Dynamic Subspace

Category: City Tech

Paying Respects to Townsend Harris, Founder of City College of New York and First US Consul General to Japan

Yesterday, Y and I visited Townsend Harris‘ grave in Green-Wood Cemetery yesterday. The tree behind it stretched out its branches to shade it from the crisp mid-afternoon sunlight. Harris is known for being the first Consul General from the United States to the Empire of Japan and he founded the school that would become the City College of New York and the cornerstone of the City University of New York (CUNY). His gravesite was renovated in 1986 by Japan and it retains the evident care that went into its design and construction. It’s a short walk from the Prospect Park West entrance on the south/southeast-facing hillside between Atlantic Ave and Ocean Ave.

September 9, 2024
Online Class Production Studio at Home

For my online, asynchronous Science Fiction (ENG 2420) class at City Tech this semester, I am recording my weekly lectures at my desk at home. I think the setup that I created for the second week’s lecture shown above will work out well for my recordings.

I have a 1080p Logitech webcam with stereo mics on the left of my monitor. I have a 2 x 3 ft. foam board propped up on the right side. Originally, this was to cut down on the sound from the living room air conditioner. But, tonight, I setup a temperature controlled LED light to reflect light off the foam board onto me. This produced a much better picture than with the overhead pot lights and even provided nice illumination with the overhead lights turned off as shown.

I used OBS Studio to record my lecture, and I edited the footage with Shotcut. Then, I uploaded the edited MP4 to YouTube.

September 4, 2024
10 Year Anniversary at City Tech
It’s hard for me to believe that it’s only been 10 years since I started teaching at City Tech in Brooklyn. My gray hair seems like a testament to it being far longer.

I’ve been able to accomplish a lot of things since landing in Brooklyn as evidenced by my CV and Teaching Portfolio. I’ve had the joy of teaching great students, and I’ve enjoyed the collegiality and comradery of excellent coworkers.

Some of the greatest hits of things that I’ve done–some alongside the best colleagues and others by myself–include:
- Acquired, Shelved, and Built the Finding Aid for the City Tech Science Fiction Collection (with Alan Lovegreen, Wanett Clyde, Justin Vazquez-Poritz, Maura Smale, Morris Hounion, Laura Westengard, Lavelle Porter, Keith Muchowski, Anne Leonard, and Jessica Roman).
- Inaugurated the Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium (with Aaron Barlow, Jill Belli, Mary Nilles for the first, and Lucas Kwong, Lavelle Porter, Wanett Clyde, Sean Scanlan, Leigh Gold, Kel Karpinski, and Emily Hockaday on subsequent ones).
- Directed City Tech’s B.S. in Professional and Technical Writing Program.
- Won some grants with Patrick Corbett to fund projects to leverage LEGO in writing classes and communication workshops.
- Contributed as an NEH Faculty Fellow and co-developed four pedagogical modules for A Cultural History of Digital Technology: Postulating a Humanities Approach to STEM (directed by Anne Leonhardt and co-directed by Sandra Cheng, Satyanand Singh, and Peter Spellane).
- Co-edited with Sean Scanlan a special issue of New American Notes Online (NANO) on Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
- Published the OERs: Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook and ENG2420 Science Fiction Syllabus.
- Published book chapters on blindness in Science Fiction (in Sharon Packer’s Lenses on Blindness), posthumanism in Science Fiction (co-authored with Lisa Yaszek in the Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman), and using Twitter in the writing classroom (in Twenty Writing Assignments in Context).
- Talked with Neil de Grasse Tyson on his Startalk Radio Show on 30 May 2019.
- Shared my research on Neuroscience and SF, Generative AI and Teaching, and Skateboarding Culture online.
- Won the 2023 Distinguished Alumni Award from the School of Literature, Media, and Communication in the Ivan Allen College at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
There’s a lot left to do. What can I accomplish in the next 10 years?
August 29, 2024
Busy Preparing My Fall 2024 Science Fiction Class

Fall 2024 classes begin on Wednesday, August 28. Originally, I was hoping to teach City Tech’s ENG2420, Science Fiction course in person this semester, but the in-person section had too few students to run. Thankfully, after the administration switched the class to being online, asynchronous and sending a message blast to prospective students, the new online class quickly filled up. Since City Tech recently switched to a new learning management system (LMS) called Brightspace, I’m going to experiment teaching the class on it instead of using our open learning system, OpenLab. However, I will still create my video lectures as YouTube videos, so they will be public facing for anyone interested in following along or using them in their own classes. Also, this will be my first time teaching the class using my open educational resource (OER) Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook. Here’s to a positive and productive semester!

August 26, 2024
Where to Search for Open Educational Resources (OER)
The next academic year is just around the corner, so I wanted to give a shout out for the open educational resource (OER) that I published earlier this year, Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook (YASFT), an over 60,000 word textbook on the history of SF literature that includes a syllabus, video lectures, and more.

And, if you’re an educator needing open and free teaching materials and textbooks, here are some useful resources where you can find OERs:
August 1, 2024