We agreed to push any logistical conversations about our course schedule and upcoming four weeks to the last fifteen minutes of class. We thought about whether we wanted to return to the Mid-Semester Writing/Composing on Authorship and agreed we would reconsider this question at the end of class or next week (we didn’t return to this question, so please think about whether you would like to talk more about these and if you haven’t had a chance to read through these, please do, as last week’s By the Week included). We also talked about some discussion of final projects but didn’t return to that either, so let’s make sure we remember to talk about final projects on Thursday, November 2.

Dr. Geller suggested we turn to “A Case for Counterstory,” the opening chapter of Counterstory: The Writing and Rhetoric of Critical Race Theory for five or ten minutes, and then talk in pairs or small groups for a half hour, as a way to ground ourselves in critical race theory and start talking about the whole book. At 5:15 she encouraged pairs to go outside for a half hour to talk about Martinez’s first chapter.

When everyone came back to the room Dr. Geller had a map, which displays “displays 750 anti-CRT efforts introduced at the local, state, and federal levels,” from CRT Forward, an initiative of the Critical Race Studies Program at UCLA School of Law, on the large screen.

Michelle and Pete (thank you!) agreed to facilitate our big group conversation, and Dr. Geller started a collaborative document for anyone who wanted to contribute to notes of our conversation. We said this could/would be a continuing collaborative document if anyone has thoughts during the week while (re)reading Counterstory that they’d like to add.

In the final fifteen minutes of class we agreed we wanted a second week of talking about Counterstory, so we will continue our conversations on Thursday, November 2nd and reduce our weeks focusing on AI by one week. Dr. Geller also said she’d like to add one additional week for Letter Two (to November 9th). The revised schedule is here. A By the Week will up over the weekend. Email Dr. Geller with any questions, or requested revisions and additions to the class recap! Have a good week — comments open on this post as always.