I am planning to review the CCCC session C.24 called Departmental WID in International Perspective: Changing Realities for Writing Across the Curriculum
I plan on reviewing session O.12 (YouTube U.: Home Video Goes to College) at the 4Cs. Scott has informed me that we will indeed be able to stay that long. :)
Journal Article Review: “Personal Genres, Public Voices” by Jane Danielwicz
Danielwicz begins by defining what she means by voice and how we, as teachers, can utilize personal genres (which she describes as autobiography, autoethnography, biography, and the personal essay) to move our students toward their own agency in public voices. She then outlines the two major benefits of this by creating two categories: 1) pedagogical and 2) rhetorical. She argues that personal genres can result in students’ own authority, thus increasing the “possibility of action”. Danielwicz makes a particular note to outline the many definitions (and ideological battles) of the term “voice” in writing, existing even within the field of Rhetoric and Composition. She cites known rhetoric and composition scholars such as Peter Elbow and Kathleen Yancey; however, Danielwicz makes her own working definition of the term “voice” clear by stating it is “a social phenomenon with rhetorical effects and social recognition…not private experience” and that voice is also “a quality of writing that can be taught or promoted from any theoretical stance and all types of pedagogies.” Danielwicz then describes her own pedagogical experiment, using this stance, in her own classroom in which she uses autobiographies of her students. Two students are highlighted: Jackie and Amelia. Excerpts of their first-draft and last-draft autobiographies are contrasted with each other, as a description of these two students’ interaction with each other is provided not only as commentary, but explanation of their journey from the personal to the public realm. Genres are defined later on in the article, being described more as having tendencies as opposed to strict formulaic traits. This definition is important to note when reading this article because it causes the reader to frame the information in a new way: not viewing genres as confining conventions, but rather as creative guidelines. The classroom experiment of using autobiography as a genre is detailed to include the element of peer revision, focus on rhetorical methods rather than topic, and creating an overall classroom environment of inquiry. Danielwicz then points out the behaviors exhibited by each of these two focus student participants, and then looks to the students’ perception of agency within their own personal genres. The student participants, Jackie and Amelia, had opposing views when comparing their autobiographies which Danielwicz viewed as a perfect opportunity to illustrate how “negotiating difference” could happen when the personal was brought into the public. This method proved successful, as it spurred conversation and reflection. Danielwicz lists nine outcomes of this classroom experiment of genre: 1) individual differences are recognized and acknowledged, 2) students understand what it means to have a “voice”, 3) writers realize the story is never the same told twice, 4) autobiography is self-reflexive, 5) writers enjoy prolonged experiences of getting to know one another, 6) writers see themselves in all essays, 7) students feel deep personal satisfaction that comes in thinking and writing about self, 8) public issues surface through personal stories, 9) students recognize that much in their lives merit attention. A glaring concern I have, however, is the scarce number of participants used for this piece. A more convincing argument would include a larger number producing the same results.
Article Review “A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing” Philip Eubanks and John D. Schaeffer CCC 59:3 February 2008, p 372-388
In their essay “A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing,” Philip Eubanks and John D. Schaeffer address the phrase “academic bullshit” and, after accepting the phrase as a perhaps all too appropriate referent for the writing fostered by academics, attempt to redefine “bullshit” in a favorable light by defining “what bullshit is” and “how what bullshit is varies” (387).
“A Kind Word” is predicated by John Frankfurt’s essay “On Bullshit,” an exploration of the “bullshit” phenomenon. Eubanks and Schaeffer’s objective is to take “bullshit” further by investigating its prevalence in academia, humanities, and rhetoric by identifying three reasons compositionists must address “bullshit”: (1) “the writing style of composition research risks being called bullshit because it often has the timbre of abstruse literary criticism or of social science;” (2) “composition has taken up disciplinary writing as an important area of study and thus implicitly endorses it;” (3) “one major consequence of studying disciplinary writing has been the abandonment of the abstract ideal once called ‘good writing’” (374). In addition, Eubanks and Schaeffer seek to identify a finite definition of “bullshit,” a task they claim Frankfurt was unable to accomplish.
It is clear as Eubanks and Schaeffer address the complicated nature of “bullshit,” especially as it is defined in academia and by compositionists, that the result of their investigation is the decisive opinion that “bullshit, in at least some senses, animates what is best in academic rhetoric” (374). In order to illustrate their claim, Eubanks and Schaeffer break their argument into four sections. In “Method of Definition,” the authors define “bullshit” in regards to composition and academia, separating “bullshit” in rhetoric from a pedestrian perception of the term. In “Prototypical Bullshit,” define prototypical and nonprototypical uses of bullshit by aligning the two types with intention and misrepresentation. In “Academic Bullshit among Professors,” the authors aim to separate academic from non-academic bullshit in order to emphasize who should determine “academic bullshit” and how this perception changes depending on audience. Finally, in “Academic Bullshit among Students,” Eubanks and Schaeffer acknowledge that much of the writing students are asked to produce in composition classes is indeed the worst form of bullshit by aligning it with “prototypical bullshit” as defined in section two and identifying this type of student bullshit as disengagement.
It seems every voyeur longs to call academics out on their “academic bullshit,” a flaw of human nature that makes this article significantly more satisfying. It might be interesting to compare some of the themes in “A Kind Word” to a similar set of observations regarding academic discourse set forth in Stuart Chase’s essay, “Gobbledygook.”
Review: Session A11, Conference on College Composition and Communication
Revisionist Views on History of Rhetoric
If we believe history is destined to be repeated -- at least the views of history as presented in Revisionist Views on the History of Rhetoric -- then we as a culture can learn much from the lessons of our past. This panel of presenters asked us to look at how rhetoric was interpreted at various times in history, and to reflect upon the connections to our current understanding of the field.
Lee Miller began by exploring the voices in the margins in the history of classical rhetoric. He organized his view of rhetoric within homiletics, which he defined as “purposeful use of language in a public forum.” According to Miller’s definition, homiletics includes many voices that may have been marginalized at certain points in history. These other voices, had they been considered with those of the more mainstream in the rhetorical tradition, may have contributed to a different perspective of history. He cites Sojourner Truth’s body rhetoric as once such example of a contribution made to the rhetorical tradition that changes the way we look at that history.
Miller contends that this kind of inquiry into how homiletics has figured into the field of rhetoric highlights that homileticians (particularly those non-white and female) have been relegated to the margins, reducing or distorting their value in the field overall. He ponders whether alternative views of this history are possible, perhaps through a re-exploration of history and the perspectives through which it has been traditionally delivered.
This theme was explored by the second presenter, Shane Borrowman, within the specific context of how rhetoric has been interpreted in Islamic history. Specifically, Borrowman investigates Ibn Rushd, a medieval Arab commentator on Aristotle, who articulates a rationale for including the Rhetoric and Poetics as the concluding books of Aristotle’s Organon (Aristotle’s collected works on logic).
Borrowman maintains that in European history Aristotle was not studied against those who came before because much of this previous scholarship was lost. But it was preserved in the Arabic tradition, and studied, and applied to the construction of their knowledge about Aristotle and his works. Most significantly for the history of the rhetorical tradition, European scholars consider Aristotle’s six books on logic as separate from the Rhetoric and the Poetics, but Arab scholars view these works as one corpus. For Ibn Rushd the Poetic, which he defined as rhythmic speech, had originated in the oratory of rhetoric.
Perhaps even more significantly, in the Arabic tradition, where all efforts are designed to honor Allah, Aristotle’s paganism and classical ideas had to be adapted to contemporary Muslim civilization. In the adaptation, Ibn Rushd and other Arab scholars were making knowledge from a new perspective, based on the same texts that European scholars had made knowledge of a different view. As Aristotle’s works were not just translated, but interpreted for the Islamic tradition, the commentators (Ibn Rushd among the leaders) who negotiated these texts for their audience were required to understand them perhaps more than any other. Borrowman argues that Ibn Rushd may have had the most complete knowledge of Aristotle’s work, and that the Islamic tradition’s perspective provides a much different view, perhaps one our accepted European tradition has marginalized.
Wade Mahon, the final member of the panel, connected the idea of varying perspectives used to interpret the same text with his own exploration of the use of the term ‘elocution’ as a rhetorical term. Eighteenth-century elocutionists used the term to describe the rhetorical canon of delivery despite the fact that it was already commonly used to describe the canon of style. Scholars in this area have suggested that an ignorance of classical rhetoric was the foundation of this usage, but Mahon disagrees. He suggests that the reason is more complex: “the discourse of elocution was a way to combine the concerns of both style (elocutio) and delivery (pronuntiatio) into one comprehensive rhetorical theory that was more attuned to the specific concerns of modern speech and writing contexts than the conventional rhetorical approaches influenced by Ramus (who had reduced rhetoric to style and delivery anyway).” According to Mahon, what distinguishes the elocutionists is their insistence that non-verbal aspects of communication are more important than words in managing emotional responses of audiences. Mahon’s theory has applications to modern composition theory: if we focus on written text alone we can easily disregard style and delivery, creating a disconnect between the writer’s intent and the reader’s emotion. Mahon suggests considering the classical orator’s approach to focus on both written text and oral presentation, using style and delivery to engage an audience, appealing to the emotion of that audience in a way that written text alone could not accomplish. While he points out that print literacy was replacing oratory at this time in history, the written word was considered my many rhetorical scholars to be weaker in communication because it did not complete the emotional connection between author and reader, thus creating the shift in elocution as representative of delivery and style, rather than style alone.
Elocutionary theory, according to Mahon, can provide insight into how a reader gains access to the emotion in a text. Considering gesture, tone, facial expression and other elements were part of oratory, but are not easily replicated through written text. Like Miller and Borrowman, Mahon urges us to resist the limited perspective with which we might be presented in favor of further discovery.
Conference on College Composition and Communication, Session A.23
Technological Transformations: Distance Education and Writing Centers
This session began with a presentation by Tammy Conrad-Salvo and John M. Spartz that focused on revision through the use of the Purdue Writing Center’s use of a software program called Kurzweil, a “comprehensive reading, writing, and learning software solution.” The program has speak-aloud features in human-like voices, textual markup features, and other features. Their handout also said that “many individuals with learning disabilities—including those with, dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, or…English Language Learners—have found Kurzweil’s text-to-speech features and writing tools to be beneficial.” Of the many uses of this software, the speakers noted that a feature many students enjoyed was that of highlighting passages for revision. Spartz said Kurzweil is expensive, and many of its features also exist in other applications like Microsoft Word. Next, JoAnn Griffin discussed the use of the Tablet PC in the University of Louiseville’s Writing Center tutorials. The Tablet PC has an electronic pen tool so that tutors can write on the “text” and send it back to the student—she talked a little bit about video and voice chat features also, but these might be dependent on what students have available on their own PC’s. One of her key points based on their work with Tablet PC’s so far was that “tablet PC’s may magnify consultant control and/or suppress writer engagement.” I think a point to be taken here is that when communicating online with students, we need to heighten our efforts to communicate in open, encouraging, and friendly manners. Griffin found that tutors and students were generally satisfied with tablet PC tutorials. However, students often preferred the online tutorials while tutors preferred face-to-face. Writers also said that more of their concerns were addressed in face-to-face consultations. JoAnn Liebman-Matson discussed the online composition program at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock where she teaches. She said that critics have argued that: online classes differ from traditional ones because they’re more likely to be taught by multiple persons than by one teacher; online classes are disembodied—students and teachers do not know or see one another; and online classes are more time-consuming than traditional classes. In response to these criticisms, she argued that online courses are particularly valuable for compositionists because they increase the amount of reading and writing done in a semester; and she noted in passing a need to include the visual and other multimodal forms of communication online. Based on a recent survey of their online classes, they found that many students prefer online classes due to their busy work or family schedules. For example, 78 percent of those who responded to the survey (n=32) said that work made it difficult to attend classes on campus. She also said that online classes do require more time than traditional classes. She emphasized the importance of training teachers before having them teach online courses. This just scratches the surface of the information from her survey. They plan on doing much more with their online composition courses. Sue Dinitz, Director of the Writing Center at the University of Vermont, was the final speaker. Her talk focused on principles of universal design in Writing Centers. There are nine principles of universal design (developed by researchers at two different universities since the 1970’s), but the overall goal of it is to design spaces and services that can accommodate a wide range of student needs and abilities. It is not a “one-size-fits-all” design, but rather one that is context-specific and adaptive to situations. Originally, the concept aimed at accommodating disabled students; Dinitz’s explanation suggests that it is meant as a heuristic for accommodating all student needs and abilities. She explained how she and the writing tutors at the University of Vermont have implemented these principles into their practice. For example, the first principle is “equitable use,” or trying to be aware of all the different needs and situations of students in that could benefit from their services. Handouts should be in reach to persons in wheelchairs. Online sessions should be available for circumstances such as students who travel or snow-in days in Vermont. “Even though are spaces are accessible, in Vermont we often have ice or snow-covered sidewalks, making it difficult and sometimes dangerous for students in wheelchairs to get to their appointments.” She used this example to explain how online tutoring sessions allow for universal design, since it accommodates students who are not able to visit face-to-face. Other principles aimed toward communicating in simple and intuitive manners, making print materials in the center perceptible for all visitors, and creating a community of learners.
Kara Taczak Review for Kairos 2008 Conference on College Composition and Communication
“Student Expertise and Knowledge Transfer: Teaching Research Writing in the First Year Academic Writing Class” Session K.20 Friday, April 4, 2008
• Phillip Troutman, “A Proto-disciplinary Approach to First-Year Writing: The Comics Medium as an Object of Student Research” • Cary Moskovitz, “Putting Student Writing to Work: the Academic Writing Class as a Research Collective” • Joseph Bizup, “Rethinking Assumptions about Topics and Texts: An Alternative Approach to Research-based Writing in FYC” • Respondent and Chair—David Kellogg
This panel showcased snapshots of three different approaches to teaching research in a first year writing classroom. Additionally, each speaker examined how research knowledge can be transferred once done with FYW. The session concluded with David Kellogg’s response to upper level commonality found in research issues.
The first speaker, Phillip Troutman, discussed the problems often associated with teaching research that surrounds library instruction. He proposed three proto-disciplinary dispositions—you will never be the first to write about it, there’s always something new to say, and there are usually something distinctive to say. His four credit course had a research component and focused on the research of comics using a formal analysis/argument, article review and one project. Troutman suggested that the problem with researched papers is compounded by library instruction. He had issues with the library’s use of language and suggested that comics are often misrepresented because of this.
Cary Moskovitz, the second speaker, addressed teaching research by using Bizzell and Herzberg definition of research-based writing as a “social act.” He wanted his students to walk away with enough knowledge so they could actually do something with the knowledge gained. Moskovitz’s classroom design represents what he called a research collective. He defined this as a common problem that would be inherently researched collaboratively and the instructor would be a model learner, someone who frames the question but does not drive the research. His class approached the central issue of “how should ticks be removed to minimize risk of infection and followed the sequence of library research, review and commentary. His class of twelve worked in groups of four to follow the assignment sequence. Throughout the assignment, the groups wrote, analyzed and researched together. As a class, they reviewed one another’s work and as a result could cite each other, as well as, actual published authors. Moskovitz’s has three goals with this approach to research: 1)Student work has recognizable value, 2)Students share learning and research and analysis, which gives them greater subject-matter expertise and more material to work with, and 3)Instructor can model key intellectual textual practices without taking over the classroom. These goals can lead to student empowerment and encourages transfer through key process skills.
The third speaker, Joseph Bizup, discussed the shortcomings of conventional research assignments. He began by asking what about the rest of us with non-themed class not organized around a particular topic. His class chooses from what he called a “seed” text, which is an important quality for this approach to work. He defined a seed text as a prose piece that makes an argument, which can link out and link in and offer variety. Bizup’s example of a seed text was William Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness.” He explained that this text allows students to link out with Cronin’s references and then link back through proximity searches (JSTOR, ProQuest and Goggle Scholar). Students begin with key word searches in each data base with Cronin and wilderness appearing within ten words of each other. Bizup wants students to identify interesting moments of “conversation” between the texts. He offered advantages of this approach as the following: 1) does not demand “exhaustive” research, 2) captures a mode of real-world research that is occluded by traditional pedagogy and 3) foregrounds dialogic nature of academic argumentation. Bizup suggested this approach teaches students knowledge that is transferrable to other causes but offered a tradeoff—it doesn’t help with library research.
David Kellogg concluded the session by stating students are often overwhelmed by the amount of work involved in research writing. Upper level students are not necessarily anymore prepared to research than freshman students. The advantage to the three approaches presented allows the research to be set-up in an environment that is highly constrained and can be less overwhelming for students.
Overall, the session proved to be interesting because it offered three drastically different approaches to teaching research in first-year writing. Each presenter gave a unique perspective and suggested ways that research can be transferred outside of the FYW.
Kroll, Barry. “Arguing with Adversaries: Aikido, Rhetoric, and the Art of Peace.” CCC 59: 3. (Feb 2008) 451-72.
According to Barry Kroll, most American students believe that engaging in an argument requires direct confrontation with one’s adversary (452). In order to discuss situations when a writer might use other tactics for responding to an opponent verbally, Kroll compares rhetoric to the martial arts. Specifically, he argues that “budo (the art of fighting) and rhetoric (the art of arguing) are semantic cousins, with the family blood of contention running in their veins.” Yet Kroll seeks to complicate this relationship between rhetoric and budo as he states, “aikido, a Japanese martial art that calls itself an ‘art of peace,’ suggests a different connection between the martial and rhetorical domains.”
Kroll begins by situating his argument within other examples of rhetoric and martial arts. He examines how Suzette Haden’s The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense and George J. Thompson’s Verbal Judo discuss various methods for creating “less confrontational ways to respond to verbal attacks” (453). These different techniques include redirective rather than confrontational responses and taking the strength of the opponent’s argument to redirect the flow of the argument. Kroll states that these books focus on jujitsu and the martial arts form of aikido contributes further to this line of inquiry. Because of the origin of aikido, the martial arts technique is designed to be a defensive strategy. For example, the aikido practitioner uses an open rather than fighting stance, which allows for a more receptive range of movements. To illustrate how aikido can contribute to an understanding of an argument by peaceful means, Kroll discusses the two main components to an aikido movement: “tankan (circling away) and irimi (entering in)” (456).
The two aikido movements work as his theoretical frame. So, Kroll discusses tankan as the method of turning into the opponent, so that the aikido practitioner ends his movement facing in the same direction as his opponent. Kroll applies this same movement to a writer constructing and argument with a real world example: an article by Michael Kinsley. Kinsley constructs his argument by reviewing the points made by those who oppose his view. Kroll states, “thus, Kinsley begins by moving alongside the opposition, summarizing their arguments for a draft” and “the he uses the force of the opposition’s criteria—fairness—to move them off balance, a paradigmatic strategy for neutralizing attack” (458). Next, Kroll explains irimi where the aikido practitioner moves the side of the opponent to intercept the attack at its origin and thus, neutralizing the attack. Again Kroll applies this discussion to an article by Steven Raphael and Jens Ludwig. Here, the two men write in response to a program for gun control, where they “ ‘enter into’ a threatening proposal, but rather than delivering a hard block or counterstrike, they connect with the public’s desire to find an effective way to reduce gun violence” (460). More specifically according to Kroll, these two techniques must work together just as they would in an actual aikido attack and they must both reflect a writer’s sympathy and empathy with his opponent, particularly the ability to sympathetically understand the opponent’s view point.
While this article provides an interesting look at two new ways to view the nature of non confrontational argumentation, one question does arise: what is the relevance of this new connection between martial arts and rhetoric if we are already aware of not only a connection between them, but also of the writing techniques Kroll mentions? Kroll answer this question in the last section of the article: his composition students. Kroll explains that when trying to teach students about argumentation and writing, they tend to only think of arguing as confrontational. The students also believe that not being confrontation indicates acquiesce, submission, and weakness. Kroll believes that demonstrating or viewing aikido moves allows students to visualize how arguments can be constructed without the duality of aggressive confrontation or passive capitulation. Though the article might have come across as a bit more relevant if the application to the classroom had appeared earlier in the article, Kroll’s overall argument contributes to an understanding of nonaggressive means for argument and some practical applications for comparing martial arts, particularly aikido, to rhetoric in the college composition classroom.
Session 0.12, YouTube U.: Home Video Goes to College Reviewed by Rory Lee (Florida State University)
This session started with two unfortunate instances: (1) the panel did not have access to a projector, thus making it impossible for them to present the YouTube videos germane to their presentations properly, and (2) presenter Virginia Kuhn was unable to attend the conference. The former was perhaps more disconcerting, as it seems illogical for a panel under the title of “Information Technologies” to not be provided adequate technology. However, despite these immediate drawbacks, the session as a whole was still a success.
Sarah Arroyo, California State University Long Beach, “You, Too: Knowledge Communities, Mutual Production, and Writing Change.” Sarah Arroyo was the first to present; she focused on Alexandra Juhasz’s media studies course, “Learning from YouTube,” which was offered at Pitzer College in the fall of 2007. The class, although interesting because it is considered the first devoted entirely to YouTube, caught Arroyo’s attention because of the students’ perception of the class. Though it may not be surprising that Juhasz’ class was lambasted on FOX News—“They’re teaching our students what?”—it was surprising to Arroyo to learn that the students shared such predominantly pejorative opinions. The students did not find the materials on YouTube pertinent to learning; they thought the site focused more on entertaining viewers rather than educating them; and they were disappointed that their posted comments (posting comments to videos was an integral part of the class) were “buried” and thus disappeared in days. The students ultimately believed that YouTube’s bad public perception (that it presumably is geared more toward humor) would reflect poorly on the course. In essence, the students postulated YouTube to be a platform that could not co-exist with higher education, an idea Arroyo attended to in the rest of her presentation. Arroyo then turned toward electracy—a name for the literacy fostered during interaction with and communication via new media—as a lens to examine the class. Juhasz’s justification for the class remained steady: though her students’ concerns were reasonable, she reiterated that content is more important than platform—a concept her students seemed unable to grasp. Arroyo concluded by emphasizing the pedagogical benefits of YouTube in the class: YouTube is not a self-contained platform and thus permits a form of participation that can both lead to and foster other networks. More importantly, such networks lead to knowledge communities outside the platform, but ones that might not have been reachable without the platform. For Arroyo, YouTube was a viable pedagogical tool because it provided applicable content, which for her supersedes platform.
Geoffrey Carter, Saginaw Valley State University, “I Heart YouTube: Video Clips and the Writing of Strange Loops.” Geoffrey Carter began by referencing a YouTube video titled “I heart Hofstadter,” which features a young women opening her new book: Douglas Hofstadter’s I am a Strange Loop. Carter, though intrigued in the women’s enthusiasm for the book, was more concerned with the book itself, Hofstadter’s first since his 1979 Pulitzer Prize winning Godel, Escher, Bach. Carter posited that I am a Strange Loop is a lens from which to examine not only other “strange loops” but also YouTube videos as a whole. In analyzing what many categorize as “strange loops” on YouTube, Carter turned to French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his cinematic concept of “bal(l)ade”—where a typical movie would suddenly shift genres, turning into a “musical.” In further illustrating Deleuze’s cinematic concept, Carter relied on the work of French New Wave filmmaker, Jean-Luc Godard. What Carter thus underscored was that both “strange loops” (uninterrupted flow of images and sound) and “bal(l)ades,” (sudden shifts in genre) are manifesting themselves on YouTube and might even be indicative of the YouTube phenomena.
Though both presentations were connected via the topic of YouTube, each presenter took a different approach in their presentation. Arroyo’s aim was pedagogical, examining not only a class devoted to YouTube but also how we as instructors can see YouTube as a fruitful, educational medium. Carter, contrarily, took a more theoretical approach, connecting YouTube media with theories of “strange loops” and “bal(l)ade.”
Session N.17: “Composed in the Wake of Disaster: (Re)Writing the Realities of New Orleans”
This session began with Byron Hawk’s presentation “Katrina Didn’t Happen? On Baudrillard and the Tragic Image.” Byron started by citing three essays Jean Baudrillard wrote in response to the Gulf War: “The Gulf War Will Not Take Place,” “The Gulf War Is Not Taking Place,” and “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.” Of particular interest to Byron was Baudrillard’s focus on the media’s complicit role in masquerading a “dead war”—a battle of two unequal sides—as an actual war: The media heightened information to redefine the event, which created affect and, in turn, separated the audience from the reality of what had happened. The media, Byron contended, circulate disaster in the same manner in which it circulates war, and it is with this frame that he examined the media’s representation of Hurricane Katrina. Focusing first on the media’s build up of the approaching storm and then on its use of spectacular images to produce what he referred to as “rhetorical spin”, Byron argued that the media’s management of information positioned the audience as captive spectators. It is this form of mediation that prevents the audience from seeing the actual event. As a result, the storm, just like the Gulf War, was a reality transformed into spectacle.
The second presentation further explored the realities of Hurricane Katrina, namely how those realities have been captured in historical narratives. Rodney Herring’s “Questioning the Histories of Katrina: Narrative Analysis in the Writing Classroom” began with a discussion of Frederic Jameson’s critique that Burke’s Pentad offers only a limited view of symbolic action in that it does not account for purpose. Rather than maintaining the distinction between Burke and Jameson, however, Rodney constructed his analysis according to a Burkean/Jamesonian interpretation of the Pentad. He then used this model to examine two histories of Katrina: Douglas Brinkley’s The Great Deluge and Michael Erik Dyson’s Come Hell or High Water. Rodney used his data set to reveal discrepancies in how the realities of Hurricane Katrina have been constructed. He then tracked the rhetorical strategies employed in each history as a means of determining the purpose behind each writer’s symbolic act.
The next speaker, Sean McCarthy, presented a shift in the conversation. His paper, “Insurgent Architecture: Building the Writing Classroom and Rebuilding New Orleans,” explored the potential of using Second Life as a mechanism for teaching students rhetorical principles. Showing digital images of a project in which Sean and others had used Second Life to build virtual homes in East Austin, he demonstrated how this cyber environment might be employed pedagogically: First, students could work in groups to engage in virtual civic activities. (Sean used rebuilding neighborhoods in New Orleans as an example.) Second, students could adopt the persona of someone involved in civic action, which would require students to navigate the various discursive activities demanded of that persona. Both examples highlighted the potential of virtual environments to create an embodied writing experience one might find, Sean suggested, in a service learning class.
Daisy Pignetti, whose paper was titled “Blogging New Orleans: Locals Creating Realities Online,” served as the final presenter. Her talk returned to the session’s emerging theme—how the realities of Hurricane Katrina have been and continue to be written. Daisy offered a personal context for her study: As a native of New Orleans, her knowledge of the city conflicted the news reports she heard on television, creating confusion for her as to what was actually happening in the wake of the storm. Daisy observed this same confusion in the blogosphere, where cyberliterate citizens wrote to establish what was true (Daisy’s handout documented the extensive use of the Internet as a means of gaining information about Hurricane Katrina). Since then, those same citizens have used blogs to continue determining accurate information, to, in some instances, entertain, and most importantly, to persuade others toward community action, namely the rebuilding of the city. Daisy’s talk tracked this ongoing conversation and revealed how local bloggers have created a narrative that adds a new frame to our understanding of the storm.
The realities of Hurricane Katrina continue to be written, and this session provided interesting perspectives as to how—whether by way of images in the media, historical narratives, or online writing. The commonalities among Byron’s, Rodney’s, and Daisy’s presentations formed a nice thread that contributed to our understanding of how we’ve created meaning from the catastrophe. Even though Sean’s paper didn’t necessarily connect with the others due to its pedagogical emphasis, it was still an engaging look at how we might employ virtual environments in the writing classroom. My only real complaint involves time management. Without a chair keeping track of time, the audience was not allowed the opportunity to participate in a Q&A. Yes, the presenters did make themselves available after the session, but that doesn’t quite compensate for what I’m sure would have been a fruitful discussion.
CCCC Review of Session C.24, “Departmental WID in International Perspective: Changing Realities for Writing Across the Curriculum” Chair: David Russell Speakers: Michael Carter, Paul Anderson, David Russell
In the session, “Departmental WID in International Perspective: Changing Realities for Writing Across the Curriculum,” David Russell, Michael Carter, and Paul Anderson presented three different models for working in tandem with college and university departments to develop more substantial and sustainable WID programs than those that evolve in response to the more commonly employed top-down or bottom-up approaches. Russell, the chair of the session, set the stage for all three panel presentations in his introduction, recognizing the departmental approach to WID as a shift from the two dominant configurations in U.S. programs (working primarily with individual faculty members or with central administration) and recommending this new approach as a model that holds the potential to help WAC and WID programs in this country achieve clearer connections to curriculum and a wider sphere of faculty participation and commitment. (Kudos to Paul Anderson, by the way, for deftly channeling Russell, who was double-booked, until he was able to appear in person!)
Carter’s presentation focused on the departmental WID program developed at his home institution, North Carolina State University. The NC State writing faculty, recognizing their departmental model as a ground-breaking one, established five principles to use as a guide during the implementation process: 1) a departmental WID program should be driven by the disciplinary values of the departmental faculty; 2) the program should be faculty owned; 3) disciplinary faculty’s writing expertise should form a WID program’s foundation and writing should be fully integrated into the departments’ curricula; 4) departmental faculty should be held accountable for the writing they teach; and 5) disciplinary faculty should be provided with the needed support to manage writing effectively in a way that encourages learning. Carter stressed that adopting the departmental WID model significantly altered the role of the writing faculty in the delivery of writing instruction at his institution but in no way eliminated the need for writing faculty expertise. Writing specialists at NC State adopted the role of program facilitators, working with departmental faculty to recognize and explicitly outline their values, the essential ways of knowing that flow from those values and that define each particular discipline, and the ways of writing that embody those ways of knowing. They also encouraged departments to re-conceive the role of writing as integral to the work of their disciplines rather than something that occurs outside of this work, and to recognize the role writing can play in evaluating the level of learning that has been reached and in providing evidence of that learning.
Anderson began by summarizing some preliminary results from research he and some colleagues have been conducting based on data from the 2007 National Survey of Student Engagement. This data suggests that while students may not feel all of the writing they do in college is always connected to learning, they do see a direct connection when the writing assignments are clearly designed to facilitate the accomplishing of specific intellectual tasks. Anderson pointed out that the kinds of writing assignments designed to help students complete these specific tasks are most naturally developed in departmental WID programs because these assignment are the ones that engage students in the ways of knowing that define the departments. Anderson then highlighted efforts being made at two very different institutions to engender greater departmental involvement in WID program elements: Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and his own Miami University of Ohio. Although these schools are vastly different in many significant ways, Anderson demonstrated that writing faculty at both institutions are working within their programmatic structures to identify opportunities for developing more departmentally based WID operations. They are taking the initiative to offer services to departmental faculty and working patiently and systematically with those who are ready to take advantage of what they have to offer. The significant contrast between the structures of the two schools illustrated Anderson’s contention that it is not only desirable but also possible to begin moving toward a departmental WID model no matter what configuration the WID program currently embodies.
Russell described the WID program at Queen Mary University in London, a highly ranked major comprehensive research university in the UK at which he worked as a WID consultant for one semester in 2006. Since students in the UK are not enrolled in a university generally but rather in a department specifically, there is no general education program at the university. With no general writing courses and no freshman composition, the significance of the WID program is magnified. Queen Mary’s WID program, named Thinking Writing, is housed in, but functions separately from, the writing center. The director and her assistants work primarily to form partnerships with departments in order to develop individualized courses, pedagogy, and assessment that mesh well with the departmental requirements and philosophies. Some departments have separate writing courses that are either introductions to writing in that field or are remedial courses for students who are lacking what are seen as the basic skills for producing the disciplinary types of writing. Other departments offer semi-integrated models in which students produce writing in courses taught by regular departmental faculty but the writing assignments are seen as add-ons to the “real” work of the discipline. Finally, there are departments in which writing is fully acknowledged as integral to learning the work of the field and is entirely integrated into regular content courses. Russell’s detailed overview supplied yet another example that supported the contention that the departmental WID approach offers unique advantages that traditional top-down and bottom-up programs simply can’t provide.
Together, Carter, Anderson, and Russell presented a comprehensive and compelling case for adopting the departmental approach as a WID management philosophy. Despite the extensive investment of time and effort this model requires of writing specialists, this presentation made clear that many schools are finding working with departments results in the development of more substantial and enriching writing assignments for students and greater advancement toward meeting the promise embodied by the Writing-In-the-Disciplines philosophy.
23 comments:
I am reviewing an article by Jane Danielwicz entitled "Personal Genres, Public Voices" from the February 2008 edition of CCC (v.59.3).
I will be reviewing one of two sessions at 4Cs:
"Writing at the Threshold of the Disciplines: How Methodological Asumptions Shape Student Writing in Anthropology, History and Engineering"
or
"Revisionist Views on the History of Rhetoric"
I am planning to review the CCCC session C.24 called Departmental WID in International Perspective: Changing Realities for Writing Across the Curriculum
I am reviewing...
"Student Expertise and Knowledge Transfer: Teaching Research Writing
in the First Year Academic Writing Class"
:)
I am going to review E.19 "Teaching and Learning in a Digital Age"
I plan on reviewing session O.12 (YouTube U.: Home Video Goes to College) at the 4Cs. Scott has informed me that we will indeed be able to stay that long. :)
I will be reviewing: Arguing with Adversaries- Aikido, rhetoric and the Art of Peace by Barry Koll
Multi-Modal Communication: Experts' Advice on Visual Rhetoric, April 5 at 9.30.
I'll be reviewing the session titled Composed in the Wake of Disaster: (Re)Writing the Realities of New Orleans.
At C's, I will be reviewing:
"Technological Transformations: Distance Education and Writing Centers"
I'll be reviewing- The Realities of Genre in Multiple Contexts: What About Form?
Session: D.18 on Apr 3, 2008 from 3:15 PM to 4:30 PM
I am reviewing "Copyright, Distance Education and the TEACH Act: Implications for Teaching Writing" which appeared in CCC Sept 2006
Journal Article Review:
“Personal Genres, Public Voices” by Jane Danielwicz
Danielwicz begins by defining what she means by voice and how we, as teachers, can utilize personal genres (which she describes as autobiography, autoethnography, biography, and the personal essay) to move our students toward their own agency in public voices. She then outlines the two major benefits of this by creating two categories: 1) pedagogical and 2) rhetorical. She argues that personal genres can result in students’ own authority, thus increasing the “possibility of action”.
Danielwicz makes a particular note to outline the many definitions (and ideological battles) of the term “voice” in writing, existing even within the field of Rhetoric and Composition. She cites known rhetoric and composition scholars such as Peter Elbow and Kathleen Yancey; however, Danielwicz makes her own working definition of the term “voice” clear by stating it is “a social phenomenon with rhetorical effects and social recognition…not private experience” and that voice is also “a quality of writing that can be taught or promoted from any theoretical stance and all types of pedagogies.”
Danielwicz then describes her own pedagogical experiment, using this stance, in her own classroom in which she uses autobiographies of her students. Two students are highlighted: Jackie and Amelia. Excerpts of their first-draft and last-draft autobiographies are contrasted with each other, as a description of these two students’ interaction with each other is provided not only as commentary, but explanation of their journey from the personal to the public realm.
Genres are defined later on in the article, being described more as having tendencies as opposed to strict formulaic traits. This definition is important to note when reading this article because it causes the reader to frame the information in a new way: not viewing genres as confining conventions, but rather as creative guidelines.
The classroom experiment of using autobiography as a genre is detailed to include the element of peer revision, focus on rhetorical methods rather than topic, and creating an overall classroom environment of inquiry. Danielwicz then points out the behaviors exhibited by each of these two focus student participants, and then looks to the students’ perception of agency within their own personal genres. The student participants, Jackie and Amelia, had opposing views when comparing their autobiographies which Danielwicz viewed as a perfect opportunity to illustrate how “negotiating difference” could happen when the personal was brought into the public. This method proved successful, as it spurred conversation and reflection.
Danielwicz lists nine outcomes of this classroom experiment of genre: 1) individual differences are recognized and acknowledged, 2) students understand what it means to have a “voice”, 3) writers realize the story is never the same told twice, 4) autobiography is self-reflexive, 5) writers enjoy prolonged experiences of getting to know one another, 6) writers see themselves in all essays, 7) students feel deep personal satisfaction that comes in thinking and writing about self, 8) public issues surface through personal stories, 9) students recognize that much in their lives merit attention. A glaring concern I have, however, is the scarce number of participants used for this piece. A more convincing argument would include a larger number producing the same results.
Article Review
“A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing”
Philip Eubanks and John D. Schaeffer
CCC 59:3 February 2008, p 372-388
In their essay “A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing,” Philip Eubanks and John D. Schaeffer address the phrase “academic bullshit” and, after accepting the phrase as a perhaps all too appropriate referent for the writing fostered by academics, attempt to redefine “bullshit” in a favorable light by defining “what bullshit is” and “how what bullshit is varies” (387).
“A Kind Word” is predicated by John Frankfurt’s essay “On Bullshit,” an exploration of the “bullshit” phenomenon. Eubanks and Schaeffer’s objective is to take “bullshit” further by investigating its prevalence in academia, humanities, and rhetoric by identifying three reasons compositionists must address “bullshit”: (1) “the writing style of composition research risks being called bullshit because it often has the timbre of abstruse literary criticism or of social science;” (2) “composition has taken up disciplinary writing as an important area of study and thus implicitly endorses it;” (3) “one major consequence of studying disciplinary writing has been the abandonment of the abstract ideal once called ‘good writing’” (374). In addition, Eubanks and Schaeffer seek to identify a finite definition of “bullshit,” a task they claim Frankfurt was unable to accomplish.
It is clear as Eubanks and Schaeffer address the complicated nature of “bullshit,” especially as it is defined in academia and by compositionists, that the result of their investigation is the decisive opinion that “bullshit, in at least some senses, animates what is best in academic rhetoric” (374). In order to illustrate their claim, Eubanks and Schaeffer break their argument into four sections. In “Method of Definition,” the authors define “bullshit” in regards to composition and academia, separating “bullshit” in rhetoric from a pedestrian perception of the term. In “Prototypical Bullshit,” define prototypical and nonprototypical uses of bullshit by aligning the two types with intention and misrepresentation. In “Academic Bullshit among Professors,” the authors aim to separate academic from non-academic bullshit in order to emphasize who should determine
“academic bullshit” and how this perception changes depending on audience. Finally, in “Academic Bullshit among Students,” Eubanks and Schaeffer acknowledge that much of the writing students are asked to produce in composition classes is indeed the worst form of bullshit by aligning it with “prototypical bullshit” as defined in section two and identifying this type of student bullshit as disengagement.
It seems every voyeur longs to call academics out on their “academic bullshit,” a flaw of human nature that makes this article significantly more satisfying. It might be interesting to compare some of the themes in “A Kind Word” to a similar set of observations regarding academic discourse set forth in Stuart Chase’s essay, “Gobbledygook.”
Review: Session A11, Conference on College Composition and Communication
Revisionist Views on History of Rhetoric
If we believe history is destined to be repeated -- at least the views of history as presented in Revisionist Views on the History of Rhetoric -- then we as a culture can learn much from the lessons of our past. This panel of presenters asked us to look at how rhetoric was interpreted at various times in history, and to reflect upon the connections to our current understanding of the field.
Lee Miller began by exploring the voices in the margins in the history of classical rhetoric. He organized his view of rhetoric within homiletics, which he defined as “purposeful use of language in a public forum.” According to Miller’s definition, homiletics includes many voices that may have been marginalized at certain points in history. These other voices, had they been considered with those of the more mainstream in the rhetorical tradition, may have contributed to a different perspective of history. He cites Sojourner Truth’s body rhetoric as once such example of a contribution made to the rhetorical tradition that changes the way we look at that history.
Miller contends that this kind of inquiry into how homiletics has figured into the field of rhetoric highlights that homileticians (particularly those non-white and female) have been relegated to the margins, reducing or distorting their value in the field overall. He ponders whether alternative views of this history are possible, perhaps through a re-exploration of history and the perspectives through which it has been traditionally delivered.
This theme was explored by the second presenter, Shane Borrowman, within the specific context of how rhetoric has been interpreted in Islamic history. Specifically, Borrowman investigates Ibn Rushd, a medieval Arab commentator on Aristotle, who articulates a rationale for including the Rhetoric and Poetics as the concluding books of Aristotle’s Organon (Aristotle’s collected works on logic).
Borrowman maintains that in European history Aristotle was not studied against those who came before because much of this previous scholarship was lost. But it was preserved in the Arabic tradition, and studied, and applied to the construction of their knowledge about Aristotle and his works. Most significantly for the history of the rhetorical tradition, European scholars consider Aristotle’s six books on logic as separate from the Rhetoric and the Poetics, but Arab scholars view these works as one corpus. For Ibn Rushd the Poetic, which he defined as rhythmic speech, had originated in the oratory of rhetoric.
Perhaps even more significantly, in the Arabic tradition, where all efforts are designed to honor Allah, Aristotle’s paganism and classical ideas had to be adapted to contemporary Muslim civilization. In the adaptation, Ibn Rushd and other Arab scholars were making knowledge from a new perspective, based on the same texts that European scholars had made knowledge of a different view. As Aristotle’s works were not just translated, but interpreted for the Islamic tradition, the commentators (Ibn Rushd among the leaders) who negotiated these texts for their audience were required to understand them perhaps more than any other. Borrowman argues that Ibn Rushd may have had the most complete knowledge of Aristotle’s work, and that the Islamic tradition’s perspective provides a much different view, perhaps one our accepted European tradition has marginalized.
Wade Mahon, the final member of the panel, connected the idea of varying perspectives used to interpret the same text with his own exploration of the use of the term ‘elocution’ as a rhetorical term. Eighteenth-century elocutionists used the term to describe the rhetorical canon of delivery despite the fact that it was already commonly used to describe the canon of style. Scholars in this area have suggested that an ignorance of classical rhetoric was the foundation of this usage, but Mahon disagrees. He suggests that the reason is more complex: “the discourse of elocution was a way to combine the concerns of both style (elocutio) and delivery (pronuntiatio) into one comprehensive rhetorical theory that was more attuned to the specific concerns of modern speech and writing contexts than the conventional rhetorical approaches influenced by Ramus (who had reduced rhetoric to style and delivery anyway).” According to Mahon, what distinguishes the elocutionists is their insistence that non-verbal aspects of communication are more important than words in managing emotional responses of audiences.
Mahon’s theory has applications to modern composition theory: if we focus on written text alone we can easily disregard style and delivery, creating a disconnect between the writer’s intent and the reader’s emotion. Mahon suggests considering the classical orator’s approach to focus on both written text and oral presentation, using style and delivery to engage an audience, appealing to the emotion of that audience in a way that written text alone could not accomplish. While he points out that print literacy was replacing oratory at this time in history, the written word was considered my many rhetorical scholars to be weaker in communication because it did not complete the emotional connection between author and reader, thus creating the shift in elocution as representative of delivery and style, rather than style alone.
Elocutionary theory, according to Mahon, can provide insight into how a reader gains access to the emotion in a text. Considering gesture, tone, facial expression and other elements were part of oratory, but are not easily replicated through written text. Like Miller and Borrowman, Mahon urges us to resist the limited perspective with which we might be presented in favor of further discovery.
Conference on College Composition and Communication, Session A.23
Technological Transformations: Distance Education and Writing Centers
This session began with a presentation by Tammy Conrad-Salvo and John M. Spartz that focused on revision through the use of the Purdue Writing Center’s use of a software program called Kurzweil, a “comprehensive reading, writing, and learning software solution.” The program has speak-aloud features in human-like voices, textual markup features, and other features. Their handout also said that “many individuals with learning disabilities—including those with, dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, or…English Language Learners—have found Kurzweil’s text-to-speech features and writing tools to be beneficial.” Of the many uses of this software, the speakers noted that a feature many students enjoyed was that of highlighting passages for revision. Spartz said Kurzweil is expensive, and many of its features also exist in other applications like Microsoft Word.
Next, JoAnn Griffin discussed the use of the Tablet PC in the University of Louiseville’s Writing Center tutorials. The Tablet PC has an electronic pen tool so that tutors can write on the “text” and send it back to the student—she talked a little bit about video and voice chat features also, but these might be dependent on what students have available on their own PC’s. One of her key points based on their work with Tablet PC’s so far was that “tablet PC’s may magnify consultant control and/or suppress writer engagement.” I think a point to be taken here is that when communicating online with students, we need to heighten our efforts to communicate in open, encouraging, and friendly manners. Griffin found that tutors and students were generally satisfied with tablet PC tutorials. However, students often preferred the online tutorials while tutors preferred face-to-face. Writers also said that more of their concerns were addressed in face-to-face consultations.
JoAnn Liebman-Matson discussed the online composition program at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock where she teaches. She said that critics have argued that: online classes differ from traditional ones because they’re more likely to be taught by multiple persons than by one teacher; online classes are disembodied—students and teachers do not know or see one another; and online classes are more time-consuming than traditional classes. In response to these criticisms, she argued that online courses are particularly valuable for compositionists because they increase the amount of reading and writing done in a semester; and she noted in passing a need to include the visual and other multimodal forms of communication online. Based on a recent survey of their online classes, they found that many students prefer online classes due to their busy work or family schedules. For example, 78 percent of those who responded to the survey (n=32) said that work made it difficult to attend classes on campus. She also said that online classes do require more time than traditional classes. She emphasized the importance of training teachers before having them teach online courses. This just scratches the surface of the information from her survey. They plan on doing much more with their online composition courses.
Sue Dinitz, Director of the Writing Center at the University of Vermont, was the final speaker. Her talk focused on principles of universal design in Writing Centers. There are nine principles of universal design (developed by researchers at two different universities since the 1970’s), but the overall goal of it is to design spaces and services that can accommodate a wide range of student needs and abilities. It is not a “one-size-fits-all” design, but rather one that is context-specific and adaptive to situations. Originally, the concept aimed at accommodating disabled students; Dinitz’s explanation suggests that it is meant as a heuristic for accommodating all student needs and abilities. She explained how she and the writing tutors at the University of Vermont have implemented these principles into their practice. For example, the first principle is “equitable use,” or trying to be aware of all the different needs and situations of students in that could benefit from their services. Handouts should be in reach to persons in wheelchairs. Online sessions should be available for circumstances such as students who travel or snow-in days in Vermont. “Even though are spaces are accessible, in Vermont we often have ice or snow-covered sidewalks, making it difficult and sometimes dangerous for students in wheelchairs to get to their appointments.” She used this example to explain how online tutoring sessions allow for universal design, since it accommodates students who are not able to visit face-to-face. Other principles aimed toward communicating in simple and intuitive manners, making print materials in the center perceptible for all visitors, and creating a community of learners.
Kara Taczak
Review for Kairos
2008 Conference on College Composition and Communication
“Student Expertise and Knowledge Transfer: Teaching Research Writing in the First Year Academic Writing Class”
Session K.20 Friday, April 4, 2008
• Phillip Troutman, “A Proto-disciplinary Approach to First-Year Writing: The Comics Medium as an Object of Student Research”
• Cary Moskovitz, “Putting Student Writing to Work: the Academic Writing Class as a Research Collective”
• Joseph Bizup, “Rethinking Assumptions about Topics and Texts: An Alternative Approach to Research-based Writing in FYC”
• Respondent and Chair—David Kellogg
This panel showcased snapshots of three different approaches to teaching research in a first year writing classroom. Additionally, each speaker examined how research knowledge can be transferred once done with FYW. The session concluded with David Kellogg’s response to upper level commonality found in research issues.
The first speaker, Phillip Troutman, discussed the problems often associated with teaching research that surrounds library instruction. He proposed three proto-disciplinary dispositions—you will never be the first to write about it, there’s always something new to say, and there are usually something distinctive to say. His four credit course had a research component and focused on the research of comics using a formal analysis/argument, article review and one project. Troutman suggested that the problem with researched papers is compounded by library instruction. He had issues with the library’s use of language and suggested that comics are often misrepresented because of this.
Cary Moskovitz, the second speaker, addressed teaching research by using Bizzell and Herzberg definition of research-based writing as a “social act.” He wanted his students to walk away with enough knowledge so they could actually do something with the knowledge gained. Moskovitz’s classroom design represents what he called a research collective. He defined this as a common problem that would be inherently researched collaboratively and the instructor would be a model learner, someone who frames the question but does not drive the research. His class approached the central issue of “how should ticks be removed to minimize risk of infection and followed the sequence of library research, review and commentary. His class of twelve worked in groups of four to follow the assignment sequence. Throughout the assignment, the groups wrote, analyzed and researched together. As a class, they reviewed one another’s work and as a result could cite each other, as well as, actual published authors. Moskovitz’s has three goals with this approach to research: 1)Student work has recognizable value, 2)Students share learning and research and analysis, which gives them greater subject-matter expertise and more material to work with, and 3)Instructor can model key intellectual textual practices without taking over the classroom. These goals can lead to student empowerment and encourages transfer through key process skills.
The third speaker, Joseph Bizup, discussed the shortcomings of conventional research assignments. He began by asking what about the rest of us with non-themed class not organized around a particular topic. His class chooses from what he called a “seed” text, which is an important quality for this approach to work. He defined a seed text as a prose piece that makes an argument, which can link out and link in and offer variety. Bizup’s example of a seed text was William Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness.” He explained that this text allows students to link out with Cronin’s references and then link back through proximity searches (JSTOR, ProQuest and Goggle Scholar). Students begin with key word searches in each data base with Cronin and wilderness appearing within ten words of each other. Bizup wants students to identify interesting moments of “conversation” between the texts. He offered advantages of this approach as the following: 1) does not demand “exhaustive” research, 2) captures a mode of real-world research that is occluded by traditional pedagogy and 3) foregrounds dialogic nature of academic argumentation. Bizup suggested this approach teaches students knowledge that is transferrable to other causes but offered a tradeoff—it doesn’t help with library research.
David Kellogg concluded the session by stating students are often overwhelmed by the amount of work involved in research writing. Upper level students are not necessarily anymore prepared to research than freshman students. The advantage to the three approaches presented allows the research to be set-up in an environment that is highly constrained and can be less overwhelming for students.
Overall, the session proved to be interesting because it offered three drastically different approaches to teaching research in first-year writing. Each presenter gave a unique perspective and suggested ways that research can be transferred outside of the FYW.
Kroll, Barry. “Arguing with Adversaries: Aikido, Rhetoric, and the Art of Peace.” CCC 59: 3. (Feb 2008) 451-72.
According to Barry Kroll, most American students believe that engaging in an argument requires direct confrontation with one’s adversary (452). In order to discuss situations when a writer might use other tactics for responding to an opponent verbally, Kroll compares rhetoric to the martial arts. Specifically, he argues that “budo (the art of fighting) and rhetoric (the art of arguing) are semantic cousins, with the family blood of contention running in their veins.” Yet Kroll seeks to complicate this relationship between rhetoric and budo as he states, “aikido, a Japanese martial art that calls itself an ‘art of peace,’ suggests a different connection between the martial and rhetorical domains.”
Kroll begins by situating his argument within other examples of rhetoric and martial arts. He examines how Suzette Haden’s The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense and George J. Thompson’s Verbal Judo discuss various methods for creating “less confrontational ways to respond to verbal attacks” (453). These different techniques include redirective rather than confrontational responses and taking the strength of the opponent’s argument to redirect the flow of the argument. Kroll states that these books focus on jujitsu and the martial arts form of aikido contributes further to this line of inquiry. Because of the origin of aikido, the martial arts technique is designed to be a defensive strategy. For example, the aikido practitioner uses an open rather than fighting stance, which allows for a more receptive range of movements. To illustrate how aikido can contribute to an understanding of an argument by peaceful means, Kroll discusses the two main components to an aikido movement: “tankan (circling away) and irimi (entering in)” (456).
The two aikido movements work as his theoretical frame. So, Kroll discusses tankan as the method of turning into the opponent, so that the aikido practitioner ends his movement facing in the same direction as his opponent. Kroll applies this same movement to a writer constructing and argument with a real world example: an article by Michael Kinsley. Kinsley constructs his argument by reviewing the points made by those who oppose his view. Kroll states, “thus, Kinsley begins by moving alongside the opposition, summarizing their arguments for a draft” and “the he uses the force of the opposition’s criteria—fairness—to move them off balance, a paradigmatic strategy for neutralizing attack” (458). Next, Kroll explains irimi where the aikido practitioner moves the side of the opponent to intercept the attack at its origin and thus, neutralizing the attack. Again Kroll applies this discussion to an article by Steven Raphael and Jens Ludwig. Here, the two men write in response to a program for gun control, where they “ ‘enter into’ a threatening proposal, but rather than delivering a hard block or counterstrike, they connect with the public’s desire to find an effective way to reduce gun violence” (460). More specifically according to Kroll, these two techniques must work together just as they would in an actual aikido attack and they must both reflect a writer’s sympathy and empathy with his opponent, particularly the ability to sympathetically understand the opponent’s view point.
While this article provides an interesting look at two new ways to view the nature of non confrontational argumentation, one question does arise: what is the relevance of this new connection between martial arts and rhetoric if we are already aware of not only a connection between them, but also of the writing techniques Kroll mentions? Kroll answer this question in the last section of the article: his composition students. Kroll explains that when trying to teach students about argumentation and writing, they tend to only think of arguing as confrontational. The students also believe that not being confrontation indicates acquiesce, submission, and weakness. Kroll believes that demonstrating or viewing aikido moves allows students to visualize how arguments can be constructed without the duality of aggressive confrontation or passive capitulation. Though the article might have come across as a bit more relevant if the application to the classroom had appeared earlier in the article, Kroll’s overall argument contributes to an understanding of nonaggressive means for argument and some practical applications for comparing martial arts, particularly aikido, to rhetoric in the college composition classroom.
Session 0.12, YouTube U.: Home Video Goes to College
Reviewed by Rory Lee (Florida State University)
This session started with two unfortunate instances: (1) the panel did not have access to a projector, thus making it impossible for them to present the YouTube videos germane to their presentations properly, and (2) presenter Virginia Kuhn was unable to attend the conference. The former was perhaps more disconcerting, as it seems illogical for a panel under the title of “Information Technologies” to not be provided adequate technology. However, despite these immediate drawbacks, the session as a whole was still a success.
Sarah Arroyo, California State University Long Beach, “You, Too: Knowledge Communities, Mutual Production, and Writing Change.”
Sarah Arroyo was the first to present; she focused on Alexandra Juhasz’s media studies course, “Learning from YouTube,” which was offered at Pitzer College in the fall of 2007. The class, although interesting because it is considered the first devoted entirely to YouTube, caught Arroyo’s attention because of the students’ perception of the class. Though it may not be surprising that Juhasz’ class was lambasted on FOX News—“They’re teaching our students what?”—it was surprising to Arroyo to learn that the students shared such predominantly pejorative opinions. The students did not find the materials on YouTube pertinent to learning; they thought the site focused more on entertaining viewers rather than educating them; and they were disappointed that their posted comments (posting comments to videos was an integral part of the class) were “buried” and thus disappeared in days. The students ultimately believed that YouTube’s bad public perception (that it presumably is geared more toward humor) would reflect poorly on the course. In essence, the students postulated YouTube to be a platform that could not co-exist with higher education, an idea Arroyo attended to in the rest of her presentation. Arroyo then turned toward electracy—a name for the literacy fostered during interaction with and communication via new media—as a lens to examine the class. Juhasz’s justification for the class remained steady: though her students’ concerns were reasonable, she reiterated that content is more important than platform—a concept her students seemed unable to grasp. Arroyo concluded by emphasizing the pedagogical benefits of YouTube in the class: YouTube is not a self-contained platform and thus permits a form of participation that can both lead to and foster other networks. More importantly, such networks lead to knowledge communities outside the platform, but ones that might not have been reachable without the platform. For Arroyo, YouTube was a viable pedagogical tool because it provided applicable content, which for her supersedes platform.
Geoffrey Carter, Saginaw Valley State University, “I Heart YouTube: Video Clips and the Writing of Strange Loops.”
Geoffrey Carter began by referencing a YouTube video titled “I heart Hofstadter,” which features a young women opening her new book: Douglas Hofstadter’s I am a Strange Loop. Carter, though intrigued in the women’s enthusiasm for the book, was more concerned with the book itself, Hofstadter’s first since his 1979 Pulitzer Prize winning Godel, Escher, Bach. Carter posited that I am a Strange Loop is a lens from which to examine not only other “strange loops” but also YouTube videos as a whole. In analyzing what many categorize as “strange loops” on YouTube, Carter turned to French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his cinematic concept of “bal(l)ade”—where a typical movie would suddenly shift genres, turning into a “musical.” In further illustrating Deleuze’s cinematic concept, Carter relied on the work of French New Wave filmmaker, Jean-Luc Godard. What Carter thus underscored was that both “strange loops” (uninterrupted flow of images and sound) and “bal(l)ades,” (sudden shifts in genre) are manifesting themselves on YouTube and might even be indicative of the YouTube phenomena.
Though both presentations were connected via the topic of YouTube, each presenter took a different approach in their presentation. Arroyo’s aim was pedagogical, examining not only a class devoted to YouTube but also how we as instructors can see YouTube as a fruitful, educational medium. Carter, contrarily, took a more theoretical approach, connecting YouTube media with theories of “strange loops” and “bal(l)ade.”
Session N.17: “Composed in the Wake of Disaster: (Re)Writing the Realities of New Orleans”
This session began with Byron Hawk’s presentation “Katrina Didn’t Happen? On Baudrillard and the Tragic Image.” Byron started by citing three essays Jean Baudrillard wrote in response to the Gulf War: “The Gulf War Will Not Take Place,” “The Gulf War Is Not Taking Place,” and “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.” Of particular interest to Byron was Baudrillard’s focus on the media’s complicit role in masquerading a “dead war”—a battle of two unequal sides—as an actual war: The media heightened information to redefine the event, which created affect and, in turn, separated the audience from the reality of what had happened. The media, Byron contended, circulate disaster in the same manner in which it circulates war, and it is with this frame that he examined the media’s representation of Hurricane Katrina. Focusing first on the media’s build up of the approaching storm and then on its use of spectacular images to produce what he referred to as “rhetorical spin”, Byron argued that the media’s management of information positioned the audience as captive spectators. It is this form of mediation that prevents the audience from seeing the actual event. As a result, the storm, just like the Gulf War, was a reality transformed into spectacle.
The second presentation further explored the realities of Hurricane Katrina, namely how those realities have been captured in historical narratives. Rodney Herring’s “Questioning the Histories of Katrina: Narrative Analysis in the Writing Classroom” began with a discussion of Frederic Jameson’s critique that Burke’s Pentad offers only a limited view of symbolic action in that it does not account for purpose. Rather than maintaining the distinction between Burke and Jameson, however, Rodney constructed his analysis according to a Burkean/Jamesonian interpretation of the Pentad. He then used this model to examine two histories of Katrina: Douglas Brinkley’s The Great Deluge and Michael Erik Dyson’s Come Hell or High Water. Rodney used his data set to reveal discrepancies in how the realities of Hurricane Katrina have been constructed. He then tracked the rhetorical strategies employed in each history as a means of determining the purpose behind each writer’s symbolic act.
The next speaker, Sean McCarthy, presented a shift in the conversation. His paper, “Insurgent Architecture: Building the Writing Classroom and Rebuilding New Orleans,” explored the potential of using Second Life as a mechanism for teaching students rhetorical principles. Showing digital images of a project in which Sean and others had used Second Life to build virtual homes in East Austin, he demonstrated how this cyber environment might be employed pedagogically: First, students could work in groups to engage in virtual civic activities. (Sean used rebuilding neighborhoods in New Orleans as an example.) Second, students could adopt the persona of someone involved in civic action, which would require students to navigate the various discursive activities demanded of that persona. Both examples highlighted the potential of virtual environments to create an embodied writing experience one might find, Sean suggested, in a service learning class.
Daisy Pignetti, whose paper was titled “Blogging New Orleans: Locals Creating Realities Online,” served as the final presenter. Her talk returned to the session’s emerging theme—how the realities of Hurricane Katrina have been and continue to be written. Daisy offered a personal context for her study: As a native of New Orleans, her knowledge of the city conflicted the news reports she heard on television, creating confusion for her as to what was actually happening in the wake of the storm. Daisy observed this same confusion in the blogosphere, where cyberliterate citizens wrote to establish what was true (Daisy’s handout documented the extensive use of the Internet as a means of gaining information about Hurricane Katrina). Since then, those same citizens have used blogs to continue determining accurate information, to, in some instances, entertain, and most importantly, to persuade others toward community action, namely the rebuilding of the city. Daisy’s talk tracked this ongoing conversation and revealed how local bloggers have created a narrative that adds a new frame to our understanding of the storm.
The realities of Hurricane Katrina continue to be written, and this session provided interesting perspectives as to how—whether by way of images in the media, historical narratives, or online writing. The commonalities among Byron’s, Rodney’s, and Daisy’s presentations formed a nice thread that contributed to our understanding of how we’ve created meaning from the catastrophe. Even though Sean’s paper didn’t necessarily connect with the others due to its pedagogical emphasis, it was still an engaging look at how we might employ virtual environments in the writing classroom. My only real complaint involves time management. Without a chair keeping track of time, the audience was not allowed the opportunity to participate in a Q&A. Yes, the presenters did make themselves available after the session, but that doesn’t quite compensate for what I’m sure would have been a fruitful discussion.
CCCC Review of Session C.24, “Departmental WID in International Perspective: Changing Realities for Writing Across the Curriculum”
Chair: David Russell
Speakers: Michael Carter, Paul Anderson, David Russell
In the session, “Departmental WID in International Perspective: Changing Realities for Writing Across the Curriculum,” David Russell, Michael Carter, and Paul Anderson presented three different models for working in tandem with college and university departments to develop more substantial and sustainable WID programs than those that evolve in response to the more commonly employed top-down or bottom-up approaches. Russell, the chair of the session, set the stage for all three panel presentations in his introduction, recognizing the departmental approach to WID as a shift from the two dominant configurations in U.S. programs (working primarily with individual faculty members or with central administration) and recommending this new approach as a model that holds the potential to help WAC and WID programs in this country achieve clearer connections to curriculum and a wider sphere of faculty participation and commitment. (Kudos to Paul Anderson, by the way, for deftly channeling Russell, who was double-booked, until he was able to appear in person!)
Carter’s presentation focused on the departmental WID program developed at his home institution, North Carolina State University. The NC State writing faculty, recognizing their departmental model as a ground-breaking one, established five principles to use as a guide during the implementation process: 1) a departmental WID program should be driven by the disciplinary values of the departmental faculty; 2) the program should be faculty owned; 3) disciplinary faculty’s writing expertise should form a WID program’s foundation and writing should be fully integrated into the departments’ curricula; 4) departmental faculty should be held accountable for the writing they teach; and 5) disciplinary faculty should be provided with the needed support to manage writing effectively in a way that encourages learning. Carter stressed that adopting the departmental WID model significantly altered the role of the writing faculty in the delivery of writing instruction at his institution but in no way eliminated the need for writing faculty expertise. Writing specialists at NC State adopted the role of program facilitators, working with departmental faculty to recognize and explicitly outline their values, the essential ways of knowing that flow from those values and that define each particular discipline, and the ways of writing that embody those ways of knowing. They also encouraged departments to re-conceive the role of writing as integral to the work of their disciplines rather than something that occurs outside of this work, and to recognize the role writing can play in evaluating the level of learning that has been reached and in providing evidence of that learning.
Anderson began by summarizing some preliminary results from research he and some colleagues have been conducting based on data from the 2007 National Survey of Student Engagement. This data suggests that while students may not feel all of the writing they do in college is always connected to learning, they do see a direct connection when the writing assignments are clearly designed to facilitate the accomplishing of specific intellectual tasks. Anderson pointed out that the kinds of writing assignments designed to help students complete these specific tasks are most naturally developed in departmental WID programs because these assignment are the ones that engage students in the ways of knowing that define the departments. Anderson then highlighted efforts being made at two very different institutions to engender greater departmental involvement in WID program elements: Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and his own Miami University of Ohio. Although these schools are vastly different in many significant ways, Anderson demonstrated that writing faculty at both institutions are working within their programmatic structures to identify opportunities for developing more departmentally based WID operations. They are taking the initiative to offer services to departmental faculty and working patiently and systematically with those who are ready to take advantage of what they have to offer. The significant contrast between the structures of the two schools illustrated Anderson’s contention that it is not only desirable but also possible to begin moving toward a departmental WID model no matter what configuration the WID program currently embodies.
Russell described the WID program at Queen Mary University in London, a highly ranked major comprehensive research university in the UK at which he worked as a WID consultant for one semester in 2006. Since students in the UK are not enrolled in a university generally but rather in a department specifically, there is no general education program at the university. With no general writing courses and no freshman composition, the significance of the WID program is magnified. Queen Mary’s WID program, named Thinking Writing, is housed in, but functions separately from, the writing center. The director and her assistants work primarily to form partnerships with departments in order to develop individualized courses, pedagogy, and assessment that mesh well with the departmental requirements and philosophies. Some departments have separate writing courses that are either introductions to writing in that field or are remedial courses for students who are lacking what are seen as the basic skills for producing the disciplinary types of writing. Other departments offer semi-integrated models in which students produce writing in courses taught by regular departmental faculty but the writing assignments are seen as add-ons to the “real” work of the discipline. Finally, there are departments in which writing is fully acknowledged as integral to learning the work of the field and is entirely integrated into regular content courses. Russell’s detailed overview supplied yet another example that supported the contention that the departmental WID approach offers unique advantages that traditional top-down and bottom-up programs simply can’t provide.
Together, Carter, Anderson, and Russell presented a comprehensive and compelling case for adopting the departmental approach as a WID management philosophy. Despite the extensive investment of time and effort this model requires of writing specialists, this presentation made clear that many schools are finding working with departments results in the development of more substantial and enriching writing assignments for students and greater advancement toward meeting the promise embodied by the Writing-In-the-Disciplines philosophy.
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