Instructor Spotlight with Sarah Haughn

Fostering Meaningful and Relevant Conversations in the Rhetoric and Composition Classroom

Sarah Haughn has been an instructor at Iowa State University for the past four years. She usually teaches ENGL 1500 and 2500, SPCM 212 (Introduction to Public Speaking), and ENGL 3100 (Rhetorical Analysis). When earning her Bachelor of Arts from the College of the Atlantic, she focused on writing and narrative theory, literature, and cultural studies. From UC Davis she earned a Masters in English (poetry and creative writing) and a PhD in Performance Studies, with designated emphases in African American Studies and Studies in Practice and Performance.

Sarah has always been interested in the relationship between sign systems, regimes of representation, and relations of power. Her focus in black studies stems from a deep conviction that in order to understand the way the world works, we must understand blackness and anti-blackness and how this structures the world: “It’s not this niche specialization, it’s actually fundamental to understanding how we got here–to this point in time–and how we relate to each other, what we assume about the world, and how that has come to form.”

Before coming to ISU, Sarah taught across many different disciplines, including African American studies, literature, sociology, and even a little in cinema and digital media studies. This work was at UC Davis, where she earned both of her graduate degrees. As she was working on her PhD dissertation, she was keen and happy to return to an English Department, so she joined the ISU faculty. This semester, Sarah is teaching Advanced Comm 3140 for the first time, as well as a seminar in literary genres (ENGL 4500), looking at black poetics and the rule of law. She is currently working on a book manuscript around anti-blackness, gestational violence, and a critique of creativity. She is also in the process of organizing a few academic symposiums with colleagues from other universities.

Sarah describes her pedagogical approach as apprenticeship. She deeply values relationships with students as a guide in their learning, “not as an infallible expert, but as someone who has climbed the mountain a few times, who can walk up with them and prevent them from leaping off a cliff. But also, who might learn a cool new way of scaling the mountain from the student who sees something that I haven’t seen.” She has taught learning communities of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS), Design, and Common Threads (Fashion Design, Apparel, and Merchandising). In order to tailor the activities to these specific student populations, Sarah seeks to provide content that is relevant to their subject matter, share matching resources and databases, and teach them how to do research within their field.

A fundamental piece of Sarah’s teaching philosophy is to communicate the idea that as important as jobs are, there is so much more to a person than their job. She remarks that as instructors we might assume that students are only interested in their jobs or career placement, but this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if it is how teaching is approached. Instead, she suggests instructors get students to be passionate, curious, and creative and invested in learning. This helps students grow by developing the skills to question sets of assumptions where they might not have previously been able to see them. Rather than trying to fit into a preestablished “shape” in the job market, Sarah advocates for teaching students “in a way where they can see the shape and maybe question it or change it, or at least understand that it’s there and not just assume that they have to change their own shape to fit this thing that is immutable or inevitable.” So by the time that students finish a course with Sarah, she hopes that when they are asked, “What do you want to be?” they can think beyond employment.

Along those lines, Sarah finds teaching rhetorical analysis is much more exciting when students are allowed to begin with what they are passionate about, what they find intriguing or troubling. In doing so, students can locate resonance and dissonance in their choice for an opinion editorial or persuasive speech. Sarah uses this strategy as a pathway for students to begin discovering where they have strong feelings in the analysis and try to understand how the form of the piece is part of what makes them feel in such a way about it. When the stakes and significance of the argument remain a central element to students, they become more engaged and write more compellingly because they are invested in the formal considerations rather than viewing them as incidental. By making the topic and assignment relevant in such a personal way, instructors can guide students away from descriptive essays and towards stronger and more analytical pieces.

An innovative approach that Sarah brought to her first-year Design learning community was doing a “What’s on your desk?” project for the profile assignment in 1500. In an attempt to break down the feeling of unapproachability between students and professors, Sarah fostered an environment for them to create significant relationships with faculty. For this profiling activity, students had to interview a professor whose work they found interesting and uncover how their office space or desk was an expression of not only their professional but also their artistic self, identity, or mode of work. The assignment was framed as telling a story about the faculty member through their desk and the objects on it, which allowed students to focus on the design framework, but also provided an opportunity for them to get to know these professors in a way that would be useful for their journey at Iowa State and maybe even find someone who could eventually become their mentor.

Another creative activity that Sarah implements in her classes, this time for the 2500 portfolio assignment, is zine-making. With support from the ENGLinks learning community program (shout out to Brenna Dixon and Val Gregori), she gathers supplies–scissors, glue, free magazines and books from the library; reserves a room for each section; and has students print out examples of their work: from drafts to peer review comments, instructor feedback, and finished writing. Then, her students put it all together to showcase their voice, what was important to them, and what they learned along the way. During their final exam period, students then exchange their zines with one another. Sarah recommends this activity as it is not only very fun (for students and instructors!), but also a good shift in pace and a meaningful way to end the course. Before taking Sarah’s class, not many students are familiar with zines, so she hopes that making one empowers them to realize that they can produce something by themselves and share it. “Groups of people, regular people, have been getting together and sharing knowledge this way informally for a long time, and it’s a way to still do so that’s perhaps less gentrified or alienating than an algorithmically curated feed,” she highlights.

When Sarah was hired to teach ENGL 1500 and 2500, she realized faculty often have a lot more to give than the basics of what those classes might be designed for. But she believes that one of the best things about ISUComm Foundation courses is that instructors bring themselves into the spaces they create in their classrooms, so that they become unique “seminars of sorts” in and of themselves. “Each person has their own way of shaping and cultivating those classes to be deeply meaningful for students, as well as equipping them with the skillsets that we’re supposed to equip them with.”

Sarah reflects upon how teaching foundation courses allows instructors to reach students all across many different majors. To prompt conversations with students who may never have another place in the university where they can have them and think about a variety of peers’ perspectives that might not be available to them in other departments. So while she really enjoys teaching the more specific and advanced English courses, ISUComm Foundation courses provide a space for students to consider new perspectives from peers as well as grapple with the assumptions and ethical considerations of communication practices that shape the communities they engage in as students, workers, and people.