Welcome to 611

Most of the course description kinds of information will be found on “pages,” accessible from the banner above, or from the left sidebar. I’m going to leave this post up here, and open for comments in case you have any questions about the course, or requests for information that I can include there. Feel free to drop me a note here or via email.

As requested, a quick list of the Area Clusters: 101 (Practices of Teaching Writing), 102 (Composition/Writing Programs), 103 (Theory), 104 (History), 105 (Research), 106 (Information Technologies), 107 (Institutional and Professional), 108 (Language), 109 (Creative Writing), 110 (Academic Writing), 111 (Professional and Technical Writing), 112 (Community, Civic & Public)

Kalantzis, Mary and Bill Cope. “On Globalisation and Diversity.”

Kalantzis, Mary and Bill Cope. “On Globalisation and Diversity.” Computers and Composition. 23.4 (2006): 402-411.

Summary: “Mary Kalantzis’s plenary address at the 2005 International Conference on the Humanities (Cambridge, U.K.) argues that globalization and diversity ground the world of our times. The article expands on this notion as Kalantzis and co-author Bill Cope describe three instantiations of globalization since the evolutionary processes of human beings began. The third globalization of which we are a part today, they argue, is characterized by layers upon layers of difference. These layers, moreover, are supported through new media and the Internet—and may indeed return us to ‘multilingualism, divergence, and enduringly deep diversity.”’

Area Clusters: 106, 

Methodology: Oratory

Citations: MKalantzis BCope SHuntington LLessig JGoody JPGee

Keywords: Globalization Diversity SymbolSystems; CommandStructures Modernity

Quotes:

Whether it is for the better or for the worse and whatever the root causes—small government conservatism, today’s globalisation, or the new dynamics of a post cold-war world—the realities of this change are everywhere to be felt. There is no alternative to creating governance structures within the communities of practice of civil society. The Internet is governed not by any state but through the community of experts and interested parties that is the World Wide Web Consortium. Diasporic communities are governed not by home governments but by highly distributed community organisations whose points of connection are common cultural principles rather than chains of command. As the state withers, a certain kind of society disappears, too, and a certain kind of politics. When a greater capacity to decide and act is devolved to civil society, a higher level of participation and reflexivity is required of citizens. This is fertile ground for a new globalisation of cultural divergence. (407)

Whether it be in the domains of governance, work, or cultural life, the command society is giving way to the society of reflexivity. We are in the midst of a transformation that is creating new forms of subjectivity and new kinds of personality. These interconnected developments can be viewed both from within a systems perspective and beyond it. From a systems point of view, these are the kinds of governance structures, the kinds of organisations, and the kinds of people required today for the most conservative, small government and pro-enterprise points of view. We hear these points of view expressed in the public rhetoric of innovation and creativity, the knowledge economy, and individual autonomy, and responsibility. Notwithstanding the high-sounding rhetoric, these transformations may only legitimate and even exacerbate systemic inequities—iniquities, indeed. (408)

So here we are, 5000 years after the beginning of the transition from the first globalisation to the second. The next globalisation may not be at odds with diversity to the same extent that the second one was. Indeed, diversity may be intrinsic to it. The historical narrative of this paper has, all too schematically perhaps, suggested an at least partial return to multilingualism, divergence, and enduringly deep diversity. It also tells of a shift back to balance in the political economy of agency. In this transition, we may hear echoes of the diversity of the first globalisation, the moment of our original humanity. But a third globalisation could never simply be a return. The future will be incomparably different to any of our pasts. (409)

Samuels, Robert. \”Integrating Hypertextual Subjects: Combining Modern Academic Essay Writing with Postmodern Web Zines.\”

Samuels, Robert. \”Integrating Hypertextual Subjects: Combining Modern Academic Essay Writing with Postmodern Web Zines.\” Kairos 10.2 (2006): <http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/10.2/binder2.html?coverweb/samuels/index.html&gt;. 

Summary: \”In this hypertext, I argue that the construction of a class web zine as a shared writing project can help students to integrate traditonal and non-traditional models of academic writing.1 In detailing my students’ production and reception of a web zine entitled “The Daily Brewin,” I turn to a hypertextual model of new media literacy and discuss how composition teachers can develop theoretical frameworks and pedagogical practices devoted to thinking across the institutional and subjective forces circulating in postmodern higher education and culture. Central to my analysis of the roles of writing and computers in postmodern universities will be an examination of how new modes of media are transforming the fundamental structures of literacy and how these transformations reinforce multiple digital divides in higher education.\”

Area Clusters: 101, 106

Methodology: pedagogical reflection, 

Citations:  CSelfe JJohnson-Eilola JAlexander MCooper 

Keywords: CriticalAccess DigitalDivide Collaboration HyperText MultiLiteracies Postmodern Hybridity

Quotes:

In other words, hypertexts rework our conceptions of rhetoric and our sense of academic discourse. However, I will argue here that the mere use of hypertexts in a university writing class does not by itself resolve the various tensions pitting the desires of progressive teachers against current-traditional and modern educational institutions; rather, I posit that critical teachers of composition and computers need to carefully construct hypertextual assignments that help to bridge the gap between individualistic and social conceptions of writing and technology.

My student web zine and my own essay posit that there are multiple digital divides structuring the use of computers in university writing classes. These tensions are built around the following oppositions:academic discourse vs.individual expression;current-traditional authority vs. critical pedagogy; individualistic writing vs.collaboration; the modern delivery of universal knowledge vs. the social construction of relativism; progressive teaching vs. grading; democratic sharing vs. intellectual property, and globalized instruction vs. localized discourse communities. I argue that these binary differences are often hidden or repressed in most accounts of contemporary educational environments. Furthermore, I believe that the use of critical technology literacy and electronic discourse formats can work to bring these latent conflicts out into open.

My desire to integrate traditional academic essays with hypertexts exists, in part, because I think that educators must respond to often contradictory institutional demands. For example, we need to help students to write for their other classes by teaching them the conventions of the academic essay, and we need to incorporate strategies that focus on helping students to improve their computer literacies. 

From a pedagogical standpoint, we can define this cultural and historical opposition between old modern media and postmodern new media by distinguishing between the modern stress on individualism, universal rationalism, mass culture, and disciplinarity, and the postmodern emphasis on interactivity, cultural relativism, collaboration, and interdisciplinarity (Lanham, 1994)

Grigar, Dene. “What New Media Offers.”

Grigar, Dene. “What New Media Offers.”  Computers and Composition. 24.2 (2007): 214-217.

Summary: “Why are we interested in new media? What does new media offer rhetoric, and, just as important, what does rhetoric offer new media?

This question led me to create a course in spring 2005 entitled “Telematic Texts.” It focused on shifting practices in reading, knowledge-making, and the conceptualization of space and time as well as the intersections of rhetoric, new media, biological systems, and consciousness––topics I saw as germane to a study of what I have begun to call “Media Rhetoric.” A Humanities-based course, it was not simply concerned with understanding what it means to be human but rather what it means to be human in an age when communication among the world’s population is occurring via satellites and broadband technologies instead of face-to-face interactions and our ideas and art instantiated in pixels instead of as expressions captured in print or on canvas.”

Area Cluster: 106

Methodology: Theory

Citations: KHayles RBarthes MMcLuhan JBolter

Quotes:

Putting it more simply—in a world whirling so fast and so knotted together as it is, traditional approaches to text net us little in the way of understanding in what it means to be human today. Needed are theories and methodologies that provide new ways of understanding that are open and far-seeing. For Huber, that would be postcolonial cultural studies and trandisciplinarity, respectively.

What does new media offer rhetoric? Well, from the standpoint of postmodern, postcolonial, transdisciplinary thinking, a new way of seeing, a new way of defining, a new way of knowing––of loving text. Just for an academic to be able to admit aloud non-objectively in public that she loves text is a big step toward changing the power relationship between her and it, from one that is viewer-object to one that is lover-beloved. In this way, she––okay––“I” am open to text and text can open up to me. This means that text can include not only word-texts but also sound-texts, motion-texts, image-texts, and the like. So for myself, what new media has to offer is a way of seeing that allows for vistas beyond the print artifact and beyond the orator’s podium.

Hammill, Bobbi Ann. “Teaching and Parenting:Who Are the Members of Our Profession?”

Hammill, Bobbi Ann. “Teaching and Parenting: Who Are the Members of Our Profession?” College Composition and Communication 59.1 (2007): 98-124. 

Summary:

This qualitative investigation explores the perceptions of four women compositionists regarding mothers, teaching, and scholarship in the field of composition. I examine narrative case studies about four women who have PhDs in composition from the same doctoral program. Findings indicate that each of these four women perceives her mother as a literacy sponsor and sees her father as a literacy doer. Participants reveal that their mothers supported their educational decisions and encouraged them to gain more education than they themselves had. Participants pursued a doctorate for practical reasons such as proximity, cost, job security, promotion, and tenure as well as knowing someone else who had done it. In addition, each of the four participants identifies as a teacher first and scholar second, and each also expresses self-doubt regarding her ability to write and publish academic discourse. Participants view teaching as an ethical responsibility much like mothering and protect the memory of their mothers in various ways. Although participants separated from their mothers in order to pursue higher education, they still exemplified rhetorical ties to them (abstract 98).

 

Hammill’s article discusses the role of motherhood in relation to the role of teaching and finally as central to the current figuring of females in the academy and particularly in our discipline. She describes the alienation many women still face as they struggle to negotiate their ethical duty as nurturers of literacy and awareness, which she sees as stemming from motherly impulses and her participants’ own mothers, and the constraints to success placed on practitioners of writing instruction, which are still limited primarily to peer-reviewed, published research.

Area Cluster:
101-Practices of Teaching Writing; 103-Theory; 107-Institutional and Professional

Methodology:
Narrative case-studies, Surface lit-review, Inattention to issues of race/class when it comes to the idea of “mothering,” Non-disclosure of the identities of her informants and how she came to ask them to participate in her project. 

Most Valuable Citations:
JBerlin ABerthoff WBishop PBizzell LBloom LBrodkey HCixous RConnors SCrowley PElbow JEmig RFulkerson ARGere CGlenn SJarratt WOng LWPhelps LWorsham

Money Quotes:

“Each one of these women shares a narrative of self-doubt in regard to her own abilities as a scholar, researcher, and academic writer despite the reality that she has earned a doctorate in rhetoric and composition” (99).

 

“Mothers as metaphors receive much attention in the field of composition research in both positive and negative forms; thus, ambivalence guides a lot of the thinking in the field about mothers. Research shows that people either see mothers as nurturers in language acquisition or as subverted victims” (103). 

 

“The research of Chodorow, Gilligan, and Belenky et al. explains why motherhood is connected to teaching because mothers are said to be the people who usually express their feeling of responsibility toward their families first and their careers or other interests second and because they are generally known as being the first language teachers their children have” (104). 

 

“…[W]hen one examines the tole of mothers, one will find these particular women are oftentimes compared to teachers, nurturers, and literacy sponsors and are relegated to a seemingly subordinate position of ‘other’ and ‘listener,’ who carries the ethical responsibility of taking care of others” (105).

Burns, Leslie David. “On Being Unreasonable: NCTE, CEE, and Political Action.”

Burns, Leslie David. “On Being Unreasonable: NCTE, CEE, and Political Action.” English Education 39.2 (2007): 120-143.

Summary:
Leslie Burns starts out with a quote from George Bernard Shaw in which he states: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man” (Burns 120). Framing her argument with Lackoff’s description of what literacy education should include, Burns advocates using a “moral nurturing” pedagogy as opposed to one rooted in elitist and hierarchical “strict father” model of teaching. Though she acknowledges that the professional organizations associated with our field have made strides toward embodying a true rhetoric of political activism and social change, she believes that CEE and NCTE need to do more to advance social justice in the public sphere, particularly when it comes to state-imposed literacy mandates.

She highlights the increasingly aggressive and regulatory strategies the government has used to sublimate linguistic diversity and inclusive Englishes, and cites our discipline’s modesty and compliance as a problem. She claims that “…no one should be seen to know more about the teaching and learning of English than literacy teachers, a group that includes classroom teachers, literacy educators and researchers, and English language arts teacher educators and researchers from all levels” (137), and opines that we are in a prime position as insiders on the outside of the policy making sphere and that this unique positioning may mean that we are “freer to act now than ever before” (142). She asserts that the critical mass of literacy experts which we have amassed within our discipline should recognize that acting unreasonably and persistently will be the only way we can ever hope to “change the world.”    

Area Cluster:
107-Institutional and Professional; 112-Community, Civic and Public

Methodology:
History; Historiography; Theoretical framework; Call to action against mere calls to action; Call for professional stability, unity, organization, and to somehow usurp the federally lucrative educational system using a “moral nurturing” rhetoric.  

Most Valuable Citations:
HGiroux AGramsci GLackoff 

Money Quotes:

“In literacy education, nurturant morality is the keystone of an ethical liberal philosophy (Kuchapski, 2002) emphasizing individual capacity, social diversity, student-centered education, experience-based curricula, constructivist pedagogies, collaborative relationships, a focus on progress, decentralized decision-making, and local government” (121). 

 

“It is not simply the case that members of the US Department of Education have taken political positions that undercut professional teachers’ more significantly, these individuals participate in a systematic movement to frame discourse about education in ways that permeate public conversations” (124). 

 

“While NCTE has spent considerable energy calling for action, it has not provided constituents with with re-framed ideas necessary for them to take control of conversations and activate their own progressive nurturant frames in the minds of others” (128).

 

“NCTE’s reasonable measured response demonstrates the way in which accepting the strict father frames of its opposition has lead to an acceptance, however reluctant, of NCLB even though it is an anti-public education and anti-teacher mandate” (129).

Jack, Jordynn. “Space, Time, Memory: Gendered Recollections of Wartime Los Alamos.”

Jack, Jordynn. “Space, Time, Memory: Gendered Recollections of Wartime Los Alamos.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 37 (2007): 229-250.

Summary:
In this article, [Jack] examine[s]configurations of space and time in memory texts written by men and women who lives at Los Alamos, New Mexico, during World War II. These accounts each use somewhat different parameters to frame their recollections, drawing attention to the gendered hierarchy of space-times involved in the work of the Manhattan Project. Despite their heterogeneous authors and motivations, however, these frameworks circumscribe memories within a narrow time and space – the physical boundaries of the Los Alamos site and the frantic tempo of wartime work. In this way, they construct a collective memory of Los Alamos that overlooks the broader spaces and times within which the development of the atomic bomb was situated. Far from being neutral, like dates on a calendar or coordinates on a map, space and time function ideologically to shape memories in ways that support the ideological interests of scientists (229). 

 

“…[I]n this article, [Jack] explore[s] the scientific configurations of space-time that writers used in their remembrances of Los Alamos, and the effects of those space-time configurations for collective memories of a significant scientific and political development. The following sections consider how writers frame their memories with relation to scientific, domestic, and natural space-time, respectively. The concluding section considers how these appeals ultimately construct a narrative of scientific discovery that supports the epistemic authority of science, while simultaneously downplaying issues of power, responsibility, and accountability the Manhattan Project engendered” (234). 

Area Cluster:
103-Theory; 104-History; 105-Research

Methodology:
Historiography, Narrative Analysis, Critical Theory

Most Valuable Citations:
CBazerman BBiesecker KBurke SDobrin KFoss SFoss CGlenn DMassey

Money Quotes:

“By examining the spatiotemporal frameworks that shape memories of Los Alamos, we can better understand how popular memories of scientific events are shaped along ideological, as well as geographic or chronological, lines” (230).

 

Even though people writing accounts of life at Los Alamos occupied different spaces and statuses within the complex, the public memories created by their writing overwhelmingly refer to the frantic tempo of work, the patriotic duty of sacrifice, and the feeling of being part of something important. These memories “…bolster the epistemic authority of science, construct a patriotic narrative of duty, and exclude the ethical and political considerations that were attached to the decision to build the atomic bomb. By bracketing off these broader issues related to the bomb’s development, these accounts sustain a narrative of scientific ingenuity while leaving moral accountability to others” (231). 

 

“The intensity of time and the spatial isolation of Los Alamos functions to limit and justify the lack of consideration for long-term consequences of the Manhattan Project. Instead, few of the writers question their tole in bringing about the most destructive weapon humankind had ever seen” (246).

Romano, Susan. “The Historical Catalina Hernandez: Inhabiting the Topoi of Feminist Historiography.”

Romano, Susan. “The Historical Catalina Hernandez: Inhabiting the Topoi of Feminist Historiography.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 37 (2007): 453-480.

Summary:
This article asserts the viability of key topoi in feminist historiography: first, to establish presence for everyday women rhetors, and second, to explore ramifications of their positioning within variant historical narratives. Catalina Hernandez was one of six European women recruited to Christianize indigenous girls immediately following the military conquest of Mexico. Her letter to the civic judicial council seeking autonomy for her community of women teachers was perceived as sufficiently dangerous to warrant its deletion from the historical record and the subsequent ‘disappearance’ of the writer herself; only excerpted accounts of Catalina’s writing remain. I seek the historical Catalina Hernandez in the sophistic mode, assaying four motives and four contexts for the production and reception of the her letter (abstract 453).

 

“[Her] process has been to examine first the extant accounts of the incident: the sixteenth-century documents and contemporary scholarship on colonial education. [She] then propose[s] two alternative contexts, one looking at the (sic) Catalina’s community identity, and the other reconstructing a conversation in which the beatas theorize rhetoric from recent experience. each of four narratives… develops an identity for Catalina: woman in love, illuminata, woman of community, analyst of rhetorical phenomena. each narrative possesses a connection between this identity and her writing. Each is developed within the context of feminist topoi in historiography” (458).

 

Catalina was thought to be associated with the illuminati, a religious category which was tolerated for the first half of the 1500s but was soon heavily persecuted during the Spanish Inquisition, with practitioners first jailed and then burned at the stake. Her letter asks for justice but is dismissed as “disturbed,” not passed along to the queen but excerpted and paraphrased, and is not preserved in the historical record. Romano contends that theAudiencia wrote to the Queen about Catalina’s grievance (the exile of a male missionary on accusation of improper sexual relations with the beatas) in code and that correspondence between the Audiencia and the Bishop in charge of the missionary work in America also transpired in coded language. Despite the extremely limited amount of information that exists about Catalina Hernandez, Romano constructs her rhetorical history as someone who had a strong sense of justice and who sought to exercise her voice in order for it to be served. Unfortunately, the geographical distance of Hernandez from the Queen may have skewed her assessment of the rhetorical situation and her letter was not received favorably. No one knows what happened to Catalina Hernandez after the Audiencia articulated their intentions for her to be interrogated for traces of “illuminati,” but Romano finally gives voice to a historically unrecognized yet rhetorically savvy woman who was likely punished for both the success and the failure of her letter to the Audiencia. 

Area Cluster:
104-History; 105-Research

Methodology:
Research, Gender critique (a la Kathleen J. Ryan, 2006), Emotion, Inspiration (in the Aspasia sense)

Most Valuable Citations:
BBiesecker XLGale CGlenn SJarratt KKCampbell 

Money Quotes:

“Because no rich body of evidence informs my study and because no extant scholarly conversation provides impetus for advancing discussion about this incident, the topoi of feminist historiography have been home to my rhetorical invention, and the disputational topoi – those uncomfortable places absent resolution - have proved particularly useful. In this specific case, for example, methodology was inspired, not given, by what I call the ‘evidence’ or ‘Aspasia’ topos – the Gale-Jarratt-Glenn debate” (454). 

 

“One function of this topos has been to inspire calibration of the connections between mainstream rhetoric and Catalina’s particular performance and her particular education, as well as to inspire responsible uses of available evidence. My agenda is thus aligned with the Alliance of Rhetoric Societies inquiry into how best to study people doing rhetoric at the margins (Bizzell and Jarratt), and it is mindful in maintaining incompleteness” (455).