As academics, no matter our level or field, we are used to the conventions of our field as well as the language, the jargon, used in our environment. While I speak of academics, every profession has its own jargon, it is used to communicate efficiently, and simultaneously it establishes our own knowledge and understanding of […]
Rhetoric & Composition
What is an Audience?
As part of the “rhetorical situation” most students either pick up on or are explicitly taught, “audience” looms large as the writer tries to predict exactly what will move those who hear or read the work. Other pieces enter the picture, too—purpose, occasion, for example—and this triumvirate serves as a kind of cloud into which […]
Should First-Year Writing Be Academic Writing Only?
Every August, when I introduce the UConn’s First-Year Writing course to new instructors, I present the course—“the pedagogy”—as a fairly coherent set of approaches and practices coming out of a particular tradition, which we do our best to engage with, revise, and renew each year. I encourage new instructors, who may be best positioned to […]
Bend and ‘Flect
When I think of “reflection” outside the world of composition and rhetoric, I think of light that emanates from a source bouncing off a surface that redirects that light–like sunlight bouncing off car windshields. The light is conceived of as linear, and the relationship between source and surface is geometric, the point of origin […]
What Are You Talking About?
Tony Scott and Lil Brannon have an article called “Democracy, Struggle, and the Praxis of Assessment” in the December CCC. I’ve read Scott before. We use part of his Dangerous Writing in our seminar for new instructors, and I appreciate his attention to the working lives of students and, increasingly, instructors. How can we discuss teaching without […]
Post-Scribing
I think the bones of our course are fairly easy to describe. I might say to a new teacher something like this: 1. Create an environment where writing seems an appropriate action (with readings, engagements, questions, problems), and 2. Respond vigorously to what gets written (and said) as both a reader and an interested colleague […]
Journey into History
Recent events have given me cause to dig into the Freshman English archives, which go back to the mid-1980s. This is fascinating reading. I’m serious here– there’s a real difference of style in how the Freshman English Program and the English Department communicated back then compared to now. Lots of long letters, long memos. Now, […]
Contributing to the University
David Bartholomae’s essay “Inventing the University,” is still a foundational text of composition studies, a testament to Bartholomae’s farsightedness and his understanding of student work. In that piece, he argues that “every time a student sits down to write for us, he has to invent the university for the occasion—invent the university, that is, or a branch […]
Improvisation and Composition #1
In an afterword to his extensively researched history, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music, George Lewis expresses his disappointment with the limited rhetorical form of the scholarly book, especially as it pertains to his subject, the Chicago-based musical collective, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Although this […]
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 […]