Stina French
Stina French was "edumacated" at Virginia Tech, where she taught Composition
and Women's Studies before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. The pendulum
swung out and back and has now landed her somewhere in the middle, which is a
good place to be. (Just ask Icarus.) Her academic interests include poetry in
all its forms; The Essay; cultural studies, including pop culture analysis and
narratives of sexuality and gender; and composition theory. She has burgeoning
interests in the slow-food movement and integrating new technologies into
curricula.
As your instructor, she seeks to incite, to enthuse, to
inspire- to unpin your butterflies. She wants you to know
that what you're doing together in the classroom is
dangerously beautiful and beautifully dangerous. Words are the raw stuff of
power, and if you won't wield them, someone else will. She
believes that she learns more from her students than they probably ever learn
from her. She's ok with that.
She has a few selves she inhabits besides English Instructor. She is a "turner
and burner" to use a North Carolinian term for a potter. We suppose her love
for making mud pies never wore off. She is also a "burner," to use a
Californian term for someone who attends Burning Man. This yearly festival of
radical self-expression and anarchic community is her Christmas and Easter
rolled into one, and she'll gladly share the good word with
you if you'd like. She memorizes poetry because it keeps her
from panicking. It's also easier to pack than a towel.
