Herring, Susan C. “Gender and Power in On-Line Communication.”

Herring, Susan C. “Gender and Power in On-Line Communication.” The Handbook of Language and Gender. Eds. Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003. 202-228.

Summary: Herring surveys research on gender and the Internet published or presented between 1989, when gender issues first began to be raised in print, and 2003. It brings together research findings and speculations and interprets the available evidence in relation to the larger question of whether – and if so, how – gender and power relations are affected in and through Internet communication. The body of evidence taken as a whole runs counter to the claim that gender is invisible or irrelevant on the Internet, or that the Internet equalizes gender-based power and status differentials. At the same time, limited trends towards female empowerment are identified, alongside disadvantages of Internet communication that affect both women and men.

Area Cluster: 106-Information Technologies

Methodology: lit review

Most Valuable Citations: S. Herring, B. Danet, L. Cherny

Money Quotes:

“gender is often visible on the Internet on the basis of features of a participant’s discourse style – features which the individual may not be consciously aware of or able to change easily. That is, users “give off” information about their gender unconsciously in interaction and this information does not depend in any crucial way on visual or auditory channels of communication; text alone is sufficient.”

” ‘Anonymity’ is not a particular virtue on the Web, although one is free to select any image to represent oneself, since the actual physical appearance of the creator of the pages remains hidden, as in text-based CMC. Researchers have observed that young women’s self-representations in personal homepages are often sexualized, involving provocative clothing and/or postures”

“the problem of objectification of images of females on the Web exists independently of the “provocativeness” of the images, recalling the wider phenomenon of objectification of females off-line.”

“In many respects, the Internet reproduces the larger societal gender status quo. Top-level control of Internet resources, infrastructure, and content is exercised mostly by men. The largest single activity on the Internet – the distribution of pornography – is not only largely controlled by men, but casts women as sexual objects for men’s use. The sexualization of women carries over into ostensibly neutral domains, such as recreational chat and personal homepages. In serious contexts, such as academic discussion groups, women participate and are responded to less than men. Moreover, it appears to be necessary for women to form their own groups to address their interests, suggesting that the default activities on the Internet address the interests of men. This evidence points to the persistence of gender disparity in online contexts, according to the same hierarchy that privileges males over females off-line.”

Hocks, Mary E. “Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments.”

Hocks, Mary E. “Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments.” CCC 54.4 (2003): 629-656.

Summary: “This essay illustrates key features of visual rhetoric as they operate in two professional academic hypertexts and student work designed for the World Wide Web. By looking at features like audience stance, transparency, and hybridity, writing teachers can teach visual rhetoric as a transformative process of design. Critiquing and producing writing in digital environments offers a welcome return to rhetorical principles and an important pedagogy of writing as design.”

Area Cluster: 106; 101

Methodology: Theory, Textual Analysis, Pedagogical Reflection

Citations: RLanham PSullivan JBolter AWysocki

Quotes:

“Visual communication theories, however, tend to draw too
easy a parallel between visual grammar and verbal grammar or to posit visual
literacy as easier or more holistic than verbal literacy.5 We need to recognize
that these new media and the literacies they require are hybrid forms” (630).

“Critiquing and producing writing in digital environments actually offers a welcome return to rhetorical principles and an important new pedagogy of writing as design” (632).

“In a space where multifaceted identities
can be constructed, experienced, and even
performed, this experience of hybridity
works to the audience’s advantage by
increasing the experience of pleasure
through identification and multiplicity” (643).

“We must offer students experiences both
in the analytic process of critique, which
scrutinizes conventional expectations
and power relations, and in the transformative
process of design, which can
change power relations by creating a
new vision of knowledge” (644).

“Because the process of design is fundamentally visual
and multimodal, it can be challenging, but it leads students to a new under-
When designing digital documents and also
seeing how people use and interpret them, our
students can then see themselves as active
producers of knowledge in their discipline.
standing of how designed spaces and artifacts
impact audiences” (652).

Rohan, Liz. “Reveal Codes: A New Lens for Examining and Historicizing the Work of Secretaries.”

Rohan, Liz. “Reveal Codes: A New Lens for Examining and Historicizing the Work of Secretaries.” Computers and Composition 20.2 (2003): 237-253.

Summary: Rohan argues that we in the academy lack language to describe low-status, gendered
and classed work. In order to fairly measure the work that women do with technology as secretaries, and
the literacy skills they need to perform this work, we need to shift our perspective and better recognize
how we measure knowledge in workplace settings. She investigates some history of secretarial work in
America, its relationship to similar female-dominated occupations and its relationship to educational
programs promoting literacy. Reveal Codes—a reference to a command in earlyWordPerfect software
programs that allowed typists to view the formatting they had done such as indenting and underlining
text—is a metaphor for framing this project as an interrogation of both our work as scholars and the work
of secretaries.

Area Cluster: 106-Information Technologies, 111-Professional & Technical Writing

Methodology: narrative, lit review

Most Valuable Citations: A. B. Aschauer, B. Street, A. Sellen and R. Harper, D. Brandt

Money Quotes:

“I learned that on-the-job technological knowledge can become a literal means of survival, and changes in technology have the potential to transform job descriptions in liberatory as well as exploitive ways. Nonetheless, there is little discussion about how technology shapes the jobs and lives of workers in low-status occupations like secretaries” (239).

“studies that measure where women have not been also promotes a monolithic category of women not doing things with technology. Thus, well-meaning feminist critiques can perpetuate the invisibility of work women do—along with other computer workers in a service capacity—because these investigations tend to measure the lack of status in the work rather than its intricacies and the degrees of skills entailed by it” (240).

“the desires we have for ourselves as workers may inevitably contain a class bias that prohibits an investigation of women’s work that is fair to the work performed by those who do not attend the academy, who don’t hold middle-class jobs, or who would rather not take their work home with them as professionals often must” (242).

“With all the suffering that has been incurred by those performing women’s work, work that has been essentialized, there is potential damage in rearticulating the work in terms associated with masculine work—like “skillful.” While we wouldn’t want women to be essentialized as good workers because they are patient, why can’t patience be built into an un makes a good worker? Why, indeed, is patience not a practiced skill like problem-solving?” (251).

Thomas, Harun Karim. “The Pedagogy of Whatever.”

Thomas, Harun Karim. “The Pedagogy of Whatever.”  Computers and Composition 20 (2003): 23-50.

Summary: “Where most pedagogical uses of hypertext either attempt to account for race, gender, and sexuality or completely disregard them, my approach to hypertextual writing both accounts for and disregards identity. In this article, by trying to capture this hybrid or rhizomatic scheme, I consider what Giorgio Agamben refers to as the Whatever. I am interested in appropriating Agamben’s concept not only to ground students in identity formation and ideological awareness, but also to conceive of an excess or what exists after all cultural and ideological determinations. This excess is exemplarity or singularity, the Whatever. I regard the Whatever as a return to the promise of happiness by way of artistic or hypertextual endeavor.”

Area Cluster: 106, 101

Methodology: (Cultural/Critical) Theory, Pedagogy, Literary/Film Analysis

Citations: GAgamben GUlmer RBarthes Deleuze FGuattari JJohnson-Eilola

Quotes:

“I am aware of the dangers of not grounding the students with understandable topics and concepts—utter confusion and frustration, to say the least—but that has been my challenge as an instructor devoted primarily to literary theory: to find where theory meets praxis, which has been the challenge for many of us” (25).

“I claim that the image warrants an experience that might illuminate the singularity of one’s being and that this relationship can be taught in electronic writing environments, specifically in first-year composition courses” (25).

“Because of the ephemeral nature of the Whatever experience, I believe the most
important aspect of teaching the Whatever in a first-year composition course lies in helping students to understand and articulate their subjectivities” (29-30).”

“Although I believe that writing in the traditional sense can be a powerful, violent, and subversive act of resistance, I think that hypertextual writing serves as a better medium in getting students to think about language and identity. [...] Hypertext foregrounds and makes explicit the shifting of text throughout the process of writing, something that print has a difficult time displaying” (47).

Karen Kopelson. Rhetoric on the Edge of Cunning; Or, The Performance of Neutrality (Re)Considered As a Composition Pedagogy for Student Resistance.

Kopelson, Karen. “Rhetoric on the Edge of Cunning; Or, The Performance of Neutrality (Re)Considered As a Composition Pedagogy for Student Resistance.” CCC. 55.1 (2003): 115-146.

Abstract: In today’s classroom and larger cultural climate, overtly politicized “critical” composition pedagogies may only exacerbate student resistance to issues and identities of difference, especially if the teacher is marked or read as different her/himself. Kopelson therefore suggests that the marginalized teacher-subject look to contemporary theoretical notions of the “radical resignification” of power as well as to the neglected rhetorical concept of mêtis, or “cunning,” to engage difference more efficaciously, if more sneakily. Specifically, she argues that one possible praxis for better negotiating student resistance is the performance of the very neutrality that students expect of teachers.

Blair, Kristine and Elizabeth A. Monske. “”Cui Bono?: Revisiting the Promises and Perials of Online Learning.”

Blair, Kristine and Elizabeth A. Monske. “”Cui Bono?: Revisiting the Promises and Perials of Online Learning.” Computers and Composition 20 (2003): 441-453.

Summary: “We chronicle—in both an historical and bibliographic framework—the discussion of rhetorics of empowerment and disempowerment throughout the last 15 years, and we also examine the promises and perils of current trends in online teaching and learning, with a special emphasis on the role of universities in promoting distance education. This article addresses the question cui bono?, or who benefits, from the rush to technologize teaching and learning? We address the extent to which the continued rush to technologize teaching and learning is a perilous return to a rhetoric of empowerment that as compositionists we must continue to interrogate critically; we question how, in an era of 24/7 learning, students may or may not benefit and also how teachers may lose out, based on the increased workload and course management surrounding online learning.”

Area Cluster: 106

Methodology: History, Bibliography

Citations: GHawisher CSelfe PTakayoshi LBrady PSullivan

Quotes:

“With the universitywide rush to put courses and entire programs online, it is vital that we focus more specifically on the collective benefits for students and teachers, issues that we address in this article” (442).

“Ironically, as educational technology specialists may tout the need for e-learning environments to be technologically transparent and seamless in their ability to interface between the web-authoring, digital imaging, rich media, and course-management software necessary for synchronous and asynchronous learning, such transparency also erases the labor of teachers involved in the course-development process” (447).

“Returning to our cui bono? framework, students are clearly the beneficiaries of the workload of faculty, whose labor-intensive technology-infused course design, development, and delivery process is invisible, a consequence of the desire for technological transparency and seamlessness in the delivery of effective online pedagogies” (448).

“Our freedom from constant justification affords technorhetoricians ample opportunity to talk about processes rather than products, creating a scholarship of teaching within our discipline that builds on existing discussions of pros and cons of computerized writing environments and that asks questions rather than provides answers” (449).

Kapper, Michael Carlson. “Mixing Media: Textual, Oral, and Visual Literacies (and then some) in Teaching with PowerPoint.”

Kapper, Michael Carlson. “Mixing Media: Textual, Oral, and Visual Literacies (and then some) in Teaching with PowerPoint.” Computers and Compostion Online (Fall 2003): <http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/edwelcome.htm>.

Summary: “This article explores the various literacies in play when we and our students use PowerPoint, and other similar software packages, to create presentations.” More specifically, the piece looks at and compares conventional and student wisdom on the various literacies and seeks to add advice to those pools of wisdom.

Area Cluster: 106, 101

Methodology: Pedagogical reflection

Citations: None.

Quotes: “In deciding how much text to include, the overall context of the presentation must be analyzed, and the text must be shaped accordingly.”

“The matter of oral literacy in PowerPoint, then becomes a matter of thinking about what the best tool is for the presenational task at hand. If there is not some spoken component to the presentation-be it live or recorded- the writer should, quite likely, consider another medium for the presentation.”

Paraphrase: When it comes to issues of design, students belief align with that of PP, that templates and a small, simple set of options make for the best looking presentations, no matter who creates them. Meanwhile, instructors would like to see students learn design more independently.

“[Students] seem to believe, that is, that the more multimedia elements they include-in terms of both number and variety-the better their presenations will be.”

“In this discussion is that the users of either program face a number of the same concerns. From a user perspective, Flash has the advantage of producing a more elegant product, while PowerPoint has the advantage of being easier to learn and use. From my perspective as a teacher, Flash has the added advantage of making every design choice-in addition to content choices-a conscious decision on the user’s part.”

Powell, Katrina M. and Takayoshi, Pamela. “Accepting Roles Created for Us: The Ethics of Reciprocity.”

Powell, Katrina M. and Pamela Takayoshi. “Accepting Roles Created for Us: The Ethics of Reciprocity.” College Composition and Communication 54.3 (2003): 394-422.
Summary:
Grounded in theories of feminist research practices and in two empirical studies we conducted separately, our argument is that seeing reciprocity as a context-based process of definition and re-definition of the relationship between participants and researcher helps us understand how research projects can benefit participants in ways that they desire (article abstract 394).

Powell and Takayoshi describe their research projects and the instances within each in which they were called to enact a methodology of reciprocity versus a methodology of “research ethics,” and in which they chose to allow a human relationship develop rather than to strictly attend to their research goals. They conclude that allowing human relationships the opportunity to develop beyond the scope of what might be initially imagined by the researcher or the participant must often include the researcher’s realization that these kinds of relationships may not be possible withing the traditional ‘participant as observer’ collaborative model.

Area Cluster:
105-Research Methods, 107-Institutional and Professional

Methodology:
Empirical, Reflective, Polemic

Most Valuable Citations:
BBrueggemann EBarton ECushman MFine JKinneavy GKirsch JRitchie KBoardman SPerl PSullivan

Money Quotes:
“‘Reciprocity includes an open and conscious negotiation of the power structures reproduced during the give-and-take interactions of the people involved in both sides of the [research] relationship. A theory of reciprocity, then, frames this activist agenda with a self-critical, conscious navigation of this investigation’ (16).” (Ellen Cushman as qtd. 394).

“[The] nonhierarchical, reciprocal relationship, in which both researcher and researched learn from one another and have a choice in the study, is informed by a deminist desire for eliminating power inequalities between researchers and participants and a concern for the difficulties of speaking for ‘the other’” (395).

“Researchers can construct methodological frameworks in which knowledge is collaboratively developed by participants and researcher, but when the roles of participants are confined to the research project (and what [participants] can give the researcher…) the research relationship may benefit only the researcher and, thus, not be reciprocal at all” (396).

“Kairos serves as a theoretical lens for understanding discomfort and dissensus so that we can be more prepared for and responsive to the various rhetorical situations that occur in our fieldwork” (416).

Heller, Rafael. “Questionable Categories and the Case for Collaborative Writing.”

Heller, Rafael. “Questionable Categories and the Case for Collaborative Writing.” Rhetoric Review 22.3 (2003): 300-317.
Summary:
Contrary to much recent scholarship, this essay argues that there is no such thing as a collaborative mode of literacy. Specifically, it takes issue with Andrea Lunsford and others who have called for a profound shift in the zeitgeist of competitive to collaborative writers/ In a larger sense, though, the article is not about collaboration at all; rather, it uses the literature on collaborative writing to illustrate a certain kind of scholarly exaggeration, whereby composition reformers try too hard to distill practical lessons from interpretative categories (article abstract 300).

Specifically, Heller disagrees with advocates of collaborative writing interpretation Foucault’s critique of the author function to justify the collaborative model, explaining that Foucault’s ideal situation “has to do not with a radically more social definition of writing but with a thoroughly asocial kind of reading” (309).

Area Cluster:
101-Practices of Teaching Writing, 110-Academic Writing, 103-Theory

Methodology:
Polemic, Clarification, Theory

Most Valuable Citations:
MFoucault ARGere SJarratt ALunsford MLPratt RSlavin DSmit PSullivan MWoodmansee KBYancey MSpooner

Money Quotes:
“My goal is to point out the consequences that follow when educational theorists exaggerate the practical significance of the analytic distinctions they make” (301).

“My point is to use the debate about collaborative writing as a representative case, illustrating certain kinds of rhetorical choices that scholars make as they try to bring theory to bear on the teaching of writing” (301).

“My concern is that scholars of composition have jumped too quickly from intellectual critique to pedagogical prescription. The cultural and legal bias toward individual authorship may be troubling and deeply flawed, but the critique of that bias is not itself sufficient to replace it” (303).

“In the end, what I’m after is not a particular pedagogy as much as what James might have called a certain pedagogical ‘temperament.’ For those of us who choose to work in the messy here and now of the classroom, our attention needs to stay focused on the problems of the here and now. It’s self-defeating, I think, for teachers to pursue the categorical transformation of students’ modes of writing” (315).

Gold, David. “Beyond the Classroom Walls: Student Writing at Texas Woman’s University, 1901-1939.”

Gold, David. “Beyond the Classroom Walls: Student Writing at Texas Woman’s University.” Rhetoric Review 22.3 (2003): 264-81.
Summary:
This essay examines rhetorical instruction and student writing at Texas Woman’s University, a public women’s college. Unlike their peers at elite, private women’s colleges in the East, students at TWU were consistently encouraged to write and speak in public forums, to take part in political discourse, and to think of themselves as rhetors. The vocational focus of the school meant that the campus could never serve as a cloister, and the ever-present support of activist clubwomen gave students powerful role models for participating in the public sphere (artricle abstract 264).

Area Cluster:
104-History, 107-Institutional and Professional

Methodology:
Historiography, History Revision and Clarification, Space Claiming

Most Valuable Citations:
AR Gere KConway SWLogan SMiller

Money Quotes:
“The founding of TWU was the result of a decade-long struggle by Texas clubwomen… [who] campaigned for the establishment of the school… [and] yearly passed resolutions supporting [it]” (266).

“…Southern women – and especially Texas women – brought to women’s causes their own interpretation of women’s rights and roles. Texas Woman’s University was in no way a hotbed of radicalism. As a public university, it had to accomodate public opinion and legislative whims” (267).

“I find little evidence that TWU students were subordinating thier personalities to write in a plain style or that they were conflicted about expressing their personalities through a more belletristic style” (276).

‘The optimism and confidence TWU students displayed owes much to the local conditions that led to the founding and development of the college… [TWU] was ale to compete with the men’s A&M college and even the University of Texas, but in some departments, it was markedly superior” (277).