When I thought about creating a blog, my first instinct was to create one blog for teaching, another for tango, yet another for my research, and maybe another that focused on my love of podcasts. It then dawned on me that I’m way too lazy to create four separate blogs, so I settled on a single blog that combined all my passion projects. The common thread that holds these different subjects, topics, and hobbies together is my lifelong obsession with learning. Each day I am committed to learning something new, whether that something is from my students in the writing classroom, from dancers at the milongas or dance teachers in the studios, from the dozen or so podcasts that I subscribe to, from living in Buenos Aires or traveling the world for tango, or from my own research and studies. Weekly, I’ll provide updates reflecting on what I’m learning.
Biography
Dr. Mary Lourdes Silva is an Associate Professor of Writing at Ithaca College. She received her Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Writing Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to her doctoral work, she received an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction at California State University, Fresno. Her research interests include multimodal literacy, new media studies, emergent educational technologies, dance literacy, and Argentine tango. Outside of work, Dr. Silva dances and teaches Argentine tango; travels the world to attend tango festivals and marathons; conducts her own personal research to find the best coffee shops, restaurants, cheese shops, wineries, cocktails, and bakeries; and listens to hours of podcasts, training videos, language courses, and audio books while cycling or hiking the great outdoors.
The Learning Curve 