Blackburn Makes Academic, Professional Presentations

Dr. Jessie Blackburn, assistant professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, spent her summer making presentations as near as Clarion University and as far as Nottingham, England.

First she presented at the Feminism and Teaching Symposium at the University of Nottingham. Her workshop, “Beneath the Bandwidth: Why, How and When Feminist Pedagogies and Digital Media Intersect Inside the Academic Composition Classroom,” examined how instructors can better prepare students for reading and writing in the digital era.

Blackburn, who is also director of composition at Pitt-Bradford, examined how the entrance of technology into the classroom affects students, faculty and curricula.

Later she traveled to Baton Rouge, La., to give a presentation to the Council of Writing Program Administrators, “The Affordances and Constraints of ‘Doing’ Multimodal WPA Work at Rural Institutions.”

In that presentation, she looked at why rural writing programs should include technology literacy in their programs.

Finally, on Aug. 23, Blackburn will lead the faculty retreat at Clarion University, where she will talk about writing across the curriculum and teaching in the digital age.

Blackburn joined the faculty at Pitt-Bradford last fall. Before that, she was the assistant writing program administrator for advanced composition at the University of Arkansas.