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AbstractThis article recounts the experience of moving an in-person literature class online at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing comparisons between the novel Mrs. Dalloway, which the class was reading at the time, and the experience of the early days of the pandemic, the piece outlines how the exigencies of the pandemic led to revised teaching and assessment practices.

This article exposes and explores what has become a perfect storm of sorts for educators at the secondary and postsecondary levels: a set of educational standards that encourage a reverence before texts and ignore the role a reader plays in the construction of meaning, the widespread use of the Internet and related technologies that promote passivity, and a political administration that releases fake news, denounces real news as fake, and provides what it calls “alternative facts.” Considering these elements independently, as well as the potentially calamitous consequences of their convergence, this article sounds a warning about these consequences and details how instructors at the secondary and postsecondary levels might respond.

This article argues for the importance of teaching reading in first-year composition courses within a metacognitive framework called mindful reading. Crucial for developing more comprehensive literacy practices that students can transfer into other courses and contexts, this framework encourages students to actively reflect on a range of reading practices in order to become more knowledgeable and deliberate about how they read. This work is intended to prepare students to successfully engage with the range of complex texts they will encounter throughout their postsecondary academic careers and beyond.

As stylistic study is revived within composition, figures of thought, a neglected subcategory of the larger category of figures, have a great deal to offer our student readers and writers. These figures can shift students' attention away from content and argument toward other equally important but often ignored aspects of prose, thereby enriching students' rhetorical repertoires. This focus on style also contributes to our understanding of composition as a discipline and its relationship to the field of rhetoric.