Dr. Kevin Brooks
Office: Minard 322E
Phone: 231-7147
Email: Kevin.Brooks@ndsu.edu
I have been a professor at NDSU since the fall of 1997, and am currently an Associate Professor and Director of Upper Division Writing.
Teaching: In fall 2009, I am teaching English 326, Writing in the Design Professions, which I will teach again in the spring of 2010. I will also be teaching a graduate seminar with the generic title "Rhetorics and Poetics of New Media." The specific focus this time around will be on the rhetorics and poetics of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. If student interest is high enough, and bank accounts deep enough, we will try to arrange a spring break trip to Rwanda to visit an OLPC deployment and meet with program directors.
Research:
My research interests used to be the history of writing
instruction, but for the last 5 years, I have been focusing on the
future of writing instruction through investigations of the use of
weblogs in classrooms, laptops in our graduate program, PowerPoint
Music Videos in our first-year composition courses, and Scott
McCloud's visual language as a guide to reading and writing visual
compositions.
My research generally grows of out my teaching. I like to try new things in the classroom--especially but not exclusively with new technology--I like to have fun, but I also expect my students to work hard and have high expectations for themselves. My mentor, Dr. Carl Ridd, liked to say "No play, no joy, no life." That quotation is on all my syllabi, and I hope students find play, joy, and life in my classes.
I've started down a new research and creative activity path by working on a documentary about one of Fargo's Lost Boys of Sudan. The African Soul, American Heart project took me to Kenya and Sudan in December of 2007, our documentary premiered on Nov. 9, 2008, and I have written about my experiences a few times, including this essay in the NDSU Magazine, "The Trip of a Lifetime Doesn't Need to Come to an End." I have composed a MEmorial for the Lost Boys of Sudan, and I am working on developing a Virtual Peace Garden website and Second Life island.
You can follow my blogging, my tagging, and my photo taking at my (un)official website, http://kabbie.suprglu.com.
Last updated: September 5, 2009.