The Writing Institute

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An innovative hub
for multimodal composition
and practice of writing craft

The Writing Institute works to help scaffold writing skills across the curriculum, and offers printed resources and workshops that support writing projects common to the Antioch experience, including the Life Aims Paper, the self-design major Statement of Inquiry, Senior theses, and the Senior Reflection Paper—as well as technical writing support for the co-op resume, cover letter, and digital portfolio. Writing mentorship includes faculty consultations, peer tutoring, the Alumni Writers Program, student-led writing groups, and faculty-led writeins. The Writing Institute and program at Antioch College also fosters opportunities in multimodal composition and the Digital Liberal Arts, creative nonfiction, reportage, literary journalism, writing immersions, public readings, Writers-in-Residence, and community outreach.

Brooke Bryan wearing black with necklace, outdoor background

Brooke Bryan

Chair of the Writing Program and Assistant Professor of Writing and Digital Literacy

Brooke Bryan wearing black with necklace, outdoor background
Brooke Bryan

Brooke Blackmon Bryan is an aesthetic philosopher and oral historian who composes work in narrative, media and textiles. A practitioner of critical and digital pedagogies, she currently chairs the Writing Program and serves as Assistant Professor of Writing & Digital Literacy at Antioch College. Brooke convenes the creativity and story area of practice, teaches a variety of nonfiction writing courses, and supports students in self-design majors that engage philosophy, media, oral history, critical community studies, and contemporary art practice. 

As director of Oral History in the Liberal Arts for the Great Lakes Colleges Association, Brooke works with GLCA program officers to fund, train, and support more than 60 Mellon-funded research projects employing interview methodology and digital tools for community-based learning. In its 5th year, the program has grown into a partnership with the Global Liberal Arts Alliance to support transnational interview projects. She travels regularly, offering workshops in critical pedagogy and oral history. Her recent convenings have been held at Antioch College, GLCA colleges, and other small liberal arts institutions throughout the Midwest while transnational oral history gatherings have been piloted in Morocco (Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane), Bulgaria (American University in Bulgaria in Blagoevgrad), and Ecuador (Universidad San Francisco de Quito, planned for June 2020). 

Brooke has studied with Howard Caygill, Franco (Bifo) Berardi, Santiago Zabala, Giovanni Tusa, Jean-Luc Nancy, Silvia Mazzini, Drew Dalton, Chris Yates, and Simonetta Moro in courses and topological field studies in Rome, Florence, Venice, Berlin, Paris, Athens, and NYC (2016-2019). Her current research focuses broadly on process and activist philosophy and takes two main tracks. The first is an object-focused exploration of new materialisms that locates the American quilt within a feminist Deleuzian aesthetic, exploring its praxis and conservation through virtuality, multiplicity, and event. This research focuses on the ‘broken pattern’ collection of African American quilts recently donated to the Berkeley Museum of Art by late collector Eli Leon, specifically exploring how vernacular art praxis engages iteration and alteration— qualities reflected in the form of the quilt and in contemporary quiltmaking communities. Her second line of research engages radical pedagogies at the intersection of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy and community-based research models in an attempt to rethink and reconfigure practices in higher education today. This work generates primary sources through interview, specifically engaging questions of collaborative and co-constructed knowledge production, how we might explode the canon of western theorists in our research and curricula, and how institutions of higher education must scaffold epistemological access for all— not just an offer of admission. 

Brooke often refers to herself as a radical phenomenologist with an audio recorder. She can usually be found in the Writing Institute building digital interview exhibits and working with students on their writing craft, in the midst of an interview with a person who is working in the trenches with these connected questions, or in her studio stitching.

 

EDUCATION

  • Ph.D., Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Art Theory, Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, ABD 2020
  • M.A., Humanities— Oral History Methodology & Sound Studies, Antioch University, 2013
  • B.A., Humanities— World Classics, Antioch University, 2009

 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

 

COURSES TAUGHT

GS 210: Global Seminar on Water

GS 210: Global Seminar Continuing Studies: Borderlands

ENG 351: Advanced Expository Writing: Long-form Creative Nonfiction

CLCN 145: Community Reporting 

ENG 251: Expository Writing: Personal Scholarly Narrative

ARTS 395: Visual and Critical Studies Seminar

ARTS 494: Senior Seminar: Studio Practice & Critique

LIT 299: Professional & Technical Writing

ENG 251: Expository Writing: Formal, Phenomenological, Hermeneutic Accounts

ENG 251: Expository Writing: Genre

ENG 101/105 English Composition: Content and Form

WORK 150: Work Portfolio I— On Working 

WORK 331: Sound, Sight, Sentiment: Phenomenologies of Place

WORK 425: Humanities Fieldwork: Oral History & Digital Scholarship

WORK 475: Extended Field Experience

 

INSTITUTES, WORKSHOPS & SCHOLARLY ACTIVITIES

Please see Brooke’s CV. 

 

NEWS & FEATURES

The Writing Program

Minimum Requirement

Prior to graduation, students are expected to master written communication ability that demonstrates development and effective expression of ideas and arguments in writing. This involves learning how to work in a variety of genres and styles. Written communication skills and abilities are developed through iterative experiences across the curriculum.

As part of the general education curriculum, students must complete two courses in composition: 

  • ENG 101 or ENG 105 English Composition 
  • and ENG 251 Expository Writing

Beyond General Education

In addition to satisfying general education requirements, students may also incorporate both creative and analytical writing into the design of their major. Faculty regularly teach the following: 

  • Advanced Expository Writing  
  • Poetry
  • Fiction
  • Lyric Essay
  • Creative Nonfiction
  • Translation
  • Community Reporting Practicum

 

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