Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. Ed. Victor Villanueva. Second ed. United States: National Council of Teachers of English, 2003. 629-653.

In the academic article “Inventing the University,” David Bartholomae explores the challenges a “basic writer” will have while writing papers across disciplines in college. The author supports his research by giving examples of student writing while explaining the difficulties a student would have within the topics, the research, and across classrooms. Bartholomae digs into this topic in order to focus on the student experience and ask instructors to reconcile the various parts of the student that create everything written for a paper and its topic. The audience for this essay is primarily teachers, though I think it would be gratifying for a student to read opinions and research like this from professors. “I am continually impressed by the patience and goodwill of our students” (624) Bartholomae says. I think it is easy to forget how difficult a thing it is not only to write, but to then hand in said writing to be judged and quantified for quality. And students are asked to do this across disciplines, whether they care about the class or topic or not. I think, more than anything, this essay is a good reminder that students should come first, and to spend more time thinking about where they come from, and everything they’re required to do while going to college.  Inside and out.

Pasque, Penny A., et al. “Pedagogical approaches to student racial conflict in the classroom.” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 6.1 (2013): 1.

In the academic article “Pedagogical approaches to student racial conflict in the classroom” Penny Pasque, et al (2013) study numerous teachers across disciplines to explore, outline, and highlight the various approaches in regard to racial conflict. The authors studied 66 teachers along with 31 researchers, observed classrooms, and interviewed the teachers after to collect the data to write this essay. The authors explore the interactions of students and teachers in moments of racial conflict in order to categorize and explore possible pedagogical practices for difficult to teach moments in classrooms. This is primarily for teachers but would work anybody in an area of work where diversity is important. I appreciated such a wide breadth and depth of instructors, giving a glimpse into the various types of interactions I myself have witnessed. Though the research and examples given were great, the type of classrooms these events happened in seem to lend themselves to exploration of the topics. I wonder how one would do the “fish bowl” technique in an English or Science class, or if that would even be the place for it. I know there is not an answer for diversity work, but it was amusing for them to end on that note after all of the research.