Soon after sending another update to all the people enrolled in ModPo, I received this note from Carlene (one of the 20,000 or so ModPo’ers who received my message): You probably already know, but a university that is alway open is the sentinel of a modern way of considering learning....
Last night at the end-of-academic-year “hub party” at the Kelly Writers House I had the pleasure of announcing the winner of the Beltran Family Award for Innovative Teaching & Mentoring—for 2017-18. She is Jamie-Lee Josselyn! Jamie-Lee is an utterly remarkable teacher. On the 0-4 scale used for student evaluations, Jamie-Lee’s courses...
Mentor and mentee after mentee’s concert. This sort of creative, generative mutuality has just got to be my favorite part of university life. Congratulations to Hannah Judd as she nears the end of a spectacular undergraduate career & to Max Apple, now amazingly 75, for loving teaching so much still...
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. His new book is 1960: When Art & Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II & Remade the Modern (Columbia University Press, 2021). He is currently writing a book about online pedagogy. He has taught a massive open online course, "ModPo," to 265,000 participants in 192 countries since 2012.
Founder/Faculty Director, Kelly Writers House—intro video ][ events calendar
Convener/teacher, “ModPo.” an open online course on modern & contemporary U.S. poetry—overview of the course ][ intro video
Publisher of Jacket2 magazine—my Jacket2 commentary series ][ "First Readings"
Producer/host, PoemTalk podcast series—co-sponsored by Kelly Writers House & the Poetry Foundation
Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing—Creative Writing ][ RealArts internships ]
Co-founder & co-director of PennSound—50,000 files ][ 15 million downloads annually
Teacher & host, "Kelly Writers House Fellows"—since 1999 ][ Susan Sontag, John Ashbery, Jamaica Kincaid, Laurie Anderson, Adrienne Rich, Joan Didion, John Edgar Wideman & more
Teacher, "Representations of the Holocaust"—a course on survivor testimony ][ my holocaust site
Click on the image for information about the book.