In this episode of Conceptually Speaking, I sit down with Dr. Al Filreis, the Kelly Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, faculty director of the Kelly Writers House, and the creator of ModPo—a free massive open online course about experimental poetry that has drawn some 435,000 students from 179 countries. Our conversation, anchored in his recent book The Classroom and the Crowd: Poetry and the Promise of Digital Community, explores how ModPo became a genuinely thriving pedagogical community in a landscape of ghost-town MOOCs, and what that achievement reveals about the relationship between open texts, open platforms, and democratic forms of teaching and learning.

Key Concepts from the Episode:

Openness as Pedagogy

• The reciprocal relationship between open texts, open forums, and open-ended interpretation
• Why poems that resist settled meaning are better vehicles for democratic learning than poems with knowable answers
• How communal interpretation can be deepened rather than diluted by scale when the pedagogical architecture supports it

The Affordances of Poetry

• The idea that a poem is not fully a poem until it is received, read, and responded to in community
• How the individualist architecture of higher education — grades, degrees, career pipelines — works against the communitarian impulse that makes reading meaningful
• Why poetry’s perceived marginality makes it an ideal site for reimagining what education can be

Against Technological Determinism

• Rejecting both EdTech’s promise that platforms will save education and the moral panic that says we need to unplug entirely
• The access question that gets erased by anti-digital backlash: for whom is unplugging even an option?
• What it means to insist on a utopian digital pedagogy without being naive about the platforms that host it

The conversation makes a compelling case that progressive digital pedagogy is not a contradiction in terms. At a moment when both the EdTech industry and its loudest critics seem to foreclose the possibility of deep, humanistic learning online, Al’s work with ModPo stands as a living counterexample. His conviction that poetry only matters when people read it together, and that digital platforms can be sites for that togetherness, left me feeling genuinely inspired about what teaching with and through technology can still look like.

Check out more of Al’s work here:
The Classroom and the Crowd
ModPo
PennSound
Kelly Writers House

Support the show

In this episode of Conceptually Speaking, I sit down with Dr. Alexander Manshel, English professor at McGill University and author of Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the American Canon, to explore the under discussed history of the high school English classroom—a space that is simultaneously the most influential literary institution in America and the most overlooked by literary scholars. Drawing from his recently published article “High School English and the Making of American Readers” and his forthcoming book High School English: A History of American Reading, our conversation traces how the interpretive practices we take for granted in English classrooms (like reading for character, reading for theme) were shaped by specific historical forces, from Cold War anxieties to the rise of New Criticism. Xander and I wrestle with what it means that these inherited methods quietly structure not just how students read, but how they understand themselves in relation to each other, society, and the very idea of America.

Key Concepts from the Episode:

High School English as Literary Institution

• The high school English classroom as the place where more people read more literature more often than anywhere else—and yet largely ignored by literary scholars
• A persistent gulf between secondary and post-secondary English educators, despite shared students, shared problems, and a shared intellectual tradition
• How testing regimes and institutions like the College Board have come to mediate (rather than facilitate) cross-institutional dialogue

Genres, Methods, and the Pedagogy of Individualism

• Reading for character and reading for theme as products of post-WWII Cold War imperatives and New Criticism, not timeless defaults
• How the high school canon, from Catcher in the Rye to 1984, consistently frames literature through the lens of “individual versus society”, functioning as a pedagogy of individualism

The Canon Revisited

• Despite decades of canon war debates reshaping university syllabi, the most-taught texts at the high school level have remained remarkably stable
• The case for a living, evolving canon rather than an abolished one: these shared texts function as a national literary mythology with real cultural and political power
• How the canon wars at the university level has tended to elevate writers of color primarily for works set in the historical past, effectively disincentivizing studying the works of authors writing about the present

Continuing the trend of this series, our dialogue explores the structural issues plaguing English education (particularly testing regimes, standardization, and institutional isolation) that have narrowed what English can be, while insisting that the discipline’s shared texts, practices, and people offer a power we have yet to fully seize or realize. For teachers who want to know more about the history of their discipline and its methods, and for literary scholars who have yet to reckon with the place where most reading actually happens, this conversation offers both a historical accounting and a call to collective action. We hope you’ll join us in our quest to seize the means of curriculum! (T-shirt incoming).

High School English and the Making of American Readers (article — open access) How The Great Gatsby Took Over High School (New Yorker article)
Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the American Canon (book)

Support the show

In this episode of Conceptually Speaking, I sit down with Dr. Jeffrey Lawrence, professor of 20th and 21st century American and Latin American literature at Rutgers University and author of Anxieties of Experience: The Literatures of the Americas from Whitman to Bolaño and the Spanish-language novel El Americano. Like me, Jeffrey has found himself intrigued by recent developments on Substack, where a growing literary scene is raising questions, debating issues, and engaging in conversations that don’t fit neatly into traditional academic venues. Our dialogue moves between the institutional structures that shape literary studies, the surprising public appetite for serious engagement with the humanities online, and what it might mean for secondary English education to reconnect with its disciplinary roots.

Key Concepts:

Public Humanities

• The distinction between community-engaged public humanities and public-facing writing that still operates through prestige networks
• What it means to invite people into a discourse rather than simply making that discourse more visible
• How Substack has opened space for a literary culture where thousands voluntarily participate in serious criticism outside the credentialing structures of the university

Disciplinary Fragmentation

• The silos within English departments (literary studies, composition and rhetoric, creative writing, etc.) and how those divisions shape what reaches K-12 classrooms
• How methods from rhet-comp and cultural studies seeped into secondary English education while literary studies seemed to turned inward
• The historical decline of cross-pollination between MLA and NCTE, and what that separation has cost both fields

The Canon Question

• The difference between treating the canon as a fixed inheritance and treating it as a living tradition that can be renegotiated in each moment
• Why refusing to engage with questions of canonization has its own costs — including leaving students without the tools to participate in, critique, and renew long-standing intellectual communities
• Framing canon formation not as culture wars but as an ongoing disciplinary practice students can and should be invited into

Defending the Humanities

• How the defense of the humanities can be seen as being too intramural and why that hasn’t worked
• What genuine heterogeneity might look like in literary studies, and why public platforms may offer something the academy currently does not
• The gatekeeping mechanisms that constrain academic publishing and hiring, and how they limit the range of voices and methodological commitments in the field

In what’s quickly becoming a theme in these conversations, we also discuss how the people best positioned to connect literary culture to a broader public (high school English teachers!) have often been alienated from it through regimes of high stakes testing and curricular standardization. For educators who share that sense that something essential has been lost in the way English is taught and structured since the neoliberal turn within K-16 education, this conversation offers both a diagnosis and a provocation. 

Jeffrey’s Substack

Anxieties of Experience

El Americano

Support the show

In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Dan Sinykin and Dr. Johanna Winant, editors of the new publication Close Reading for the 21st Century. While close reading is a foundational practice in literary studies, it’s also one that remains notoriously difficult to define. Dan and Johanna explain how they set out to do the “impossible” task of defining the term, ultimately framing it as the practice of paying attention to a passage of text to account for its meaning and argue how it works.

Key Concepts from the Episode:

The Five-Step Method: Dan and Johanna emphasize the distinction between close reading as a verb (the messy, non-linear process of thinking) and close reading as a noun (the polished genre of writing). To help students master the “noun,” they anatomize the practice into five movements:

• Scene Setting: A strategic summary that invites the reader in, choosing only the parts of the text necessary to follow the argument.
• Noticing: Stopping on a concrete, “finger-sized” detail that feels strange, unusual, or evocative.
• Local Claiming: Sitting with that detail to make a specific interpretation of how it works within its immediate surroundings.
• Regional Argumentation: Identifying patterns across the entire poem, story, or play to build a cohesive argument.
• Global Theorizing: The final, “wild” moment where the critic connects their argument to broader historical periods, genres, or universal themes.

The Pedagogical Disjuncture: One of the most striking parts of our conversation is the unfortunate gap between how close reading is practiced by professional critics and how it is taught in schools dominated by standardized tests and AP curriculum. While the discipline shifted toward historicism and theory in the 1980s, classroom pedagogy often remains stuck in a zombified version of New Criticism that is shaped by regimes of standardized testing and standardized curriculum. 

Close Reading as a Democratic Practice: Rather than a solitary exercise in theme parroting or symbol hunting, close reading is reimagined as a dialogue between authors, theorists, and critics that unfolds across time and space. When presented this way, close reading functions as a set of tools that students can use to both appreciate and argue about aesthetic objects in ways that make them more attuned to the world around them and connected to those who share their passion for close reading.

Practical Implications

This conversation offers a vital bridge for educators looking to move beyond rote analysis. The five-step method allows students to move from simple observation to global theorizing without making specious leaps. Ultimately, Dan and Johanna remind us that when we ask students to close read, we are asking them to perform a feat of intellectual elegance. By reintroducing the beauty of the genre and treating students as active participants in a scholarly conversation, we can transform the English classroom into a place where students don’t just “do school,” but participate in intellectual and scholarly communities that not only read the word and the world, but intervene in it as well.

Check out Dan and Johanna’s work:

Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century

Dan Sinykin's Website

Johanna Winant's website

The Claims of Close Reading (Boston Review)

Support the show

In this episode of Conceptually Speaking, I sit down with Dr. Susan D. Blum, a cultural, linguistic, and psychological anthropologist and author of Schoolishness: Alienated Education and Authentic, Joyful Learning. Our conversation centers on a powerful concept that captures much of what constrains contemporary education: schoolishness. Drawing on thinkers from Marx to the Buddha, from school-aged children to sociolinguists, Susan's work reveals how the seemingly natural structures of institutional education are not only artificial but actively work against the joy and meaning that make learning worthwhile.

Key Concepts from the Episode:

Schoolishness and Alienation

• Understanding schoolishness as packaged learning, uniformity, arbitrary forms, predetermined time, and delayed rewards
• Recognizing how alienated labor in school means students trade meaningless tasks for credentials rather than engaging in authentic learning
• Examining ten dimensions of schooling that contribute to alienation (including space, time, assessment, etc.)
• Contrasting alienated education with authentic, joyful learning that happens naturally everywhere

The Naturalization of School Structures

• How institutional forms become "naturalized" and seem inevitable despite being historical constructs
• The survivorship bias of educators who succeeded at the "school game" and now perpetuate its structures
• Understanding that grades, classrooms, and standardized curricula are not universal or timeless features of learning
• Recognizing that learning to walk, talk, and engage with the world happens without curriculum, grades, or coercion

Ungrading Practices & Communities

• The role of social media and digital networks in building communities of practice around alternative approaches
• How the ungrading movement demonstrates organic, educator-led change despite institutional inertia
• The importance of generous knowledge-sharing and making work public so others can adapt it
• Finding colleagues and collaborators across institutions when local support isn't available

Susan's work offers both devastating critique and hopeful possibility. While she acknowledges the massive structural constraints facing educators—particularly contingent faculty with limited time and security—she also demonstrates how networked communities and committed collaboration can support meaningful change. Her approach to working with colleagues emphasizes meeting people where they are, rather than imposing solutions, and offering alternatives when existing practices aren't working, rather than demanding revolution.

For educators feeling trapped by institutional constraints yet hungry for something more authentic, this episode validates both the struggle and the possibility of change. It offers permission to question what seems inevitable while providing concrete examples of how others have created learning experiences that honor both student agency and genuine intellectual engagement.

Check out Susan's work:

• Schoolishness: Alienated Education and the Quest to Learn with Authentic Pride
• Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) (editor)
• Dr. Susan D. Blum's Website & Substack

Support the show

In this episode of Conceptually Speaking, I explore the complex and contested terrain of AI literacy with Dr. Rachel Horst, a digital literacy and arts-based scholar whose framework for understanding entangled literacies offers a refreshing alternative to the polarized discourse surrounding artificial intelligence in education. Drawing from posthumanist theory and futures literacies scholarship, our conversation challenges both techno-optimistic and techno-pessimistic narratives while centering creativity, relationality, and critical inquiry in our approach to these emerging technologies.

Key Concepts from the Episode:

Entangled AI Literacy

• Moving beyond skills-based definitions toward messy, relational understandings of literacy
• Understanding AI literacy as interconnected with ecological, data, knowledge-construction, epistemic, disciplinary, political, relational, creative, futures, and algorithmic dimensions
• Recognizing how AI reveals existing entanglements rather than creating entirely new problems
• Embracing uncertainty and fluidity in defining what AI literacy means

Creative Disobedience and Posthumanist Approaches

• Using AI tools in playful, experimental, and "disobedient" ways that highlight glitches and limitations
• Drawing on posthumanist theory to decenter human exceptionalism and explore relational ontologies
• Connecting with indigenous cosmologies and other-than-human ways of knowing

Teaching With, Against, and About AI

• Creating space for diverse perspectives on AI rather than seeking consensus
• Balancing critique with curiosity and experimentation
• Supporting process-oriented, collaborative learning that uses AI to amplify rather than replace human creativity
• Trusting students' innate desire to create and make meaning

Theory as Practice

• Making philosophical and theoretical frameworks accessible and playful for educators
• Recognizing that all teaching involves theory, whether we acknowledge it or not
• Using AI tools to create rich digital artifacts for teaching and learning
• Moving beyond compliance-driven approaches to embrace complexity and emergence

The conversation highlights how educators can move beyond binary thinking about AI to create learning environments that are both critically engaged and experimentally open. Rachel's work demonstrates how posthumanist theory can inform practical approaches to AI literacy that honor complexity while remaining grounded in the realities of teaching and learning.

Rather than treating AI as either salvation or doom, this episode models an (admittedly fraught) third way: engaging with these tools as part of larger conversations about knowledge, creativity, relationality, and the future of education. The discussion emphasizes the importance of creating spaces where educators can explore their own AI literacy in "messy" ways while supporting students in developing critical and creative relationships with emerging technologies.

Connect with Rachel's Work:

• LinkedIn (primary platform for sharing work)
• Substack (for arts-based integration of AI)
• UBC Master's in Educational Technology program
• Entangled AI Literacy Resource (created for educators)

Support the show

In this episode of Conceptually Speaking, I sit down with Marcus Luther, a 13th-year high school English teacher and co-host of The Broken Copier podcast. After spending his first eight years teaching in Arkansas, Marcus recently returned to the Pacific Northwest, bringing with him a wealth of classroom experience and a passion for teacher-centered conversations. Our discussion explores the evolving landscape of teacher community-building, from the early days of Teacher Twitter to the current fractured digital spaces where educators seek connection and growth.

Key Concepts from the Episode:

The Digital Teacher's Lounge

• How online spaces can recreate the collaborative spirit of in-person professional learning communities
• Moving beyond transactional networking toward authentic relationship-building
• The role of digital platforms in sustaining teacher enthusiasm and preventing isolation

Communities of Practice

• Understanding teaching as fundamentally community work that extends beyond school walls
• The "generosity journey" of sharing resources and learning from fellow educators
• Balancing local collegial relationships with broader professional networks

Storytelling and Resistance

• Addressing the vacuum of positive narratives about classroom possibilities
• The urgent need to highlight what's working in public education
• Using authentic teacher voices to counter deficit-based reform narratives

Navigating Professional Boundaries

• Managing the relationship between classroom practice and public educator identity
• The ethics of sharing experiences while maintaining privacy
• Setting sustainable limits on development and growth outside the classroom

Marcus brings a refreshing perspective on how educators can remain committed to the classroom while recognizing the power of broader professional community. His conviction that we need to tell better stories about the transformative potential of teaching offers hope in an era of educational uncertainty. Whether you're an early-career teacher seeking community or a veteran educator looking to reinvigorate your practice, this conversation demonstrates how authentic professional relationships can sustain both individual growth and collective advocacy for the teaching profession.

Links:

https://thebrokencopier.substack.com/

https://web-cdn.bsky.app/profile/marcusluther.bsky.social

Support the show

In this episode of Conceptually Speaking, I sit down with Dr. Matt Seybold, host of the American Vandal podcast and scholar at the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College. Our conversation traverses the changing landscape of literary studies as it moves beyond traditional academic boundaries into digital spaces, revealing both new opportunities and persistent challenges in how we create and share knowledge. Dr. Seybold shares the origin story of American Vandal—born as a pandemic response when in-person programming was suspended—and how it evolved into a platform that builds relationships with scholars and reaches an unexpectedly global audience. Together, we explore the fascinating contradiction that while humanities departments face serious funding crises, public hunger for thoughtful literary and cultural analysis continues to flourish across platforms and borders.

Key Concepts from the Episode:

Democratizing Academic Discourse

• How podcasting allows scholars to communicate more naturally about complex ideas
• The surprising global reach of academic content when freed from traditional constraints
• Why digital media complements but cannot replace forms of scholarship housed in academic institutions

Digital Media in Humanities Education

• Engaging students with diverse media experiences across multiple platforms
• Balancing traditional written texts like articles and monographs with emerging forms of communication
• Understanding the unique affordances of different media formats rather than creating hierarchies

Bridging Academic & Public Humanities

• Challenging the "crisis in humanities" narrative by revealing genuine public interest in literary discourse despite decades of Ponzi austerity 
• Distinguishing between institutional defunding and the persistent cultural appetite for humanistic inquiry
• Promoting authentic creative production through engagement with "real world" media genres

Our conversation offers practical insights for educators, researchers, podcasters, and anyone interested in how literary scholarship evolves in the digital age. Dr. Seybold reminds us that despite institutional challenges, the humanities must continue to resist through rhetorical agility, media savvy, and (perhaps most importantly) organized political action. 

Check out more of Matt's work:

• The American Vandal Podcast
• Center for Mark Twain Studies

Support the show

In this thought-provoking episode, I sit down with Dr. Remi Kalir,  the Associate Director of Faculty Development and Applied Research with Learning Innovation and Lifetime Education at Duke University, where he also serves as Associate Director of the Center for Applied Research and Design in Transformative Education. He has also completely revolutionized my thinking about annotation. As someone who was relatively ambivalent about annotations, Remi's perspective transformed me into a fan, believer, and enthusiastic practitioner. Our conversation challenges conventional wisdom about annotation, as Remi argues that we're all annotators, from the grandmother scribbling recipe modifications to fans dissecting Kendrick Lamar's lyrics on Genius. He also shares fascinating examples from his upcoming book "Re/Marks on Power" (MIT Press, 2025), including Harriet Tubman's previously unexamined annotations in pension files, protest markings on Confederate monuments, and how the US-Mexico border itself represents a form of annotation—a line drawn imprecisely on a map as an exercise of power.

Key Concepts from the Episode:

Annotation as a Social Practice

• Annotation is more than a reflection of individual comprehension
• Annotations have a "social life" that extends beyond the text and time
• Annotation is dialogic rather than an isolated literacy act

Annotation as a Tool for Critique

• Annotation serves as a tool for critique and challenging authority
• Annotation can circulate counter-narratives and resist dominant ideologies
• E.g. Harriet Tubman's use of annotations on pension documents

Annotation as an Embodied Practice

• Annotations can be embodied and geographic 
• Protests and interventions on monuments represent forms of annotation
• Digital annotation practices are all over spaces like TikTok, Genius, etc.

Particularly compelling is our discussion of annotation's unique affordances: its proximity to the original text, its capacity for "rough draft thinking," and its ability to make our responses visible to others across time and space. Remi invites us to see annotation not as an isolated comprehension check but as a dialogic practice with profound implications for critical literacy, social justice, and civic engagement. For educators struggling to make annotation meaningful beyond compliance, this episode offers both theoretical insights and practical inspiration to transform this everyday practice into something that can, as Remi says, "live, speak, and inspire."

Re/Marks on Power (Newsletter)

Re/Marks on Power (Book)

Join me and socially annotate the transcription!

Support the show

In this episode of Conceptually Speaking, I explore the evolving landscape of disciplinary literacy with three distinguished professors and teacher educators: Dr. Jacy Ippolito from Salem State University, Dr. Christina Dobbs from Boston University, and Dr. Megan Charner-Laird from Salem State University. Drawing from their collaborative work on the second edition of "Disciplinary Literacy Inquiry and Instruction," this conversation delves into how educators can authentically engage students in disciplinary literacies while challenging their traditional boundaries.

Key Concepts from the Episode:

Reimagining Disciplinary Literacy

• Moving beyond traditional apprenticeship models to critique and expand disciplinary boundaries
• Examining whose norms and traditions shape disciplinary practices
• Exploring how students remix and reinvent ways of belonging in academic communities
• Understanding disciplinary literacy as both access and transformation

Critical Inquiry and Identity

• Supporting teachers in examining their own disciplinary identities and biases
• Creating spaces for collaborative questioning and knowledge construction
• Embracing uncertainty and open-ended exploration in classroom discussions
• Connecting personal passion for disciplines with student engagement

Practical Implementation Across Grade Levels

• Extending disciplinary literacy practices into elementary education
• Balancing disciplinary practices with critique and remix
• Finding opportunities for change within existing curricular constraints
• Starting with small but meaningful adjustments to existing practices

The conversation highlights how disciplinary literacy can reignite both teachers' and students' love for learning when approached through a critical, inquiry-driven lens. The authors share practical insights for educators while acknowledging the complex challenges of implementing these approaches within current educational structures. Their discussion emphasizes the importance of making space for joy, authenticity, and student voice in disciplinary learning.

Whether you're a classroom teacher, educational researcher, or interested in the evolution of literacy practices, this episode offers valuable perspectives on creating critical and culturally sustaining ecologies of disciplinary learning. The authors demonstrate how educators can provide access to powerful academic discourses while opening new possibilities for student engagement and knowledge creation.

Disciplinary Literacy Inquiry & Instruction (2nd edition)

Critical Disciplinary Literacy: An Equity-Driven and Culturally Responsive Approach to Disciplinary Learning and Teaching

Support the show

In this episode of Conceptually Speaking, I sit down with Dr. Annie Abrams, author of Short Changed: How Advanced Placement Cheats American Students, to explore the complex relationship between policy, pedagogy, and the purpose of English education in America. Our conversation weaves between critiques of AP's corporatization of liberal arts education and deeper questions about what it means to teach literature meaningfully. Annie and I wrestle with how institutional forces shape (and often constrain) the rich interpretive practices and humanizing ethos that make English teaching worthwhile.

Key Concepts from the Episode:

Corporate Mediation

• AP's shift from facilitating teacher-professor collaboration to prescribing standardized curriculum
• The "AP brand" becoming synonymous with rigor while potentially undermining authentic liberal arts experiences

Spaces of/for Literary Discourse

• Lack of institutional support for teachers to engage deeply with texts and scholarship
• Disconnect between growing public appetite for literary criticism and classroom spaces

Vision for Change

• Drawing on Ralph Ellison to balance critique with hope for the American project 
• Need to move beyond standardized frameworks to build sustainable communities of practice with institutional support

For teachers wrestling with their own relationship to AP or seeking ways to cultivate more meaningful literary experiences in their classrooms, this conversation offers both validation and vision for what might be possible. While we may not have all the answers, the episode demonstrates the value of creating spaces where we can explore these questions together.

Check out more of Annie's work here:
Short Changed (book)
Teaching Ellison (article)

Show Information:
My Site
My Substack

Music Credit:
Infraction - No Copyright Music

Support the show