Interview with Katie Garahan

Dr. Garahan is currently an Assistant Professor of English and the director of the Writing Center at Radford University in Virginia. She is also part of the humanities faculty for the Governor’s School for Visual & Performing Arts and Humanities.

Can you explain your career, and what you research?

I am an assistant professor of English and also the director of the Radford Writing

Center. So, there are three parts of my job. First, I teach courses in rhetoric and

writing, including first-year writing, science writing, teaching writing as well as

rhetoric and discourse theory. Second, I direct The Writing Center, which offers one-

to-one writing tutoring, in-class writing workshops, and individualized support for

instructors who teach writing. Third, I conduct research. One avenue of my research

focuses on developing and honing empirical methods for assessing writing center

work. For instance, I have an ongoing project that focuses on developing methods of

assessing writing workshops and training tutors to engage in writing workshops. The

other avenue of my research focuses on rhetorics of education policy, advocacy, and

dissent. My previous work has examined how K-12 teachers construct their

professional identities in discourses of dissent, including open letters and protest

signs. I am currently working on a larger project that looks at gendered

representations of teachers throughout the history of education reform. I have found

in preliminary research that representations of teachers as heroes, mothers, martyrs,

and villains play a crucial role in the narrative of education as a cure-all for social

issues like poverty and racial inequality.

What drew you to study English and the rhetorics of educational policy, advocacy, and dissent?

Writing has always been an important part of how I experience the world. I have boxes of old journals cluttering my basement. Writing poetry, stories, rants, or even snippets of songs I love helps me process my experiences and emotions. In high school, I had wonderful English teachers who inspired in me a love of literature. I distinctly remember a moment in 9th grade when Mrs. Herring analyzed a poem—“Making a Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye. I liked the poem when I first read it, but after her analysis, I loved it. I too wanted to analyze texts to gain a deeper appreciation of their beauty and power.

So, I studied English in college and became a high school English teacher in North Carolina. I loved teaching high school, but was disheartened by what my state was doing to the profession: teachers hadn’t received a bump in salary for years, and the state was working to dismantle job security, increased pay for advanced degrees and longevity, and rules against maximum class sizes. I was working constantly—which was an expectation—and yet felt attacked by those making the decisions about my work. Moreover, I started to tune into how the teaching profession was represented in political discourse and the media—teachers should not be concerned about things like pay and job security because teaching is a selfless profession. And, as teachers, we should be able to overcome obstacles plaguing our schools, like gross racial and economic disparities. I felt these narratives were untrue and damaging, so I decided to go back to school and study them.

What are some of your most memorable experiences as an English professor that inspire you to continue your work?

Well, I’ve only been an English professor for a little over a year, so my experiences are limited. As a teacher, my most rewarding moments occur when I convince a struggling student that writing well is not innate, and they are not inherently bad at it. I feel accomplished when those students see themselves improve their skills. I believe helping students gain confidence in their ability to communicate clearly and effectively is the most important part of my job.

This year I’ve started teaching future teachers—which has always been a dream of mine. Their energy and excitement are contagious.

As a professor for the Governor’s School for Humanities, why do you believe the humanities are important for students in this generation?

As I said, the most important part of my job is to help students gain the confidence and skills to communicate clearly and effectively through different genres and in different situations. Closely tied to these skills is the ability to read, process, and analyze large amounts of information. In other words, the humanities provide the tools to read and think critically. Generation Z has more access to information than any previous generation. If you have a question about how the proteins in the SARS- CoV-2 work, most of you can find out without even leaving your homes. However, you have to know where to look and how to determine if the information is accurate—no easy feat. I believe the humanities—and for me, rhetorical studies—offer tools to help.

This year was especially different due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the various social issues, such as systemic racial inequality, that were brought to light. Because these social issues and social justice movements were brought to light, I believe that there are opportunities for social innovation in our society. Can you explain what innovation is to you, and how you think we can be innovative when publicly speaking about these social issues with others?

I think being innovative means collaboratively seeking to understand the intricacies of social issues. Coming to the (pretty inevitable) conclusion that our country is riddled with economic and racial disparities is important. And, I think, we see people make this first step all the time. After any tragic instance of police brutality against a Black person, many of us see our news feeds filled with memes and quotes that demonstrate a person’s admission that disparities exist. The next step—the harder step—is seeking (together) to understand how disparities manifest and determining how each of us can contribute to their demise. Now, I’m not saying every person can possibly come to know all the intricacies of the racial and economic disparities in this country, but they can seek to better understand their own little corner of the world. What do their school systems look like? Are they racially and economically desegrated? If not, what’s the history there? Are the schools equitably funded? They might be surprised to find out that—for instance—schools in their area are in fact highly segregated, and since funding is partly based on property taxes, schools in lower-income areas have not been able to purchase new textbooks or tablets for their students. Is there a local nonprofit who is working to fight such disparities that this person can donate to? Could they write an op-ed for their local newspaper to raise awareness about these issues? So, when we choose to speak publicly about such issues, we must understand them on a deep, intricate level. Take, for instance, Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow. She tackles one area of racial disparity—mass incarceration. We can’t all be Alexander—who is a civil rights litigator and legal scholar—but we can turn to her work to inform the arguments we make.

I believe many students were inspired to become an advocate for certain social issues this year, but were not sure how to voice their opinions on these issues because of the divide in beliefs. Do you have any tips on how students can navigate these stark differences in opinion when public speaking, and on how students can engage critically with public discourse?

This is a tough question. One way to engage critically with public discourse is to do what I mentioned above, read critically and seek to learn the intricacies of an issue before forming and voicing an opinion. Navigating stark differences in opinion is tricky—even for the most seasoned writers, researchers, and advocates. People will always find reasons to react negatively to an opinion on a controversial topic. One tip would be to construct compelling arguments using the three most common rhetorical appeals—ethos (credibility, authority), logos (logic, reason), and pathos (emotion). That is, present yourself in a trustworthy manner; create sound, logical arguments; and (carefully) connect with your audience on an emotional level. For an expert example on these three appeals read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Today, we have plenty of venues, like social media, to voice our opinions, but often these are closed networks, meaning we end up preaching to the choir or having an argument over-and-over with the same five people. In this way, students might have to work a bit harder to engage critically with public discourse. However, I believe older generations do want to hear what young people have to say. Though the “haters” as you might call them are often the loudest (think, antagonists of the Parkland student protesters and Greta Thunberg), I think my generation for the most part are blown away by these instances of Generation Z activism. And, venues exist for your voice. The New York Times, for instance, has a Student Opinion section in which editors pose daily questions for students to engage with.

Do you have any advice for students who are interested in studying English in the future?

Read. Read different genres: fiction, nonfiction, sci-fi, memoirs, poetry, short stories. Read difficult texts that you might not immediately be drawn to and stick with them. Studying English is all about working out your brain, which—just like physical working out—can sometimes be painful.

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