. The workshop is designed to increase students’ confi-dence and ability to speak up in class-es and in other campus activities. This spring, for the second consecutive year, Margie will run a speaking pro-gram for freshmen, consisting of three experiential classes that take students through the highlights of Expos 40.

• Harvard Speaks. Inspired by her participation in Expos 40, Meredith

Baker co-founded Harvard Speaks, an organization that promotes under-graduate public speaking. Harvard Speaks has now spawned U Speaks, a speaking group that currently operates in three other U.S. colleges, and aims to expand rapidly from there.

Writing Program Faculty DistinctionsIn addition to serving our freshmen each semester, our faculty members continue their work as active scholars, writers, and contributors to a variety of projects and programs. Here are some highlights since Fall 2011.

JERUSHA ACHTERBERG

• Awards and Nominations Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teach-

ing Prize. Harvard University. In recognition of outstanding pedagogy and mentorship. One of three annual recipients University-wide. Nominee in 2011-13. Harvard University Certificate of

Teaching Excellence. Certificate of Recognition. College

Board, Advanced Placement Program.


• Conferences Invited speaker. Blevins E, Castro NG,

Achterberg JT. “Decoding the Rheto-ric of Science: Discussing the Scien-tific Literature with Students.” 2012 Winter Teaching Conference, Harvard University. January 19, 2012.

• Positions Non-resident tutor. Cabot House,

Harvard College.

MICHAEL ALLEN• Awards and Nominations Harvard University Certificate of

Teaching Excellence.

• Publications “‘The Most Influential Book in India’:

The Ocean of Inquiry and the Rise of Advaita Vedanta,” Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin -Madison. October 2013. “Epistemology in Translation:

Sanskrit, Hindi, and English Renderings of Nischaldas’s Ocean of Inquiry,” Center for the Study of World Religions, “Translation of the Sacred Text” Colloquium, Harvard Divinity School. October 2013. “Knowledge and Devotion in the

Bhagavad-gita: A Suggestive Parallel

from Chinese Buddhism,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy (March 2014). Forthcoming.

• Conferences “Inquiry as Spiritual Practice: The

Role of Philosophy in Late Advaita Vedanta,” World Congress of Philosophy, Athens, Greece. August 2013.

CHRISTINA BECKER• Conferences “Flickering Waves of Music: the

Mystical Poetics of Self-Erasure in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.” Northeast Modern Language Association. Boston, MA. March 2013.

PETER BECKER• Awards and Nominations Harvard University Certificate of

Teaching Excellence. Stephen Botein Prize for Excellence in

Mentoring in History and Literature.

• Conferences Chaired Seminar, “A Literature

of Historical Guilt?” with eight selected panelists. Northeast Modern Language Association. Boston, MA. March 2013.


Chaired Panel, “Slave Narratives.” Northeast Modern Language Association. Harrisburg, PA. April 2014.

KEVIN BIRMINGHAM• Publications The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle

for James Joyce’s Ulysses. New York: Penguin Press. Forthcoming Bloomsday (June 16) 2014.

ERIN BLEVINS• Publications Blevins EL, Lauder GV. 2013.

Swimming near the substrate: a simple robotic model of stingray locomotion. Bioinspiration and Biomimetics. 8(1):016005. doi: 10.1088/1748-3182/8/1/016005. Macesic LJ, Mulvaney D and Blevins

EL. 2013. Synchronized swimming: coordination of pelvic and pectoral fins during augmented punting by the freshwater stingray Potamotrygon orbignyi. Zoology. 116:144-150 doi: 10.1016/j.zool.2012.11.002.

• Conferences Blevins EL. 2013. Structure and

function in freshwater stingray

pectoral fins. Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. San Francisco, CA, January 4, 2013.

• Positions Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard

Initiative for Learning and Teaching. Postdoctoral Fellow, Lauder

Laboratory, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. Judge, Best Student Paper

Competition, Division of Comparative Biomechanics, Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.

JUSTINE DE YOUNG• Awards and Nominations Harvard University Certificate of


• Publications Served as a consultant and catalogue

author on The Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, & Musée d’Orsay exhibition, “Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity” (2012-2013), writing two invited essays, “Fashion and Intimate Portraits” and “Fashion and the Press.” In Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity, edited by Gloria Groom,


exh. cat., 106-123, 232-243. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Published in the French edition of the catalogue as “La mode en por-traits intimes” and “La mode des impressionnistes face à la presse.” In L’Impressionnisme et la Mode, edited by Gloria Groom, exh. cat., 145-151, 257-263. Paris: Skira Flammarion for Musée d’Orsay, 2012.

• Conferences Invited speaker, “Fashioning the

(Masculine) Interior: Tissot, Portrai-ture and the Fashion Plate.” Part of the session, “The Modern Interior as Space and Image,” at the College Art Association Annual Conference, New York. February 2013. Organizer and Chair, “Re-examining

Fashion in Western Art, 1775-1975” at the College Art Association Annual Conference, Chicago. February 2014.

• Positions Adviser, Board of Freshman Advisers,

Harvard College.

• Service Organized, with Joaquin Terrones,

training session on ESL and writing pedagogy.

DWIGHT FEE• Awards and Nominations Harvard University Certificate of


• Positions Faculty Associate, Harvard Writing

Project. Assisted with writing assignment

design for the Harvard Sociology Department course, Tutorial in Social Theory (Soc 97). Led a faculty workshop for Women,

Gender, and Sexuality (WGS) faculty on writing pedagogy (Fall 2013) and visited WGS seminars. Helped develop The Brief Guide to

Writing the Sociology Paper, with Jane Rosenzweig and Rachel Meyer

(Sociology). Faculty Affiliate: Committee on

Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Lecturer in Sociology.

• Service Organized Wintersession Program on

“Friendship and Blocking at Harvard.” Freshman Dean’s Office.


JANLING FU• Publications “Death and Feasting in the Isaiah

Apocalypse (Isaiah 25:6-8),” in Todd Hibbard and Paul Kim, eds., Intertextuality and Formation of Isaiah 24-27 (forthcoming with Scholars Press).

- co-authored with P. Cho, 2nd author.

“Theory and Method in Feasting,” in Peter Altmann and Janling Fu, eds., Feasting in the Archaeology and Texts of the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Levant. (forthcoming with Eisenbrauns).

- co-authored with P. Altmann, 1st author.

“Reconstructing Ancient Israelite Religion: Feasting as a Politics of Legitimation in Iron Age Israel,” in Peter Altmann and Janling Fu, eds., Feasting in the Archaeology and Texts of the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Levant (forthcoming with Eisenbrauns).

• Conferences “The Program of the Black Obelisk of

Shalmaneser III,”[The Archaeology of] Feasting and Foodways, American School of Oriental Research annual

meeting, Baltimore, MD, 2013. “Longer-term Processes of State

Formation in the Levant: The Case of Israel in the Iron Age II,” Stretching Disciplinary Boundaries: Approaches for Studying Intersocietal Interaction in the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East Session, Society of American Archaeology annual meeting, Honolulu, HI, 2013. “Episodic Allusions in the Semantic

Field of the Feast,” North American Conference of Afroasiatic Linguistics annual meeting, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 2013. “Per-forming the Solomonic State:

Political Agency in the Iron Age Levant,” Archaeology of the Near East: Bronze and Iron Ages, American Schools of Oriental Research annual meeting, Chicago, IL, 2012. “The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser

III: Refractions of an Ideological Moment,” Joint Session of Israel in the Ancient Near East (EABS)/Bible and Empire Unit, Society of Biblical Literature international meeting, Amsterdam, AN, 2012. “Resistance and a Trope of Feasting

in Daniel 5,” Writings Unit, Society of Biblical Literature international meeting, Amsterdam, AN, 2012 (1st


author; 2nd author P. Cho). “Fragments Left Over: Ritual Practice

and Monarchic Privilege in Ancient Israel,” Religion in Pieces Interdisciplinary Conference. Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions and Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University, Providence, RI, 2012. “Networking the Feast: Theoretical

and Methodological Perspectives in Archaeology,” The “Networked” Feast symposium, Society for American Ar-chaeology annual meeting, Memphis, TN, 2012 (1st author; 2nd author J. Dobereiner).

ELIZABETH GREENSPAN• Publications “Battle for Ground Zero: Inside the

Political Struggle to Rebuild the World Trade Center Site” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). “A Review of Towson University’s ‘An-

thropology by the Wire’ Course and anthropologybythewire.com,” Ameri-can Anthropologist (June, 2012).

• Conferences Invited Speaker, “Heritage as

Common(s), Common(s) as Heritage,” Gothenburg University, Sweden, August 2013.

DAVID HAHN• AwardsandNominations Nominated for Joseph R. Levenson

Memorial Teaching Prize, Fall 2012. Harvard University Certificate of


KAREN HEATH• AwardsandNominations Harvard University Certificate of


• Service Expanded the Program’s series of

research workshops; new fall-semester workshops targeted international students and introduced them to the expectations of the American academic essay; a new series of research paper clinics offered students research strategies and suggestions from Writing Program faculty and reference librarians. Revised and streamlined the process

for developing and administering the Writing Test required of all entering freshmen. Led team of


faculty to research topics and choose sources; developed essay prompt; coordinated with the Harvard University Information Technology group and with other College offices to implement the test in the online testing system, including a revised schedule for students taking the test. Led a group of faculty in a project

assessing the strongest writers in the freshman class, examining their performance on the Writing Test and comparing it with their performance in Expos 20. Designed plan for assessment; coordinated collection and faculty review of papers; led initial review of faculty assessment of student work. Led workshop: “Strategies for

the Writing Process.” Harvard Extension School. Led workshops: “Writing the Col-

lege Application Essay”; “Making the Transition from High School to College Writing”; “The American Academic Essay”; “Using Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism”; and “Strategies for the Writing Process.” Harvard Summer School.

JONAH JOHNSON• AwardsandNominations Harvard University Certificate

of Teaching Excellence.

• Conferences “What’s Black and White and Prickly

All Over? Talking with Student Writers About Source Use and Plagiarism.” Led a workshop on source use for teaching assistants at the University of Idaho. January 2013.

• Positions Director, First-Year International

Program, Freshman Dean’s Office, Harvard College. Content Developer, HarvardWrites. Assistant Coordinator for the

Writing Test, Harvard College Writing Program. Adviser, Board of Freshman Advisers,

Harvard College.

ELISSA KRAKAUER• AwardsandNominations Harvard University Certificate

of Teaching Excellence.

• Positions Faculty Associate, Harvard

Writing Project.


Consulted with departments on writing and pedagogy and contributed to the development of HarvardWrites. Associate Editor, Exposé. Mentor to new faculty member.

• Service Presented workshop with Donna

Mumme, “Reading and Writing in the Sciences,” for Harvard College Writing Program and Harvard Summer School. Assisted with development of the

2013 Writing Test.

MATTHEW LEVAY• AwardsandNominations Harvard University Certificate of


• Publications “Remaining a Mystery: Gertrude

Stein, Crime Fiction, and Popular Modernism,” Journal of Modern Literature 36.4 (Summer 2013). “Modernism, Periodically.” Review

essay on The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Volume I, Britain and Ireland 1880-1955, edited by Peter

Brooker and Andrew Thacker, and Modernism in the Magazines: An Introduction, by Robert Scholes and Clifford Wulfman, Modern Language Quarterly 72.4 (December 2011): 521-535. Review of Jared Gardner, Projections:

Comics and the History of Twenty -First-Century Storytelling, and Bart Beaty, Comics Versus Art, Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 4.1 (2013). Review of Fiona Peters, Anxiety

and Evil in the Writings of Patricia Highsmith. Modernism/modernity 19.2 (April 2012): 402-404.

• Conferences “Endless Plot: Modernism’s Sequel

Problem.” Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL. January 2014. “The Opposite of Modernism: John

Galsworthy’s Repeated Success.” Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL. January 2014. “Pulp Boston.” Modern Language

Association. Boston, MA. January 2013. “Wyndham Lewis and the Modernist

Potboiler.” Modernist Studies Association. Las Vegas, NV. October 2012.


• Positions Head Preceptor, Writing Program. Member of the Instructional Support

Services Team, Harvard College Program in General Education. Associate Editor, Exposé. Faculty Associate, Harvard Writing

Project.

ARIANE LIAZOS• Conferences Organized and chaired panel for the

annual meeting of the American Historical Association in January 2014 entitled “Writing the Past to Prepare Students for the Future: Writing Pedagogy, History Courses, and the Role of Undergraduate Writing Assignments.” Each of the presenters has taught courses in writing programs and history departments, and their presentations draw from these experiences. Liazos’ own presentation was based on the courses she has taught in the Harvard College Writing Program and the History Department and her work in helping to develop HarvardWrites. She explored the ways that writing assignments can enhance learning outcomes in history courses. “Comparing Approaches to Writing

Assignments in Undergraduate History and Writing Courses,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, January 2014.

• Positions Co-Editor, Instructor Toolkit for

HarvardWrites.

MICHELE MARTINEZ• Publications “Creating an Audience for British Art:

Letitia Landon’s Poetical Catalogue of Pictures in the Literary Gazette,” Victorian Poetry (Spring 2014). Forthcoming.

• Conferences “Victorian Poetry and the Picture

Frame.” Victorian Poetry: Forms and Fashions. University of West Virginia. Morgantown, WV. April 2013. Paper Accepted.

DEIRDRE MASK• AwardsandNominations Harvard University Certificate of


• Publications Mask, D. 2013. Where the Streets


Have No Name. Atlantic Magazine (January/February 2013). Mask, D. 2013. Fitting In. Irish Pages.

7(1). Mask, D. 2013. Burned. Dublin

Review. 51. Mask, D. 2013. Why Do NPR

Reporters Have Such Great Names? Atlantic Online (May 6, 2013)

• Conferences “Prize and Prejudice: Diversity

Jurisdiction and the Revolutionary War Prize Cases,” Aspiring Law Professors Workshop, University of Maine School of Law, Portland, ME, August 2013.


Project.

KELSEY MCNIFF• AwardsandNominations Harvard University Certificate of


• Publications “On Creative Writing and Historical

Understanding.” Journal of Applied Arts and Health 4, no. 1 (2013): 133-139.

“On Creative Writing and Historical Understanding.” In Art as Research: Opportunities and Challenges, edited by Shaun McNiff. Chicago, IL: Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 2013.


Project.

• Service Worked with team of Writing

Program faculty to develop the Writing Test. As part of the Harvard Writing

Project, consulted with Harvard faculty teaching in the Program in General Education on writing assignments, course-specific writing guides, and training teaching staff to respond to student writing. Oversaw the creation for Professor Daniel Albright of A Guide to Writing in Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding 14: Putting Modernism Together.

SRI MUKHERJEE• AwardsandNominations Harvard University Certificate of



• Conferences “A Shattered Ideal: Global Citizenship

in the Aftermath of 9/11 in H.M. Naqvi’s Home Boy.” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Meeting. Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. March 29-April 1, 2012.

• Positions Lecturer for the Open Society

Foundations Scholarship Programs’ Summer Academy designed to enable their international scholarship recipients make a smooth academic transition to graduate programs in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Istanbul, Turkey.

DONNA MUMME• AwardsandNominations Harvard University Certificate of


• Publications Mumme DL, Tierney, A. 2013. The

pedagogy of Expos: Alignment with the cognitive and learning sciences. (White paper in preparation.)

• Positions Associate Editor, Exposé.

Member, Expos 30/Writing Test Committee. Adviser, Board of Freshman

Advisers, Harvard College. Member, Preceptor Team for

HarvardWrites.

• Service Presented workshop with Elissa

Krakauer, “Reading and Writing in the Sciences,” for Harvard College Writing Program and Harvard Summer School.

SARA NEWLAND• Publications Critical Review Essay of Coming to

Terms with the Nation, by Thomas S. Mullaney. Pacific Affairs (forthcoming 2014).

• Conferences “The Subnational Logic of Region-

al Trade-Security Linkages: China’s Internal Security Challenges and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” Linking Trade and Security in Asia Conference, The East-West Center, Honolulu, HI, 2012. “Local Governance in Multiethnic

China,” American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, 2013.


TESS O’TOOLE• Publications Critical introduction and other

educational materials to accompany a new edition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 2012). Critical Review Essay of The

Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope, ed. by Carolyn Dever and Lisa Niles. Victoriographies (2012).

• Positions Member of Advisory Board of

Victoriographies (Edinburgh University Press).

LINDSAY SILVER COHEN• AwardsandNominations Letter of Commendation for

Distinguished Teaching Performance, Harvard University Extension School.

• Positions Associate Editor, Exposé. Faculty Associate, Harvard Writing

Project.

• Service Co-curated Expos on the Web, the Writing Program’s website of teaching resources.

REBECCA SUMMERHAYS• AwardsandNominations Harvard University Certificate of


• Publications Critical Review Essay of The Lives

of Machines, by Tamara Ketabgian. NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction (2013).

• Conferences “Sir Charles Bell, Jane Eyre, and a

New System of Natural Sympathy.” Midwest Conference on British Studies (MWCBS). Indiana State University. October 2011.

JOAQUIN TERRONES• AwardsandNominations Harvard University Certificate of

Teaching Excellence. Faculty research grant by the David

Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies in 2013 to conduct research on the impact of HIV/AIDS on the arts and culture in Latin America.

• Conferences “AIDS and the Afterlife of Orígenes.”

“Positioning Orígenes” Seminar. American Comparative Literature


Association Annual Meeting, Toronto, ON. 2013. “AIDS and the Possibility of Postdic-

tatorial History in Onde Andara Dulce Veiga?” Brazilian Studies Association 11th International Congress, Urbana-Champaign, IL. 2012. Organized the panel “An Inverted

Pendulum: Layered Time, Counter-narratives and Memory in Brazilian Narrative” at the Brazilian Studies Association 11th International Congress, Urbana-Champaign, IL. 2012. “Tradução Viral: Elegias e Territorios.”

Invited Lecture. Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Florianópolis, SC, Brazil. June 2012. “The Diaphanous Self: AIDS and

Absence in Severo Sarduy and Félix González-Torres.” U of Toronto Comparative Literature Conference. Toronto, ON. 2012. “Hard to Swallow: Cannibalism and

Queer Bodies in 1990s São Paulo.” Inaugural Lecture. Rethinking Difference Lecture Series at Bard College. October 2011.

• Positions Editor, Exposé. Visiting Lecturer, “Globalization: The

Good, The Bad and the In-Between,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Fall 2012. Visiting Lecturer, “Literature, Film

and Visual Culture in Mexico since the Revolution,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Spring 2013.

• Service Organized, with Justine De Young,

training session on ESL and Writing Pedagogy.

ADRIENNE TIERNEY• AwardsandNominations Harvard University Certificate of

Teaching Excellence. Nominated for the Star Prize in

Advising.

• Publications Gabard-Durnam L, Tierney AL,

Vogel-Farley V, Tager-Flusberg, H, Nelson, CA. 2013. EEG asymmetry in infants at risk for autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Tierney, A, Mumme DL. 2013. The

pedagogy of Expos: Alignment with the cognitive and learning sciences. (White paper in preparation.)


• Positions Faculty Associate, Harvard College

Writing Program. Associate Editor, Exposé. Adviser, Board of Freshman Advisers,

Harvard College.

JANE UNRUE• AwardsandNominations John R. Marquand Award for

Exceptional Advising and Counseling of Harvard Students. Harvard University Certificate of


• Service Member, Scholars at Risk Committee.

KEN URBAN• AwardsandNominations Harvard University Certificate of


• PlaysandPerformances This summer, his play The Awake had

sold-out run at 59E59 Theatres in New York; the play was named a Critic’s Pick by the New York Times and the production featured Maulik Pancholy from TV’s 30 Rock and Weeds. The Happy Sad, a feature film that

he wrote the screenplay for, based on his play of the same name, had a theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles following screenings at Frameline San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, Philadelphia QFest and Outfest (Los Angeles). This fall, it will also be a featured film in the Sacramento International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and the Dayton LGBT Film Festival. His new play A Future Perfect was

developed at the Huntington Theatre as part of their summer workshop series. This past summer, his adaptation

of Aristophanes’s The Wasps was produced by Studio 42 at the Connelly Theatre in New York. This fall, his play Nibbler will have a

workshop in New York, produced by Stable Cable. In the winter, Ken’s new play The

Correspondent will open Off-Broadway at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre. Previews begin in February 2014. His band Occurrence is mixing their

new album Decks. The album features songs that the band created using voices found on old cassettes discovered at estate sales and garbage bins.


• Publications “John Guare,” in Methuen Drama

Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights, Ed. Martin Middeke. London, Methuen. Print. Forthcoming. “The Censor in the Mirror,” in

Out of Silence: Censorship and Self- Censorship in Theatre and Performance, Ed. Caridad Svich. Eyecorner Press, 2012. Commentary to Sarah Kane’s Blasted.

London: Methuen, 2012. “Sarah Kane,” in Methuen Drama

Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights, Eds. Martin Middeke, Peter Paul Schnierer and Aleks Sierz. London: Methuen, 2012.

WILLIAM WEITZEL

• AwardsandNominations Harvard University Certificate of


• Publications “Short Scenes from Other Longings,”

Slush Pile (Issue 12, Feb. 2012). “Callia,” New Orleans Review

(Volume 38.1, 2012).

“One Road,” Slush Pile (Issue 13, July 2012). “Kathy,” Southwest Review

(Volume 98, Number 1, 2013). “Haze,” Chautauqua (Issue 10, 2013). “Leviathan,” Conjunctions (Issue 61,

Fall 2013).

• Positions Head Preceptor, Harvard College

Writing Program.

MARGIE ZOHN• AwardsandNominations Harvard University Certificate of


• Service Invited to join the Leadership

Development Institute of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies, an organizational development consultancy serving synagogues and Jewish agencies.

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