Teachin' Books

On the agenda today is true masterpiece of reality television, Below Deck: Mediterranean! Specifically: Season 6 Episode 16, "Sleepless in Croatia," which I've happily taught a few times now in my first-year cultural studies courses. Topics today include: surveying the realities of the superyachting industry, teaching emotional and affective labour, and cringing hard at the talent show the guests forcibly instruct the crew to put on. Come talk tv with me!Arlie Hochschild's interview in The Atlantic@âpihtawikosisân on Twitter / Chelsea Vowel's website / her tweet on "believing" the firesUrban Indigenous Collective and a link to donate to their workFollow Teachin' Books on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod or get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.  I'd love to hear from you about this or any other episode in the back catalogue!Please do share the podcast with someone who might like it, and rate and review in your podcasting app. Reviews especially help get the word out about the pod! The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.  **The transcript for this episode, once available , will be here.**

6/7/23 • 36:22

Heeeey y'all: Teachin' Books is back to production after a longer-than-expected hiatus, and today I'm talkin' about REST.  More specifically: how an enforced rest-by-injury shaped my teaching practices in the last six months, including newly grappling with the "pace" of sound teaching and confronting the ableist dimensions of teaching and learning. I also share a bit about my Labour, Justice, and the Cultural Lives of Working People class, including a labour inventory exercise that I'm thinking about turning into a...  rest inventory?! Hit play on the episode to hear more, then get in touch with me to tell me your thoughts and practices around ~rest~ in teaching and learning! Tricia Hersey's The Nap Ministry  (& her 2022 book, Rest is Resistance)Audre Lorde's A Burst of Light and Other Essays  / The Selected Works of Audre Lorde (ed. Roxane Gay, & which Hersey includes in "The Nap Ministry Library" from Rest is Resistance)Sarah Jaffe's Work Won't Love You BackIndigenous Climate Action (ICA) & their statement "Equitable Action Needed for Indigenous Communities Impacted by Alberta and Saskatchewan Wildfires"Central Urban Métis Federation Inc. (CUMFI)'s call for donations of suppliesOfficial East Prairie Métis Settlement Fire Relief donation fundOfficial Fox Lake Fire Evacuees donation fundCanadian Red Cross 2023 Alberta Fires AppealFollow Teachin' Books on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod or get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.  I'd love to hear from you about this or any other episode in the back catalogue!And it would be so lovely if you shared the podcast with someone you think might like it, and rate and review in your podcasting app. Reviews especially help get the word out about the pod! The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.  **The transcript for this episode, once available , will be here.**

5/23/23 • 30:23

Today's episode involves our first ever comic on Teachin' Books! I'm excited to share with you  how I teach Kate Beaton's webcomic Ducks, which you should definitely read right now, if you haven't already.Topics of the episode include: confronting environmental and social justice through literature, i.e. through visual and textual analysis; teaching within and around public narratives about Fort McMurray; reading text alongside paratext; and celebrating the effectiveness of a discussion forum prompt that was actually successful (!!). Listen in and tell me what you think!Kate Beaton's Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands / original five-part series / Hark! A VagrantAritha van Herk's "There’s more to Fort McMurray than oil sands – It’s a real community"Anti-Racism on the Prairies: A Workbook for Canadian Settlers (with thanks, again, to SURJ #yxe for sharing this Call for Contributions)If you're interested in getting your hands on a Teachin' Books tidbits zine as part of my ongoing fundraiser to ensure I can keep providing honoraria for students and precariously or under-employed folks who come chat on the podcast, e-transfer to teachinbookspod@gmail.com or paypal.me/jambermcd or just drop me a line wherever you can find me :) The zines are pay-what-you-can, and I'll need your mailing address to get the zine to you.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.  Please share the pod with someone you think might like it, and rate and review if you have the option to in your podcasting app! :) **The transcript for this episode, once available , will be here.**

3/15/22 • 28:41

On today's episode, I'm chattin' with the fabulous Namrata Mitra, who is an Associate Professor at Iona College in the Department of English. Her research areas are feminist philosophy, queer theory, and postcolonial studies. We talk about Namrata's Postcolonial Literatures courses, and we discuss a wide range of teaching-related topics, such as: how students' material conditions shape their learning, and in turn should shape our teaching; uncertainty as pedagogical method and practice, plus its possibilities and limitations; learning outcomes/objectives and the questions they raise; the matter of WHAT vs HOW we read in a postcolonial lit context; and more!Dissonant Methods: Undoing Discipline in the Humanities Classroom (eds. Ada J. Jaarsma and Kit Dobson) includes Namrata's piece "Practising How We Read What We Read." Find out more about the book in my review of it in Engaged Scholar Journal.Jody Mason's "Make Them Up and Ignore Them"? Learning Outcomes and Literary Studies in CanadaShowing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) / SURJ YXE Facebook and Instagram (with many thanks to Jessica DeWitt for bringing my attention to the work of SURJ YXE)If you're interested in getting your hands on a Teachin' Books tidbits zine as part of my ongoing fundraiser to ensure I can keep providing honoraria for students and precariously or under-employed folks who come chat on the podcast, e-transfer to teachinbookspod@gmail.com or paypal.me/jambermcd or just drop me a line wherever you can find me :) The zines are pay-what-you-can, and I'll need your mailing address to get the zine to you.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.  Please share the pod with someone you think might like it, and rate and review if you have the option to in your podcasting app! :) **The transcript for this episode, once available , will be here.**

2/22/22 • 69:50

Wow, things have chaaaanged and are still a-changin'! Teachin' and learnin' things, that is. On this first solo episode of 2022, I talk about how I've come face-to-face, in the last few weeks of full-time teaching, with how teaching and learning has changed in the year and a half+ that I was away from teaching for my full-time postdoctoral fellowship. Topics include: uncertainty and flexibility; questioning attendance and participation practices; deciding not to assign any late deductions (extensions only!); negotiating synchronous vs. asynchronous teaching; coming back to teaching as a podcaster; and more! Listen in and tell me what your experiences with teaching in 2022 have been :)Jesse Stommel on attendance policies, pulling from his contributions to "The Attendance Conundrum"Zoe Todd on not having attendance policiesMy past and ongoing thinking re: attendance and participation has also been informed by the public work of Kaitlin Blanchard and sarah madoka currieGratitude to Skydancer Louise Bernice Halfe and Tenille Campbell for the spicy poems that made us laugh and get playful in my second-year ENG classBrandi Morin on how "'Freedom' protests are white supremacy in all its glory"Cornerstone: Housing for WomenIf you're interested in getting your hands on a Teachin' Books tidbits zine as part of my ongoing fundraiser to ensure I can keep providing honoraria for students and precariously or under-employed folks who come chat on the podcast, e-transfer to teachinbookspod@gmail.com or paypal.me/jambermcd or just drop me a line wherever you can find me :) The zines are pay-what-you-can, and I'll need your mailing address to get the zine to you.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.  Please share the pod with someone you think might like it! **The transcript for this episode, once available , will be here.**

2/2/22 • 28:35

In this first episode of 2022 (!!!),  I'm delighted to be joined by Brent Ryan Bellamy, Moritz Ingwersen, and Rachel Webb Jekanowski, co-instructors of a course on "North American Petrocultures," taught collaboratively and online through TU Dresden in Germany. The core of this episode: How do you talk about oil in a Humanities classroom? What can studying arts and literature teach us about oil, energy, and environmental justice? How can we imagine different futures through the skills and creative capacities we build in Humanities classrooms? Hit play to find out more!"Teaching North American Petrocultures in Germany: Experiments in Collaborative Pedagogy," co-written by Brent, Moritz, and Rachel.Check out Brent's collection of "loanwords to live with," An Ecotopian Lexicon,  co-edited with Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, as well as the teaching guide Matthew and Brent created for the book / Brent also recently published Remainders of the American Century: Post-Apocalyptic Novels in the Age of U.S. DeclineMoritz is Assistant Professor and Chair of North American literature and critical future studies at Dresden University of Technology in Germany working on the transformative capacities of speculative fiction and art to help us grapple with the climate crisis and promote social change / Find more about his work hereFind Rachel at her website and on Twitter / Check out her recent work in a chapter entitled "Contested and Emergent Futures: Film and Energy Regimes of the Newfoundland Offshore" in Cold Water Oil: Offshore Petroleum Cultures,  a collaboratively-authored StoryMap called "Energy Amphitheatre: St. John's Harbour" (with Fiona Police and Danine Farquharson), and in the article "From Labrador to Leipzig: Film and Infrastructures along the Fur Trail."How to Survive the End of the World podcastElizabeth Miller's interactive documentary The Shore Line / Plus, an educator's guide to the project, on "speculative futures," written by RachelIndigenous Climate Action website / Indigenous Climate Action Youth Wellness Honorarium and ToolkitThe podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.  **The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.*

1/11/22 • 68:46

This year's Holiday Special episode (whoop whoooop!) is an audio essay I produced for the Future Horizons summer project series. The series was organized by the fabulous Sarah Roger and Paul Barrett, and my essay was produced with generous support and feedback from Myra Bloom.The audio essay is "Feeling My Way through Walmart," and it spans my experiences from growing up in a Walmart, to my time working in retail, navigating the company in present day, and researching Walmart and other chain stores and sites of retail and travel. The audio essay features clips from an interview with my mom (hi mom!) and stories from my family and childhood, which I thought made it an especially appropriate piece to share with you during this holiday season.

12/21/21 • 46:49

I'm so pleased to share today's interview with you, featuring Karrie Auger and Nancy Van Styvendale, all about the Inspired Minds: All Nations Creative Writing Program, which is facilitated in prisons in Saskatchewan and Alberta.In addition to talking about how they've approached Gregory Scofield's poem "Heart Food" in Inspired Minds classes, Karrie and Nancy get into: relationship as the core of Inspired Minds and their facilitation of creative writing classes; the material conditions of prison programming; the Inspired Minds philosophy, which includes welcoming diversions, informal chat, and laughter; responding to texts through the senses, licking tables (!!), and more. Listen above or on most podcasting apps!Gregory Scofield's poem "Heart Food" comes from his collection I Knew Two Métis  Women"'Against Improvement,' Toward Relations: Meditations on a Prison Writing Program" by Nancy Van Styvendale Karrie refers to the poem "âcimowina" by Marilyn Dumont in A Really Good Brown GirlSherry Farrell-Racette's faculty page, including citations for her work on memory, objects, and moreRichard Wagamese's Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations"Prisons are built on our backs" by Cory Charles CardinalThe Prison Abolition Issue of briarpatch magazineInmates 4 Humane Conditions / Beyond Prison Walls Canada / noprisons.caIf you're interested in getting your hands on a Teachin' Books tidbits zine as part of my ongoing fundraiser to ensure I can keep providing honoraria for students and precariously or under-employed folks who come chat on the podcast, e-transfer to teachinbookspod@gmail.com or paypal.me/jambermcd or just drop me a line wherever you can find me :) The zines are pay-what-you-can, and I'll need your mailing address to get the zine to you.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.  Please share the pod with those you think might like it!*Today's episode art comes to you from the inside of my makeshift podcast-recording blanket fort. Welcome! **The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**

12/7/21 • 56:03

Today's episode is all about the ways we teach, learn, and work with... Instagraaaaaaaaam! I'm so excited to share with you this conversation I had with Shana MacDonald, who is an Associate Professor in Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo and the current President of the Film Studies Association of Canada.On today's episode, Shana talks about her funded, collaborative, interdisciplinary research-creation project Feminist Think Tank,  @aesthetic.resistance on Instagram, and we get into: turning Instagram into an activist tool; collaborative editing, learning, and peer-to-peer mentorship models; teaching with/and social media; securing funding for awesome feminist research-creation projects like Shana's; centring rest and care for ourselves and each other as a core part of research and teaching projects; and so much more. Listen and enjoy!As Shana mentions, Feminist Think Tank is thinking about opening themselves up as a curatorial collaborative space that will invite and host guest posts. Reach out to them via DM on their account if you're interested.Chesapeake Digital Humanities Consortium: Social Justice and Online ActivismNot Influencers, But Amplifiers: @aesthetic.resistance as Feminist IG Hack (co-written by Shana MacDonald and  Brianna I. Wiens, who we mention in the episode)Materializing Data: New Research Methods for Feminist Digital Humanities (co-written by Brianna Wiens, Stan Ruecker, Jennifer Roberts-Smith, Milena Radzikowska, and Shana MacDonald)Living whose best life? An intersectional feminist interrogation of postfeminist #solidarity in #selfcare (co-written by Briana Wiens and Shana MacDonald)@theindigenousnarchist / @indigenousfeminisms / @decolonizemyself / @theindigenousfoundationIf you didn't hear my announcement from previous episodes: We have MERCH! If you're interested in getting your hands on a Teachin' Books tidbits zine as part of my ongoing fundraiser to ensure I can keep providing honoraria for students and precariously or under-employed folks who come chat on the podcast, e-transfer to teachinbookspod@gmail.com or paypal.me/jambermcd or just drop me a line wherever you can find me :) The zines are pay-what-you-can, and I'll need your mailing address to get the zine to you.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.  It's super helpful to me if you share the pod with a friend, rate it, review it, tell your folks tell your family tell your neighbours your cats and anyone who will listen! **The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**

11/16/21 • 58:10

If you enjoy thinking, learning, and hearing about the nuts and bolts of classroom practice, this one's for you! In today's episode, I talk about three methods / exercises / approaches I've used to teach Emily Dickinson's poem "A narrow Fellow in the Grass." And I get downright detailed, y'all: close-reading, concept-mapping, riddle poems, assembling textual evidence, and practicing poem annotation. And: hear my breadmaker bangin' up a storm in the background -- whoops! Listen in and let me know how *you* teach, or read, this poem. I'm curious to know!Emily Dickinson's "A narrow Fellow in the Grass"English 1G03: Emily Dickinson With Magda Zapędowska and Eugenia ZurowskiBill Bartley's faculty pageNiigaan Sinclair's Twitter / faculty pageI Pass the Talking Stick to You: Sharing, Reading, Teaching Residential School Stories conferenceFor more on how the frames we bring into our teaching influence the learning that happens there, see Dissonant Methods: Undoing Discipline in the Humanities Classroom (eds. Ada Jaarsma and Kit Dobson), and especially the essay by soon-to-be podcast guest Namrata Mitra, whose contribution opens with a question similar to the point made by Niigaan Sinclair: "What is at stake in the first text you assign in an English literature course?" (103).Episode pic is of my own damn undergrad paper, in which I correctly spelled Dickinson's last name exactly 0 times. Growth!If you didn't hear my announcement from the last episode: We have MERCH! If you're interested in getting your hands on a Teachin' Books tidbits zine as part of my ongoing fundraiser to ensure I can keep providing honoraria for students and precariously or under-employed folks who come chat on the podcast, e-transfer to teachinbookspod@gmail.com or paypal.me/jambermcd or just drop me a line wherever you can find me :) The zines are pay-what-you-can, and I'll need your mailing address to get the zine to you.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.  In this kick-off to Season Two, I'd so appreciate if you'd share the pod with a friend, rate it, review it, tell your folks tell your family tell your neighbours and anyone who will listen! **The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**

11/3/21 • 31:19

Listen in to part TWO of my conversation with expert TAs and all-around excellent humans Megan Solberg and Ian Moy, Ph.D. candidates in English at the University of Saskatchewan who have lots of wisdom to share about navigating the unique context of team-teaching environments. In this second and final part of our conversation, we cover: student-TA dynamics, including setting boundaries and handling challenging situations; dealing with difficult or controversial course content as a TA; and the nitty-gritty realities of TAing in remote and in-person teaching environments. Along the way, we answer more listener questions.We have MERCH! If you're interested in getting your hands on a Teachin' Books tidbits zine (merch merch merch merch merch) as part of my ongoing fundraiser to ensure I can keep providing honoraria for students and precariously or under-employed folks who come chat on the podcast, e-transfer to teachinbookspod@gmail.com or paypal.me/jambermcd or just drop me a line wherever you can find me :) The zines are pay-what-you-can, and I'll need your mailing address to get the zine to you.Secret Feminist Agenda 4.26 Becoming "The Man" with Lily ChoUniversity of Saskatchewan's Access and Equity ServicesGoogle Jamboard"I Pass the Talking Stick to You": Sharing, Reading, Teaching Residential School Stories conference Indigenous Voices AwardsThe podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.  In this kick-off to Season Two, I'd so appreciate if you'd share the pod with a friend, rate it, review it, tell your folks tell your family tell your neighbours and anyone who will listen! **The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**

10/19/21 • 58:26

Teachin' Books is back for Season Twoooooo, and I'm excited, y'all! ...especially because this first episode is part of a special two-part series to kick off Season Two, and it features a couple of my dearest friends, Megan Solberg and Ian Moy, Ph.D. candidates at the University of Saskatchewan who have a combined variety of experiences as Teaching Assistants. In Part One of this two-parter on Teaching Assistantships, we talk about: protecting your mental health as a TA; working in good ways with lead instructors; solidarity, friendship, community-building (!!!); handling challenging dynamics in a team-teaching context; anchoring in compassion and self-compassion; embracing uncertainty; learning how science works (my bad lol); and more! We also answer listener questions along the way, with more answers coming in Part Two. Hit play, enjoy, and get in touch if you have more to add, or to ask, about teachin' assistin' (too much?).Shoutouts to two of the awesome lead instructors Megan and Ian have worked with in their history as TAs: former guests and friends of the podcast Joanne Leow and Wendy Roy!Writing Help Centre at the University of SaskatchewanTruth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's 94 Calls to ActionTwitter thread by @cedarsageskoden with links to Paypals, e-transfer addresses, etc. of Indigenous folks seeking supportPrairie Sage Protectors Grocery RegistryThe podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.  In this kick-off to Season Two, I'd so appreciate if you'd share the pod with a friend, rate it, review it, tell your folks tell your family tell your neighbours and anyone who will listen! **The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**

10/5/21 • 64:28

Today I'm talkin' FAILURE. With contributions from friends, colleagues, listeners who shared their stories and thoughts about failure, as well as my own experiences and ideas, this episode gets into: the "meta" experience of failing to read enough about failure to do an episode on it; learning in theory versus learning through practice; sharing failures with students as "parting gifts," as icebreakers, as a lesson in self-reflexivity, as a practice of vulnerability, of transparency, or just to knock over the performative bullshit of "excellence" in teaching and learning.I hope you enjoy! Get in touch with me if you have more thoughts about failure in/and teaching.(PS Carl,  widely adored podcast mascot, research assistant, and longtime Build-a-Bear friend of my adult life, is pictured here because he never fails. He's a nonstop WINNER.)Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy Teaching Fails section / Neil Mari's contribution "When Wikipedia Fought Back"Tara's episode of Teachin' Books (on André Alexis's Fifteen Dogs), with discussion at the end of the prisoner justice work of Cory CardinalJack Halberstam's The Queer Art of Failure (which I just requested from the library!)Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments / Keyword: Failure (curated by Brian Croxall and Quinn Warnick) / Mark Sample's "Flogging Reflection" / Dorothea Salo's "Failure Assessment" / Allison Carr's "In Support of Failure"Cory Cardinal's obituary / Inmates 4 Humane Conditions / Beyond Prison Walls Canada / Funeral and Support Fund for Cory CardinalThe podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.  It really helps me out if you rate and review the podcast, so please do that if you like what you're hearing and wanna share the good word! ;) **The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**

6/22/21 • 35:43

On today's solo episode of Teachin' Books, I'm talking about the work of acclaimed poet Louise Bernice Halfe, whose Cree name is Sky Dancer. In particular, I'm talking about an excerpt from Blue Marrow and a short poem called "Body Politics" from Bear Bones & Feathers. For the former: I get into the topic of prairie poetry, prairie literature, and prairie identity, complicated as these formations are, and for the latter, I discuss gender, "womanhood," and "real" versus "artificial" bodies.Content warning: In my discussion of Halfe's work, I address issues such as settler-colonialism and its attendant violences, abuse by colonial institutions and the Catholic Church, and residential schools. Please take care. Order copies of Louise Halfe's work from your local bookstore.  In Saskatoon, I like Turning the Tide and McNally Robinson.  Please read the poem that Halfe gave permission to the Saskatchewan Ânskohk Writers’ Circle Inc. (SAWCI) to share, in honour of the children found on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School and in honour of all residential school survivors. Find more about SAWCI on their website.Read David Gaertner's essay on Blue Marrow, and check out Sôhkêyihta:The Poetry of Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe, a collection selected and with an introduction by Gaertner, an afterword by Halfe, and published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. I hope to pick up my copy soon!I am grateful to continue to read and learn from The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology, edited by Karina Vernon and published by Wilfried Laurier University Press. If you haven't gotten yourself a copy yet (or requested that your library purchase one!), you absolutely should.Contributions to Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc can be sent to: donations [at] kib [dot] ca, as mentioned in their tweet from June 3 2021.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.   **The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**

6/9/21 • 33:39

We're back to teachin' Shakespeeeeeare today! This episode features an interview with my lovely friend and brilliant human Dr. Lucy Hinnie! Lucy is currently Wikimedian-in-Residence at the British Library, and is completing her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Saskatchewan. In the course of our convo about the second-year Shakespeare: Comedy and History class that Lucy taught in 2020, we get into: how to demystify Shakespeare for those who are intimidated by his work; attending with care to the social and political issues raised by studying Shakespeare's work, such as consent and colonialism; the problem with worrying about "anachronism" in our work on historical literature; critique is not cancellation, "Shakespeare be Shakespeare!," burn it all down (!!!), and more. It's a fun one, y'all.Find Lucy on Twitter or her website, and check out her Bannatyne Manuscript project and the student blog for the Medieval Women course she instructed. Lucy is also a busy podcaster herself, with recent appearances on Scotichronicast, Coding Codices, and the AskHistorians podcast.Read all of Shakespeare's plays online and for free from The Folger Shakespeare Library.Check out a couple of the readings Lucy mentions: "A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Stolen Generation" by Anna Kurian and Obscene Pedagogies: Transgressive Talk and Sexual Education in Late Medieval Britain by Carissa M. Harris.Decolonize Palestine is the resource I highlight at the end of the episode. You can support the resource by becoming a patron.See Eve Tuck's tweet about Truth and Reconciliation, decolonization, and Palestine, and read her essay, co-written with K. Wayne Yang, "Decolonization is not a Metaphor."The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.   **The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**

5/18/21 • 64:56

Teachin' Books is back with an exciting interview with Khodi Dill, who is author of the picture book Welcome to the Cypher (available for pre-order now!) and a Bahamian-Canadian writer, spoken word artist, and anti-racist educator living and working on Treaty 6 territory in Saskatoon. Check it out, y'all! :) Khodi and I chat about spoken word poetry (& its role in education and social justice); his poem "Grey" and how I've taught it in my undergraduate English classes; the publication of "Grey" in Karina Vernon's fantastic The Black Prairie Archives (published by the also fantastic WLU Press); and the behind-the-scenes process of writing Welcome to the Cypher, including a discussion of "children's literature" versus "picture books," the instructive qualities of writing a book, and connections between spoken word and the new picture book.Check out Khodi's performance of "Grey" posted by the Vancouver Poetry House. You can also find "Grey" in Karina Vernon's (ed.) The Black Prairie Archives, published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press.Find out more about Khodi at his website, The Grey Griot, or on Twitter @KhodiDill.Pre-order Khodi's new picture book Welcome to the Cypher from your local bookstore, e.g. at Turning the Tide in Saskatoon.Learn more about the Saskatoon Indian and Métis Friendship Centre’s new mental health program Sītoskawātowin and read this CBS news piece on it or listen to this interview with Charleen Cote.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.  Tell me what you're thinking, y'all!Please subscribe, rate, and review, and spread the word about the podcast -- it really helps! :) **The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**

5/4/21 • 70:00

How do you wrap up the term in a good way? What do you do in the final days of class, whether remote or in-person? What atmosphere do you try to create? This episode includes thoughts in response to those questions, featuring fantastic tips by Ashley Gagnon-Shaw, Jocelyne Vogt, and Catherine Nygren, as well as some ideas of my own. :) Hope you enjoy!Listen to Jocelyne's episode of Teachin' Books, on Harold Cardinal's "A Canadian What the Hell It's All About," and Catherine's episode on The Stanley Parable.If you're not familiar, here's the Hedbanz game that Jocelyne refers to in her tip!Read one version of Marianne Moore's poem "Poetry."Resources on the Unessay Catherine uses in her classes: Daniel Paul O'Donnell / Emily Suzanne Clark / Marc Kissel / Ryan Cordell / Andrew Gilreath-BrownIf you're curious about which song won out for the one-song-long, end-of-year dance party... :)Here is the article by Maia Herriot on Saskatchewan's overdose crisis and the CTV news piece (by Stefanie Davis) from January 2021 with statistics about overdoses in Saskatchewan in 2020.Donate to Prairie Harm Reduction or write a letter in support of more funding for their safe consumption site.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. I post extra content, like audiograms and behind-the-scenes stuff, on both accounts, more frequently on Insta, so follow me there for more teachin' books fun!You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com. Please subscribe, rate, and review, and spread the word about the podcast if you like it. :) **The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**

4/13/21 • 29:48

Heeey y'all! On today's episode of Teachin' Books, we're talking about something a bit different: research, writing, and publishing as forms of teaching and learning. The episode features part of the book launch for The Next Instalment:  Serials, Sequels, and Adaptations of Nellie L. McClung, L.M. Montgomery, and Mazo de la Roche, written by Dr. Wendy Roy, Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Saskatchewan. In the launch recording, Wendy reads from the book and answers questions about the book.After the book launch recording, Wendy and I circle back to chat more about some of the ways that teaching and learning intersect with the process of preparing and publishing a scholarly book. Topics include:  the realities and challenges of archival work, writing as an instructive process, working with research assistants, relationships and collaboration in research, and the possibilities and perils of peer review. Hope you enjoy!Get your copy of The Next Instalment: Serials, Sequels, and Adaptations of Nellie L. McClung, L.M. Montgomery, and Mazo de la Roche through the publisher, Wilfrid Laurier University Press. For even more on the book, check out Hannah McGregor's review in Canadian Literature.Check out more about the 20/21 Vision: Speculating in Literature and Film in Canada conference that Wendy is organizing.Order your copy of Gregory Younging's Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples from your local bookstore (in Saskatoon, I like Turning the Tide and McNally Robinson), or go to the publisher website and order through UTP.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain and the graphics are by @muskrathands.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. I post extra content, like audiograms and behind-the-scenes stuff, on both accounts, more frequently on Insta, so follow me there for more teachin' books fun!You can also get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com. Please subscribe, rate, and review, and spread the word about the podcast if you like it. :) **The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**

3/30/21 • 62:47

Today's episode is a bit of a catch-up / breather: I'm answering a few listener questions and emails and, along the way, returning to some of the podcast's ongoing topics of interest.Topics like... statue activism, book clubs (I ask: why do some last and some don't?), recording the podcast, teaching challenging texts, and the often energizing circumstance of teaching students who think English is a whole bunch of bullshit. I hope you enjoy!Check out Tonya Davidson's work on statues. Thank you, Jean, for pointing me to her scholarship!Other episodes mentioned here include 1.1 Interview with Jade McDougall / Marilyn Dumont's "Letter to Sir John A Macdonald," 1.4 Interview with Alice Munro Book Club Members / Alice Munro's Dear Life, 1.12 Interview with Taylor Brown / Thomas King's The Inconvenient Indian, and 1.14 Interview with Rebekah Ludolph / Hiromi Goto's The Kappa Child.Watch and enjoy HAIM's music video for "The Steps." :DToday's episode image features Carl, my backpack-wearing Build-a-Bear moose and podcasting companion. Hey Carl!See more about Jody Lerat and Melody Wood's art project Uncensored.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.Email me at teachinbookspod@gmail.com. As you'll hear in this episode, I'd love to hear from you if you have been in a longstanding book club and have thoughts about why it has lasted so long, and I'd also love to hear from other folks who have taught Marian Engel's Bear.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. I post extra content, like audiograms and behind-the-scenes stuff, on both accounts, more frequently on Insta, so follow me there for more teachin' books fun!Please subscribe, rate, and review, and spread the word about the podcast if you like it. :) **The transcript for this episode, once available, will be here.**

3/23/21 • 22:37

It's heeeeeere! I'm so excited to share this Teachin' Books episode on Dungeons and Dragons, featuring Dr. Jordan Bolay, who is an instructor of English at Pearson College UWC.Even if you're not a DnD player, I think you'll like our chat! We get into: DnD as an experiential learning practice, and as a text to be studied in literature classes (plus, as a language-learning tool); games and play in the classroom; and roleplay as a method to teach issues around ethics, empathy, and ecological justice. And if you're an instructor who is interested in using DnD in your classes, Jordan shares his three-week plan and lays out the preparations, logistics, and challenges of teachin' with DnD. Thank you, Jordan!With Allie McFarland, Jordan co-founded and edits the fantastic antilang. magazine, published by The Anti-Languorous Project: check it out!Find out more about Pearson College UWC, including a Land Welcome by Chief Russ Chipps of the Sc'ianew First Nation.This episode's image is a picture of some awesome dice I got from my rad friend Dev. Thanks, Dev! :D Check out Morning Thompson's billboard project, "Illusions of Peace," at PAVED Arts in Saskatoon. The project was initially part of an exhibit at Chokecherry Studios, and you can find more about how to support Chokecherry, and their upcoming and ongoing events, here.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.Email me at teachinbookspod@gmail.com: I'm planning a listener email / Q&A episode, so please get in touch with any questions (or comments) you'd like me to address on that episode! You can ask to be kept anonymous, or I can say your name alongside your question/comment.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. I post extra content, like audiograms and behind-the-scenes stuff, on both accounts, more frequently on Insta, so follow me there for more teachin' books fun!Please subscribe, rate, and review, and spread the word about the podcast if you like it. :) **The transcript for this episode is available here.**

3/16/21 • 64:48

On today's episode, I'm talking about the public poetry installations of London-based poet and artist Robert Montgomery. I use Montgomery's work in my first-year undergrad poetry class to consider important dimensions of and questions brought up by public poetry, such as: how these poems blur the line between "art" and "the real world"; how materiality and physical position shapes meaning; where poetry belongs and who has access to it; what kind of art or poetry is "permitted" in public space; and more!See Robert Montgomery's website for a good sample of the public poetry installations he's done.Montgomery's poems in the order I discuss them in the episode: all palaces / on fire amidst greenery / poem amidst protest / the mountains must have / vehicle poemListen to Episode 1.5 on Instapoetry for more on the poetry course I talk about in this episode, including the discussion board assignment I mention.Find out more about the Tonight It's Poetry series on their website and Facebook page.Check out Zoey Roy's YouTube page for examples of public poetry projects online, including her video "Be Well" from October 2020. You can also check out her Facebook page.The episode image is a screenshot from the video "Urban Poet Robert Montgomery" by Crane.tv.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.Email me at teachinbookspod@gmail.com! I'm planning a listener email / Q&A episode, so please get in touch with any questions (or comments) you'd like me to address on that episode! You can ask to be kept anonymous, or I can say your name alongside your question/comment.Follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. I post extra content, like audiograms and behind-the-scenes stuff, on both accounts, more frequently on Insta, so follow me there for more teachin' books fun!Please subscribe, rate, and review, and tell a friend about the podcast if you like what you're hearing! It really helps me out :) **The transcript for this episode is available here.**

3/9/21 • 31:12

Heeeeey y'all! We're back to talkin' about book clubs today as Ph.D. candidate Rebekah Ludolph shares her experience reading Hiromi Goto's novel The Kappa Child (2001) in a book club that encourages the goal of reading to learn. At the same time, Rebekah complicates the idea of reading for "social change" and draws from her doctoral research to discuss the nuances, limitations, and possibilities in the act of reading. Other topics of the episode include: types of readers and reading strategies; the labour of reading (and why reading is not, by itself, "the work" of social justice or social change); and book clubs as spaces of vulnerability in which we might bump up against unfamiliar or new ideas. If you're a book club member, lover, or hater, I think you'll want to listen to this chat! Order The Kappa Child (and Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun!) from your local bookstore.  In Saskatoon, I like Turning the Tide and McNally Robinson. Read David James Hudson's essay on anti-racism and "self-work" (which I refer to in the episode but could not remember the name): "The Displays: On Anti-Racist Study and Institutional Enclosure." Rebekah refers to Larissa Lai's Slanting I / Imagining We: Asian Canadian Literary Production in the 1980s and 1990s.Check out more information about, including the schedule of programming for, the One Book, One Province reading event. You can send a copy of Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun to someone who is incarcerated via Paul Seesequasis’s website, and there you can also make a contribution to the Indigenous Archival Photo Project.  Also check out the APTN story/video featuring Paul Seesequasis.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.Email me at teachinbookspod@gmail.com or follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. I post extra content, like audiograms and behind-the-scenes stuff, on both accounts, more frequently on Insta, so follow me there for more teachin' books fun!Please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever podcasting app you tend to use.  **The transcript for this episode is available here.**

3/2/21 • 70:03

I've been really excited to share this episode with you: today, I talk about teachin' Janelle Monáe's song/music video "Pynk" in combination with Vivek Shraya's song/music video "Part-time Woman"! This is always a fun combo to teach. In this episode: teaching students methods of reading the visual dimensions of texts (moving from identification to meaning to significance), facilitating discussions about the visual vocabularies of these music videos, and negotiating ideas of "womanhood" through the texts. Plus: you'll hear me say "pussy power" probably more times than I ever will again in a podcast episode -- what fun! (Thank you to Janelle Monáe's music video for making that achievement possible.)If you haven't already, watch Janelle Monáe's music video for "Pynk" and Vivek Shraya's music video for "Part-time Woman" before you check out the episode. Also check  out the lyrics to "Pynk" and to "Part-time Woman." Check out more of Janelle Monáe's music and find out more about Vivek Shraya's books, music, films, visual art, and theatre work (!!) on her website.In the episode, I refer to Meg Matthias's essay on "Gender Definition and Expressions of Sexuality in Janelle Monáe's Pynk."See this screenshot from Shraya's video of the Sleepover Posture™ I was failing to describe in the episode.Check out Eekwol on Soundcloud, Facebook, and Apple Music. Watch her talk/performance as part of the Indigenous Storyteller-in-Residence program at the University of Saskatchewan. Read this news piece on the Indigenous Storyteller-in-Residence Program at the University of Saskatchewan.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.Email me at teachinbookspod@gmail.com or follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. I post extra content, like audiograms and behind-the-scenes stuff, on both accounts, more frequently on Insta, so follow me there for more teachin' books fun!Please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever podcasting app you tend to use.  **The transcript for this episode is available here.**

2/23/21 • 30:43

On today's episode of Teachin' Books, undergraduate student Taylor Brown shares her experiences working as a tour guide while she was also reading and thinking through Thomas King's 2012 non-fiction work The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America.Topics from our chat include: being subversive despite/versus the constraints and norms of a profession; navigating Canada's history and geography as a settler tour guide in a position of authority; and the realities and difficulties of blending history, education, story, and entertainment. Plus, hear me struggle to find the right words to talk about the youths!Order The Inconvenient Indian from your local bookstore.  In Saskatoon, I like Turning the Tide and McNally Robinson. Here's the tweet by @SusannaLHarris that I refer to in the episode.You can follow Taylor on Instagram @bookclub.bby!Check out the events and schedule for Saskatchewan Aboriginal Storytelling Month, put on by Library Services for Saskatchewan Aboriginal Peoples and the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.Email me at teachinbookspod@gmail.com or follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. I post extra content, like audiograms and behind-the-scenes stuff, on both accounts, more frequently on Insta, so follow me there for more teachin' books fun!Please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever podcatcher you tend to use.  **The transcript for this episode is available here.**

2/2/21 • 61:00

January sucks and I am here to talk about why! :D If you need a more positive tagline than that, I can't help you.In this episode, I talk about teachin' Jes Baker's memoir Landwhale: On Turning Insults into Nicknames, Why Body Image is Hard, and How Diets Can Kiss My Ass.  Topics of interest include: memoir, rhetorical appeals (logos, ethos, pathos), "health" and "wellness" (heavy scare quotes), body politics, and fat activism. Plus, I talk about a self-reflection assignment I use when I teach this text.Order Landwhale from your local bookstore.  In Saskatoon, I like Turning the Tide and McNally Robinson.Check out the Witch, Please episode I refer to at the beginning of the episode, as well as the Secret Feminist Agenda episode I use in my assignment. Both podcasts are developed and hosted (for SFA) or co-hosted (for WP, with Marcelle Kosman) by fantastic podcaster Hannah McGregor and you should listen to them.Read more about the rhetorical appeals: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos.Here's more about the ACCUTE panel on Pandemic & Institution: Mental Health/Invisible Disability and more about Andrew McEwan's work beyond that panel. You should also read his piece "Beyond 'Wellness': How Bell Let's Talk Limits Our Understanding of Mental Illness."Follow Jaris Swidrovich on Twitter or Instagram.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.Email me at teachinbookspod@gmail.com or follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. I post extra content, like audiograms and behind-the-scenes stuff, on both accounts, more frequently on Insta, so follow me there for more teachin' books fun!Please do subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever podcatcher you tend to use. It really helps me out! **The transcript for this episode is available here.**

1/26/21 • 34:16

Teachin' Books is baaaaack! It appears it's a new, but still garbage, year --  yay?! On today's episode, I chat with my friend Tara Chambers about a novel we both teach in undergraduate classes: Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis. Tara talks about teachin' this novel in a class themed around the question "What is humanity?" or "What does it mean to be human?", and I chat about teachin' it in a class that deconstructs "nature vs. culture." Also of note: Tara's discussion of the novel in relation to "real-world dog biology" (poor phrasing mine) and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs; my thoughts about reading the novel through its paratext and Plato's Allegory of the Cave; and Tara's essential question... should Heart of Darkness ever be taught again? XD I hope you enjoy this chat!Order Fifteen Dogs from your local bookstore. In Saskatoon, I like Turning the Tide and McNally Robinson.Watch the video on Plato's Allegory of the Cave, discussed in the episode.To get in touch with Tara, reach her at tchambers@tru.ca or tara.chambers@usask.ca.Read Cory Cardinal's piece for Briarpatch, "A letter from the organizer of the Sask prisoners' hunger strike," see more about the Open Letter in Solidarity with Prisoners at Saskatchewan Jails, and check out @SaskSolidarity's list of actions you can take in solidarity with people who are incarcerated in Saskatchewan.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.Email me at teachinbookspod@gmail.com or follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. I post extra content, like audiograms and behind-the-scenes stuff, on both accounts, more frequently on Insta, so follow me there for more teachin' books fun!Please do subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever podcatcher you tend to use. It's a new year and I would love to grow the podcast listening community! :D  **Read the transcript for this episode here.**

1/19/21 • 60:12

I'm back from hiatus to share with you this sweet and joy-filled Holiday special episode, which I recorded with my mom Kathy and my cousin Whitney!We planned to just "shoot the shit," as they say, about topics like books and reading, family and parenting, and the holidays. And shoot the shit we did, indeed! :DListen in if you'd like to hear us share some warm memories, reflect on "raising a reader," and talk about books & family bonding, authorship & identity, Harry Potter, Little House on the Prairie, The Black Stallion (my mom's favourite book growing up, and I never knew??!!), and more! As Whitney says in our chat, this episode is a bit of a love note.

12/26/20 • 45:29

It's the last official episode of 2020! As I mention in this episode and the last, I'm taking a break from producing the podcast, and I'll be back in January 2021.On this episode, I'm chatting with Jocelyne Vogt about teaching Harold Cardinal's essay "A Canadian What the Hell It's All About" in her high school English Language Arts classes in the Francophone school system in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Our conversation includes: how curricular requirements and standards (e.g. text lists) inform teaching; how to prepare high school students for university; and why citation matters. Plus, a podcast fave: the connections between teaching, reading, and activism.As explained in the episode, Cardinal’s essay is originally from his second book, The Rebirth of Canada’s Indians (1977), but you can find it published more recently in the anthology An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English (4th ed., 2013), edited by Daniel David Moses and Terry Goldie. If you’re having trouble accessing this essay but want to read it, please get in touch at teachinbookspod@gmail.com. You can get in touch with Jocelyne at jocelynevogt@cefsk.ca or on Instagram @jdumonce. She also has a new Instagram account for educators and other interested folks to find reliable Indigenous resources in French: @frenchiemetisteaches.  You can contribute to Back 2 the Land: 2Land 2Furious at their GoFundMe page (includes e-transfer email address) and find more about it in this Briarpatch article.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.Please send me an email over this episode production break, so that I won't be lonely! Tell me your ideas for future podcast episodes, tell me what you've been liking or what feedback you have for me, or just send me a note to say hi. Email at teachinbookspod@gmail.com.You can follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. To chat about the podcast, use the hashtag #TeachinBooksPod. Please subscribe to the podcast (and rate & review!) on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever podcatcher you tend to use.  **Read the transcript for this episode here.**

12/15/20 • 44:09

Nearing the one-year anniversary -- if such a term applies -- of my dissertation defence, I am taking this opportunity to mark the occasion by chatting about an author I've spent around a decade of my life studying: Douglas Coupland. In this episode, I talk about teachin' Coupland's novel JPod (2006) in a third-year Canadian literature course. Of note, from the episode: feeling unprepared but doing things anyway; forms of reading and how they're validated in teaching and learning spaces (what about skimming, skipping, scrolling?); and teaching a difficult text which includes material that's tough to navigate using traditional methods of literary study. And more!You will likely be able to order JPod from your local bookstore. In Saskatoon, I like Turning the Tide and McNally Robinson.If you want to read more about the topic of JPod, paratext vs. text, and the "interstitial material" that interrupts the plot of the novel, I have an article on that very topic.Emmy Lee Wall's "Douglas Coupland: A Selected Chronology" in Douglas Coupland: everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything provides an extensive list of Coupland's written and visual work, as well as other events and milestones, up to 2014.You can find more about Gérard Genette's theory of paratext in the book Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation.  See this piece for more on how paratext affects literary value and shapes meaning (and check out the other pieces in CanLit Guides for more teaching resources!).Check out Paul Martin's Sanctioned Ignorance: The Politics of Knowledge Production and the Teaching of the Literatures of Canada and Lorraine York's Literary Celebrity in Canada (for more on literary celebrity and citizenship), both of which I refer to in the episode.Read âpihtawikosisân's / Chelsea Vowel's piece "Beyond territorial acknowledgements."For the Land Acknowledgement videos created by Stryker Calvez and Rose Roberts at the University of Saskatchewan's Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning, click here. The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.You can follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. To chat about the podcast, use the hashtag #TeachinBooksPod. Email me at teachinbookspod@gmail.com. Please subscribe to the podcast (and rate & review!) on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever podcatcher you tend to use.  **Read the transcript for this episode here.**

12/8/20 • 34:05

We’re talkin’ Shakespeare today! In this episode, I chat with theatre artist Anita Smith about her production of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It for Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan’s 2019 season. We talk about the parallels between directing and teaching, about why she chose Alice in Wonderland as a "hook" for the show, about directing As You Like It in the era of Trump, and about how the practicalities of labour and bodies inform what we can do in theatre and education (spoiler alert: it turns out audiences and students have material bodies with needs!). If you want to read As You Like It but don’t have a copy, check out this free online version.To know more about Anita’s 2019 production of the play, see the poster and summary here, read this review from The Star Phoenix, and check out Anita's Director's Notes. If you haven’t seen Anita’s version of the play and are not sure which characters we’re referring to in the episode: Oliver is adapted into Olivia, Duke Frederick into Duchess Fredericka, and Charles the wrestler into characters Char and Les.Check out Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan’s website to find more about them and to support their work, if you can, through a contribution on this Giving Tuesday, December 1 2020.Other local (Saskatoon-based) theatre companies that Anita is involved in include 25th Street Theatre, Saskatoon Summer Players, and Ferre Play Theatre.  You can listen to / watch the music video for George Michael’s song “Freedom ‘90” (!!!!!) here and find the lyrics here.Find out more about Wanuskewin's Artist-in-Residence program on their website.The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.You can follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. To chat about the podcast, use the hashtag #TeachinBooksPod. Email me at teachinbookspod@gmail.com. Please subscribe to the podcast (and rate & review!) on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever podcatcher you tend to use.  **Read the transcript for this episode here.**Thank you to Anita for the permission to use this episode’s photograph, which is from the 2019 As You Like It production put on by Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan. Here are additional photo credits: Photographer: Deborah MarshallDirector: Anita SmithSet Designer: Stephen WadeLighting Designer: Will BrooksCostume Designer: Beverley KobelskyKate Herriot as Rosalind

12/1/20 • 58:07