History
The Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms was founded in spring 2019 by SWLF Professor Raymond Malewitz with the goal of offering free, short, easily accessible literary lessons to students within and beyond Oregon. During the first year of the series, the project was supported by the OER division of Oregon State's E-Campus with David Green serving as Director of Photography. Each lesson was recorded at an Oregon State E-Campus Video Studio and was written by a variety of SWLF Faculty Members. Dedicated transcript pages for each video lesson were introduced in fall 2019.
Due to the COVID pandemic, the partnership with E-Campus ended in 2020 and all subsequent videos were directed and edited by Raymond Malewitz in two makeshift green-screen studios: first in his home and later, when COVID restrictions were lifted, in a classroom in Moreland Hall. Spanish translations for the video lessons began in fall 2020, with the majority of the work being done by Raisa Cañete Blazquez.
In spring 2021, Senior Lecturer J.T. Bushnell began work on a second video series: The Oregon State Guide to Grammar. During this same year, SWLF Graduate Students from our MA in English and MFA in Creative Writing programs began to contribute to both series as lecturers and writers. Two graduate students--Chris Smith (MFA 2022) and Vanessa Garcia Vazquez (MA 2025)--also helped with video and transcript productions.
In spring 2024, two MFA students--Sukayna Davanzo and Bec Ehlers--began to create in-person lessons and activities tied to each video lecture. At this same term, MA students piloted the Oregon State Guide to Climate-Change Literature project, which will be further developed in the fall.
Currently, we have produced 78 video lessons, and our SWLF YouTube channel has amassed over 33,000 subscribers, making it the most popular English Department channel in the world.
Web Statistics
Video traffic to the SWLF YouTube page has displayed dramatic annual growth from the start of the series in spring 2019:
2018: 945 views
2019: 132,615 views
2020: 493,693 views
2021: 861,889 views
2022: 956,277 views
2023: 1,061,397 views
Similarly, traffic to SWLF web pages displayed exponential annual growth from the moment we began to create dedicated transcript pages in late 2019:
2018: 90,349 views
2019: 94,526 views
2020: 168,948 views
2021: 552,629 views
2022: 1,420,509 views
2023: 2,535,879 views
This traffic includes viewers and readers from over 150 countries, with the 10 most popular being the United States, Mexico, India, the Philippines, Canada, Columbia, Argentina, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Pakistan. According to Google Scholar, our transcript pages have also been cited over 100 times in scholarly contexts ranging from student theses and dissertations to published articles and monographs.
Questions and comments about the series can be directed to Raymond Malewitz.