The use of trigger warnings—brief statements informing students of potentially distressing or re-traumatizing content—in education have grown in popularity over the last decade, as educators attempt to engage students in controversial or sensitive topics without causing undue stress or anxiety. But do they really work? That's the question that Mara Lee Grayson, CSUDH assistant professor of English, asks in her new book, “Race Talk in the Age of the Trigger Warning: Recognizing and Challenging Classroom Cultures of Silence.” The conclusions she reaches may be surprising to some. “Most of the empirical psychological research demonstrates that it doesn't help students deal with trauma or ... Read More
English
Anne Garrett Honored with Catherine H. Jacobs Outstanding Faculty Lecturer Award
For Anne Garrett, there is one skill that college graduates simply can not do without. “No matter what career someone goes into, it's important that they be able to write competently,” she says. That's why the former composition professor in the interdisciplinary studies program at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) devoted her career to developing those skills in her students. “Working on writing can be a vulnerable and delicate issue, but I've been continually amazed by my students' receptivity. I feel my greatest strength is my ability to get through to students, which is drawn from my sensitivity to their backgrounds and needs.” Garrett, who retired at the ... Read More
From Monsters to Romance, Outstanding Professor Award Winner Debra Best Brings Literature to Life
Whether it is medieval romance or monsters, Professor of English Debra Best has an uncanny ability to find just the right stories and plays to successfully integrate students intellectually and artistically into the study of challenging literature. Best specializes in medieval literature and Shakespeare, and creatively incorporates high-impact teaching into her literature and composition courses, including student research, group and performance projects, and imaginative assignments. Her teaching style has turned her students into fixtures at conferences, in the pages of academic journals, and at CSUDH’s Student Research Day awards ceremonies. This ability to bring student learning to ... Read More
Trigger Warnings in the Classroom
Are trigger warnings helpful in the classroom? In today's Academic Minute, Mara Grayson of California State University, Dominguez Hills, says maybe not. Grayson is an assistant professor of English at Cal State Dominguez Hills. Source: Inside Higher Ed ... Read More
Novelist Will Alexander will be Featured Speaker for the Patricia Eliet Memorial Lecture
(Carson, Calif.) – Nationally-renowned novelist and American Book Award winner Will Alexander will be the featured speaker for California State University, Dominguez Hills’ (CSUDH) 2019 Patricia Eliet Memorial Lecture on Tuesday, April 23, from 7 to 9 p.m., in Loker Student Union Ballroom. The free lecture is hosted by CSUDH’s Department of English and is open to the public. Alexander has written more than 30 books and chapbooks, including Singing in Magnetic Hoofbeat: Essays, Prose, Texts, Interviews, and a Lecture, which won the American Book Award in 2013, and The Sri Lankan Loxodrome and Across the Vapour Gulf, recent collections of poetry from New Directions Press. He was also honored ... Read More
