As the former director of the English Department’s CIC entry-level writing program, Professor Laurie George now recruits and supports humanities faculty as they integrate technology into upper-division writing, literature, and cultural studies courses. She also designs and teaches multimedia courses of her own, further expanding the CIC curriculum. Many of her designs are culturally and, specifically, technologically centered. Each focuses on shifting literacy practices from the past to our present digital age.

In her senior seminar “Ravishing Reads: Textual Pleasures, Pains, and Reading Practices in our Time," for example, students test Harold Bloom’s theory that “the way we read now . . . retains considerable continuity with past, however it is performed in the academies.” To test Bloom’s and other literacy/literary theorists’ beliefs, students read in and out of class conventionally-bound books, e-books, audiotapes, 35 mm film and digitized adaptations of original print stories, plus hypermediated poetry, diaries, and letters. All this as well as discussions of their findings, in person and online--the differing debate venues themselves creating field tests for student enquiry.

Whatever the course subject, Professor George seeks to balance traditional classroom practices with technological innovation to stimulate minds and imaginations, maximize textual pleasures, and bring smiles to her students’ faces.