Logistics and Legitimization for Implementing Reading and Writing Workshops in the Middle Grades

Teaching and Learning Department Capstone ProjectIn the search for best practices in literacy instruction, Reading and Writing Workshops emerge as effective, engaging methods. Reading and Writing Workshops are an alternative to text-based, teacher-led question-answer sessions in which students may be minimally engaged in the text or the discussion. Workshop environments foster a sense of community as readers and writers come together to help one another explore and achieve. Addressing learners and learning, the learning environment, curriculum and instructional strategies, and assessment, research defends this conceptual theory, and there are many examples of workshops in practice today that exemplify why Reading and Writing Workshops should be more widespread in our schools, specifically in the middle grades.Department of Teaching and LearningPeabody College of Education and Human Developmen

The Acorn Chronicle; Winter 2001

The Acorn Chronicle is published semi-annually by the Jean and Alexander Heard Library and Development and Alumni Relations

The Acorn Chronicle; Fall 2004

The Acorn Chronicle is published semi-annually by the Jean and Alexander Heard Library and Development and Alumni Relation

Mundane Grief

Vanderbilt University. Divinity SchoolUsed by permission of Abingdon Press

Redeeming Critique: Resignations to the Cultural Turn in Christian Theology and Ethics

In this essay I begin by naming a "turn to culture" that marks a wide range of works in contemporary theology and ethics. I describe how the turn plays out in books by Stanley Hauerwas and Delores S. Williams and argue that their idealist versions of the turn uncritically replicate core features of the dominant cultures they try to criticize. I explain how their idealism in conceiving the oppositional cultures to which they turn constructs those cultures as "others" to the culture being criticized, wholes unto themselves, and symbols that directly participate in some ultimate good or truth. I then gesture toward a more critical, self-conscious performance of the turn to culture. I argue that turns to culture should not obscure but rather thematize the role of the critic in making the turn. I use the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Walter Benjamin to argue that self-conscious critique will involve a set of resignations to reflexivity rather than otherness, to a hodgepodge of highly mobile practices rather than a single, unified tradition, and to regarding cultural artifacts as mixed allegories rather than pure symbols.Vanderbilt University. Divinity SchoolSmith, Ted A. "Redeeming Critique: Resignations to the Cultural Turn in Christian Theology and Ethics." Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 24.2 (2004): 89-113 originally published by Georgetown University Press of Washington, D.C. Used by permission of the Society of Christian Ethics (U.S.)

The Shape of Water

Promotional poster for the film screening and discussion of the film "The Shape of Water" featuring film producer and director Kum Kum Bhavnan

Moving Into Our Town

A paper for Theatre 100: Fundamentals of Theatre, Fall 2008. Tomick analyzes Vanderbilt University Theatre’s production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town and explains how a minimalist approach to staging allows all audience members to relate to the characters in the play about a young woman growing up in a quintessential American town.Department of TheatreCollege of Arts and Scienc

Making Money Grow on Trees: Forest Policy in Light of a Carbon Tax

Written as a senior thesis in the Fall of 2008, this paper discusses cap and trade and other incentives to sequester carbon in forests to address global warming

Arts and Science; Spring 2008

ARTS AND SCIENCE is published by the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University in cooperation with the Office of Development and Alumni Relations Communications.Vanderbilt University. College of Arts and Scienc

The Search for the Hebrew God

Text of the Fourth Annual E. Maynard Adams Lecture in the Humanities and Human Values, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, September 23, 2001. In this lecture Professor Sasson traces the search for the Hebrew God, inquiring into how the Hebrews adopted him as their God and suggesting reasons as to "why their theology about that God gained permanence and acceptance."Divinity SchoolAccess provided with permission from the publisher, Department of Religious Studies at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill