Hector Vila
Office
Davis Family Library 224
Tel
(802) 443-2181
Email
hvila@middlebury.edu
Office Hours
Fall 24 - Tuesdays-10:00-11:30, Thursdays-2:00-3:30 and By Appointment

Professor Vila, an associate professor of Writing & Rhetoric, brings his extensive experience and expertise in experiential learning, student cohort-building, and academic inquiry into inequality to this role. His book, Life Affirming Acts, Education as Transformation in the Writing Classroom  (Heinemann/Boynton-Cook) addresses the tension between race and gender, class, and the education system. Héctor’s book article, Digital Stories in the Liberal Arts Environment: Educational Media Communities at the Margins,” with Barbara Ganley, in Media Communities, Brigitte Hipfl, Theo Hug, ed. (Waxmann, Berlin and New York) demonstrates how digital media can break down harsh boundaries between students and education. Further essays on education, marginalization, and identity are published by the Community Works Journal. Of interest may be, Degrees of Separation: Helping Students Find Safe Spaces for Thinking and Being, Star Wars Civilization and Stone Age Emotions, Who Owns the Academic Body in the ‘Pandemic University’ , and Reflecting With Students. The Ecology of Teaching is an interview about service learning, particularly at Middlebury College.  

Courses Taught

Course Description

Writing and Power
Power: who has it, who doesn’t, and what does it have to do with your writing? This course both instructs students in how to access power in academic contexts and to critique power structures. We’ll learn how power connects to literacy, and how it's shaped through rhetorical contexts. Students will explore their own power as writers and thinkers while engaging in meaningful personal, reflective and argumentative writing. The professor will work with each student extensively on their writing process and development, and we'll create a writing community. This course bears elective credit but does not fulfill the college writing requirement. 3 hrs. lect/disc (Students who have already taken WRPR 0101 cannot take this course again.)

Terms Taught

Fall 2020, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024

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Course Description

Writing to Heal
This writing-intensive course examines writing as a catalyst for healing after loss or grief. In a workshop focused on student writing, we will analyze fiction, drama, poetry, and creative nonfiction as a basis for discussions. To this end, we will read creative non-fiction, memoir, and novels. Assignments for this course will include formal analytical essays, creative work (published online), and oral presentations.

Terms Taught

Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2025

Requirements

CW, LIT

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Course Description

The Rhetorics of Sports
In this course we will examine the relationship between media, sports, and the formulation of one’s identity. We will examine issues pertaining to gender identification, violence, and hero worship. Reading critical essays on the subject, studying media coverage of sporting events, and writing short analytical essays will enable us to determine key elements concerning how sports are contextualized in American culture. Student essays will form the basis of a more in-depth inquiry that each student will then present, using media, at the end of the course. (Not open to students who have taken WRPR 1002)

Terms Taught

Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2024

Requirements

AMR, CW, SOC

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Course Description

Social Class and the Environment
In this course we will explore the consequence of growth, technological development, and the evolution of ecological sacrifice zones. Texts will serve as the theoretical framework for in-the-field investigations, classroom work, and real-world experience. The Struggle for Environmental Justice outlines resistance models; Shadow Cities provides lessons from the squatters movement; Ben Hewitt's The Town that Food Saved describes economy of scale solutions, and David Owen's The Conundrum challenges environmentalism. Texts will guide discussions, serve as lenses for in-the-field investigations, and the basis for writing. We will also travel to Hardwick and Putney, Vermont, to explore new economic-environmental models. (Not open to students who have taken ENVS/WRPR 1014)

Terms Taught

Spring 2021, Fall 2021

Requirements

AMR, NOR, SOC

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Course Description

The Rhetorics of Death
In this course we will examine a number of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mortality. Are we, in some sense, immortal? Would immortality be desirable? How should the knowledge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life? What is the place of grief? The goal of this course is to examine creative approaches to these questions in Literature and Philosophy. The purpose of this examination is to enable deep reflections on a meaningful life when understanding that there is an end to it. We will engage in discussions and share our writing as a means of understanding “the good life.” Student writing will emerge from discussions of course texts.

Terms Taught

Fall 2023, Fall 2024

Requirements

CMP, CW, LIT, PHL

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Course Description

Writing On Contemporary Issues: Writing, Editing, and Publishing Online
This course is an introduction to writing prose for a public audience. Students will create both critical and personal essays that feature strong ideas and perspectives. The readings and writing will focus on American popular culture, broadly defined. Essays will critically engage elements of contemporary American popular culture via a vivid personal voice and presence. Readings will address current issues in popular culture – Gladwell, “Brain Candy,” Klosterman, “Campus Confidential,” for instance. ReMix: Reading in Contemporary Culture is the central text. The end result will be a new online magazine of writings on American popular culture 3 hrs. lect.

Terms Taught

Fall 2020, Spring 2023

Requirements

AMR, ART, CW, SOC

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Course Description

Writing and Experience: Exploring Self in Society
The reading and online writing for this course will focus on what it means to construct a sense of self in relation to the larger social world of family and friends, education, media, work, and community. Readings will include nonfiction and fiction works by authors such as Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Andre Dubus, Tim O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Amy Tan, Tobias Wolff, and Alice Walker. Students will explore the craft of storytelling and the multiple ways in which one can employ the tools of fiction in crafting creative nonfiction and fiction narratives for a new online magazine on American popular culture. This magazine will have been created by students in Writing on Contemporary Issues. Narratives about self and society will therefore lean towards aspects of American popular culture. 3 hrs sem.

Terms Taught

Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024, Spring 2025

Requirements

AMR, CW, LIT, NOR, SOC

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Course Description

Independent Research
(Approval Required)

Terms Taught

Fall 2020, Winter 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Winter 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Winter 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Spring 2025

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