A couple of years ago, my family and I watched the entirety of Avatar: The Last Airbender . It's a really well done cartoon from Nickelodeon that still has a pretty strong following, despite the second series, Korra , not quite catching my interest in the same way. During LTUE this year, there was a paper by an undergrad from BYU whose thesis was "Feminism and Avatar: The Last Airbender ." The paper he was presenting wasn't finished, and his primary conceit was really just being explored at this point, rather than being polished and ready for presentation. As an educator, it kind of bothered me that he had come to present a really interesting idea, but hadn't finished the exploration in any depth. While I didn't mind the request for feedback and the general discussion--in fact, I enjoyed that quite a bit--it felt slipshod to have an unfinished product presented at a writing conference. But the conversation definitely got me thinking. The audience was posit...
Personal musings of Steven Dowdle