["Beyond the Bio: Seeking out a New Way to Connect Generations": Start Thread] #POPC1
1/17 As a new instructor in first-year composition, I was excited last spring to design my English 2 syllabus around a theme of my own choosing. Eng 2 focuses on research and argument and I wanted a topic the students could be engaged with the entire semester. #POPC1
2/17 Being at an engineering-focused university, I naturally felt that my class would embrace the topic of “space exploration.” While my interest lies in the rhetoric surrounding space and the technological future, the class was less than enthusiastic at the outset. #POPC1
3/17 Instead of adjusting the topic, I shifted focus to the narratives surrounding space exploration. We started with rhetorical analysis of artwork from the 1900s that depicted the “Year 2000.” I asked the students to focus on who ISN’T depicted. #POPC1 
4/17 We listened to Orson Welles radio production of H.G. Wells’s “War of the Worlds” and discussed storytelling, hoaxes, and government takeover of the public airways (at least its dramatization). This 1938 show was a hit with the students. #POPC1 youtube.com/watch?v=Xs0K4A…
5/17 At this time, students were also picking current/past NASA missions as subjects for definition and position papers. The students had to decide whether the mission should receive funding, or be retired. #POPC1 jpl.nasa.gov/missions/advan…
6/17 In the meantime, I wanted to discuss some of the narratives surrounding the space race, so we screened the “Balance of Terror” episode of Star Trek series in class. They wrote a response over the weekend, and while their analyses were good, their interest waned. #POPC1
7/17 It was important that we stay in this time period as we would be watching “Hidden Figures” later, so I decided to stretch the Star Trek theme for one day and discuss one of the most important characters on the bridge of the Enterprise: Lt. Uhura. #POPC1
8/17 I’d remembered Nichelle Nichols telling her story about the development of Uhura with Gene Roddenberry, how she spoke with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. about her role and how much it meant to her. Yet I couldn’t find a streaming version of the whole interview. #POPC1
9/17 We watched a few shorter versions so my students could get a sense of Nichols as a person. Yet I worried that, due to the generational divide and their less-than-enthusiastic response to the Star Trek episode, that her message of representation would be dimmed, lost. #POPC1
10/17 (Remember, this was my first year teaching and, if there is one thing I carried into my second year teaching, is to never underestimate students.) #POPC1
11/17 What I did find was the Drunk History episode “Nichelle Nichols Lives Boldly.” I watched it and thought that the students might connect with her inspirational story through humor. @ashleyn1cole narrated and Raven Simone played Nichols. #POPC1 cc.com/video-clips/b5…
12/17 I worried that the “drunk” framing may not be appropriate, or that some of the humor would diminish the work that Nichols has done. But again, I underestimated my students. They loved it and we had one of the more animated discussions of the whole semester. #POPC1
13/17 We talked about how Lt. Uhura’s visibility as a woman of color in space will be a contrast to the women (real and fictional) highlighted in Hidden Figures. How there is (reluctant) acceptance in fiction as opposed to reality. #POPC1
14/17 I talked about how even I didn’t know about her recruitment work. I showed a picture of the cast beside the first space shuttle, called Enterprise. I reminded them that Lt. Uhura was 4th in command of a starship. A damn starship! #POPC1
15/17 The video and discussion afterward inspired quite a few written and multimodal final projects: from the discussion of space suit sizes (around the time the all-female space walk was cancelled) to discovering the Indian-American women serving in NASA. #POPC1
16/17 As a new teacher, I learned that I can take some chances to connect ideas with my students, to give them something that evokes a positive reaction, and therefore, perhaps, sparks an interest within. #POPC1
17/17 “Drunk History” may seems like a silly, mildly offensive show, but its accessibility and charm connected two generations through space and time. Live long and prosper. Q&A Time. #POPC1
["Beyond the Bio: Seeking out a New Way to Connect Generations": End Thread] #POPC1
