Dr. Jamie Berthel Office: CT214 Courses Taught: |
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Educational Background A rhetoric and writing specialist, Dr. Berthel is liberally educated. Her undergraduate degree, a contract major in Allied Arts, consisted of performance arts courses in Music, Theater, Art, Dance, and Film Studies. Her M.A. is in Literature, equally British and American. Her dissertation is a marriage of occidental and oriental rhetorics. Using paradox and postmodern theories of critical thinking, her courses emphasize the role of S/subjectivity in popular culture and "process" composition. A socratic method educator, Berthel often teaches without a textbook. Personal Information Teaching Philosophy With regard to critical thinking, my assignments quite often present the student with an aphorism or verbal paradox, which the student struggles to translate, interpret, and illustrate. Students must "make an effort to answer" when called upon; active and spontaneous discussion is the model for my classroom, which is a Socratic setting for the peer review of essays which are read aloud and critiqued by the entire class, then and there.
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