Response to Ashley

Ashley, in her post, talks about the Villanueva article, focusing in especially on community forums as a form of social intervention. Ashely says:

"The school Villanueva discusses takes that concept one (important) step further. Rather than simply suggesting that your child speculate on the effect their actions had on someone else, the child is forced to confront that individual and hear them express their feelings."

I'd just like to reiterate how important these kinds of interactions seem to the development of the kinds of students we want (read: need) in our FYC classes in order to make a lot of the pedagogical approaches we've discussed actually work. We need students who are not uncomfortable with communication, and who are able to speak freely in order to identify and optimize their own voices. It also disheartens me (as I'm sure it does many of you) when you ask students to communicate with each other in an effort to actively engage them in learning and they act like they've never had to speak with another human being before. I honestly think that this springs from an innate fear of confrontation instilled at an early age.

Hot Media Electro

After the jump, you'll find a recording I made in which a Spell N Speak talks about identifying hot media, and the effects they have on a culture. It seemed to me doubly fitting to have this lesson screeching out of the failing speakers of a machine, essentially excluding all human voice and participation.

Mr. Abusjhadjjafzxcsda... Does this guy even speak English?

I didn't mention it yesterday in class, but three different people this semester alone, after learning my last name, have asked me something to effect of, "You're not one of those ISIS guys are you?" One of those people was someone right here in the English department.

Now the absolute ridiculousness of a statement like that aside, what I find most shocking is that fact that someone would just nonchalantly say such a thing. Each time its happened (and I've been hearing similar such bullshit since I was in 10th grade), it came completely out of no where, following a conversation about the weather, or where we're from, or something else innocuous.

It's made me think a lot about my appearance and reception in the classroom. Of course, I don't think many (or hopefully any) of my students see me and wonder whether or not I'm a card carrying  member of a terrorist cell. I like to think that's for the uniquely ignorant. However, I am well aware of how my ethnicity might have an effect on student perception of my authority over the English language. As writing teachers, I think that those of us of non-American decent are operating at something of a deficit. Or rather, I have a constant anxiety about that. I wonder if my students, on the first day, see my brown skin and here a foreign last name and think, "What can this guy teach me about English? It's probably not even his first language."

And it's embarrassing to say, but because of this I go in on the first day of class and I speak super clearly, and make a concerted effort to prove to my students that I know my shit. Which is probably a good thing to do, anyway, but I'm not doing it for the right reasons.

"Bad" Grammar -- Responding to Meg responding to Brianne

I agree with the both of you, and try to think in terms "regular" and "irregular" grammar instead. The lesson here is that grammar is a fluid concept that simply describes the order and structure of language. Like you've said, based on the given rhetorical situation, communication will fall somewhere on the spectrum between regular and irregular structures. This might affect things as basic as spelling and as complex as sentence structure.

I also find myself very sensitive lately to the idea that grammar and "whiteness" are some how inextricably linked. You might check out this essay in which the argument is broached -- though, annoyingly, it also tries to paint "nerd" culture as a uniquely white construct. As a nerd of color, I'm just not into that.


Can Geekiness be Decoupled from Whiteness?

How I Learned About the Power of Language

Even as a child I was always interested in reading and writing. Even though now my purview is literature, when I was young I was vastly more interested in science and science texts: field guides, star charts, books about how things were built, and so on. So while I read a lot, most of what I read was of a purely descriptive nature.

As I approached 3rd and 4th grade, I started to become increasingly interested in comic books.Of the two major moments in my childhood where I actually began to feel the power of language, comics had a direct role in the first. I read a reprint of Uncanny X-Men #3 -- you know, the one where the heroes are under siege in the academy by Juggernaut -- and for the first time in my life, I felt truly transported and compelled not by just the story and the artwork, but the language. I remember thinking, "This would be just as good without the pictures." At that point I started writing my own comics. And when I say writing, I mean literally just writing. I couldn't draw well at all, so I just modeled character movement with stick figures while I wrote huge blocks of text. As it turns out, an adult Harvey Peakar (American Splendor) wrote his comics the same way.

The second time this happened I was in 6th grade. I'd started reading Stephen King, which was the first time I was really consumed by fiction. I can still remember exactly where I was when I finished Pet Semetery -- in my grandparents' bedroom on a gloomy Monday afternoon -- because I had a physical reaction to the book. If you've not read it, then know that the story is incredibly dark, and the action just descends deeper and deeper into darkness as the book reaches its close. The thing is, though, I had a suspicion that it wasn't just the story that made me react so viscerally (I mean, I literally felt sick). It was the language. I was sure of it. It had something to do with the actual words and their arrangements that produced this effect. It just so happened that it was coupled with a horrific story which acted as the perfect vehicle. So, I started to go back through the book and copy down all of the words and sentences that created that effect. I remember describing it to someone as feeling like I was a rock covered in moss.

So began my horror fiction phase, and I wrote stories constantly modeled after King and the language of PS. Often times, even today, that language shows up on my poems and I wonder, "Where the hell did this creepy shit come from?" And then I remember taking all those notes with my little red notebook in 6th grade.

Teaching Forms on the Road to Rhetorical Consciousness

The more I think about teaching rhetoric to students who have no idea how to even comprehend the conceptual nature of the term, the more I begin to realize that teaching rhetoric is a push to make students see that shape of things. That is, how are its components positioned, and how does this make for optimal usage? This, I think, is the basis of form.

As a student of poetry, I am always concerned with form. "Form," too often, can be conflated with dead white guy boxes like sonnets (which I happen to love, thank you very much) and ballades and sestinas and trioles and so on until the end of time. Rather, when I think of form, I think of the decisions that make such received forms (and all poetic forms) possible. It has to do with why one writer decided to do this instead of that. Why five lines instead of six? Why four beats instead of five? Why three words instead of four?

And then to make the leap from art to things to writing! A car has form (why four wheels instead of five?). Advertisements have form (why six repetitions of the words "hot wings" instead of seven?). And of course, our writing has form.

Writing too often seems like a thing that is outside the agency of our students. They don't realize that they get to make the forms, and not the other way around. They get to decide what constitutes "essay" or "letter." And they must do so, of course, with an informed opinion. But, with this kind of realization comes rhetorical consciousness. I think, therefore I am. I write, therefore I choose. I choose, therefore I invent.

The Fictional Fictional Audience, or Why I Kind of Hate Creative Writing Workshop

I went on this rant for Essence and Taryn in class earlier, but I think I'll recreate it here for the benefit of all you fine folks.

I mentioned today that it seemed best to me to keep my students in the dark initially about the fact that they'd be workshopping thesis statements in small peer groups. My reasoning being that I feel like I'm constantly trying to push them to the other side of the circle; that is, they struggle immensely with the concept of the invoked audience, and often times default even without thinking to the more immediately accessible addressed audience. My fear was that they would find out about having to share their writing with other students, and then immediately start imagining those peers as their audience.

Then I started thinking about the concept behind creative writing workshop. It's a blasphemy, I know, what with me being a creative writing PhD and all, but the truth is, I kind of hate workshop. I've been in and out of creative writing workshops for the last 10 years of my life, and if I've learned one thing, it's that my best work comes when I'm not participating in one. It has to do, I think, with the idea of the invoked audience, the "fictional" audience. When enrolled in a workshop, no matter how much I tell myself that I am writing for the invoked audience, that is, the nameless faceless group of literature readers who will encounter nothing other than my poem, my name, and maybe some elusive biographical notes, the fact remains that I am writing for an addressed audience: those 8-10 people who gather in a room to talk about poems every week. As such, I find myself writing to very real people, and caring (perhaps erroneously) about what they think.

The truth is, this is a superficial and artificial stand-in for the real audience. In very few, if any, ways does the workshop environment mirror the actual reading public. These people are trained to critique -- to READ -- in a way that most people just aren't. What's worse is that these people know me. They know things about me and, to some degree or another, care about me. The bottom line is that the average readers -- Joe and Josephine Litmag -- don't know shit about me and don't give a shit about me. Therefore, their reactions to my work are going to be completely different from that of the workshop.

Don't get me wrong. I feel like workshop is super useful. And I love all my workshop buddsies. But I think we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that the "audience" we attend to in the classroom is somehow analogous to the actual reading public, and it just isn't.

End rant. Chad out.

*mic drop*

A Universal Composition Process?

I find myself agreeing with Berlin when he posits that the fault in many essays exploring the pedagogical theory behind composition is a reliance on the theory of a universal composition process. The writing process varies too greatly from one individual until the next for there to be a set of rules and procedures to aid in its discovery. Because that is what it really comes down to: discovery. We can't teach students a writing process. It's not the kind of thing that can be handed down and expected to function as a cure-all for linguistic woes. We can only allow students to discover their own processes of composition.

What, then, is our role in all of this as instructors? I mean, if we can't teach the process, then what do we teach? The answer here is that we become facilitators than teachers. We put students into situations which are engineered to steer them towards discovering their processes. We present obstacles that must be navigated through composition. By making writing the only way to navigate, we encourage (read: force) students to figure out how, exactly, they best approach this skill. I think the key is repeat exposure. Once they student realizes that writing has become the only way to navigate successfully the academic landscape and beyond, they will want to figure out ways to make it easier -- to discover how they can make writing work for them. This, I believe, represents the beginning of personal process building.

Reflections on Bizzell and Young

In short, "Contact Zones" ultimately left me with more questions than answers. Bizzell's approach to the "reorganization" of English studies is novel and thought-provoking. There is something, certainly, to be said for the seemingly arbitrary ways in which we organize and, finally, specialize within our field. However, I feel like totally dismissing chronology as an organizing principle of literature -- as Bizzell suggests -- in favor of grouping studies by "contact zones" fails to recognize the practical reasoning behind dividing literature into time periods. First and foremost, we need to recognize that time is a static figure in relation to text generation. There is no arguing about when Adrienne Rich wrote "Diving the Wreck." Despite our lack of knowledge concerning the composition process, we are able to discern almost precisely when Emily Dickinson began and completed her life's work. While chronology may not insist upon the kinds of cultural investigation that is often times necessary to literary study, temporal organization is, unarguably, consistent.

I think this is one of two things that turns me off to Bizzell's essay. While her intentions are good in theory, the practical element just doesn't exist, and, as such, her argument remains just that: theory. A number of practical questions arise: Who decides which contact zones deserve our attention? How do we standardize that set enough to make a legitimate discipline out of its study? If chronology becomes essentially irrelevant to the study of literature, how do we then define contact zones without temporal boundaries? This last question seems to be one that Bizzell herself is unable to consider: even when describing particular contact zones, she frames them in terms of time periods. "For example, The New England region from about 1600 to 1800 might be defined as a contact zone..." writes Bizzell on page 167. How, practically, one is expected to specialize in a period of over 200 years of modern letters (not, I should note, limited to strictly "literary" texts) is begs another set of questions on its own.

It seems that a simpler and much easier to manage practice would be the simple recognition of contact zones in current literary discussions (though I'm not totally sure that this conversation would differ greatly from what you're likely to hear in comparative literature seminars across the country). I'm personally very suspect of any theory that forbids an approach to reading in favor of another. The gift of literary theory, in my opinion, is the multitude of avenues we develop to approach literature. There is no "one true lens" as it were, but rather only our capacity as thinkers to see a work from as many angles as possible. But I digress...

I do, however, greatly appreciate Bizzell's suggestion that we examine the rhetorical choices of literary works. I'm not sure that I agree with her search for "effective" rhetoric in literary texts, but I certainly understand and fully see the importance of impulse to deconstruct literature and examining what powers the "argument" of the poem, or short story, and so on. I think I much prefer Richard Young's conception of "the art of glamour" and "the art of grammar" in this respect (202). In terms of both my creative work and my critical analysis, I'm always interested in what choices were made in order to make art "work." I often find myself beginning with a basic question at all levels of the language: Why this way and not that?

Surely, there is some ethereal motor driving these choices -- the ghost of process -- but given the very real boundaries of language, it seems that artists are more or less presented with the same series of choices time and time again, and to study these choices would give us an even greater sense of how rhetoric can be the basis for beauty. I'd second Young's warning, however, that it can be a great disservice to "over rationalize the composing process" (201). There must be something like intuition -- some unteachable instinct -- that makes the "right" choices in the "right" sequence in order to materialize any particular utterance. To trivialize this instinct might be to dismiss the mystery of art completely. 

Reversing Systematic Marginalization? Responding to Jeremy

Jeremy brought up the issue of what it's going to take to "de-gender" composition studies. In his post from earlier this week, he ends by suggesting that fostering a badly needed sense of gender equality might help to unravel the web of feminization inside the profession. This leads me to question whether or not the systematic marginalization of GTAs and adjunct instructors of all genders is something that, despite the term "feminization," can truly be resolved by debunking the concept. While feminization is an insanely apt way to describe the marginalization of "lesser valued" workers in English higher education, I am now beginning to question if the problem has exploded beyond gender roles and into the false hierarchy of power and respect we see operating at all levels of the university model. This is, of course, not to say that we shouldn't continue to push for gender equality inside this, and other, workplaces. As far as I'm concerned, this is a top tier problem. I only mean to question if the way that our FYW instructors are treated by their "superiors" has gone to deep to be solved by anything other than a full-on re-evaluation of the system that fosters it.

Take the Power Back! Responding to Macy

In Macy's post about the gendering of composition, she argues that while our reading this week makes a point to paint composition as a powerless position, the implications of what the composition teacher actually accomplishes can be construed as quite a powerful position, indeed. I fully agree with this, and would take it a step further to ask: Is our ability to recognize and demonstrate the power of first year composition studies a key to breaking down the systematic gendering of the field? Admittedly, the decks are stacked against our favor. But is it not possible for us to take the power back, so to speak, and to make a difference at least in the minds of our students? Might we not simply refuse to buy into the assumptions we are continually sold -- that we cogs in a machine not of our own making? And if this causes the machinery to break down, might we not take the opportunity to build, or at least influence the building of, a better, more democratic way administrating FYC?

A realize this just brings me back to the point of my post from earlier about the Bartlett article. But nonetheless, I feel that recognizing the true power of what we do can get us at least closer to understanding our role in significant change.

Our Place as Instructors

I keep circling Lynn Bloom's "Teaching College English as a Woman." It was, indeed, a horrific piece. Not only for its description of brutal sexual violence, but also for its uncompromising portrayal of sexism in the sphere of higher education. It is as if Bloom, and by extension all women (and, by further extension, all those who fall into the "feminized" construction of entry-level composition studies) are constantly being reminded, either explicitly or implicitly, to "know thy place."

Given this constant, othering message of a false hierarchy, we might look at the final episode of Bloom's essay in terms of questioning one's "place" or "role" in the classroom. In fact, the straightforward (and, as a result, somewhat ambiguous) nature of this chilling episode begs the reader to take it and make something out of it. We are never truly asked by Bloom to examine her story any specific way, and thus are left to read our own reasoning into it. What I keep returning to is, "What would those practitioners of academic misogyny make of Bloom's decision to relay such a personal and devastating story to her students?"

I assume that their response would be much the same as what they've been parroting all along: "Know your place." That is to say, know your place as a teacher, not as a moralizer, or as an activist, or, frankly, as a human being.

But who decides what it means to take one's place as an instructor? In my opinion, it can only be the instructor herself. The story Bloom tells her class may not fit into the antiseptic New Critical approach to literature that may have been expected of her in many phases of her career, but, as we find out in the end, it was without a doubt necessary for her to relay. Our discussions of literature, rhetoric, or what have you, can have direct impacts on our actual lives. The point here is that to think that the academy harbors this thing called "education," and that it has exists only within the pages of books and the minds of theorists, is a folly, at best. It is up to the self-actualized educator to know when to point out that what we read in books transcends the boundaries of the intellect and finds itself rendered -- sometimes horrifically so -- in our everyday lives.

Feminization, Standardization, and Graduate Students

Something that really struck me in the Bartlett article "Feminization and Composition's Managerial Subject" was the way she talked about the role of the graduate student who teaches composition. It's true that we (and I mean graduate students at TTU, and elsewhere) are expected to perform the tasks for a (not quite) full time instructor with much less pay and more expensive benefits. It is also true that, while I wouldn't say that any professor I have or have had (barring a couple of misfits) has ever made me feel any less than a burgeoning colleague, we do not have the same institutional or societal status as those around us, some of whom are performing similar if not exactly the same tasks. Even as I write this, I see clearer and clearer the connection to feminization. Before starting into this unit of reading, I suppose I've always just assumed that this model was just "the grad school way" and that to question it would be folly. But now I have to ask: isn't there another way? 

Then I look at the kind of top-down structuring of courses described by Bartlett (and lived by me) in which large portions of graduate students teaching composition are using syllabi and texts determined by the powers that be. The instructors of these courses, largely graduate students like ourselves, are supplemented (read: indoctrinated) at various seminars, workshops, group planning sessions, and so on. The burden of which -- and here I mean the burden of time and additional effort required beyond both one's coursework and the actual administrative duties of teaching a course oneself -- is put squarely on the shoulders of the student. And in the case of many programs these are unpaid hours.

I also notice how much of what Bartlett describes as a symptom of feminization, we just two weeks ago called standardization. I guess what I'd like to know is: Is there a more democratic way to standardize our writing courses that involves the direct input of graduate students to create an constantly evolving though cohesive program? Or would it require a systematic shift so great that current university model just can't support it?

Do We Need It? Responding to Erika

I personally wonder if having FYC students approach writing from the often times unfamiliar and extremely theoretical viewpoint of "rhetoric studies" isn't asking too much in terms of true comprehension and application. It's very easy for us--meaning English grad students and faculty--to see the wizard behind the curtain for what he is. These kids, though... I start talking about the rhetorical choices made in Steele's essay on sovereignty, and it's truly as if some of them are listening to the voice of Oz with no ability to conceive of how his voice got so loud or his head so big.

This is why I am in favor of classes in literature which teach students by way of application, instead of direct explication, about rhetoric and composition. I've taught classes in which the word "rhetoric" was never even used, and yet the students left with the capability to write a rhetorically sound argument.

There's just something about advocating for rhetoric as "the thing itself" that seems to push the concept too far into abstraction to help a lot of the students who are arriving in FYC.

The Name Game - Responding to Mark

I, too, have been thinking a lot about what we are to call ourselves as students of the amorphous blob of studies known as English. It's true that whatever it is we think we do (be it writing creatively, textual scholarship, linguistics, etc.), we have to account for the ways in which our particular fields of study snake out and touch those also under the English umbrella. Just saying that one studies "English" is only accurate in its ambiguity. On the other hand, when I try to be more specific and call myself a creative writing student, I am directing attention away from the obvious studies of literature and literary criticism involved in CW.

For these reasons, I typically prefer to think of myself as a student of capital L Literature. While the accepted version of what it might mean to be a student of Literature may exclude creative writers en mass, I like to think of what I do as the study of how to generate as well as analyze literature.

I think there is a stigma that accompanies serious scholars who describe themselves as creative writer. I mean, we spend so much time with our head in the clouds trying to come up with rhymes for "popsicle" that there's no way we give serious consideration to all of the other stuff that true "English majors" or "literary scholars" have to worry about, right?

I guess it just seems a lot easier to create my own definition of "literature student" than to try and shift public perception of the "creative writing student." Though I truly wish that weren't the case.

Field Work & Separation Anxiety

We didn't talk about it in class, but I found myself really interested in the relationship between a field of study and a discipline.

It occurs to me, after doing some reading on etymologies and industry interpretations of the concepts that one facilitates the other. That is, a discipline is a particular subset of study and practice within a field that (and this is interesting in the context of our conversation re: theory and practice) typically develops alongside or in conjunction with a "system of profession." (Wikipedia)

"System of profession," here, seems pertinent. It seems, to me, at least, that in order for a discipline to evolve, it usually needs to have some ties to practical application. Does this mean that disciplines can't fully develop in a kind of practical vacuum? Is a discipline of "pure theory" even possible?

I've sensed a different, but similar, concern bubbling beneath the surface of almost all of the readings so far. English, as a department as well as a subject, has spent most of its existence an amorphous state. I think we all recognize that at this point. Unlike other studies (especially those outside the humanities) I feel those who fall under the English umbrella are constantly at risk of some slow but deliberate change which, over time, my completely alter or do-away with their particular disciplines. I mean, is it likely that literary theory is just going to disappear over the course of 50 years? Probably not. But historically speaking, English seems frighteningly unstable.

This begs the question of what happens to a discipline once it has been separated from its field. We've talked a lot about how Composition and Rhetoric have bounced around looking for a home during the time that English studies were going through their adolescence (listening the The Smiths, smoking clove cigarettes, and just trying to fit in). Looking at the history from afar, the ultimate marriage of the two truly seems serendipitous (or at least a kind of phenomenon of aligning elements). But what would happen, theoretically, if we were to separate the two once again. Would Comp. Rhet. cease to be a discipline and instead become a field with its own set of established disciplines?

The horrible answer I keep coming back to: English studies would whiter up and die, but not until I lost all of my funding. I keep hearing over and over how FYC is the only thing keeping English departments alive and viable. But is this actually the case? Does anyone know of an example of a college or university completely compartmentalizing Composition? Can we think of any other hypothetical scenarios where two largely different disciplines aren't competing to define one field, and everyone gets to keep their jobs?

Pedagogy In Medias Res - Responding (in tangent) to Siobhan

I wonder, when is the best time to introduce a new instructor to pedagogical practices and theories?

The model that I've always seen practiced is that the new instructor goes in to her first class basically blind, but with the promise of professional assistance along the way. Many times, this manifests itself as a series of weekly or biweekly workshops or meeting where new instructors can come together and talk about the difficulties of, well, instructing. This is useful, for sure, and allows for much comfort in the heart of the new instructor -- what with being surrounded by a dozen or so other people who feel equally lost (and, hopefully, equally exhilarated). But in practical terms, how much time does this allow for a serious discussion of pedagogy? And should a new instructor not have some kind of theoretical rumblings of pedagogy brewing before stepping foot into the classroom?

The idea of learning to teach through teaching is a tried and true method, for sure. It forces new instructors to simultaneously encounter and solve problems without the benefit of "over thinking it." This method of developing pedagogical chops also suits the needs of the university: classrooms need teachers as soon as possible, and if we can condense the instructors learning time and teaching time into one experience, all the better. But, as I said above, how much time does this really leave for theoretical discussion of pedagogy? It seems as if the new instructor is expected to craft a pedagogical stance like a jazz musician burns through a solo. So the questions becomes: what happens when the soloist has little, if any, conception of musical theory? Or even practical knowledge of the instrument itself.

It's not a perfect analogy by any stretch of the imagination. But I can't get past the idea that many new instructors are forming their personal pedagogies based on little or no knowledge of actual methodology. And after doing this for a few semesters, does it not reinforce the very kind of aversion to standardization in comp/rhet that theorists strive for -- essentially fostering an attitude of "my way is the best way?"

FYC & WCW

It's interesting to see the way that composition is integrated into the English department at Tech as a student who's not taught from the rhetorical stance before. We spoke in class today about the different ways that different institutions lay the groundwork for comp., I.E., what specific offshoot of the English department (if any) is in charge of the program. I realize now that Vanderbilt (the school I'm coming from as a masters students and a teacher) divides FYW among the disciplines. That is to say, English has a FYC, Medicine Health and Society has a FYC, Business has an FYC, and so on and so forth.

On the English end of things (I have experience with MHS, as well, but the course I taught was structured much like an English course), FYW is definitely bent toward literature and literary analysis. Within this, students have the opportunity to choose through which literary facet they want to get their FYW experience. 102W, for example, is a course on literary theory, but the underlying goal is composition. 116W (a course I taught a few times) was introduction to poetry. The challenge, however, was integrating the idea of training to write academically into what looks on paper like a survey course.

Something that I used to do a lot of, that I realize now perhaps taught some of the same sensitivity to rhetorical choices that I'm having my students look at through essays in 1301, was to not only examine essays on poetry, but to examine the poems themselves. That is to say, who is the audience of this poem? What is the argument? And how does the speaker effectively convey her standpoint? As a beginning exercise into looking a literature this way, I always spent the first day "exhausting" (my term) a short poem by looking very intensely at all aspects in order to gain the most understanding of why the poem is written in the form it appears instead of some other way (with different language, different formal decisions, etc.). I typically would use William Carlos Williams' "This is Just to Say." Students would get to see how in very few words, WCW masterfully creates a speaker and, maybe more importantly, an imagined audience about which, by examining the rhetoric of the piece, we can make a myriad of observations.

I wonder: has anyone else tried something like this? Granted, when it comes to developing the skills needed to write at the college level, there is no substitution for actual scholarly essays. But this always seemed to me a nice, compact way to introduce students to a sensitivity toward purpose and choices in writing.