The moving force of inquiry is the existence of questions that are posable relative to the “body of knowledge” of the day but not answerable within it. Inquiry sets afoot a process of a cyclic form . . . —Nicholas Rescher, Process Philosophy, p. 65 Yesterday, the First-Year Writing Program facilitated a workshop on assignment […]
Bartholomae
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 […]
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 […]