Kate Blanchard

I recently found myself on a Friday night amid a group of twenty-somethings, mostly women, who were celebrating their periods. Yes, you read that correctly. The students of the women’s resource center on campus decided to host a “menarche party” in honor of their monthly bleeding. They wore festive ...

Maybe you’ve been here before. It’s the middle of the semester. Your undergraduate survey class has been rolling along fine. Students are fairly engaged, and you feel you have a good rapport. Then along comes the mid-term, and you realize that the situation is not what you thought. ...

Am I the only one who didn’t learn to read until graduate school, or possibly until I started teaching? A convergence of things brought me to this realization. My current institution’s most recent alumni magazine included a feature on our New Media Studies program. It started only two ...

It’s late summer in North America. The days are breezy, the nights are cool. Students in athletics t-shirts and shower shoes shuffle around campus. Here in Alma the intermittent sounds of marching bands, coaches’ whistles, and bagpipes hover over the lawns. And best of all, the air has that “...

The main reason I don’t lecture is cowardice, plain and simple. I have never felt brilliant or knowledgeable or charismatic enough to carry a course on my own. Thankfully, though, I teach in a small department in a small institution where I have the luxury of small classes, so ...