Teaching Modern & Contemporary American Poetry to 36k<\/p>\n
Al Filreis has taught his “ModPo” course at Penn for years; in Fall 2012 he
\noffered a 10-week version of the course online, via Coursera, to more than
\n36,000 students. The course, as in its previous versions, does not include
\nlectures, being based instead on discussion – the collaborative close
\nreadings of poems. The course grows out of Filreis’s work at the Kelly
\nWriters House; he has been Faculty Director of this literary freespace since
\nits founding in 1995. Filreis is also co-founder of PennSound, the Web’s
\nmain free archive of poetry readings, publisher of Jacket2 magazine, and
\nproducer and host of “PoemTalk,” a podcast\/radio series of close readings of
\npoems. In conversation with Nick Montfort, Filreis will discuss ModPo and
\nhis perspective on writing, teaching, and digital media.<\/p>\n
Filreis is Kelly Professor of English and Director of the Center for
\nPrograms in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. He is
\nthe author of Wallace Stevens and the Actual World, Modernism from Right to
\nLeft, Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modernism,
\n1945-60, and other works. He was chosen as Pennsylvania Professor of the
\nYear by the Carnegie Foundation in 2000.<\/p>\n
Co-sponsored by the SHASS Dean’s Office and the Literature Section.<\/p>\n