Intercambio Café

I am collaborating with a colleague at the College of Southern Idaho to have my students here at the Universidad de Guanajuato correspond with students there at CSI via the online learning platform, Blackboard. The students have just begun the dialogue, writing a little bit about themselves and about their hometowns. This evening I've enjoyed perusing the start of their conversation.

I hope this is not just a useful rhetorical exercise (it requires the students to think deliberately about their audience and how to build common ground), but also a meaningful cultural and literary exchange. Already, it is interesting to see how the students choose to identify themselves (through work, family, interests, etc.) and how they describe their place (through landscape, architecture, events, etc.).

In my course on the literature of the U.S. West, we will be reading literature that pays close attention to place, so I think it is particularly pertinent for the students to create their own representation of the place they know best, and present it to others.

I'm looking forward to watching the conversation develop.