2019 Oh What a Year It Was!

As you can probably see I have not written a blog post for a month. What were you doing this past month, Ann, you ask? I was working on final edits of a book manuscript which I just an hour ago sent to the publisher. I think the relief slash excitement of sending that document through the Internet tubes hasn’t hit me yet, and I feel that I will probably not want to write a single word or be anywhere near my computer for the remainder of the holiday so I am writing this year in review post now. It is a post I have been meaning to write for over two weeks or so and in my brief moments away from the manuscript I started reflecting on all of the things that happened in the past 12 months and truly realized- oh what a year it was!

This year I started a new position that I love.The work that I am doing is very rewarding and I love being able to think about pedagogy, read and apply current pedagogical and instructional technology research when I support faculty, compile accessible resources for active learning, and advocate for inclusive pedagogy on a regular basis. I am very lucky and I feel truly blessed with this opportunity. I work with a wonderful team, and have the opportunity to interact with amazing faculty, instructors, and staff and I am grateful on the daily. 

I read 70 books so far this year and it may be 71 by tomorrow depending on how much I get into the novel I am reading at the moment. I was aiming for 100 books when I started at the beginning of the year but considering the new position and all the publishing, conferences, and workshops I did this year I feel I did pretty well. Most of the books I read were either non-fiction books that relate to pedagogy and accessibility or novels which is nice because I had really fell off reading fiction for a long while. However, there has been wonderful Toronto-set fiction by Mutonji, Leung, and Hernandez that you must read. I also Tweeted out the books I read with a small review which seemed to be well received by those who follow me. I of course continued with my Twitter and blogging and even had the pleasure to meet Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega in real life this year. We went stationary shopping! It was so fun!

I also completed a few courses online which led to another certification to add to my list. The courses allowed me to work with Articulate Rise more and it was fun to see all my interests come together in the final project I chose.

Being in a full-time role and not teaching a heavy load in 2019 meant I had time to do a lot more writing than I normally can because I now found myself with more time and space during the evening and on Sundays (Saturday still being my day off reflection day). My “writing to do” list was long and covered in dust when I dug it out of my computer in the fall of 2018 so it was really really (so many reallys) nice to put a dent in what I have been meaning to write for so long. So much so that for 2020 I only have one leftover article to write from my long list of things. I am glad about this because I can now shift gears from the literature article backlog that was haunting me to the pedagogical and accessibility articles I am researching and outlining for various projects.

I am not a shameless promoter of my things but when I reflected on what I did in 2019, even I was shocked at how I managed to get all of that done with all my other responsibilities. I was also blessed with working with people with reasonable publishing turnaround times which is super great, and also sadly super rare in academe.

So here is a snapshot of my 2019 :

Articles:

“Architecture and Perception: The Science of Art in Ruskin.” Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature 136 (Winter2019): 124-137 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/743257

“Recovering a Ruskinian Tactile Ethics of Architecture.” Modern Horizon Journal.  Senses of Architecture http://modernhorizonsjournal.ca/senses-of-architecture-june-2019/

“How I Came to Ruskin.” Victorian Web. http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/encounters/gagne.html

Encyclopedia Entry

Cross, Victoria. In: Scholl L. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women's Writing. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02721-6_119-1

Book Reviews

Rev. of Tact: Aesthetic Liberalism and the Essay Form in Nineteenth-Century Britain by David Russell. Victorian Review 44:1 (Spring): 152-153.

Rev. of John Ruskin and the Fabric of Architecture by Anuradha Chatterjee The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies 26 (Spring 2019): 102-105.

Rev. of The Pre-Raphaelites and Science by John Holmes. The Journal of William Morris Studies 23.2 (2019): 77-80.

Conferences

I recently presented a conference paper at the Research in Teaching and Learning Conference with Dr. Fiona Rawle, Associate Professor and Associate Dean Undergraduate at UTM, entitled “Mental Health and Well-Being for Students: It Starts with the Syllabus.” It was a wonderful discussion about the roles and possibilities for thinking about mental health and wellness in terms of pedagogy and best practices. It is definitely a topic that sparked a lot of discussion and with possibility for future work and it was wonderful to present and work with Fiona!

At that same conference I facilitated a workshop called “A Holistic Framework for Inclusive Research and Pedagogy” which was a very positive experience and allowed for a space to frame how SoTL can be thought of in a more inclusive manner through UDL and AODA.

I also presented on pedagogy and precarity at ACCUTE during Congress this summer, and presented on holistic access in communication and English classes at NeMLA in Washington in March.  

Podcast Fun!

My friend Margrit invited me on their podcast in the summer and I had a lot of fun talking books and research. The episode is here but you should really just listen to all the World of Stories Podcast episodes because they are all great.

The Past and the Future

This is also a big flipping of the calendar, if I think back to 2010, I was starting to teach sessionally as I attempted to finish my dissertation, trying to not get caught in the sessional loop that often leads to people not completing their dissertation, which I was definitely in for a while. Ironically it is that same dissertation that I just edited and revised into a manuscript. My decade bookended by touch but very much looking forward to how that touch is so important to conceptualizing access and accessibility. Academically I have had many experiences in the past decade and it is those experiences that have informed my advocacy for inclusive pedagogy and my research. I am glad for those experiences for they have led me to where I am today. 

Ending this post so that I can go enjoy what is left of the days I have off before the semester starts anew but I want to end with a little story. Have you ever meet someone, usually in the most random of places, and you think to yourself, yes, this person I need to be friends with this person. This happened to me this year and I am so ridiculously lucky. This year has been many things and had a lot of moving parts, but you have been a constant and I cannot wait for more fun and adventures!

Happy 2020 everyone!