I’ve become interested in the concept of parrhesia or “parrhesy” and its implications for the way we teach writing to undergraduates. My thoughts are definitely still inchoate here, but I wanted to start thinking more publicly about the direction I’m heading and offer a few of the bits and pieces I’ve found and recorded in my commonplace book (which is […]
Freshman English
The Anti-Thesis Thesis; or, Why I Don’t Use the Word “Thesis” [Very Often] in Class
I may well be setting myself up for some charges of “composition” heresy: I try to avoid using the word “thesis” when I’m teaching Freshman English. Although I’ve practiced this erasure for a while, I recently made a public statement about it at our August Orientation and was interested in reactions from several who heard […]
Son of “Panopticism”
I’ve been using Michel Foucault in first-year writing courses since I began teaching, and I’m not alone. There have been portions of Discipline and Punish in Bartholomae and Petrosky’s Ways of Reading for as long as I can remember. I may be misremembering, but I recall Foucault’s first section, “The Body of the Condemned,” in […]
First Words
What to do about beginnings? So self-conscious, so artificial. Well, let’s start with a word of explanation. This blog is meant as a notepad or sidebar to the UConn Freshman English Program, as a place to stash ideas, work through first thinking, or just generally rehearse pieces of our evolving catechism in short form. We […]