{"id":7329,"date":"2011-02-13T15:20:16","date_gmt":"2011-02-13T15:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/13\/tough-room\/"},"modified":"2011-02-13T15:20:16","modified_gmt":"2011-02-13T15:20:16","slug":"tough-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/13\/tough-room\/","title":{"rendered":"Tough Room"},"content":{"rendered":"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> < 1<\/span> min<\/span><\/span>

Last week’s This American Life<\/em> on Tough Rooms<\/a> has been lingering in the back of my mind since I heard it—again, as a podcast to make time pass on the elliptical. The first segment on headline-invention meetings at The Onion<\/em><\/a> struck me at the time as a fantastic clip for orienting the ENGL121 students I will have in the spring to the idea of entering the conversation. As usual, I’m mildly conflicted (and I have the luxury of time before this conflict must be resolved): it’s a bit more agonistic than irenic, but I am still thinking about its possibilities for framing how some of our in-class discussions could go. The idea of tough rooms could also be a useful counterpart to echo chambers. Could the two be joined to suggest a spectrum that has different consequences on either extreme—too much believing or too much doubting?<\/p>\n

I’ve also been thinking about a sequence in ENGL121 that would adopt in turn composing logics associated with Grammar A (conventions; writing mythos; “Inventing the University”), Grammar B (Winston Weathers; crots), and Grammar <a> (Rice; networks; hypertext). I don’t know yet how I would position the three in relation, but I can faintly imagine a promising sequence that would help us gain traction on their differences, their respective strengths and limitations, etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> < 1<\/span> min<\/span><\/span>Last week’s This American Life on Tough Rooms has been lingering in the back of my mind since I heard it—again, as a podcast to make time pass on the elliptical. 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