Dispatch #1
This Spring, I’m teaching a brand new class called Publishing in Public. It’s the first class I’ve independently pitched and developed from scratch. The class is about how to make ideas legible to others through publishing. The main themes are defining an audience, “taste” and curation, and distribution.
As part of the class, I’ve decided to treat the course itself as an experimental publication, which is what you’re reading! The goal is to make the process of teaching a new class visible outside of the classroom. When I teach, I often have edits I’d like to make and big conclusions once it’s done, but I think there’s something interesting about seeing how it’s going week to week while it’s still an active process.
I love discovering lurkers in the aging Dropbox Paper teaching notes I’ve kept public as a resource, and this feels more like a conversation than leaving a fossil for someone to find overtime. It also reflects what it feels like to teach a new class. In line with the course’s goals, I’m showing students that publishing doesn’t require a traditional format or platform, & almost anything can function as a publication when it’s shared with intention.
Our first session was this week. I asked students why they thought I pitched this class. Some mentioned hearing about traditional models for pitching or Substack as an alternative, but don't hear as much about digital networks as a third route in other classes. We also talked about how academia’s perception in the general public is changing, which provides an opportunity to share how what happens inside a classroom overlaps with public discourse.
The class is interdisciplinary, with students coming from various liberal arts backgrounds. Whatever your interests are, there is something powerful about knowing how to share your work effectively, even if it’s a conscious choice to keep it offline.
As an icebreaker, I asked students to bring in an img that reminded them of 2016, in response to the recent trend. Many shared old Instagram photos: overly filtered sunsets, crying teenage selfies, a student’s mom “dabbing,” and lots of pink hair. Individually, they told personal stories of adolescence. As a collection, they showed how social media once felt more ephemeral, and how the present moment seems to long for that freedom. A few students chose memes, which was interesting because while they commented on the era’s political climate, we still use them more or less in the same way.
I then gave students a prompt: if you had to create a publication in 1 hour, how would you do it? Ideas included QR codes, printed posters, Airdrop, free web templates, emails, group chats, videos, and even performing in the subway. When we revisited the prompt without a time constraint, students started thinking more about sustainability, visual language, and what people might actually return to instead of digesting once.
Dispatch 2 coming next week!
