Alla Gadassik

(January 18, 2013). As a writing genre, the academic cover letter is surrounded by too much mystery, and it elicits unmerited levels of anxiety. Since we’re talking about academic writing in general, that’s saying something. As part of my fellowship at Northwestern University’s Graduate Writing Place, I developed a professionalization workshop on the dreaded “job letter,” geared specifically toward students in my department of media studies. Continue reading “Workshop: “Writing the Academic Cover Letter”” →

(December 12, 2012). Today was my final day of teaching the foundation course “Analyzing Media Texts” at Northwestern University’s School of Continuing Studies. This was my first time working with returning and mature students, and it was very rewarding to have a classroom with such a range of life experiences and an open-minded approach to the diverse films we watched. My personal highlight was our field trip, which took place during the week we studied documentary cinema. I’ve never tried to do a field trip for a film analysis class before. We watched Chasing Ice at the Music Box theatre, with the additional challenge of taking notes during a public screening. Then we went to a cafe to talk about how the film used formal techniques to show the long-term impact of climate change.

Image above is from Chasing Ice (2012), directed by Jeff Orlowski